[So, things get pretty weird. You’re in for a roller coaster, folks. Vote&Comment]

                               Chapter Eighty Eight Minus Eighty

                                         “Syntax Error”

Smalle

The lights to the porch turned on and I had to hide my eyes under the intense glow of the light.

The door opened and I pushed passed Rory, hands extended out in front of me, as if I was supposed to catch something from falling.

I spun around and stood there, mouth still agape and still feeling like an army of butterflies were currently doing cheering routines at the pit of my stomach.

Rory closed his door and rubbed his eyes. His hair was spiked up, possibly from his pillow and he was naked, besides wearing blue and white striped boxers. I just noticed how hairy his legs were.

“You want to stop looking me over and explain to me your text message with just exclamation marks and why you are currently at my door at 2 in the morning, Jer?” he asked, sounding like a frog had rented his throat out.

“Duuude,” was all I could say. “Dude. Dude. Like dude. This is…dude.”

Rory nodded. “Okay,” he said, nodding just slightly. “Now, let’s try this again. And maybe in English.”

How can I say this gently?

“Price isn't in love with you.”

I held a hand out to him, just in case he was about to fall to his feet and cry. I even brought soft tissues for him if he did. Hell, I even wrote a pep talk speech that involved other gay fish in the sea. But I didn’t get it. He just stared at me and blinked, looking more surprised than hurt.

“Why aren’t you feeling eternal misery and despair? Or crumbling? Or jumping through your front window is complete and total misery or whatever?”

“Because we just started dating,” he said. His voice was back to his normal monotonous pitch. “I’m not in love with him either. I’m in really deep…like.”

“Well, sit your ass down homie, because he’s been playing you this entire fucking time.”

Rory blinked. His eyes narrowed. His skin looked even more pale at night. Strange. “What are you talking about?”

I held out my hands, and walked up to rest it on his shoulder. “Do you have any predispositions for heart attacks, because you won’t believe what I’m about to tell you.”

He swatted my hand off of him and folded them across his shiny chest. “Jeremy, just spit it out.”

“I…overheard a conversation between Price and my Dad."

"And?"

"And dude, Price hasn’t been in love with you. He never was. He’s just been covering up the fact, that and get this, he’s been having an affair with...... my Dad.”

I stepped back, hand on my chest. I fanned myself. “I need juice. Orange. I need some vitamins. This is too much for my heart.” I fell backwards on the love seat that Rory’s parents had near the bookshelf and exhaled.

Rory hadn’t moved. He was blinking.

And then he laughed. Laughed.

“Oh God, don’t lose your fucking mind, dude. One of us has to stay sane,” Isaid.

He continued. He even snorted a few times. Very un-Rory. He held his stomach. And slapped his knee like one of those guys from the old movies. I huffed.

“I’m glad you find your boyfriend, my best friend, having an extramarital affair with my father the slightest bit funny,” I grunted.

Rory was still laughing. “Dude,” laugh “that’s,” chuckle “the single,” giggle, snicker, titter “the dumbest thing you might have ever said. And yes, I am including that time you said Harry Potter was a low-key analogy for life in the womb.”

I suddenly felt angry. He was dismissing me. This was serious. “Rory, this isn't a fucking joke. And I was high.”

He waved me off and slogged over, standing in front of me with his hands on his hips. “You expect me to believe this, Jeremy?” he asked, incredulously. “It’s crazy talk.”

“I overheard them!” I yelled in rebuttal. “Bits and pieces.”

He rolled his eyes. “Bits and pieces?” He was blowing me off. Dick.

“It was enough!” I yelled.

“Keep it down, Neanderthal,” he bit. “There are actual people sleepy at the time.”

“It was enough,” I whispered-yelled.

“Fine,” he huffed, rolling his eyes, “what did you hear?”

“Okay,” I said, blowing my own sharp bit of air. “My Dad said he’d ‘meet him tomorrow’, and then Price said that he didn’t want to tomorrow because he did want ‘me to suspect anything’.”

I stopped to look at Rory’s face. He looked unmoved. I continued.

“Then, my dad said he’d be at the bottom. When I came in they stopped talking in their whsipers and they were super close.”

Rory’s eyebrows shot up. “Your Dad’s the bottom?”

I nodded feverishly. “I know!” I laughed, but it was void of humor. “It makes me wonder what my parents do in bed and who probes who and Oh My God, the images, the sounds the…the mental scars. My eyes…they burn at night now. I will never live this one down!” I yelled just above a whisper. I dug my face into my hands. Hopefully I’d just accidentally smother myself to death.

“This…sounds serious to you,” was all that Rory had to say…after all of that incriminating evidence.

I looked up at him, keeping my hands in the cup that held my face. “I just told you that my boyfriend was filling my Dad’s donut hole with his Boston crème and that’s your response?” I asked, disbelievingly. “Either you’re a great friend for putting my feelings first, you’re mocking me or you were in on this.”

 He nodded. “Yeah, I was totally in on Price topping you’re Dad. Yup, completely in on it. My motives for doing so are clea-” He stopped abruptly, midsentence, mouth still hanging onto the last syllable. “Your boyfriend?”

I cocked my head. “What are you talking about?”

“You called…Price your boyfriend.”

Shit. I did, didn’t I? “Dude, I found out my dad and my best friend is having an affair. I think I’m allowed to have at least one slip of the tongue.”

Rory stared. “Okay.” Then he huffed and it came out shaky. He ran his hand through his hair one time and coughed. “Let’s…regroup. We’re tired and it’s late. We’ll rethink this tomorrow.”

I wanted to protest. Something had to be done. But Rory was level-headed which was either worthy of praise or plain bizarre. Maybe he was in shock. Maybe I should lay him down and make sure he’s okay.

“Go home, Jer,” he said and broke me out of my thoughts. I looked at him and he smiled a bit. “Go and lay down, man. Sleep and try and clear your head. Then we’ll discuss this tomorrow and get Joy involved.”

I breathed. “Joy will know what to do,” I swallowed. “She’s always does.”

Rory smiled and gave me a bro-hug. Then he pushed me out of his door.

I got home about 30 minutes later (I ran there and jogged back) and snuck into my kitchen. A light was on. I stepped in and it was my dad with a beer in his hands.

“Dad?” I whispered and he jumped slightly.

He looked at me and sighed. “I thought you were an axe murderer, Jelly.”

Jelly. That nickname felt tainted now. “I thought you were asleep?”

“Ditto,” he answered.

I nodded.

He took a sip.

I coughed.

He looked up.

“Um.” That was my fine response to the awkwardness that was bear hugging me at the moment. “Permission to approach the bench, your honor?”

He nodded and tapped the seat next to him. He climbed up on a table and moved the chair in front of him. “Permission granted.”

I slinked over and sat in it.

“Is there something wrong, Jeremy?”

A lot. So much. “No. Nah. Everything’s great.” Except for you swallowing my best friend’s penis juice. “I was just wondering, pondering really…as ponderers usually do. Um. Have you ever…felt, I don’t know, like you were gay?”

“Gay?” he asked. Then his eyes widened. As if something rippled across his brain and he came to a sudden realization. “Gay. Holy fucking shit. This is the talk, isn't it?”

He knew. He knew that I knew. I nodded. I could feel something lumping at the back of my throat. I couldn't speak after he said it. It felt like my tongue had been swallowed. The butterflies were now doing flight simulations.

“I was waiting on you to find out.”

My eyes snapped open. “Huh?”

He laughed. “We’ve been waiting forever.”

I blinked. “Us?”

“Your mother and I, and Price as I recently found out.”

“Mom knows about this?!”

He snorted. “Everyone does, Jer. You’re probably the last person to find out.”

I looked at his beer. I needed a drink. “Can I?”

He looked at it and nodded. “Just one swallow. I don’t need your mother up my ass about you getting drunk.”

I took a swallow. Or a gulp. Ether, way, I basically drank the entire thing. It was horrible. So, naturally I took another. “But Price…”

Dad took the can and rested it next to him. “Peanut Butter has been dying for you to ask him about it Jeremy.”

“I don’t know what’s going on anymore…” I mumbled.

“Sleep on it, Offspring #1. Get your feelings in order and try to accept it. There’s no changing it.” He smiled. “Now I suspend this case until you’ve gotten enough sleep. We’ll reconvene after you’ve slept,” he said. He kissed my forehead and all I could think about was where those lips had been.

I pulled back and very gracefully bolted out of that kitchen like a bat out of hell and scurried up my staircase.

I crept into my room. It was dark but I could clearly see Price asleep in my bed. And he was really asleep because his stomach moved in and out evenly.

I didn’t dare climb in next to him. I don’t know what I’d do or say, so I lied down at the foot of my bed and tried to go to sleep. I closed my eyes. And then it hit me. My eyes snapped back opened and I whispered to myself, “Price is a top?”