I swallow bile as he describes an ambush – homophobic football players who'd been my teammates only the year before waiting for him in the school parking lot. I cringe when he says he almost preferred their fists to the words because they made him doubt everything he knew about himself.
Worse, they made him ashamed.
Made him wonder if he wanted to live.
I reach out to him, needing to stop the flow of words, needing to save that scared little boy, but there's nothing I can do.
"Don't," he snarls. "You were the reason."
I drop my hand, helpless.
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