Page 99 of The Associate
The first kiss. Then the few that followed.
Then, the landslide. His father’s face. The word abomination hanging in the air of his bedroom, more solid than any piece of furniture. His mother’s weeping prayers. The silent, terrifying bus ride.
The Hills.
The name alone was a cold knot in his stomach. He let himself remember. Not just the fear, but the specifics he usually kept locked away. The “welcome sermon” in the cold chapel. The feel of his favorite paperback, a romance novel, being taken from his hands. The endless, echoing silence of the bunkroom at night. The hollow-eyed boys, all mirrors of his own shame.
Elias.
The memory was a sharp, sweet pain. Not just the stolen kiss at the lake, the first and only touch that had ever felt right until Gael. But the aftermath. The way Elias’s face had turned to stone when they were dragged apart. The Director’s profound, cold disappointment that had somehow hurt worse than anger. The cube. The crushing, lightless silence. The cold concrete against his cheek. The mantra they’d forced him to recite until the words lost all meaning and became just sounds, just pain.
They said they healed him.
The thought rose, clear and cold.
They said he was clean. Born again.
He looked around his pristine apartment. He looked at the life he’d built after; the career, the polite distance from his family, the silent, solitary nights. This wasn’t a life born of healing. It was a life built on a foundation of ash. It was a careful, hollow sculpture erected around a central, screaming void.
I wasn’t dirty to begin with.
The realization didn’t come as a thunderclap. It seeped in, cold and quiet, like water finally finding a crack in a dam. The shame, the fear, the self-loathing; they weren’t symptoms of a sickness he’d been cured of. They were the sickness itself, a poison he’d been injected with and told was medicine.
He was just… different… just…
He stopped. The word sat on the threshold of his mind, a shape in the fog. It was a simple word. A word worn by brave people on TV, by cheerful couples holding hands in neighborhoods he never visited. It was a word that had been screamed, wept, and whispered in his direction until it had become a monster, a condemnation, a death sentence.
He wanted to say it. Just in the silence of his own head. He knew, with a certainty, that came from the book, from Penny’s serene smile, from the way Gael looked at him as if he were something desirable, that he had to. If he wanted to move. If he wanted to one day have a sliver of the quiet, unashamed happiness he saw in Penny when she spoke Chloe’s name.
His fingers, gone cold, fumbled with the book. Tucked in the back, on a plain, cream-colored card, was a phone number and a name:
Dr. Jasmine Vance, LMFT.
Specializing in LGBTQ+ Affirmative Therapy and Post Traumatic Stress Disorders.
He stared at the digits. They blurred. His heart began its familiar, frantic knock.
I can’t.
But another voice, newer, fragile, whispered:Truth. Honesty. Even a small one.
He grabbed his phone. His hands were shaking so badly he misdialed twice. On the third try, the line connected. A ring. Then another.
“Hello, you’ve reached the office of Dr. Jasmine Vance. This is Maya speaking, how can I help you?”
The voice was warm. Professional, but infused with a calm, melodic kindness.
“I… I…” Samuel’s throat locked. He squeezed his eyes shut. “I’d like… to schedule… an appointment. Please.”
There was a pause. “Of course. I can help you with that. Are you a new client?”
“Y-yes.”
“Wonderful. My name is Maya. What’s your name?”
“Samuel. Samuel Ruiz.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Samuel."
