Rocks and Stars

by Sam Ledel

  Rocks and Stars

  For Kyle Lindsay, life is simple. She comes from the ideal suburban family—two hardworking parents, a geeky younger brother, and a supportive best friend. But everything changes when Kyle starts having those kind of thoughts about her soccer teammate.

  Things don’t get any easier when college starts and she heads off to play for a Division I squad. Figuring out how to pass her classes is one thing. Figuring out herself and the other girls on her team, a whole other ball game.

  Kyle’s struggle to own who she is and what she really wants may end up landing her on the bench and without the woman of her dreams.

  Rocks and Stars

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  eBooks from Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  http://www.boldstrokesbooks.com

  eBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.

  Please respect the rights of the author and do not file share.

  Rocks and Stars

  © 2018 By Sam Ledel. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13:978-1-63555-157-0

  This Electronic Book is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 249

  Valley Falls, NY 12185

  First Edition: April 2018

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Editors: Katia Noyes and Barbara Ann Wright

  Production Design: Stacia Seaman

  Cover Design by Tammy Seidick

  Acknowledgments

  A special thank you to Bold Strokes Books and to my editor, Katia Noyes, who guided me on this journey and helped mold this story into what it was meant to be. Thank you to Kirsten Watters for taking on the task of reading the early drafts. To my family, who has always supported me in this dream of being a writer. And thank you to Alyssa, for everything.

  Part One

  Prologue

  Fresh air. I need fresh air.

  Not like I don’t get enough of it six days a week between club practices, school practices, and weekend games. Still, I think I need it. Fresh air has to do me good. Help me clear my head or something. Because clearly, I’m not thinking straight.

  Straight. Has anyone actually thought about that phrasing before? The irony is staggering. And quickly becoming too much for my seventeen-year-old brain to handle.

  I grab a water bottle from the fridge, my ball, and my phone and head to Kade Park. When I step outside at ten in the morning, it’s already hinting at the blistering central Texas summer heat that looms just hours away. From my parents’ house, the park is a half-mile walk, which I hope is enough time to get in some practice and ideally, figure out just what in the world is going on with me.

  Let me try to explain: I’ve been having thoughts. Lots of thoughts…about one of my club teammates. You know, those kinds of thoughts.

  Her name is Beth. We’ve known each other for years. We’ve had at least one class together since the fifth grade. She’s one of those girls who is unbelievably sweet to everybody. I’m pretty sure she has no mean bone in her body. She’s the girl whose mom bakes brownies on obscure holidays like International Save the Whales Day and has Beth hand said brownies out to every student in class with a sticker that reads, “What will you do to help?” She’s the girl who always has five extra pencils on hand when yours breaks during a test. And currently, she’s the girl I can’t get out of my head.

  Though, if I’m being honest, Beth isn’t the only one I’ve noticed lately. Actresses on TV soaps have started to catch my eye in a way they haven’t before. Then, one time, there was that girl—maybe college-aged with a gorgeous sleeve of tattoos—who smiled at me in the local smoothie shop on a Saturday afternoon. I nearly fainted when she handed me my drink. Heck, even the meteorologist on Channel Five has me pausing to watch the next day’s forecast every other night.

  So, sure, a few more people are on my radar these days. Still, most can’t hold a candle to Beth. She’s just amazing. She has this beautiful smile that makes even the sprints at practice feel like an easy jog. Her hair is often done up in an elegant ponytail (probably courtesy of her mom), or in the case of our soccer practices, is set in a professional-looking braid. A few adorable freckles dot her nose and cheeks.

  Actually, when it comes to Beth, I am painfully aware of a lot of things now. I notice every time she grins, which sends my stomach into a crazy gymnastics routine. I notice the way our hips bump when we both go for the ball in a one-on-one. I feel the tug on my jersey each time we battle for a spot in the goalie box before a corner kick. And lately, I find myself relishing those tugs, wishing she would lift my jersey just a little bit higher.

  Beep!

  Oops.

  I’m apparently loitering on the corner of a crosswalk, unfazed by the blinking WALK flashing at me on the other side. I wave apologetically at the driver and hurry across the street. The park is about fifty yards away, so I drop the soccer ball and kick it ahead of me. I pass a playground with a few kids enjoying their summer vacation, scrambling along the brightly painted metal stairs.

  I walk over to the side of the elementary school located on the other end of the park. A large oak tree provides some shade as I set my water bottle down and put my earbuds in.

  “Let’s see.” I hold the ball in place under my foot and scroll through the song list on my phone. Eventually, I decide on a singer-songwriter and hit play.

  After juggling the ball twice, I kick it over to the wall. I adjust my feet, and it bounces back against the instep of my foot. Then I chip it back to the wall before falling into my usual routine with my brick partner.

  Instantly, I start to feel better. Soccer has a way of doing that. It’s therapeutic. I don’t have to think when I’m playing. Soccer is the one time I can forget about everything else and just enjoy the game. I take a deep breath and juggle the ball between my feet, letting the lyrics float around me.

  The ball skids off my foot. Huh. I never really noticed how ambiguous these lyrics are. What do they even mean, “the secrets we keep” and “people like us”? I press skip and drop down onto my hands and knees. So, maybe soccer isn’t always completely therapeutic. Push-ups. Push-ups could help.

  The opening notes of a Demi Lovato song starts, and I smile. She can always put me in a good mood.

  I exhale and ignore the burn in my arms. Then I turn over, clicking next again.

  Melissa Etheridge’s guitar strums its opening chords…

  “Oh, you have got to be kidding me!” I turn off my phone, tossing it away from me. It lands with a thud in the grass and I roll over onto my back, resting my hands behind my head. Closing my eyes, I exhale.

  The squeals of the little kids from the playground ride the breeze over to me as I try to organize my thoughts.

  “Okay, Kyle,” I tell myself. “You got this.” I grab the ball and toss it up toward the sky. “So I think Beth is pretty. That’s totally normal. Lots of girls think other girls are pretty. Emily, my best friend since forever, commented on how I looked at last semester’s soccer banquet. That wasn’t weird at all.”

  I toss the ball higher, and it lands in my hands a foot over my chest.

  “And well, surely it’s natural to want to kiss other girls. Girls kiss each other all the time in movies. And they talk about it all the time in magazines. I mean, who wouldn’t want to do that?”

  The image of Beth at last night’s practice
pops into my head. She’s running past me as the ball sails over us. Sweat glistens on her forehead.

  I close my eyes. She has this freckle on the corner of her lips. I’d noticed it a few weeks ago when she came up to high-five me after assisting on my goal. The way she smiled at me afterward nearly made me swoon. Or there was that one time after algebra class when I explained the homework assignment to her in the hallway, and she leaned into me, listening; she smelled like tulips. Oh, then there’s the way her lips shine after she takes a drink of water…

  Once again, I see myself alone with her out on the field. We’re standing against the goalpost. She presses me up against it. Her body is flush with mine. Her breasts press against me. Her hands grab my hips. My lips touch hers…

  The ball I had thrown high overhead lands with a smack on my nose.

  “Shit,” I cry out and grab my face while the ball rolls away. After a painful few seconds, I turn over onto my stomach. My nose still stings as I grab the ball and rest it under my chin, watching the kids running back up the slide over on the playground. A dark-haired boy with copper skin sits among the wood chips, his only concern the monarch butterfly flapping over his head. Behind him, a girl, about six with strawberry-blond hair, scampers up the shiny red slide, giggling while she chases her friends.

  I try to remember what being that little was even like. I try to recall a time before things were so complicated. Like when my mom would pick me up from school. Or when my brother Kevin and I played spies with Emily on long summer days until we had to run home for dinner. Or when Jacob Sparks sloppily kissed me in the hallway outside the girl’s bathroom in second grade. Or when I lay next to my dad on the overstuffed leather sofa watching basketball and sharing a bowl of popcorn.

  What was it like before I realized I was gay?

  Chapter One

  Emily closes the patio door of my parents’ house behind her, the blinds shimmying before slowing to a halt once she’s sitting opposite me in one of our wicker patio chairs. The humid June breeze floats over us while strands of clouds grasp at the sun, painting the sky a light blue, scattered with strokes of pink.

  “Fun party,” Emily says, adjusting her floral-patterned skirt and touching the rim of her red glasses.

  “Thanks,” I reply, glancing back into the house through the brightly lit living room windows. Uncle Will is demonstrating a new trick that his Yorkies have learned to my dad, who laughs loudly, his eyes sparkling after a few beers. He manages to look both impeccable and casual thanks to his finely pressed suit and tousled brown hair. My dad runs his free hand through it while the other holds a half-full glass. Several of my parents’ colleagues sit among the plush furniture. The drinks placed neatly on metal coasters make the whole scene look like the cover of Austin Weekly instead of my high school graduation party. My brother Kevin stands near the back table, pretzels in one hand, his attention parked on one of our neighbors, an elderly man with thick gray hair who is telling an animated story. My mom, meanwhile, is a mere flash, a well-dressed, effervescent shadow as she flutters between everyone, making sure they are happy, satisfied, and smiling.

  “You’re lucky, getting all this,” Emily says, gesturing to the crowd inside. “When I graduated last year, my dad handed me a gift certificate for Two Bucks Sushi. And then my mom spent the whole night crying over my first communion photos, accompanied by her sobbing about how ‘I’ll always be her niña preciosa.’” Emily’s dark brown eyes rove over our backyard as she speaks, eventually landing on our old swing set. “Remember playing spies on there when we were kids?”

  “Yeah. And we always made Kevin be the double-crossing mole and would tie him to the tree when my parents weren’t home.”

  Emily laughs and we both look out over the backyard. Now the paint on the swing set is faded, and chips of white paint litter the manicured lawn around its base.

  I lean back in my chair, the brown wicker creaking. “At least your mom was proud of you when you graduated. At my college signing the other week, all my parents could talk about was how excited they were to show my pictures to their coworkers. I had accomplished another milestone on the ‘perfect little family’ checklist.”

  “I’m sure they are proud of you, Kyle,” she says. “You got a full ride to Meadowbrook. You’re going to be a Division I athlete. Pretty impressive if you ask me.”

  I sigh. Part of me is thrilled, then I think about Beth. I wonder where she will be next year. I try to imagine a team where she isn’t there, and an unease settles in me. I blink a few times, sitting up in the chair and forcing myself back into the conversation with Emily. “Well, you helped,” I finally say. “You got Coach to come out and see me.”

  “True.” Emily shakes back her dark, shoulder-length curls. “But it wasn’t that difficult. She does know our school has a history of talented soccer players.” She smirks, and I nudge her lightly with my bare foot, having kicked off my heels the second I sat down.

  “Humble as ever,” I reply.

  After a playful nod, Emily sits back. We watch the branches sway and listen to the cicadas begin their summer song. After a few minutes, Emily crunches a fallen leaf with her red ballet flat.

  “Have you told them?”

  I don’t have to ask to know what she’s talking about. Slowly, I shake my head.

  “It’s not that easy, Em.”

  She nods, and I wait for the rest of what she has to say.

  “This is your last season with the Tornadoes.”

  I bite the inside of my cheek and clear my throat. “I know.”

  “Did you…are you going to say anything?”

  I look at Emily. Immediately, I flash back to almost two years ago. I had spent so long crushing on Beth, not understanding the reason why I needed to rush to practice, or why I felt elated each time she looked my way. Or why leaving the practice field each night left me feeling like a deflated ball kicked into the garage. Then, one day, I had gotten the courage to open up the book Desert of the Heart. I’d spotted it in the local bookshop when I’d gone to buy Othello’s Spark Notes to help with my Lit final. When my eyes landed on the cover, and I hurriedly read the back, it was all I could do to not sprint out then and there to devour the book in the parking lot. That night, I stayed up until three a.m. reading. And as soon as I turned the last page, I called Emily.

  “I understand now,” I had cried through ragged breaths. I held my sheets close, trying to muffle my voice while my parents slept down the hallway. “I like her, Em. I really like her.” I cried into my phone for half an hour while Emily sat on the other end of the line, letting me know it was okay. Everything would be okay.

  Sitting on the back patio now, my eyes drift away from my best friend and toward the old swing set. The feeling that had hit me that night, that epiphany, had overwhelmed me and threatened to swallow me and rip me open at the same time. I could feel myself coming apart as something deep within clawed and pushed against my lungs, shouting to be free. It was the same feeling that left me dizzy each time Beth flashed me a smile on the field. It was the feeling I had noticed even before Beth, like with that girl in the smoothie shop, but had forced deep into a drawer, locked away with a key buried under years of denial and efforts to be the perfect daughter. But just like that, after reading that book and seeing myself in those pages, there it was, desperately yelling for me to recognize it.

  As the warm blanket of summer air begins to lift with the setting sun, Emily doesn’t push me to answer. I hold her gaze as mosquitoes buzz overhead. Eventually, she smiles and turns to watch the light disappear over the trees.

  “College will be different,” she says. “Just wait and see.”

  Chapter Two

  “Are you excited for the school year to start, sweetheart?”

  I bite down into my slice of pepperoni pizza and glance up at my mom sitting across from me at the kitchen table. An oversized bowl of fake fruit takes up the space between us, always playing host to whatever is in season.

 
; “Umghhmm,” I reply through my mouthful. “Sure.”

  “Nice, Kyle,” my brother says. “You’re sure to win over plenty of new friends like that.”

  I toss my used napkin at Kevin, and we earn a look from our mom before she sighs, “I’m sure Kyle will make plenty of friends. Are you looking forward to Meadowbrook, sweetie?”

  “I still have a few weeks before move-in day.”

  “I know,” my mom muses, dabbing at the edges of her mouth with a napkin. Her manicured nails look like they should be handling a polished knife and fork, not a thickly sauced pizza from the local Italian restaurant. She takes another delicate bite, then sets it down to smooth her sweater before adding, “Emily’s mom says she can’t wait for you to join the team. You must be so excited to play with her again.”

  I nod. “It’ll be nice.” I take another bite of my pizza, the sauce dribbling onto my chin. I swipe at it with the back of my hand and can feel my mom’s eyes willing the disregarded napkin into my grasp.

  “Though I am surprised they make you move in so early. School doesn’t begin for almost two months.” She says this like she just remembered an item on her shopping list, mildly interested but still preoccupied with a dozen other things on her mind.

  “Soccer requires I move in early. We begin preseason in August.”

  “So I get the house to myself even sooner,” Kevin grins over his slice. His technology club T-shirt, which looks two sizes too big on his lanky frame, looms dangerously close to the pool of garlic butter creeping across his patterned plate.

  I scrunch up my face at him, and he mimics me before brushing strands of light brown hair from his eyes.