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But it was the sight of Jason Fixx walking by with his friends that caused me to hide my face from sight behind the locker door. Jason sorta looked at me, but didn't really acknowledge me with more than a quick glance and a smile. I wish I could say that it didn't make me blush...but it did. What could I do? His soft brown eyes were still hot enough to make me quiver inside.
I think Lori was aggravated by the lack of attention he gave me as he passed, and with a scowl on her face, she silently gave him the finger. I don't know why I did it, but instinct kicked in and I quickly reached out to bring her extended arm down. "Lori! What are you DOING?" I whispered loudly.
"What are YOU doing??? Tristan, that guy is a JACKASS!"
"Nooo, just...don't, ok?" I said. Wondering myself why I would stick up for him at this point.
"You CAN'T still be harboring feelings for that asshole???" She asked. "That was a MONTH ago! Move on. You deserve so much better. He knows you two were, like, 'dating'....and now he can't even look you in the FACE in the hallway? What kind of cowardly heartless bullshit is THAT?"
"Sighhh...Lori, just...please don't make things any worse. Ok? Please?" I pleaded. She shook her head at me. "What?"
"I KNOW what you're doing, Tristan! And I'm not gonna let you lower your self esteem like that."
"What are you talking about?"
"You KNOW what I'm talking about. You're playing 'neutral' and keeping a convenient lane open for Jason to come back and be your boyfriend again...JUST in case he gets horny enough to consider you worth the phone call."
I cringed, and looked around us. "Great. Really nice, Lori. Just broadcast my secret out to everybody in the hallway."
"This is NOT about your attractions. It's about you acting as though Mr. Asshole is the only decent available boy on the planet."
With a roll of my eyes, I slammed my locker shut, and backed away from her. "Just leave it alone, ok. Really. I'm not in the mood." She was equally upset, but I didn't give her the chance to offer me much of a rebuttal on the subject. I just kept walking.
I dunno...maybe she's right. My mind was telling me to be done with him and look for something better. But my heart was keeping the door open for him. I kinda....I wanted to feel like I was a part of something again. Something special. It might have been a fantasy and nothing more, but I so desperately wanted to close my eyes and be immersed in it once again. I missed that feeling. That constant vibration in my chest that let me know I was worthy of someone else's affections. Their lust. Their kisses. Their caresses. I needed that in my life again. Especially with me watching YouTube in some sort of a strange attempt to fill that void with an artificial boyfriend on a computer screen. It's just not normal.
Nothing about me is ever normal.
I didn't see Lori again until the end of the school day, and her sister, Michelle, was willing to give us a ride home. So I climbed in the backseat, hoping that she wouldn't bring up the conflict we had earlier No such luck. Lori wasn't one for letting things slide.
"You know what? We're going to the mall this weekend." She said.
"The mall? For what?"
"We're going shopping. Hellooooo? We're spending the day there."
"Heh...I highly doubt that the Orchard Mall is going to be enough entertainment to fill up an entire afternoon, Lori. It's barely an hour's worth of fun, and that's if it's full."
"We're not going to the Orchard." She said. "We're going to Hillside. The BIG mall."
I looked at her and squinted my eyes. "NO...we're NOT, Lori!"
"Yes...we are, Tristan!"
"What are you up to now? This is STUPID!"
"What's STUPID about it? We're going to spend the day at a much bigger mall than the one by our house? What's strange about that?" She asked.
"You know what you're doing, Lori! And it's stupid! So just...stop it, ok? Just count me out."
"I'm not counting you out, you have to go with me. So we can find...'stuff'."
"Stuff like what?" I said sternly, daring her to say it out loud.
Never one to back down from a dare, Lori said, "Like a hot piece of blond haired sexified ASS for you grab and shove your TONGUE in!" Making her sister up in the driver's seat laugh out loud.
I couldn't help but laugh out loud myself at the sudden burst of perversion, and she took my moment of weakness by storm, forcing me to give in. "God, Lori..what are you DOING???"
"WHAT??? Come on, go with us! It's not like he's just gonna randomly 'be' there this weekend! I mean what are the odds of that, right? If he shows up, it must be fate." She said.
"I can't believe that I'm even considering this...." I sighed.
"Why not??? You KNOW he shops there! So let's go!"
"Lori...this is...ugh! This is STALKING!!! Ok? It's ILLEGAL! There's nothing cool or funny about ANY of this!"
It's NOT stalking! It's SHOPPING...first of all. Ok? And if you HAPPEN to bump into each other, it's merely a coincidence. EVEN if you went there with the direct intention of meeting him in person." She said. "You get it?"
Thankfully, they were pulling up to my house, and I could escape this madness once and for all. "I'm outta here. I'll see you tomorrow. Thanks for the ride, Michelle."
"So you're gonna come with us, right?" Lori asked, pushing the issue.
"I'll think about it."
"Ok, so think about it NOW!" She said with a smirk. "Are you coming or not?"
"Ugh...what the HELL, Lori...."
"Just TELL me, yes or no, already!"
I hesitated. I squirmed. I hopped from one foot to the other. Just HOPING that I could hold off on an answer for just a FEW moments longer! Because the second I said ye, she was totally gonna FORCE me to go. I just KNOW she is! She'd never leave me alone about it until I caved in. So...with a bit of an infatuated tremble, alerting me to the excitement of the 'possibility' that Jesse-101 might actually BE there....I told her..."Ok. I'll go. But *NOT* for the whole day!!!"
She clapped her hands excitedly and bounced around in her seat! "YES!!!!"
"And I'm *NOT* looking for...HIM either! I'm just going to SHOP! Like you said!"
"Sure thing! I got ya!"
"And you're buying me one of those giant sweet sugary Cinnabon things in the food court, too! I MEAN it!" I told her.
"Yeah! I'll get it as soon as we get there if you want! Whatever it takes!" I hated to see her THIS happy, because it meant that she was plotting something. And....I dunno...this feeling I had for Jesse-101 was kinda...'private', you know? Because it felt silly, and weird, and I didn't really want to share it with anybody else. It was kind of embarrassing for me.
But in the most awesome way...
I walked up to my front door, and was quite disturbed to see a familiar bike leaning up against the side of the house. Sighhhh....which means that my mom had sold me out, yet again.
I came in through the front door, and sure enough, there was Scotty Lynch, right there in our kitchen, munching on one of my mom's famous desserts. Every time my mom made something sweet, she shared it with Scotty. I think she just liked to see his boyish face light up with that cheesy TV commercial grin of his. It had gotten to the point where he would make a detour into my front yard every time he smelled something sweet baking in the oven. Giving him another excuse to stress me out. No wonder the word 'desserts' is 'stressed' spelled backwards! Sighhhh...she is SO not helping my situation here!
"Sup, T-Diddy?" He said the second he saw me, swiftly grabbing for a napkin to wipe his mouth.
And I *HATE* when he calls me 'T-Diddy'!!!!
"Scotty...dude..." I was angry, but tried not to be too mean to him. "...Mom? What are you doing?"
She gave me a strange look, and Scotty kinda finished up his last bite by shoving the whole thing in his mouth. Then he stood up and grabbed his skateboard out of the corner. "I just wanted to come over and say hello. You got home quick today."
"Yeah, I had a ride." I said, and then looked over Scotty's shoulder to flash a mean look at my mom. "You know...I've got a ton of homework tonight, Scotty..."
"Yeah. Me too." He said. "What kind of homework do YOU got? We're reading 'Romeo And Juliet', but this guy talks really weird, so I'm trying to get it right. But, he's being a freak about everything he says. It's like another language or something." I don't know what 'look' he had seen on my face, but he suddenly straightened up and tried to seem older. "But I'm GETTING it now though! And it's like...easy. You know? So yeah, it's like....baby stuff." He said, and moved closer to me as I walked around to the other side of the table.
"Yeah, so I guess I'll see you TOMORROW, huh, Scotty?" My mom hit me with a washrag when I said it, but Scotty didn't even flinch.
"Oh yeah, tomorrow is cool. Three day weekend coming up! Heh, yeah baby! You and me can totally hang out and do whatever we want. Right?" He seemed so....so hopeful.
"Yeah, sounds like a plan." I said, and actually had my hand on his arm as I gently guided him to the back door.
"Hey, I've got that new Batman game for X360! You wanna come over and play or something on Monday? It's really cool."
"Sure." I lied.
"Cool! I've got some, like, coupons and stuff for cheeseburgers up at Flukies if you wanna go. We can like....you know...spend some time catching up and...talking. Since you're always so busy." He said, the most innocent look of admiration on his face. "I kinda miss talking to you...Tristan."
"Ok, yeah, Scotty. That'd be fun."
"Really? You WANT to?"
"Yeah, Monday. Got it. Just come knock on my door." I told him, and practically pushed him outside onto the back porch.
"Alright! SWEET! I'll totally do that!!!" He grinned, and then added, "Bye, Tristan. I'm glad you..."
"Yeah. BYE!" I said, and quickly shut the door before he got even MORE infatuated than he already was. You know...as strange as it sounds, I'm starting to think that Lori was right. I think that boy really DOES like other boys! What's worse??? I think he likes ME!!!
When I turned around, my mom had her arms folded. "For as long as you two have known each other, you could be a little nicer to him, you know?"
"I don't know him, mom. He just kinda followed me home one day, and hasn't broken the habit since." I looked on the stove, and the crumbs left in the saucer Scotty was eating out of. "Mom...geez, what are you doing?"
"They're lemon squares. Scotty LOVES my lemon squares. He came over looking for you, and the second he took a whiff of them baking I invited him in. I AM allowed to do that, right?" She said.
"Sighhh....suit yourself. But if you keep feeding a stray dog, it's just gonna keep coming back." She hit me with the dishrag for that comment, and told me to get started on my homework. Like I said before, Scotty's not really as much of a pain as I make him out to be sometimes. It's just..the second I'm nice to him, he practically starts humping my leg again. So it's best to just keep him at arm's length. It'll end up saving us BOTH a lot of trouble.
The rest of the week was spent with Lori constantly hounding me about not backing out on our trip to Hillside Mall this weekend, and with Scotty 'nonchalantly' riding his bike or his scooter or his skateboard or SOMETHING by my house twice a day, just to see if he could catch a glimpse of me and smile. I couldn't tell if Lori put this silly 'boy crush' idea in my head, or if it had been there all along and I was just too busy being annoyed to really notice it...but Scotty definitely had 'intentions' of keeping his eye on me. And not just because he was looking for attention, or because he needed some kind of hero worship figure in his life. Which was...you know...intriguing, to say the least.
I actually tried to break my addiction to checking Jesse's YouTube account every few hours, but the more success I had in leaving it alone, the faster I relapsed when I finally gave into the temptation. Binging myself after a six hour battle with online withdrawals. I was so hopeless. I don't think it actually hit me that I might actually see him in real LIFE until Saturday morning rolled around, and I found myself trembling in the shower. I think it kinda...overwhelmed me all at once. It was all just some stupid, pointless, fantasy up until that very moment, when I realized that I was thinking about what to wear that he might think was...you know...hot. Sighhh...arrrgh! I shouldn't have agreed to this. I should be hiding in my room, refusing to answer the door when Lori and her sister come by. I mean, really, what am I DOING here? I'm just gonna casually stop by the mall for some weekend shopping and sensually bump into a boy that I've been drooling over for two weeks straight? And THEN what? What am I actually going to say to THE 'Jesse-101' once I look into those deep blue eyes of his and try to keep from falling at his feet as hysterical fainting spell stops oxygen from getting to my brain?
This is dumb. Why am I doing this? And why am I actually excited to be doing this?
Oh God....I'm Scotty Lynch! I'm totally pulling a Scotty Lynch right now! Ugh! And he's probably gonna look at me the exact same way. Pestered and annoyed. Sighhh...
When the car horn honked outside of the window, I froze up immediately. In that split second, my clothes looked wrong, my hair looked wrong, my voice was wrong, my shoes were wrong...NOTHING about me seemed to match anymore! It was all just a mismatch collection of garbage that was sure to get me laughed at, if not ignored completely.
I felt like my legs were walking all on their own as I walked out to the car, where Lori and her sister were waiting with giant smiles on their faces. Ready to whisk me off to the Hillside Mall, and quite possibly the most embarrassing day of my life. So why was I still going along with this?
Because....
The concept of just getting a GLIMPSE of 'Jesse-101' in the flesh...it seemed worth it. Sooooo worth it. I could bear some humiliation for that. Let's just hope that I don't have to.
And big thanks to openly gay/bi teens on YouTube like Mongoos150, Yaygasm, Alexthemagix, and many more...who are MORE than just cool, funny, boys that are pretty to look at...but are honestly reaching out with an attempt to make a difference! Even if you never read this, you guys...I thank you!
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