It Will All Work Out (Intersex gxg)

Chapter 47

Two years later - Age 18 (almost)

Time flies when you're having fun, right? I had to admit, after everything we'd been though, our life was pretty damn good these days. I still loved work, and so I was working as many hours as Gloria would give me to make money for our current life. High School was finally over, though the last two years weren't as enjoyable without Shay there with me. But we were still together every night and weekend at home since her college was so close. I would still teach her to cook a few things, though in general she was helpless beyond the basics, and with her truck we could venture out even in the winter. I knew that we had a lot of obstacles to overcome, but we'd already had to do that, and I was sure that we could figure out anything else that came our way together. Plus, we had great cuddles every night.

Strangely enough, I had hung out a lot with Lynn for our junior and senior years, who was also alone after everything that had happened. She'd barely scraped by her finals during sophomore year, and I ended up tutoring her in several classes, as did Shay to get her caught up in our junior year. It was like a switch had been flipped for her, and she had realized that being the 'golden child' to parents that were horrible didn't mean a lot. She still apologized a lot, especially to Shay, but we could see big differences in her. She and I both finally graduated high school and were on our way to URI along with Shay. 

I had to give Lynn credit in her personal life too. The two of us sat together at lunch every day, and while sometimes others joined us, usually to hit on Lynn since it was well known that I was with Shay, she always turned them down. She just wasn't interested in dating, because as she told me, she needed to work on herself first. After Leigh and Nicky she didn't want to deal with any high school drama, and I couldn't blame her. Maybe she needed to find someone a little older? Either way though, she was doing much better, and had become a good friend, and repaired her relationship with Shay, even if their parents hadn't. I didn't know if she would ever stop feeling guilty for the way she treated Shay in the past, but Shay and I were both over it, so we hoped she would be too.

Nicky and Leigh never came back to school and were now in jail along with Otis, having both been tried as adults. They had all pleaded guilty since there was no sense trying to go before a jury in a sensationalized courtroom hearing when all of the texts and evidence were clear on what happened. There were a lot of motions filed to try to suppress the evidence, but once those all failed, it was inevitable. They'd been in jail for over a year now, and had nine more to go, unless they were well behaved, which seemed pretty unlikely. Otis would be away even longer as a repeat offender, and he'd violated the terms of his parole when he committed the crime, so I knew he wouldn't taste freedom for a long time.

Once that case was settled, Harper presented me with plans to file a lawsuit against their families for damages. She had tried to get a hold of my mom, who was still in rehab, but never got a reply about joining the suit. That suit was finally filed six months ago, and both families were doing their best to drag it out. I wasn't asking for as much as Harper thought I could get, just the medical expenses for me and my mom, my continued therapy costs, and then a few million in damages on top of that that I could split with my mom. Considering that if this went to a trial, it would be a slam dunk win, and then a jury would decide the amounts, she thought I could have easily gone for ten or twelve million, with half of that going to my mom too. She finally convinced me to split the difference, and ask for six, and then split it with my mom because there was always a chance that the jury wouldn't give me all of it, and I'd end up with less anyway.

Sooner or later, that would get handled, but in the meantime, things were going well for me and Shay. She was doing as well in college as she had in high school, and still working weekends at the garage. She was on track to graduate when I was finishing my freshman year, and then she'd be getting a job, which I already knew was going to be hard on us. We'd slept next to each other every night for well over two years and going from that to only seeing each other on the occasional visit was going to be hard. I'd still have three years of college left when she had to move, and we'd have to find a way to make it work.