As promised, after school on Wednesday, I made my way downtown to have an appointment with a new therapist. If this hadn't been a stipulation of getting my car back, I would've bailed. This was an hour I could spend with Emmett, rather than a stranger.

The shrink looked at his watch, then over at me. Beyond the basic introductory, hi-how-are-yous and such, I hadn't done much talking. I'd spent several minutes admiring his very impressive thick black beard, which he kept immaculately shaped and lined up. "We've been sitting here in silence for almost fifteen minutes, Clay. Don't you have anything you want to talk about? It doesn't even have to be relating to your anxiety."

He was getting paid regardless, so I didn't see why he cared. I doubted he had a genuine interest in my well-being. Maybe if I'd been a patient for more than twenty minutes. But he didn't know me. I was a name on a file to him.

"What else is there?" I asked. "That's why I'm here, right?"

My gaze bounced around the room. It looked like it belonged in someone's house, not the eighth floor of a random office building downtown. The view of downtown outside the large windows, framed by heavy brown curtains, did not match the interior. It felt like an optical illusion. All the furniture was comfortable, lived in—nothing like the stark modern decor of my last therapist. I suspected the comfy couch and the warm earth tones were meant to make people comfortable. To help them open up. Like they were talking to a friend in their living room.

"Your anxiety is not your whole life. You're a puzzle, and that's just one piece of the full picture," Dr. Singh said. "You could tell me about school, your friends, your family."

"I like your suit." I scanned the man's outfit. Burgundy trousers and a crisp pink button-down, with a fuchsia tie and suspenders. A matching burgundy coat hung on the back of his leather desk chair across the room. Emmett would love the ensemble.

"Thank you." He brushed a hand across his pants leg, as if to clear off lint. "I thought it was nice."

"You don't worry what people will think about you wearing that?"

"Not really. I liked it so I bought it." He looked me over. My tattered jeans—which I bought that way—my boring white t-shirt from Ralph Lauren with their signature polo player's silhouette, and my favorite Nikes. I was very boring in contrast with him. "Do you worry people will judge you for how you look?"

"Everyone judges everyone for how they look."

"Hmm." He nodded. "But you still did that." His eyes jumped to my silver hair. The only thing about me that stuck out.

"Maybe I'm sick of caring. They're just going to judge, anyway. It might as well be for something that makes me happy."

"That's a good way to look at it," Dr. Singh said.

"I guess."

"So, I read your file. A bit about your history. How this all started for you."

So much for not talking about my anxiety. Maybe he assumed I would open up now that he'd got me talking.

"No offense, Doc, but I don't want to talk about my dead dad. There's only one person I feel comfortable talking to about that outside my family, and you ain't him." I detested the word ain't—I heard it at least ten times a day—but I felt it worked better to get my point across.

Dr. Singh crossed his legs and leaned his head on his hand, framing his narrow face with his thumb and forefinger. "Do you mind if I ask who this mystery man is?"

I debated whether I should answer. I wasn't thrilled with the idea of letting a stranger know my sexuality right off the bat. Then again, once I implemented my plan, it wouldn't be a secret much longer, so why the hell not? As usual, I felt a sizable pit in my stomach. Surely the size of a golf ball, at least.

"You look conflicted," Dr. Singh said.

"Maybe I am."

"No one gets to know what you say in here, Clay. Not even your parents. It's between you, me, and my notebook. The only way I can divulge information about you is if I think you're a danger to yourself or others. Which I don't believe you are."

My mother told me she got this guy's information from the mom of another queer teen, so maybe I could let him in on this one part of my life. "The mystery man is my boyfriend."

"You have a boyfriend?" His inflectionless voice held no clue to his thoughts on the matter. He wrote something down without looking away from me. "That's nice. How long have you been dating?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. Our timeline is kinda messy."

"How so?"

"We started as friends, and I sorta fell really hard for him, really fast. Um, I thought I was straight... or something, but I know I'm not now." I shook my head. That was irrelevant to the question. "Anyway, we finally admitted our feelings, maybe like a month ago. We've been boyfriends ever since. Although there was a grounding situation that made it difficult for us to really be together until last Friday, when we had our first official date."

"Has your coming to terms with your sexuality caused your anxiety to worsen?"

"What do you think?" I said, a bit too petulantly.

"I want to know what you think."

"Obviously! Or my mom wouldn't have forced me to come here."

The doctor nodded. "Are you still questioning your feelings, your identity?"

"Not really. No. I know that I'm gay."

"It's okay to be unsure."

"Well, I really enjoy having sex with my boyfriend, if that clears anything up for you."

He chuckled. "You don't have to be gay to enjoy sex with men. You could be bisexual, pansexual—"

I raised a hand, showing him my palm. "I'm going to stop you before you name the whole acronym. I'm gay, Doc. I've had sex with girls. I didn't like it. It felt boring and tedious. I always felt disappointed... dissatisfied."

"Perhaps you require an emotional connection to feel pleasure with your partner."

"I've had several girlfriends, and I had deep feelings for most of them. I'd go so far as to say I think I loved a couple of them. I definitely loved my last girlfriend; she's one of my favorite people. But it was a platonic love. I never felt a physical attraction to her or any other girl. I didn't want her the way I way I wanted Emmett—that's my boyfriend. And that started almost immediately, before I even really knew him. Five days after we met, I started having fantasies about giving him a handjob in the woods, which is not as kinky as it sounds if you knew the context."

I hadn't meant to say that last part out loud. "Sorry. That's probably more information than you wanted or needed."

He waved a hand toward me. "This is your time. Say whatever you want to say."

"Well, stuff like that never happened with any girl I've dated or pursued." I shrugged my shoulder up to my ear. "Not that I ever did much pursuing. They mostly came to me, asked me out."

"I see."

"The most I ever wanted from girls was to be their friend."

"It's okay to feel like that."

"But my friends... they all had girlfriends by seventh grade. I knew I didn't want one, but I felt like I had to have one to fit in... or something. It's stupid kid bullshit, and I wish I'd never done it. Maybe I would've figured myself out sooner."

"It's possible." Dr. Singh puckered his lips as he wrote something down on his notepad. "Did you ever have feelings for any boys before Emmett?"

"I didn't think so when I first met him. But recently I keep remembering stuff."

"Like what?"

"Stupid little things that should have been a clue. Like in the locker room before and after gym, I felt really embarrassed and I would not look anywhere but straight into my locker. Because I was worried someone might catch me looking around and think I was gay and that deeply terrified me." I pushed a hand through my hair, blowing out a breath. "How did that not tip me off?"

"You didn't want to know, and your brain complied," Dr. Singh said. "Denial can affect the way we remember things, making our memories unreliable. Over time, those memories can take the form of the story we wish we'd lived, rather than the truth of the events. We omit some details and fabricate others to fit our narrative. The brain is very powerful that way. It blocks off things it doesn't think we're ready to deal with."

I nodded. That definitely struck a chord. "I totally blocked out a guy I had a crush on."

"Tell me about that."

"I mean, I didn't fully block him out. Just my feelings for him." I brushed my hands up and down the legs of my jeans. "See, I went to camp every summer from the age of like nine until I was thirteen. I guess my mom thought getting me out of the house into the fresh air would make me be less sad about my dad at first. And then I loved it and kept going back."

"And what about the boy?"

"His name was Jacob. He was my camp counselor for my last two summers there. He was in charge of my cabin both years. He had to be about sixteen... seventeen, something like that. I remember he had a car—a black mustang with white racing stripes—and he'd show me pictures and talk to me about all this car shit I had no clue about, but it was Jacob, so I listened to it like it was fucking Shakespeare."

Dr. Singh chuckled.

I took a deep breath, and explained all the things I'd done to get close to Jacob, to receive his praise, just to get a few bro-hugs and some high-fives and maybe a "You're a cool kid."

I told him about Jacob getting a girlfriend and how it made me feel. How devastated I was. "And it's so stupid, but when our cabin won a relay race, thanks to me, Jacob just patted me on the back and went to kiss her."

"How did that make you feel?"

"It pissed me off. I trained so hard that summer and forced my bunk mates to train just to make him proud of me. Then he barely even cared. That night, I punched one of my bunk mates in the face. Honestly, I forget what the kid did, or what he said to make me so mad."

"You were angry at Jacob and you lashed out at your bunk mate. It's classic transference."

"Duh!"

Dr. Singh snickered at the outburst, but quickly regained composure and asked, "Why didn't you go back to camp after that summer?"

"For a while I told myself that I'd outgrown it. But the truth is I didn't want to see Jacob again. I guess I thought he'd be with that girl who I'd seen around camp for years. Or maybe he would've moved on to someone new. Someone else to take his attention from me."

It suddenly occurred to me, I'd done something similar with Emmett. All those months of wanting him, only to have him hook up with Duke, made me so angry. But maybe Duke wasn't the real target of my ire. I think I may have been angry at Emmett for that and transferred all that onto Duke. Duke had done plenty since then to deserve my fury, just not that. Although I couldn't justify that anger toward Emmett either, since I was holding back my feelings. Maybe that's why I kept throwing it in Emmett's face that he'd outright denied feelings for me, making us both suffer. If he hadn't rejected me so many times, maybe I would have told him sooner. Maybe he never would have fallen back in with Duke. Then this whole mess never would've gotten started. But again, it wasn't fair to place all the blame on him. I played my part in the damage.

"Now, you said you blocked Jacob from your memory. Why do you think you did that?" The doctor asked the question the way a teacher does who already has the answer, putting extra emphasis on the first you, making his intentions crystal clear.

"I think I did it because I was afraid of how much I liked him. Somewhere, subconsciously, I must have known what was happening. I mean, I wasn't a moron, or like fucking Amish. I knew gay people existed. But I guess that wasn't a thing I thought of as acceptable for me."

"Why would you think that?"

I got a bit choked up. I knew the answer to that question. It came to me as soon as he asked it. So I told him: "There was a boy I went to school with. He was very feminine. His name was Isaiah. He wore a lot of 'girly' colors." I put air quotes around the word, because I'd always thought gendering colors was stupid. "He also liked music and movies and TV shows that are generally considered girl stuff. And he always pretended to be someone like Wonder Woman, Black Widow, or Supergirl when all the kids wanted to play superhero. Which I understood. They're all awesome. And Supergirl is one of the strongest characters in the universe. Why wouldn't you want to be her playing against doofuses pretending to be Hawkeye? She shoots fucking lasers out of her eyes. She'd wipe that son of a bitch out in two seconds."

"She's awesome. I can't argue with that."

"Um, anyway, in second grade, he brought in a Holiday Barbie that was still in the box, for show and tell. He was so excited."

The corner of my mouth quirked up, recalling Isaiah's beaming face as he stood at the head of the class, showing her off. I don't know why, but this memory stood out in stark clarity. So much brighter than so many others from my childhood that meant a lot more to me. "He talked about how her dress was his favorite shade of purple and how he loved her sparkly crown, which looked like real diamonds, and her silk cape with all these beads on the trim."

My smile faded as I recalled what happened next. "At recess that day, someone had taken the Barbie out of the box and brought it outside. Some boys from my class started teasing Isaiah about it. They played keep-away. You know, the game where kids throw things over another kid's head to stop him from getting it."

Dr. Singh gave a deadpan stare worthy of Jim Halpert. "I know what keep-away is, Clay. I'm pretty sure they've been playing it since the dawn of time."

"Right. Sorry." I shook my head. That was so stupid. Of course, he knew what it was. "Uh, so, some of the older kids, they saw this and came over. One of my classmates told one of the older kids—who I think maybe was his brother—about Isaiah's Barbie and what he said in class. Then the two big kids joined in, picking on him, kinda pushing him around the circle of boys. The big brother said if Isaiah liked the dress so much, he should get one for himself, because he'd obviously rather be a girl. I mean, it was hardly clever or particularly biting comments, but we were only like eight or nine, and that shit still hurts. You know?"

Dr. Singh nodded. "Mm-hmm."

"One of the big kids threw the Barbie in a mud puddle. When Isaiah started crying, the boy from my class, who started it all, pushed him down, and I think he scraped his knee or something because a teacher took Isaiah away. He was still crying when he got back to class."

"That's terrible."

I grabbed the throw pillow beside me and hugged it to my chest as my heart raced. Though I didn't know why. This happened a decade ago. "I remember the school called Isaiah's dad, and he came and took Isaiah into the hall to talk to him. Only the door didn't close all the way and my seat was right there next to the door, so I heard his dad berating him, because I guess the Barbie was his sister's, and he was supposed to bring in this fire truck that his dad had bought him just for this day so he'd have something he could show proudly. And I remember thinking that was such an odd thing to say, because Isaiah was so proud of that Barbie before she got messed up. The dad kept his voice really low the whole time, but I remember he sounded so angry. And he asked, 'Why do you have to be like this?'"

"What did Isaiah say?" Dr. Singh asked.

"He didn't say anything. His dad grabbed his arm, said that they'd talk about it at home, and dragged him down the hall."

"What does that story have to do with you, Clay?"

I lifted my eyes to meet his. "What do you mean?"

"I asked why you thought being gay was not acceptable for you when you were thirteen. All that negativity came from one incident where a little boy brought a Barbie to school?"

I shrugged. "I don't even know if Isaiah was really gay, or if he just liked Barbies and pretty dresses, but that was just the start of it. He was tormented for the next five years. In seventh grade, someone left a dildo in his gym locker with a note that said, 'I hope you choke on this and die.' I mean, where does a thirteen-year-old even get a dildo." I picked at my nails. "After that, his mom pulled him out of school. I never saw him again."

"Were you sad when he left?"

I stared at him, confused. "I didn't even know him. I don't think I said more than ten words to him in the entire time we went to school together."

"Were you perhaps afraid that people would think you were like him if you hung out with him? Then maybe they would've treated you the way they treated him?"

"Maybe." The word came out as a croak. I cleared my throat, hoping to resolve the issue.

"So, you feel like Isaiah and all that he went through was the reason you repressed your sexuality?"

"Among other things. Little things. Stupid things."

"Like what?"

"This one time, my best friend Jackson and me were watching a show on his laptop. We were in his room and just laying across the bed, like we always did, and his older brother came in right around the time that one of the guys on the show—who's bisexual—started kissing another guy. Well, Lucas freaked out about it, and started shouting at us." I started jabbing my finger in the air to mimic Lucas' actions, lowering my voice to repeat the words, "'Why the fuck are you watching that faggy shit? I better not ever catch you doing anything queer like that or I'll beat you bloody, you little perverts.'"

"Lucas sounds like an asshole."

I laughed. "I didn't think therapists could say stuff like that."

"Only when it's the truth. And he's not my patient."

"He is such an asshole," I said. "When he finds out I'm gay, I'm positive he'll tell Jackson he better not see me again."

"Are you worried Jackson will listen to him?"

"Heh! Hell no." I shook my head vehemently, grinning at the absurdity of that question. "Jackson hates Lucas."

"Correct me if I'm wrong; I assume you haven't come out to many people."

"A few. My parents, my sister, Jackson, my ex-girlfriend—the one I said I love. And, of course, my boyfriend Emmett. Emmett told me his friends also know, but he trusts them, and I trust him."

"How do you feel when you think about coming out to more people?"

"Scared."

"Understandable."

I picked at my fingernails, making one of them jagged. "And maybe... maybe a little excited."

Dr. Singh smiled. "That's good. Can you elaborate on that?"

"If I was out, I could love Emmett the way I want. I could treat Emmett the way everyone else gets to treat the person they love. Holding hands, hugging, kissing. I can't do that if I keep hiding."

"But sometimes it's not safe to be who you are. Hiding it is acceptable if it's for your own protection. If you think you might be in danger from revealing your identity, it might be best to hold it in until you can go somewhere safer."

"I'm not sure that's true for me."

"Why?"

"Emmett is out. And apart from an incident that happened four years ago, he says it's mostly fine. Maybe some name calling, but I can handle that."

"Okay. Well, we've talked about the excitement. Now tell me about the fear. Is it fear of the reaction? Of ending up like Isaiah?"