With Your Love: Junior Year

As Israel and the rest of his church friends lined up to get back onto the bus and leave church camp, Tim stood by the bus doors with their bucket of phones. Israel was practically vibrating, he was so excited to get his phone back and talk to Zeke.

Church camp had been fun, as always, and Israel honestly hadn’t even missed Zeke and their other friends as much as he thought he would. But now that all the fun activities were over, he was ready to get back to his normal life.

“Here,” Valentine said, passing Israel’s phone back to him.

“Thanks,” Israel said, turning it on as he climbed onto the bus. He made his way back to the seat he had shared with Abe, right in front of Rachel and Valentine, and sat down. Once his phone booted up, he immediately got so many notifications that it nearly died.

“Whoa,” Israel said to himself, laughing and digging his portable charger out of his backpack.

“‘Whoa’ what?” Abe asked, sitting down next to Israel.

“Just a lot of notifications.”

“Oh, yeah. I got, like, thirty too.”

Israel had a lot more than thirty, but they were mostly from The DAA™, which was exploding due to the fact that they were just a day or, in some cases, a few days away from seeing each other again.

After texting Zeke, saying that he was about to leave camp, Israel got on Instagram. Immediately, he was bombarded with posts of Pride flags and captions saying the same thing: gay marriage was now legal in the entire country!

Israel couldn’t contain his excitement, so he did a little dance in his seat and told Abe the good news.

“Congrats, I guess,” Abe said, shrugging.

Not even his lukewarm reaction could bring Israel down. He opened his texts with Zeke, feeling the sudden urge to cry.

Israel

LOVE WE CAN GET MARRIED NOW!!!!!

WHEREVER THE FUCK WE WANT!!!!!!!

IT’S LEGAL!!!!

IT’S OKAY TO BE GAY!!!!!!!

I LOVE YOU SO MUCH

Zeke was lounging in the shade between baseball games when his phone started blowing up. He pulled it out of his pocket and opened his texts, where Israel was losing his mind.

Israel

CAN WE START PLANNING OUR WEDDING?

I’m really excited, can you tell?

Zeke

Ur not just messing w me right?

This is real?

Israel

FUCK YEAH IT’S REAL

I LOVE THE SUPREME COURT

Zeke

ME TOO

AND YES, LET’S PLAN OUR WEDDING!

Zeke put his phone down in his lap, smiling so hard that it made his face hurt. He looked over at his teammates, who were all either looking at their phones or laying down with their hats over their faces. He wished he could tell them the good news and they could all celebrate together, but the reality was that he didn’t know how any of them would feel about it.

Instead of saying anything, Zeke opened The DAA™ and celebrated with the friends he knew he could trust.

Zeke

AYYYYYOOO GUESS WHO CAN GET MARRIED NOW

Meric

I saw that this morning! So happy for you guys

And everyone else

Pax

I call being a groomsman!

Israel

You’re all going to be groomsmen, duh

I love you guys <3

Deven

<3 <3

Zeke

This is the best day!

Israel

Agreed!

“Hey, King Athletic, let’s go,” Coach [Jason] called.

Zeke put away his phone and jumped up with the rest of his team. Part of him really wanted to go home and celebrate instead of playing baseball right now, but he pushed that part of himself down and took a deep breath.

“Gettin’ ready to kick some ass,” Wren said, walking next to Zeke. “I like it.”

Zeke smiled and let out his breath. “Yeah, let’s do this.”