Straight Boys

Being Straight is Okay

"You're supposed to be studying Andrew. Alone. What is your friend doing here?" Mr. Parsley's voice was sharp, deeply rooted to the back of his throat in a way that made a lump form in my own throat.

Andrew, with a heavy breath, admitted to his dad where he actually was, what he was actually doing and why I was with him. If this was any other day, under any other circumstances, and with any other possible reasons, I would have been trying to hold back my laughter at the interrogation Andrew was being forced into. Watching him squirm would have been icing on the top of the cake; but it wasn't like that. I was in the worst possible situation a person could be put into when meeting a parent for the first time. It physically brought me pain because I had no clue what to even do.

It was like meeting Taylor's parents for the first time all over again. Well, except Andrew wasn't my lover, probably pretty close to it with how I was feeling being scrutinized by Mr. Parsley with every glance he passed my way, but of course this was different. Everything was different with Andrew.

"Look, dad," my stare kept to Andrew, though, as I tried to ignore the dark brown eyes tracking my every motion, "if it wasn't for Zachary, I probably would've had a wreck from driving so recklessly trying to get here." I gulped for the second time in the presence of Mr. Parsley's glare.

"Is this true? All of it?" The question was directed towards me.

I had no idea what the hell I should have said to Andrew's father. It wasn't like I had to defend myself because I did nothing wrong, but it seemed like I did with the looks I was receiving. This had been an intimate family affair and I was impeding on it. I tried to leave, I really did, but it was like God just couldn't let me go. I should have left so none of this could have happened.

And in that moment, standing in the middle of a hospital room, being glared at by a pair of daunting brown eyes, I wanted the ground to swallow me whole. Not half of me so that I laid there with part of my mind too gone into the thin air to actually think because I already felt that way, but all of me so that it seemed I didn't have to confront the one person I probably needed to apologize to the most in the world. I would be gone so it wouldn't matter. I wouldn't have to look at the man that raised somebody I had hated and basically taunted one day, but couldn't get enough of the next.

I wasn't even being asked to apologize, so why was I thinking like this?

I had had too many confrontations that night, so I didn't need this, yet I did if that makes sense. Meeting Mr. Parsley was probably something that needed to happen.

But God damnit not in this situation.

This was a family affair, and I was nowhere near the vicinity of the Parsley name and what they had.

I felt like an unwanted outsider. I should not have come into the room in the first place, but I just had to see Andrew, to make sure he was alright.

What was I doing?

I usually knew, but not that night.

I had no clue what I was doing anymore, and that was kind of crap if I had to admit it. Complete and utter cow shit.

Taking in a deep breath to cool my burning mind, I had to answer him or else I would have started to look like a lunatic just standing around stuck in some imaginary space capsule. So I said, "Yeah. It was actually my idea for Andrew to go to homecoming so don't blame him." My argument, if you could even call it that, was an over used, weak plea, but I didn't know what else to say.

It did make Parsley himself, that righteous brat, smirk, so it wasn't terribly awful. It wasn't good either.

Good enough I suppose.