It's been a year since Clay, otherwise known as Porkchop, planned the graduation event in Newport Beach. The event where a handsome Tyler Hamilton caught Clay off guard by kissing him. Clay, up until that day, had never kissed a boy before.
At 24 ye...
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INSPIRATION Point was the last place I chose to go before I had to drive to the airport. The lookout spot was just over an hour away from the UCLA campus, but it's not like I really cared about the extra long drive (not including California traffic, of course; fuck that shit).
I walked up to the lookout point that had become so familiar to me since growing up in California. It was the spot my sister Alex and I had always gone when we just needed to get away. It was where she'd brought me the day I was publicly outed and called homophobic slurs in the hallway of our high school. It was the place I'd continued driving to whenever I needed a break from life, or when I needed to calm my shit.
The California sunrise stretched across the sky like a watercolor painting. It was surreal as shades of orange and pink and the littlest bit of yellow peaked through the clouds that served as curtains of the sky above and my eyes wandered down to the beach. It looked like golden flour, some sort of warm blanket for the ground.
I took my usual seat at the edge of the lookout on the rock Alex and I always sat on, almost at the edge of the cliff. Fucking beautiful.
I liked UCLA. I mean, okay, I liked the basketball part of it.
Playing for the team was my fucking dream. The guys were amazing, the crowds went wild every game night, and this year, we'd nearly made it to the final four when March rolled around. We got to play against Gonzaga multiple times, too, which was my absolute favorite (considering I got to go up against Jesse Campbell, my sister's boyfriend, my ex-enemy, and now, practically my brother).
But when it came to the school shit... Yeah, no.
School was not the vibe.
The campus was fine. Pretty and shit. It was just the classes. Just the ... everything. School had never been my favorite thing. And more than ever, being enrolled in college made me realize just how much going to school and forcing myself to go to classes I didn't care about made me angry and sad to the point that leaving my dorm room became increasingly difficult.
"We prioritize your health more than anything, Tyler. And that includes your mental health," my mom had told me after I spent two weeks at home even though I wasn't on any kind of break. I just made my own break in the middle of the semester, which had been much needed and called for.
So, after having a long conversation with my parents, I decided to leave UCLA after the first year was over.
Yeah, I know, it was a bit soon. I could have given it another semester, possibly another year, to see if college wasn't complete ass, but sometimes you just know. And I just knew.
Basketball was the only thing keeping me in California (that and maybe my family and the gorgeous view from Inspiration Point), but it couldn't be. Not anymore.
