He's Just a Skater Boy (boyxboyxboy)

Chapter 157: Mr Marsh's New Squirrel

The warm hug from my parents wasn't what I expected when I arrived home and unlocked the door. Their luggage was still at the bottom of the stairs, there was the smell of shrimp soup, which my mother knew was my favourite. I felt the full force of the relief I worried I wouldn't feel as I they greeted me, my father patting me on the back as I dropped my backpack on the floor.

"I was looking for him, but he takes a lot of time, he has a lot of friends." Gift told them, coming down from the stairs, then glared at me. "Why don't you answer your texts?"

"Sorry, I didn't look."

"Make sure to answer his texts." My mom smiled at me and patted my cheek. "Okay you want some dinner?"

"Isn't it early?" I pulled out my phone to have a look.

"Your mother needs to sleep, the coach was six hours." My dad told me.

I nodded. "Okay." And was quickly directed to lay the table.

"Just fill the bowls to the top, they're a bit small." Mom told me, leaning over my shoulder as I filled them up, even that closeness made me oddly happy.

It felt strange now that they were back, it was only a couple of weeks but it felt weird, like something was wrong as I was moving around them, like maybe the floor was different, or the ceiling, maybe I'd gotten taller? No, that couldn't be it. Or they'd gotten shorter, probably also not the case.

I couldn't shake the odd feeling off of me as I sat down, surrounded by the strange warmth suffused atmosphere.

Neither of them really had any questions for me though, which was both a relief and made thing additionally awkward for me. 

I didn't have anything to talk about. If I talked about school I would end up admitting I was being chaperoned all day and if they asked about friends I would probably end up having to tell them about Jacob and Atlas, about them being friends that is.

At some point everyone would have to know, that we were friends, and even that alone sounded like an uncomfortable thing to say. It wasn't a lie exactly though, I mean, it wasn't like we were a normal couple kind of thing, like a guy and a girl, we were friends... I liked being around them, even if they tried to annoy me, or if I tried to annoy them, it felt right, it felt good.

Gift spoke in Thai to them, and while I could understand pretty much everything save the odd few words, I wasn't good enough at speaking Thai to really take part, so I sat a bit mute in the busy dining room, and ate a lot, letting my mom occasionally lean over and give me more food.

When my father eventually asked how I was doing at school I hurriedly replied that I was doing fine. A little shifty sounding, like maybe I was dealing drugs in the school parking lot, but otherwise I was telling the truth, more so than ever I was telling the truth.

The house felt crowded now, in a good way, as Gift and I returned to my room, with me playing for a while and him studying before going to bed.

My dad came into the room to look around for laundry on mom's orders, but Gift had been religiously washing every item of clothing that touched the ground so there really wasn't much.

We both woke up bright and early the next morning and set off for school.

It hadn't ever been a habit of mine to go to school this early before, but with Gift over and having to go to Marsh it was beginning to feel natural, even if I was still groggy and rubbing my eyes by the time we reached the school gates.

We were earlier than normal though, and while Gift went off to wherever he was going, I didn't actually ask, I figured Marsh wouldn't be in his office yet and headed to my locker to fish out the right books to sleep on for the day.