Chapter 7

Derek's POV

"Derek!" my father says, seeing me for the first time in a hot minute.

"Hi," I say awkwardly. I don't really know what to say, I haven't seen him in forever.

"Come here," he smiles, opening his arms and inviting me into a hug.

He pulls me into the hug, patting me on the back while I kind of just stand there. I don't really know what to do with my hands right now. That's a normal occurrence by the way, if I have no hoodie pockets, I don't know what to do with my hands.

"I missed you," he says.

"I missed you too."

"How have you been?" he asks me and I shrug.

"I've been alright."

"You grew so much," he notices, looking at my height. "You're not 4'1 anymore."

"Yeah."

"How has football been going? I saw you got a full ride scholarship to UCLA, so I assume you've been doing well."

"It's been going well. All of my super close friends came with me, so it's gonna be fun."

"I'm glad you know a lot of people going. How has your mother been doing?" he asks, grimacing. I know he doesn't like her at all anymore.

"The same. She met some guy in church, they aren't dating, but they were flirting all the time when I was still living with her," I state. That guy, I forgot his name, but he has voiced his opinions on gay people before, and they are not respectful.

"She still a bitch?" he grins before being scolded by his wife.

"Language, please don't talk like that in front of Isabelle," she says, pointing at who I assume is my half sister. If she truly does listen to Eminem, she's heard worse.

"Sorry," he says.

"So, you're Derek?" my stepmother asks. "I've heard a lot about you. Are you truly a football phenom?"

"I don't know if I would call myself a phenom, but I'm pretty good," I reply.

"Either way, it's great to meet you. I'm Clara, your stepmother. You can just call me Clara, I know you don't know me at all, basically."

"Nice to meet you," I smile at her.

"So, is your mother still a b word?" my dad asks, making sure not to swear in front of his daughter.

"Yes. Very much. I talked to her today."

"What'd she say?"

"Well, as you may know, I have three teammates who are gay or like guys. Two of them are dating, I think the other one is definitely on the way to getting in a relationship, he's been flirting with a baseball player for a week," I kind of ramble.

"Yeah, I'm aware of them."

"Well, you might also recall that she is a massive homophobe, and she is totally against them. She told me to distance myself from them. Three of my closest friends, she told me to distance myself from them. I couldn't really believe it. I can't believe someone can just be that much of a horrible person. She called them the f slur."

"Well, I disagree with her a lot. Talk to Damian about this," he nods at his stepson who smiles at him. "He knows how to deal with things like this."

I look over at Damian and he takes a deep breath. "I don't love telling people straight up, I don't like being super open and in people's faces with this, but yeah, I'm gay. I came out in junior year and have gotten a good amount of grief for it from asshole teenage boys and conservative people of all ages. I had a boyfriend, we were completely secret, and I came out on my own. The day after I came out, he said he was proud of me and I was happy. After a few days, people in school started learning this, and they sent some crazy ass shit to my social media, and I decided that, for my boyfriend's safety, we should break up. I didn't want him to have to deal with the shit I had to face. I haven't had a boyfriend since then, I'm still getting over him."

"Wow. That sounds horrible," I say genuinely.

"I'm okay now. I stopped checking my notifications on the apps and have drowned out the homophobia at games, but it still eats me up a bit."

"I really hope my teammates aren't having to deal with that," I think about Aaron, Cam, and Adrian. They're such good people, I really don't want them facing death threats or anything like that. Aaron and Cam might ignore it because they ignore a lot because they're so in love, but Adrian is different. I see him sometimes, and he looks depressed.

"They probably are dealing with it, probably worse than I had it. There's more publicity around football players and signings than there is for hockey. More people know about them than they know about me," he states.

"I hope they aren't."

"So do I," Damian replies, nodding.

"So, Derek, we support the LGBT community in this house. We believe love is love, and that's one of the reasons that I left your mother. Not because of you or anything you did, none of it was your fault, it was her. I never truly felt like I was in love with her after we turned 20 something, and her hatred for people, large groups of people, really fucked me up," my father says.

"That's good. I support them all as well," I state. And I really do.

"Well, it was great to see you Derek, it really was. I didn't get custody of you when me and your mother broke up, and I was so broken when that happened, I was fighting hard to get you, but now that you're an adult and you can make your own decisions, I would like to see you more and make up for lost time," he states and I nod at him.

"Definitely. That sounds great. It was great to see you again."

"Alright, should we go back?" Damian asks and I nod.

"Yeah. Let's go."

It's good to know that when I do feel the time is right to come out, I do have a family, kind of, that will support me coming out. I want it to be smooth, no yelling about being shameful to the family or something like that.

We get into Damian's car and he starts playing music. From the super small interaction I had with him, he never seemed like a gay person. He had the persona of a dry texter, and not a single gay person in history is a dry texter. That's an exaggeration, but it honestly could be true. Gay people are much more expressive in their texting.

"You didn't jump out to me as gay," I tell Damian, still looking ahead at the road.

"Neither did you," he says and my soul drops. Drops off a fifty fucking story building.

"Huh?" I ask, hoping it didn't sound too suspicious.

"You never jumped out to me as gay, Derek."

"That's cause I'm not," I lie, but hopefully he has brain damage from hockey and believes me.

"You sure?"

"Yeah. I'm not gay. I like girls. I love boobs. I love long hair," I say, lying about all those statements. I do not like boobs.

"Who are you trying to convince? You or me?"

"How did you know?" I question. I'm truly curious about how he knew.

"I have gaydar. Elite gaydar. I can walk into a room and point out every gay person in a room. Not bisexual people though, that's too difficult."

"What specifically set off your gaydar?" I ask.

"Your face when you were talking about your gay friends. You were thinking about them, the hate they may be receiving, and hoping that when you come out, you have someone to tell that you know will support you." So he basically read my fucking mind.

"Wow. Are you a psychic?" I ask and he laughs.

"Maybe. It's okay to be gay, Derek. I receive hate, but I also party a lot. Gay parties are the best parties by the way, so I would recommend going to some before you die," he tells me.

"Alright. Like a gay club or something?" I ask him and he nods.

"Yeah. Those are the best. I haven't gone in a while, and I have no plans to go soon, but you should go at some point."

"Maybe. That seems like a good way to meet people."

"Exactly."

"I don't know though. My mom is super homophobic and I don't want her to hate me," I state.

"Well, just cut her off. You have a father that wants to be a part of your life, and because of me, you know that he's not homophobic, so that's a good thing."

"Yeah, I guess. I just still won't feel comfortable about coming out."

"I get that. I went through the same thing when I was thinking about coming out. I didn't want my mom to look at me differently, I didn't want other people looking at me different, I didn't want your dad to look at me different. I came out, it was fine for a little while until people that don't deserve to find love started learning about me. That's when shit went down," he says. I legitimately feel pretty bad for him.

"I'm sorry about that. That's why I don't really want to come out. And the difference is that you have a mom that doesn't mind it, but my mom very much cares. She will absolutely fucking tear me apart and I don't want that. The way you along with my other gay or bi friends are living is making me want to come out more, but I assume they're still getting plenty of hate."

"They definitely are. And I hate that we live in a world where people get hate for basically no reason. It's horrible," he states and I nod.

"Yeah. It's really upsetting that being different is still such a horrible thing."

We get back to the dorm building and Damian drops me off at the front. I have a lot on my mind. I'm a bit angry right now, not because of Damian, but because of society in general. I hate everything about people and I have no reason to want to come out. If I eventually can cut off contact with my mom, maybe it could be better, but I don't want to get grief for being gay. It's so fucking awful.

I get out of the car and notice Adrian, looking up from his phone and just staring at the car I just came out of.

"Who was that?" he asks.

"No one," I answer, colder than I meant.

"Jeez, sorry," he says, returning his attention to his phone.

Adrian's POV

I told myself I'm not gonna check my social media notifications anymore, but I'm the kind of person that doesn't have a lot going on, so whenever I look at an app on the home screen and see that there's a notification, my curiosity takes the best of me and I check it. And a lot of the time it's something I would prefer not to have to read.

People need to realize that I'm also a human being with human feelings that wants what everyone else wants, in one way or another. I want love, I want to be successful, I want money, so how different really am I from other people? I don't think I'm that different compared to the average straight male. The only major difference I can think of is that I like dudes, which sure, is a big difference, but is it really that difficult to look past?

I see people like DeShaun, Kai, Jax, and Devin, and see strong allies. Kai and Jax may be more than just allies to our community, but as far as I know they're just allies right now. They don't make it seem difficult to just be friendly. People are actively making the decision to be assholes and they have little to no excuse for it.

To be honest, they all just look insecure. They can't handle the fact that gay people are definitely not checking them out, and that's an issue to them. That's why they're homophobic and all in people's faces with their homophobia, so they can be noticed by someone, anyone, because God knows they aren't getting attention from any women.

I've just been sitting on a bench outside the dorm building for a little while. This is a fucking beautiful building. I am glad us athletes get our own dorm buildings because I have to assume it's much nicer than the other dorms. I feel bad for them, but it makes sense. This is a D1 school and athletics are valued here.

Out of the corner of my eyes, I see a car pulling into the parking lot. It's pulling into the part of the parking lot where drop offs and pick ups happen, probably for one night stands type shit.

The car pulls up right in front of me, and Derek steps out of the car. I look into the car and notice a relatively attractive guy in the car, looking straight ahead at the road after Derek got out of the car. I have never seen this guy before.

"Who was that?" I ask as the guy drives away.

"No one," he answers quickly, glaring at me.

"Jeez, sorry."

I watch as Derek walks into the building, shoving the door open aggressively as he walks in. I don't know what's up with him, because he seems like he's getting more and more upset about things daily. I hope this shit doesn't keep happening when practices start up, because team chemistry, as we've seen with Aaron and Cam, is a super delicate thing that needs to be taken care of at all time.

If me and Derek, who are two of the best players out of our friend group, are not on the same page, there are going to be problems.

I look back down at my phone, frowning as I unwisely continue to keep reading my messages. To be fair, I could be checking for people trying to ask me out on a date, which is still happening plenty of times.

I don't want any of them, though. I want someone I already know, like Derek, obviously, but that's not gonna work because he hates me now for barely any reason. Julian is the next best option here, and I would be totally fine with settling for him. He's hot as hell and he knows it. He knows what he's doing when he talks to me. He's slowly becoming my first option everyday that Derek is more and more of an asshole to me.

As I continue to read the messages, Kai and Jax walk up to me to talk to me. They're damn near conjoined at the hip, they're basically the same person. I'm almost sure any relationships that they have in the future will be ruined by the fact that they spend so much time together and very well could be a couple.

"Adrian, what's up?" Kai grins, dapping me up.

"Nothing much, how about you?" I ask, dapping up Jax.

"We're thinking about making a collab album together. We've had this idea for a while, but we were never gonna get the exposure that we would need to get popular. Now that we're on college and players on a D1 football team, we could get popular more easily," Jax answers.

"Is it gonna be rap or...?" I ask, kind of confused.

"It's gonna be rap, we're gonna go bar for bar, and produce the beats ourselves," Kai says.

"Yeah. We already made a beat, you wanna listen to it?" Jax says.

A smile creeps onto my face and I can't really say no to them. I'm kind of interested to see if it's any good, but if it is actually good, I would be very surprised. They listen to some crazy fucking music, so I would expect some Playboi Carti type beat. Something that would be played in a concert and multiple people would die.

"Alright, lemme pull it up real quick," Kai says, pulling out his phone.

He plays the beat, and it's pretty fucking good. I predicted correctly what the kind of beat it would be, but it's also a bit more chill than I expected it to be. Young Thug would slide on this beat and go crazy.

"What do you think?" Jax grins.

"It's pretty good. So you guys are gonna rap and you're gonna write your own lyrics?" I ask.

"Yeah. We have some ideas. It's mostly gonna be about money and shit, but anything would be fine to be honest. We're also looking for possible features on a few songs, we would love if you had time to record a verse or a chorus for us," Jax states.

"I don't know. Maybe, I don't know. I feel like some other guys on the team would be super excited to be featured on a rap album. Maybe get a C list rapper on your song, someone that has connections in the industry."

"I don't know. We're trying not to spend too much money on this, I don't know if any decently successful rappers would accept $20," Kai says, shrugging.

"Yeah, well, I'll get back to you on the feature, but right now, I don't know if I want to do it. It seems like it could take a lot of time, and with football starting really soon, I don't know if I'll have that kind of time."

"Your loss I guess," Kai says, and the two of them walk back inside. Again, they're attached at the fucking hip. If they started dating and then came out to the rest of the team, I would not even be surprised. I've said it before and I'll say it again. They'll end up together no matter who they start dating in these next few years, they're too close to just not be the most important people in each other's lives.

"What's up Adrian?" Devin asks as he walks towards the bench I'm sitting on.

"Not much, how bout you?"

"Same as you I guess. I'm glad we get our own dorm building but I'm also kind of pissed that Alicia is staying so far from here. I need to see her more. I'm glad we're going here together, but it would be better if we could live in at least the same building. I know we can't live in the same room, but the same building would be nice."

"Yeah. I get that. Don't worry though, I'm sure she's thinking the exact same thing," I reply.

"What are you doing out here?" he asks me.

"Just chilling."

"It's so hot out here though."

"I don't mind. I think it could be worse." It's actually really nice outside right now. It's not super sunny and I can tell it's gonna rain soon. When it rains I'll go back inside but until then, I'll stay out here because it's so nice.

"Yeah, that's true. Have you put everything in our room?" he asks and I nod.

"Yeah. I put everything that I need in the room. If I remember that I need something, I can just go back home, it's not a big deal."

"Aight. I'll see you soon, I'll just be chilling in our room," he says.

I'm glad he's my roommate, I couldn't have really asked for a better roommate. He's clean, respectful, nice, and he has a strict sleep schedule like I do.

"Oh, wait," he turns back around to face me.

"Huh?"

"Have you been doing okay?"

I frown a little. "I've been better. I think things can only get better from where I am right now, I don't think people are gonna be coming up to me and saying shit to me anymore."

"Alright. That's good. If you ever have any problems with anyone on the team, don't hesitate to tell me. I'll beat them up for you. I bet the rest of the team would do that for you, we all don't want you to be getting grief for shit," he states.

"Thanks," I smile. "I appreciate it."

"No problem man, I'll see you soon."

I continue to sit outside, enjoying the nice weather while not enjoying the messages I'm getting from people I want to strangle or drown in a sewer.

Eventually, it does start raining and I am forced to go inside. I'm fine with that though, the inside of the building is just as nice as the weather was before it started raining. Inside, Julian and a few other random guys I assume are on the baseball team are sitting on some couches.

I walk over to Julian and dap him up. "Hey Julian," I greet him and he smiles at me.

"Hey Adrian, how have you been?"

"I've been good, how bout you?"

"No complaints. Just getting ready for sports to start up again, you know the drill by now I assume. When does football start?" he asks.

"In a few days. So I have a few days left of free time before I have to get back to working my ass off every day. Probably more than I did in high school too."

"You'll be fine. You went to a football camp over the summer, you're probably in better condition and shape to start ramping up your workload compared to the other freshmen."

"I hope so," I say.

"Don't worry about it. If you stress about it, that's when you get in your own head and start thinking that there's no way that you can do well, when the easier thing is to do well, and I know you can," he says. I appreciate his encouragement. He's a good guy and I really like him.

"Thanks, man. I appreciate it."

"Don't worry. By the way, the first pride club meeting is tomorrow at 10:00 AM, it's in the dorm building right next to ours, I'll walk you there tomorrow so you know where it is. I don't want you getting lost."

"Okay. I'll go to it for sure. After the first one, I'll try to go to other ones, but I don't know if football practices might conflict with the timing of them," I state. I do want to go to them, I'm not just trying to make an excuse not to go.

"Oh, this week's meeting is just different because classes haven't started. After this week, meetings will happen at 4:00 PM, after most classes end."

"Alright. Thanks Julian. I'll see you around," I say, waving to him and walking towards my room.

I like the atmosphere here so far, other than the weird vibe I'm getting from Derek. I feel like he hates me, but I also didn't do anything wrong. There's not really a single thing you can blame me for doing. Maybe it wasn't smart to walk into the locker room last year after graduation, but there was also literally no way I could've predicted that Derek was in there having sex. The locker rooms there are sex spot number 1. Apparently Cam and Aaron did it in there multiple times, which is kind of traumatizing to think about.

They probably fucked on the benches where we sat everyday after practice. That's fucking weird and scary to think about. I hope that since they're roommates now, they know they don't have to just fuck in random places, they should just contain themselves until they get back to their room.

I hope the pride club will be somewhere I can go to and connect with people on a deeper level. I think I already connect with Julian pretty well, he's a good guy and I think he likes me. He's undoubtedly one of the most fine ass motherfuckers I've ever seen.

Obviously the most fine motherfucker I've ever seen is Derek.

A/N: I had a hard time ending this chapter for some reason. This slow burn is moving just as slowly as I wanted it to move. Again, I'm gonna be trying to make this an enemies to lovers book but I don't really have a great spot where I can make them start hating each other. I can't really see it happening because they got along so well in the first book, and a complete 180 switch in Derek's personality is already a lot. He was so goofy in the first book but now he's quiet and rude. It's a switch that I kind of had to make to make him seem more mysterious which is something that makes characters in other books seem more attractive. Thanks for reading!!!