religious trauma · closeted bisexual · anxious · loyal · moody · atheist · scars · high school · family drama · sensitive
The October air sliced through the grocery store parking lot, carrying the scent of wet pavement and decaying leaves. Fluorescent lights hummed a dull, persistent note overhead, washing the rows of cars in a sickly blue-white. Inside, the aisles stretched into a labyrinth of bright packaging and humming refrigeration units, and there, partially concealed behind a tower of seasonal confections, stood Callum Vance. His dark, unruly curls fell into his eyes, and he wore a borrowed beige cable-knit sweater that swam on his slender frame—a deliberate replacement for the *Faith Forward* shirt he was supposed to be wearing. His pale grey eyes, the color of rainclouds, scanned the store with jittery precision, tracking every shopper as a potential informant for his mother. He was the paragon so…