A/N: Hey fam, sorry this chapter is short but work has been kicking my ass :(

Love,

Kyle, Your Local Garbage Gay

...

My therapist thinks I'm holding back.

It seems she wants me to spew everything I'm thinking in some stream-of-conscious style, drive into every cistern of my brain and explore this life without one single speck of word fleeing from the heel of my boot. But I'm not fucking Faulkner. I'm just Kyle.

What the fuck am I supposed to do here, Dr. T'Soni? Do you want me to admit that I hope he's unhappy? That I want him to feel bad about hurting me? Good people don't wish for these things. Good people move on and forgive. I'm not a good person.

Each time I go to that little office with the ceramic Big Bird on the desk, I want to throw the papers in the trash. I want to say that everything that has happened to me isn't worth discussing anymore. What's done is done and I'd rather forget it all. But by the time I've finished reading, my hands are shaking. If it's terrifying, then I guess it's worth saying.

Clyde amped me up to sleep with this girl at a party once. She'd been eyeing me all night but I was too shy to speak to her. I didn't think anything would come of it. After a few shots, Clyde shoved me into her and I was forced to mutter a velvety, alcohol-soaked "hullo."

She locked us in the master bedroom and after several minutes of her grabbing and grinding me everywhere, me mumbling "hold on a sec," and her saying something along the lines of "what are you, gay?" when I didn't want to do something, we stumbled back out to the hallway to smug faces, and Clyde's whooping, exclaiming I was "officially a man."

I don't remember her name, but I can still taste her sweat, the whiskey and apple cider, how into the carpet fell my vomit, and became an entrée for someone's dog.

I haven't thought about this in years.

The next morning, I woke up surrounded by snoring teenagers. Clyde was in the kitchen, airing out his face in the open fridge.

"Hey," I said.

"Kyle," he pulled himself out and shut the door. "I feel disgusting."

"Me too."

"I'm going to need a list of every stupid thing I did last night."

"You're on your own with that one. I don't remember much."

"Shit."

"I wouldn't worry. I doubt what you did was any stupider than what you do when you're sober."

"Fuck you, Broflovski." He opened the freezer compartment. "Ooh, burritos."

I leaned against the bright red counter. I had no idea whose house this was. Don't think I cared to.

"How was it with what's-her-face?"

"Great," I lied, though the memory of her reaching into my jeans when I said "no" made me want to vomit again. I pressed the lever on a toaster and two cockroaches crawled out. "Oh, fuck this. I'm going home, Clyde."

"'Aight, see ya."

I made my way to the kitchen door that led into the garage and outside into the mid-morning sun. That party was just one of many parties. Parties with college students and enough cocaine to fill my skull, vodka to keep my chest on fire, and girls who put tabs of LSD under my tongue and kissed me with smoke in their mouths.

I was too tired to try and climb up into my bedroom window, so I quietly opened the front door, peeked in, saw no one, then walked in and carefully closed it behind me. My father was out on a business trip, and Ike couldn't care less where I had been, but my mother saw me try and walk past the kitchen.

"Kyle. Help me roll this dough."

"Ma, I don't feel well."

"I know. Help me with this bread or I'll tell your father you were out drinking."

I sighed, then wobbled over.

"Wash your hands."

"Ken, ima." Yes, Ma.

She was in the process of rolling and braiding long strands of dough for challah, her hands covered in flour.

I washed all the way up to my elbows and scrubbed under my fingernails before turning to the counter island, facing opposite of Sheila, and started stretching the dough. Challah is tricky sometimes, as is baking any bread, I suppose, but I've never got the braiding part quite right. The threads can't be too thick or too thin, and I always fuck it up.

"You reek," she said, not looking up.

"Sorry."

"Why didn't you call me when people started drinking?"

"My phone died."

"No one else had a charger?"

"I don't remember."

She lay her hands flat on the counter, still not looking at me. "I was out. Driving around until four in the morning looking for you, Kyle."

"Sorry," I repeated.

"You don't sound sorry at all. You sound like that Clyde kid."

I said nothing, pinching the ends of my thread.

"I know you don't care about anything I have to say anymore, but I'm going to say it anyway: I'm really worried for you, ben. People who really care about you will uplift you into a better person. This Clyde… he's a leech, Kyle. He takes advantage of you and you let him."

"I'm not doing anything that I don't want to do," I said, plopping the dough onto the pan. "You don't know him how I know him."

She finally looked up at me. "Every day, I feel like you're slipping further away from this family. I don't want to lose my son."

"So now what?"

Craig's hands were still up inside my shirt, holding my sides. He leaned in and kissed my ear, just where my scar ends.

"What do you mean?" he started in on my neck, stippling a line of tiny kisses. My brain swam, my chest turned to goo. I thought of that girl. Apple sweat. My vomit in the beige carpet.

"I - just, hold on a sec, Craig."

Craig pulled away and held my face. "You want me to stop kissing you?"

"Of course not. But we should really talk about this."

"Why? We already said we liked each other."

"Yeah, but the direction this is heading right now…" I took his hands away and held them in mine. "I like you a lot. But with us working together and everything, I don't think we should do a one-night stand. I've tried before but I always feel like shit afterward and I don't want that with you. I can't explain why right now but this feels too special for me to ruin."

"Who said anything about a one-night stand?"

"Oh. I just assumed…"

"You assumed wrong." He kissed me again, then rested his forehead against mine. "I mean, I would totally sleep with you right now but that's not all I want. You're special to me, too."

"Guess I was wrong."

He chuckled, running his fingers up my open palm. "You were half-wrong."