Chapter huit -Pondering and plans-
THIS IS ALMOST 5000 WORDS YOu should be satisfied.
Dedicated to TheQuinnEvans because she's totally awesome. If you haven't already, check out her stories Boys Will Be Boys and Tone Deaf. Those are my favorites so far, I'm pretty sure the rest of her work is just as awesome.
Pictures of the charaters ~~~~~>
"What's wrong with you? You look like you're about to pass out." Dannie laid her hand against my neck, but I shook her off.
"I-I'm fine." That was lie. Dannie gave me a skeptical look but all the same she stopped asking and started telling me about how much fun we were going to have this weekend. I threw a smile and a nod in every few seconds to make it seem like I was listening.
It had been five days. Five days since the incident. That was how I was starting to refer to it in my head.
Sebastian, just generally being himself hadn't pestered me about it or even looked at me funny. Actually, we hadn't talked since it happened, he got that I needed space and he wasn't put off when I stopped sitting beside him and talking to him. Or if he was, he didn't show it.
No one knew about the incident. I didn't tell Dannie or Luke and I probably never would. I had no idea where to go from where I was. There wasn't exactly an easy way to go about this, I wanted to be friends with him still, but how do you come back from something like that? What do you do after you find out your friend who's a guy has a crush on you? After you guys kissed?
I didn't have the faintest idea.
Sooner or later we're going to have to have to talk about it. Both of us knew that. I just knew I wouldn't be the one to initiate that conversation. If anything, I would avoid it for as long as I could.
"Cammy!" Dannie snapped her fingers in front of my face. I flinched from her proximity. "Oh, sorry. Are you sure you're okay? Whatever it is you know you can tell me, right?" I nodded, but didn't meet her eyes. Suddenly she wrapped her arms around me and my face was practically in her cleavage. "Aw, Cammy. I wish you would tell me what's wrong. She gently stroked the hair that wasn't under my beanie.
"Mmf, Dannie..." I mumbled. "You're suffocating me." If Luke were to walk in this would look very awkward. Dannie was kind of mother hen when it came to me. While she partied an insane amount, just like Luke, she had a whole different aspect of her personality.
She giggled, but let me out of her bosoms. She slid her hands up so she was cupping my face. If this was any other girl I'd say she was trying to put the moves on me, but knowing Dannie, she was just being herself. "Cammy, you know I love you and Luke right? I would do anything for you goofballs, I've got your backs. While I worry about the both of you, I worry about you more. Luke can hold his own pretty well, but you let people walk over you sometimes. You aren't a people person." She could read me so well. Some people might try to argue with her, but I knew all of that was true.
"I know, can't help it."
Her hazel eyes flashed. "That's okay. I just want you be happy." She pinched my cheeks. "My little Cammy is becoming a man!" She exclaimed. Sometimes, as bad as it sounded, Dannie was more of a mother to me emotionally than my real one was. She was still pinching my cheeks as Luke walked in. He stopped in the doorway and gave us a weird look.
"What did I just walk in on? My two best friends are sitting awfully close on a bed and one is pinching the others cheeks. Anyone want to explain this?" Dannie rolled her eyes and threw a pillow at him. He ducked and laughed. "Missed me. You'll have to try harder than that, kinda like you did last night." She didn't respond, I noticed she had the slightest tinge of pink in her pale cheeks.
I wrinkled my nose as Luke sat on the other side of her. "Can you guys not do that stuff while I'm here? I know you guys have your own secret love language or whatever, but leave me out of it. This is best friend time for all of us." Dannie snorted as she turned the TV on. Luke reached over her and ruffled my hair, beanie and all.
"You're just like that because you don't have someone to have a love language with." He teased. For some reason when he said that an image of Sebastian flashed in my mind. I pushed it out, this weekend wasn't about him and I. It was about spending time with my best friends.
"You mad," Dannie clicked her tongue. "Or nah?"
"Oh don't even start that with me." I couldn't stand that for whatever reason. Maybe it was the tongue click itself or just the way the whole thing sounded. Whatever it was, I hated it.
"Yeah, Cammy's mad." Dannie said decisively. "Alright, what do you guys want to watch? We have some crappy chick flicks, classic romantic comedies, things that will make you cry... more things that will make you cry, guns and fire, or stuff that will make you shit your pants because you're so scared." I laughed at the way she described the movies. We joked an argued about what to watch for a few minutes before I suddenly remembered something.
"Luke, where are the snacks?" Luke turned to face me and I could tell by his face he had forgotten. "Dude, you spent like half an hour out there, what were you doing?" He gave me his usual lazy smile. He was so relaxed about everything it was ridiculous.
"Well, see what happened was I went to the store and while I was in there I saw Parker and we talked for a while. I kind of lost track of time. Sorry." The last part was directed to Dannie. She was annoyed. Luke and Parker had a no-strings-attached kind of deal going on before this school year. Dannie did not like the 'other woman' at all. I could understand why she didn't like Parker and everything, but did she really have a right to be mad? Parker wasn't dating him and neither was she. She and Luke were doing the same exact thing. Yet she was jealous.
Women. I'll never understand them.
Dannie shook her head at Luke, then stood up and walked out of the room.
"What?" He called after her. When she didn't come back he gave me an incredulous look. "I don't understand what I did wrong!" This time I shook my head my at him.
"You got off easier than you should have. I'm going to go get the snacks. When I get back, you two better have made up." When it came to some things, Luke was so smart it was ridiculous. In other situations he was so oblivious it made me want to punch him. I often wondered if either of them realized if that they were made for each other. Probably not.
I sighed and made my way downstairs. I grabbed Dannie's keys that she kept in the rainbow bowl beside the door. As I was leaving I was pretty sure I heard something hit the wall. I would bet any amount of money that she had thrown something at him.
I got hit with a blast of air when I exited the apartment complex. For spring, it was still pretty cool. I tugged my beanie down over my ears as I walked across the street. I unlocked the car and slide in the driver's seat. I started the car and was about to start toward the store when I realized the seat was way too far back. "Seriously, Luke? You couldn't put the seat back when you were done?" I muttered. After adjusting the seat so my feet could actually reach the pedals, I pulled out of the spot and started towards the store.
The store was less than ten minutes away from Dannie's apartment so I was there in a few minutes. I pulled into the parking lot, made sure the car was in park, then got out. When I got into the store I knew exactly what everyone need. I got popcorn (what's a movie without popcorn?), three two-liter bottles of soda, chips, sour worms for Dannie, and pretzels for Luke. Luke was a strange guy, he preferred pretzels over most things. I got a bunch of Star-bursts for myself.
When I had everything we needed to make this night fun, I turned to go to the check out line, and walked straight into another pair of bosoms belonging to a different redhead this time. These were truly the struggles of being a short guy, when you bump into someone, you bump into their chest. If the chest happened to have breasts, than it made everything awkward.
"Sorry!" I said quickly, backing up a little. "I wasn't paying attention."
I knew Naomi was popular and all that, but I didn't know what her real personality was like. I seriously hoped I hadn't just bumped into another Cindy. She was intimidating, to say the least. Tall, voluptuous, and so pretty it hurt to look at her full on.
Naomi simply smiled at me. "I saw you at my party last weekend. I don't remember your name, but I remember who you were with. That cute French boy, Sebastian, right?" It would figure. I was having the weekend out to take my thoughts off of him, and yet he seemed to be at every corner of my mind. Nonetheless, I nodded. "Are you two friends?"
Right now? I didn't know. After two people kiss in the hallway, can you still be friends? I didn't know. Since everyone else had no clue -- to my knowledge-- that the whole incident had even happened, I just said, "Yeah, something like that." That was about as truthful as it was getting. Naomi seemed to like that answer because her smile got even brighter.
"Well if you see him can you tell him to give me a call? I'd love to hang out with him sometime." I wondered what she would say if she knew that he was gay. Or that he had a crush on me. It probably wouldn't be nice.
I gave her another stiff nod. She waved. "Well, see ya later then. Thanks." She sashayed away. After I made sure I had all the snacks, I started towards my original destination. The checkout line. While some college kid bagged my snacks, I noted that Naomi didn't even ask me for my name. Well, for someone like her, I wasn't really anybody. Like Dannie said, I was not a people person, and if meeting with new people could be avoided, that's what I would do.
I grabbed the bags and went outside. I put the snacks in the front seat then got in the car and pulled out of the parking lot.
It was a little after five so there was some traffic. I settled into my seat, it was going to be a bit of a wait. I flicked the radio on in an attempt to distract myself. Some mindless pop music floated through the speakers. It was some something about about someone loving someone they shouldn't.
It was supposed to distract me from a certain person I was trying not to think about. But if anything it made me think of him more.
There were a number of things I could do moving forward:
I could completely ignore him for the rest of the year.
I could pretend nothing happened.
I could hate him.
Those were just a few. I knew none of those would work. There was no way I could ignore him for the rest of year. There was also no way I could pretend like nothing happened. It would always be there, a reminder of why things wouldn't be the same for us. And I knew I couldn't hate him. I didn't have it in me, and besides that... I didn't want to.
I sighed. This was why I tried not to dwell on it too much. I usually ended up feeling more confused than I already was about the whole deal. While I had been lost in thought, the traffic had cleared up. I drove back to Dannie's apartment in record time.
After I had all the bags, I carefully made my way up the stairs and used my free hand to open the door I knew no one locked. I tossed the keys in the bowl and called, "I'm back!" I called. No response. "Guys?" I walked into the living room to see if they were in there. Nope. I decided to just go back to Dannie's room and wait for them to turn up.
I pushed opened the door and walked straight into a very compromising scene between my two best friends. Dannie let out a squeal as I turned and covered my eyes. "Jeez! I leave for all of fifteen minutes and you guys are going at it?"
Luke chuckled. "You told me to make up with her before you left... I did. Anyway, we're decent. You can come in." I set the snacks on the bed and Dannie all but pounced on the bag containing the gummy worms. Luke tried to take the bag from her, but she growled at him. "If you make that noise a little louder, it almost sounds like it did last night." Dannie went pink again.
"I swear to God, if you make another reference to what you and Dannie do in the love nest, I'm leaving." I tried to give him a menacing look, but it didn't really work through a mouth full of Starbursts.
He held up his hands in mock surrender. "Hey, it's okay. I can be a good boy, I'll stop." Dannie snorted when he called himself a 'good boy', but didn't comment on the inaccuracy of his statement
After a little more playful banter between the three of us, we all eventually decided to watch The Truman Show. We laughed at it more than we actually watched it.
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"What I want to know, is how the hell did this guy live his entire life not knowing his world was a lie?" Luke asked while shoveling pretzels in his mouth. "I mean really, he didn't notice people picking up random objects and smiling brightly in the middle of conversation? Everyone knows that's called advirtisement."
I stole a gummy worm from Dannie's bag when I thought she wasn't looking. She growled at me when she realized it was gone. "Well, you can't really blame him. It's all he ever knew. How could he think any differently if that was what his entire had been?" While I was saying that, I compared it to Sebastian once again. He had to understand that this whole... thing... with him was very different for me. Whether it was a good kind of different or not, I still hadn't decided.
Luke clapped in front of my face. I dragged myself out my head and tried to pay attention. "Cameron, can you stop spacing out and help pick the next thing to watch?"
"Mhm, give me a second..." I stretched and rolled closer to Dannie to see what my options were.
POV: |Sebastian|
"I should slap you." He abruptly switched to English, still wearing that same stupid smirk.
I rolled my eyes at him. "Why'd you switch back to English?"
"I felt like it." I watched him get up from the table and walk over to the fridge. He pulled out two beers. I eyed him suspiciously as he slid one over to me. I reached my hand up to pop the top off, but he held a hand up to stop me. "No, mine is for now. Yours is for when he rejects you."
"You can be a real dick sometimes, Noel." He merely smiled and took a sip of his beer. "He kissed me while he was drunk, and I wanted him to think about it sober." I wished he hadn't done it. So we could at least go back to being friends, and I could pretend I didn't have a crush on him. Maybe he just had an impulsive thought to kiss me, and it didn't mean anything. I kept replaying the look on his face after I told him, wide-eyed and shocked. The way he had scrambled to get away from me was gutting. At least it was over.
But how would I tell my mom? I realized this with a groan. I promised her I would tell her if something like this happened. And if I told her, I just knew she would order me to come back. I didn't want to leave America. I made friends, and aside from that, there was still a lot of stuff I wanted to do, a lot of things I wanted to see.
"Didn't you say you were going to call auntie Jackie this morning?" Noel said after taking another sip from his beer.
"Merde. You're right...." I told her I was going to do because I hadn't talked to her and my sisters in almost two weeks. I glanced at the clock on the stove. It was nearing five here so currently it was about eleven over there. She told me she would stay up until twelve so I still had time. I got up from the table and left Noel sitting at the table with his drink.
I shuffled upstairs and poked my head in uncle Robert's study to see if he needed anything. He usually didn't come downstairs for dinner while he was in the middle of a big project. He had only been coming down recently for my benefit. Normally Alice or Noel would bring him dinner. He often joked that he wouldn't eat at all if they didn't bring him food up. That was pretty true.
"Avez-vous besoin de quelque chose, mon oncle Robert?"
"Non, merci."
I just stood there watching him for a minute. He was typing away, papers surrounding him like an ocean at his desk. Occasionally he looked down at one or two then continued writing. He stopped for a moment to rub at the stubble on his jawline then got back to writing. The life of a professor must be hard. I stopped lurking in the doorway and left uncle Robert to have some peace.
I went into my room and got out my laptop. I turned it on and waited for it to load up. When it was done, I logged into Skype and called my mom. After a minute or so, an image popped up. All I could see was someone's eye. That person backed up and smiled brightly. Brigette. She waved at me and said something I couldn't hear. "Votre microphone n'est pas sur ..." I said. She nodded and ran off, probably to go get my other sisters. {A/N: He said the microphone's not on.}
A few minutes later, she returned carrying a sleepy looking Victorie and a very disgruntled looking Reneé showed up. Brigette said something to Reneé and she pushed two chairs closer to the camera and sat down. They both sat down and Reneé tapped something the laptop and the sound came on with a pop! "Je peux vous entendre maintenant." I said. {'I can hear you now.'}
"Bonjour, Sebastian." Victorie waved at me sleepily before lying against Brigette's shoulder and closing her eyes. I smiled faintly.
"So 'ows America?" Brigette said in her heavy accent, clapping her hands. She was probably the most excitable out of all of us and she was a very outgoing person which resulted in her having a lot of friends. Some of those friends weren't too smart and convinced her to things she didn't need to. Like skipping her classes. She did the worst English class, her French accent almost completely overpowered her English words, as a result she didn't like to speak the language a lot because it embarrassing to her.
"Why are you speaking English?" I said curiously. If she was going to switch languages, I figured I might as well also.
She twirled a strand of her hair around her finger idly. "I met zis man at a café. 'E vas very nice, but 'es French vas a bit poor. 'E said 'e vould help me vith my accent if I taught him better French." Wait, she was playing with her hair and looking around. That only meant one thing.
"You like him." She shook her head vigorously which only fueled the fire. "Yes you do! You're blushing."
"Zats...zat is not importaant vight now. So, Vhat is it like there? 'Aave you met any cool frands? Any hot boys?" My family was completely okay with me being gay. Brigette was overly ecstatic about the whole thing in fact. Whenever she happened to drag me along for shopping, she tried to to get me to pick out cute guys with her like it was okay. It was not. It was weird.
"I made friend's with this guy and his group. I met a bunch of people at the this party I went to a little while ago. They're all really nice. It's pretty goof here, you know. Some people are a little too open but...it is a lot warmer here, there's not a lot of spontaneous rain so I don't have to carry an umbrella around." This time of year in Paris the weather was not very good. It would generally be on the cold side and would require you to lug around a coat just in case it started raining.
"that's good for yo--- You skipped a question." She said slyly. Just like I read her well enough to know what she was thinking or hiding from me, she could do the same. "You like someone too, don't you?"
I shook my head and smirked. "Also not important. Where's mom?"
Brigette shifted Victorie's sleeping form on her shoulder. "She vent to sleep at ten. She passed out on the couch vaiting for your lazy âne to call."
"Merde. Tell her I promise to call her tomorrow, eight o'clock." I looked at the time. "It's seriously late, you have work tomorrow and she has school. Go put Victorie in her crib and go to bed. I want to talk to Reneé." Reneé, who had curled up in her chair quietly while I spoke to Brigette, looked up at the sound of her name.
"Okay, goodnight, frère." She mock saluted me before carrying Victorie away.
Once Brigette was gone, Reneé pulled her chair closer and ran a hand through her tangled hair. "Quoi?"
"English please."
"Pourquoi?"
"What's your grade in English?"
"Fine. Fine." Her accent was even worse than Brigette's. "Vhat is it?"
I just looked at her for a second. I could remember when she was a child, too young to know the evils of the world. We used to be close, the three of us. Brigette, Reneé, and I used to be best friends when we were younger. Brigette and I had been close, but not as close as Reneé and I used to be. She used to follow me around everywhere, there was a time when she looked up to me.
Then she got older and it seemed like ever since she learned of my sexual preference, nothing was the same.
"How's school?"
"Fine."
I paused. "Anyone giving you trouble? Teachers or student?"
"No."
"Are you happy?"
"No, because I am tired and 'shu are asking me stupid questions. I 'ope you have fun doing vhatever it is 'shu doing over there." She said irritably. "I am doing just fine over 'ere, so leave me alone, Sebastian!" Before I could respond to that, she ended the call and left me staring at blank screen. I sighed and put my laptop away. I didn't know if she was just going through some kind of teenage phase or if she just... hated me. I did not want to believe it was like that, but maybe that was reality.
I didn't know anymore. I honestly didn't. By this time it was about six o'clock so I pulled out my textbook and notebook to finish some homework I had due over the weekend. I worked for about ten minutes before I got interrupted. Noel poked his head through the door way and gave me his trademark idiotic smirk. "I've got an idea." Why was everyone speaking English today?
"That's good for you." I said. I didn't spare him another glance.
"I think it might interest you."
"I think not."
"It's about Cameron..." I looked up at him. He actually looked serious for once.
"I'm listening."
"It's about how you can win him over."
I sighed. I still had a lot of work left to do... but this might not be stupid. Noel could come up with good plans when he put his mind to it. As children we spent a lot of time doing mischievous things thanks to Noel's extensive planning. We wouldn't have gotten away with egging a neighbor's house if it wasn't for him. "Okay, give me half an hour."
"I'll be in my room."
I worked diligently for thirty more agonizing minutes. By the time I was finished my hand was numb from everything I had written down and the beginnings of a headache were starting to appear. I stood up and walked a out into the hallway. I went into Noel's bedroom which was a few doors down and pushed the door open. "What's your plan?"
Noel ushered me through all the stuff littering his floor and let me sit on the bed. He had a pair of glasses sitting on the bridge of his nose and he had put on a bowtie over his white shirt. He pulled out some papers and spread them over his desk. "Before we start this, you have to know, once you do this... there's no going back." He looked at me seriously again.
"I think this is the most serious I've seen you act about anything for the entire time I've known you," What were all those papers for on his desk? "And why do you make this sound so... life changing?"
He pushed his glasses up fraction of an inch. "Because it is. Are you serious about Cameron? Is it a serious crush?" I nodded. I'd liked him probably since I first met him, he was adorable, it was impossible to see how anyone could not like him. "Do you think he likes you, too?" I nodded again. While I may have initiated the kiss on both counts, he didn't stop it either times. And both times he had been getting pretty into it.
"Great. Are you sure you want to do this?"
"Yes, Noel. I don't even know what the plan is yet, but it sounds like it must be good."
"It is. Now let operation Cabastian commence." He clapped his hands.
"Cabastain?" I gave him a weird look.
"Sebastian and Cameron. It's a ship name."
"Why can't my name come first?"
"Like Sebron?"
"Yes. Perfect."
"Look, it can be both. Let operation Cabastian/Sebron begin!"
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