He wasn’t gonna cry. Not in front of you.

Roy’s blue eyes looked down at the metal beneath his feet, the glimmer of the bleacher dulled with shoe dirt and brimmed with grime. His pretty pink bottom lip trembled slightly as he felt your gaze move off of him. He knew you did it for his sake, you always knew what to do. “I’m-I’m angry..I’m angry now.” A few tears dropped from the oceans that were his eyes, the soft droplets dripping onto the slick surface. “I’m angry enough.”

The night was a quiet one, crickets making there normal hum as the long field lay ahead of you, lustrous with perfectly cut green grass blades. Slightly wet from the damp, cool air. Roy clutched his weathered, brown leather jacket into him a little closer.

He had been cut. Cut from the team. What shit. He was good at football, great at it. It’s what he was born to do and being cut from a team wouldn’t change that…it shouldn’t at least. All because he wasn’t “Angry enough” the coach had said. Fuck that.

A small sniffle erupted from him, breaking the silence of the night, the thin, cool air going tense for a moment. You were all he had it felt like. The only one that had the answers that settled his restless, self deprecating mind. The only voice that would stop to listen. You were all he had. Everything.

Big boys don’t cry. He didn’t care. His shoulders shook with silent sobs. He liked that you gave him the opportunity of having shameful privacy, that you looked away as he cried beside you on the very bleacher he was next to when he got cut.

He liked it…but when he felt your hand brushing against his back, like a paint brush gliding up and down a canvas in meaningful strokes, he felt calm. Understood. For the first time in a long time. Did it make it hurt any less? He didn’t know. But at least he wasn’t alone.