Rowan & Justin [boyxboy]

Chapter Eight

Justin

When I got home our house had basically exploded.

                I’d offered to go to the hospital with Rowan because even though I felt really guilty and somehow responsible for what had happened, he seemed to be holding me pretty tight like maybe he didn’t want to let go. He started to say yes but then seemed to remember that this was going to be a massive deal to Montague, and that lots of students and parents were going to turn up at the hospital once they heard, and that having a Capulet student, much less the cousin of the idiot responsible, there as well might not go down so well.

                So instead Nate and I made our way home and when we got here I almost wished I’d braved going to the hospital after all.

                Tyson was sitting on the couch in my living room with skinned knuckles, a split lip, and a slowly swelling right eye, while both our sets of parents stood around him screaming. Only, not at him. At each other.

                Like I mentioned before, Tyson’s branch of the family is way into the Montague/Capulet rivalry thing, which is probably how he ended up being so hardcore too. His dad is my mom’s brother and for some reason I guess she wasn’t always so into it when they were younger, which is why Nate and I ended up being, you know, normal.

                Anyway, the scene in the living room seemed to have descended into a sibling argument between the two of them rather than anybody having a go at Tyson for putting a kid in hospital: they were arguing over whether he’d been “right” or not.

                When we walked in it was going thusly:

                My dad was standing slightly behind my mom on one side of Tyson, while my aunt was sitting beside her son, and her husband was facing his sister as they both raised their voices. (Hey, I said my family was complicated.)

                My mom was shouting, ‘Can you hear yourself?! Do you realise how crazy you’re being?! He put a child in hospital!’

                ‘It was just boys being boys! I suppose you’re going to say that Montague brat is completely innocent in all of this?! Tyson has done nothing wrong, he’s just being loyal to his school.’

                ‘Loyal to...?’ my mom broke off in disbelief. ‘You really are deluded,’ she snapped. ‘Loyalty to one school does not mean putting the students of another in a hospital bed!’

                ‘Sometimes it does,’ my uncle retorted. ‘Those Montague delinquents obviously needed to be taught a lesson!’

                ‘Nearly killing one of them isn’t teaching them a lesson! This is just going to breed more hostility! If Tyson had a problem with that Rowan boy sneaking into their Prom he should have taken it to the principal, not beat forty shades of shit out of the boy!’

                I glanced at Nate, and neither of us could resist a small smirk at the sound of Mom saying the word “shit”. She rarely swears and always makes a little “Ooh!” sound when she does, like she’s surprised at herself. Not so this time, however, as she stood there is blazing fury, staring down her brother and looking like some frightening Amazonian warrior queen.

                ‘Actually,’ Nate interrupted calmly, ‘he didn’t beat up Rowan Montgomery.’ Obviously surprised, my uncle nevertheless shot a victorious look towards my mother. ‘He beat up a different student called Mitch.’