Nathaniel Jean's Senior Year

Nathaniel Jean's Senior Year (Extended Summary)

Woo! New story!
I'm just gonna throw this ES and the prologue out to you all—read it, see if you like it. If there's any interest, I'll start posting the rest ;)))

At first glance, nobody would be able to tell that Nathaniel Jean had a problem. Or second glance, or third, or fourth. Nobody would imagine him losing entire nights of sleep to conflicted thoughts and tear-stained cheeks. Nobody would know that he was flawed.

After all, he had everything. He was a captain of his school's soccer team and one of the top players in the state. He had a big house, a loving family, and money to spend. He had friends, he had fun, he had faith.

He never meant for it to happen, he really didn't. He never wanted to look at another man in the way he should have been looking at another woman. The idea had disgusted him for most of his life—living in a heavily catholic town with heavily catholic parents, homophobia was the only response he knew. That didn't change when he first realized that he didn't like girls.

No, Nathaniel Jean was still homophobic. He hated the idea of a man sleeping with another man. He was raised on the idea that gays went to hell, and he believed it. He despised gays.

Therefore, he despised himself.

Nathaniel Jean hated himself more than he'd ever hated any friend that had betrayed him, any enemy that angered him. How could he love himself when his very existence was, in his mind, wrong?

It wasn't a lesson he could learn on his own. He needed help, even if he didn't know it.

Nathaniel Jean was more fortunate than most, because help did arrive for him. Help by the name of Lucas Morgan, they boy he'd always known but never known. The boy with big dreams and bigger talent. The boy who was out and proud, with loving parents and a hateful brother. The boy who was way too wise to be only seventeen years old.

The boy that changed Nathaniel's life over the course of their thirty-six week long senior year.