Sometimes, Jamari liked to imagine what his life would like if he could play football because he wanted to.

Obviously, his dad would be more accepting — kinder, maybe. He could eat what he wanted. He could have whatever friends he wanted and hang out with them whenever, within reason. In this daydream, he could have his hair as long as he wanted, and his dad would just say it was nice, rather than lecturing him about it fitting his helmet.

In this daydream, his dad would say he was proud of his son without picking him apart in the next breath. In this daydream, his dad would say he loved him.

Obviously, this whole thing was unrealistic.

Jamari knew that wasn't the life he lived, despite how close it sometimes felt to reality.

Like now, as he sat in a rodizio with his family, his plate piled high with meat that made his mouth water — chicken, beef, lamb, anything he could want. Shrimp the size of his palms, and ribs slathered with the gleaming, luscious, tangy barbecue sauce this place was known for — he'd been to this restaurant at least eight times in the last two years, and somehow, it always managed to best thing he'd ever tasted.

His dad was smiling, the gap between his teeth on full display, the part of him Jamari could match. It wasn't often that his dad's eyes were alight with joy like this, especially not when Jamari was involved, but now, this expression was for his father's only son, someone he had found himself proud of.

“Jamari,” His dad said, pulling Jamari's attention away from the tempura he was attempting to wrap in bacon. “You were… good, today.”

Jamari resisted the urge to grin, still a little high on the endorphins of the win, despite how parts of his brain yelled at him that he shouldn't enjoy his father's attention when he couldn't even pick a better word than ‘good.’ A smile sneaks onto his lips anyway. “Thanks, Pops.”

Kyrah paused with a chicken wing halfway to her mouth, flicking eyes between their dad, and Jamari's face, clearly suspicious. She was right that there was tension building, that their bubble was about to break, but Jamari put his bacon-wrapped tempura in his mouth in the most self-gratifying way he possibly could instead, watching for Kyrah’s face to screw up with disgust.

“Ew,” she mouthed behind her wing, before turning it vertical, putting it in her mouth whole, and pulling out the bare bones.

Jamari's eyes went wide when she did it, his top lip curling. He mouthed, “I’m the disgusting one?!” back, rolling his eyes when she stuck her tongue out.

His father cleared his throat, the previous mirth gone from his face. “We’ve gotta go through the tapes when we get home. You shouldn't be caught like that at the endzone. Clean touchdowns are clearly a skill you need more work on.”

A somber mood fell like an anvil on Wile E. Coyote.

“Maybe,” His father continued, “You should lose some weight to maximize your speed. If you weren't lugging around an extra 40 pounds, you'd have made it to the endzone with that lineman in your dust.”

“Forty pounds?!” Kyrah mouthed at him, allowed to be more visibly taken-aback than Jamari was.

40lbs was insane. That could take him sub-200, taking away a lot of what made him a good running back, since he wouldn't be nearly as much of a tank on the field. Plus, it was unrealistic. There was no way that Jamari could actually drop 40lbs unless he stopped working out or eating, and both of those were non-negotiable.

It was times like this that shattered that goddamn daydream, proved to him that his dad couldn't possibly love him.

Was he being punished?

“What?” Jamari whispered, cognizant of the shock that was contorting his face.

“Fix your face, boy, unless you want a real reason to look like that.” His dad narrowed his eyes in a way that had alarm bells ringing in his head, and Jamari quickly neutralized his expression. His dad carried on as if he hadn’t been interrupted, “I’mma make some amendments to your diet. You could benefit from losing some weight, ’specially with that li’l gut you've got going on.”

Jamari wanted to defend his ‘li’l gut’ — it was nice! warm and soft — but it was a small complaint in the face of the threat of more surveillance, more ways for his father to control his life. 

It probably wouldn't happen. It wasn't the first time his dad had said something like this, and Jamari was sure it was less of a real suggestion and more of a fucked-up power play. 

Kyrah pointed down across the table, mouthing at him to check his phone. 

When he did — surreptitiously, so his dad wouldn't get on him for being on his phone at a family dinner — he saw a message from ‘boogerface’ reading: “yu want me 2 distract dad so he wnt make u watch da tapes?”

He cringed at her spellings, making sure she saw his disgusted eyeroll at the message she sent. He typed back, relying on muscle memory and spellcheck for the single word: “Please”

Their dad wasn't a fair parent by any means. Kyrah was far and away his favorite, with her wide doe-eyes and button nose. She looked just like their mom, and his dad definitely, definitely, still had a soft spot for it. Honestly, it was less of a soft spot and more of a soft whole-ass-body, because Kyrah could get away with shit Jamari couldn't even imagine.

The first time Jamari had even mentioned a girlfriend, his dad had given him a lecture on how women can ruin football player’s careers and the consequences of distractions, and if you get a girl pregnant, you ain't living here no more. But when Kyrah brought home Malik without telling anybody anything, she got grounded for two days before their dad acquiesced to Malik’s presence in their life.

Kyrah got to be out way longer than Jamari could, so long as she had her location on. Jamari was grounded more times than he wasn't. Kyrah could have birthday parties and pick the guestlist. Jamari got told what to wear and when to show up, with no choice of who was there. Kyrah’s allowance was innumerable if she batted her eyelashes enough. Their dad tracked Jamari’s purchases and grounded him if he spent too much. 

Kyrah got to have an emo phase. 

Jamari suggested to his dad once that he wanted to experiment with his style and his dad had called him a punk and laughed in his face.

Kyrah failed Math last year, and their dad had hugged her as she cried and grilled her teacher for not paying attention to her needs.

When Jamari was fourteen, he failed Social Studies. It had hurt to sit down for a week.

Jamari can't remember the last time his dad touched him with affection beyond a hand on his shoulder.

Kyrah got a hug and a kiss any time she asked.

At the very least, his sister leveraged her privilege for him. She tried her best to make up for their dad's blatant favoritism by asking for the things Jamari wanted, or trying to distract from their dad's anger so he could cool down and Jamari wasn't punished as harshly.

Kyrah was the only person Jamari had fully considered coming out to.

He was half sure she already knew, but he would be able to take it if she rejected him for it.

“Jamari.” His father said decisively, looking up from his rice. “You can go to Eduardo's birthday party next Friday.”

Jamari held off a full-body sigh of relief. He wasn't grounded anymore. 

Eddie's party had been a hair’s breadth away from being a blow-up argument between them, and Jamari knew that his dad could feel the tension brewing as well as he could. This was an olive branch — a rare extension of compromise that Jamari had never thought he'd see. 

It didn't mean his dad wasn't still pissed off about the tutoring, but it meant that, at the very least, he'd accepted its existence for the foreseeable future.

With the warmth in Jamari's chest bringing a smile to his face, the rest of the dinner was easy, conversation flowing like a river between them. 

They talked about sports, explained basketball to Kyrah (maybe she'll get it on the eighth time) and listened to her talk about her most recent date with Malik and some gossip between her friends.

It was probably one of the best nights they'd had together since before their mom left.

Maybe Jamari wasn't that big of a disappointment after all.

In the car, on the way home, Jamari’s phone pinged with a text. His heart did a backflip in his chest, and butterflies did laps of his stomach as he read who it was from.

Just the appearance of the Korean flag emoji made his heart squeeze, but reading the message made warmth spread through his body, and a smile stretch it's way across his lips.

“thanks for inviting me to your game!” the text read, a fire emoji and a flexing arm emoji following the sentence. “your touchdown was fucking insane!!!!”

The way Lucas texted was one of Jamari's favorite things about him — maybe Top Five, a step or so below his actual voice — and it never failed to bring a smile to his face.

“Thanks man” Jamari responded, his thumbs making errors in his enthusiasm. (The text probably would've read ‘Ygwks nsmm’ without spellcheck saving his ass, as usual.) 

If it hadn't been for those three bubbles bobbing at the bottom of his screen, he would've put his phone away, but the anticipation of knowing Lucas was typing on the other side had him forgetting his anxieties about his dad seeing him grin at his phone.

His tooth caught on his lip as he waited. 

He knew Lucas was a slow texter, but this was beginning to feel excruciating, the bubbles bobbing up and down with the beat of Jamari’s heart as the suspense drew taut.

Finally, a message came.

“ u do anything to celebrate? that touchdown definitely deserved something big imo” 

A smile cracked Jamari’s face in half. “Yeah my dad took me n my sister to a rodizio”

“It was so good”

“whats a rodizio?” Lucas responded using the question mark emoji rather than the actual punctuation. “wait don't answer im looking it up”

Jamari obediently erased his message explaining it, waiting for Lucas’ text bubbles to come back.

“all you can eat meat?? that's crazy” 

“Its literally the best thing ever I promise you” Jamari bit his cheek to stop his smile getting any wider, trying to imagine what it would be like to take Lucas to Tiago’s.

“bro im a meateater like you wouldn't believe” The response came, flanked by the meat emoji and the flexing arm emoji. “pause”

Jamari simply sent three skull emojis, before switching the topic onto something he'd been thinking about since a few sessions ago. “Did you see that new whale documentary on Netflix?”

The bubbles bobbed like a floatie in the ocean, and if Jamari was honest, he felt like he'd just thrown himself right into the deep end. ‘What ifs’ began to cloud his vision and his teeth found his lip once more.

He felt Kyrah’s eyes on his left, and when he looked over, she wiggled her eyebrows in a way that made Jamari want to fight her. 

“Shut up!” he hissed, punching her softly in her shoulder. She responded with an exaggerated expression of pain and offence, scoffing at him.

He ignored her in favor of his phone, buzzing with the reception of a new message from ‘Tutor Lucas [Korean flag emoji]’ (he was gonna get around to changing it, definitely.)

“its about orcas which are dolphins not whales lmao” the message read, followed up quickly by “i watched it last night actually”

“Wait,” Jamari furrowed his brow as he typed furiously, “Aren’t orcas killer whales? Wdym they're not whales?”

“they’re big and round like a whale but they are very different. they're closer in relation to porpoises than regular whales”

“Wtf,” Jamari began, more confused than he expected to be when he asked about that documentary, “Is a porpoise”

One of the reasons why Jamari loved the way that Lucas texted was that he was a double, triple, quadruple texter, with every sentence often being sent as its own message. It meant that, since Lucas typed at a snail’s pace, Jamari could get a steady influx of messages, rather than having to read an entire paragraph.

And with the amount of knowledge that Lucas was imbuing him with, if it was all one message, it would've been the length of a book — though, if it was, Jamari would’ve happily read it, all the same.

The way Lucas explained it, it was like the two of them were floating in a vast ocean, alone with nothing but the whales and dolphins surrounding them.

Jamari forgot that he was even supposed to watch the video his dad had filmed of the touchdown so his dad could drill him on it. He forgot that his dad was going to try and get him to lose weight. He forgot that his sister was the favorite.

Because there, with Lucas in the ocean as he talked about whales with such a passion that Jamari could honestly feel through the screen, none of it mattered.

All that mattered were that orcas were dolphins and whales sang and both were mammals just like us, and that he and Lucas were together, no matter how far they were physically apart.

It didn't matter how his sister begged to know who he was texting.

It didn't matter when it went past midnight.

Because Jamari felt safe, for the first time in a long, long time. He felt safe in this little world they'd created, and even as the messages gained more time in between them, and Jamari's eyes began to flutter closed, his body was still warm with a comfort that he forgot he could feel.

For the first time, the thought crossed his mind that maybe — just maybe — his father's approval didn't matter.

Maybe he could be something he wanted to be.

And with that thought, he drifted into a content sleep, his dreams full of dolphins and breaching whales, and the memory of Lucas’s baritone guiding his way.