That weekend was a dream. School, hockey, friends, everything fell by the wayside for us. We both had Sunday off and spent the day mostly in my bed, as my parents were out of town for the day visiting my mom's parents. I had elided this obligation by making it seem, though not outrightly lying, that I would have to be at the bookshop all day. Theo and I were both the youngest children and effectively only children as my siblings and his brother were all either in college or working already. This meant the house was all ours for the day once my parents left. The topic of defining the relationship must have been forgotten, or it had never occurred to Theo in the first place because it never came up.
We'd gone to get breakfast at Sal's to make it appear like we were heading into work. Theo had stayed over the night before and the impression was given that he would be sleeping on the air mattress in my room. We made only minimal attempts at feigning this charade. Sunday was spent entirely in bed once we got back from Sal's, save for the twenty minutes I spent making quesadillas and grilled cheese for lunch, the extent of my cooking capabilities.
Movies were put on my laptop, mostly as a pretext for spending so much time in bed. Choice of what was watched alternated between us, but followed a bit of a theme. The first set was first celebrity crushes, the third Mighty Ducks movie for Theo and Prisoner of Azkaban for me. Draco Malfoy had preoccupied my preadolescent imagination for a solid two years and was the reason I was the only kid I knew who willingly labeled themselves as a Slytherin. As these were children's movies and movies that we'd each seen dozens of times, we spent that time more focused on each other than the plots.
The next strand was favorite movies, Demolition for Theo and Little Men for me. These films drew our attention towards the screen and away from each other more than not. I mostly contented myself with playing with Theo's hair while we watched these. Our third and final set didn't really have a theme and we didn't have that much time left, so Theo picked an episode of Skins (the British version, not the American remake) and then we watched Big Mouth for me.
Towards the end of Big Mouth, we heard the garage door going up and scrambled to fully dress ourselves and make it seem like we hadn't been kissing, pawing and groping each other for the past ten hours. By the time footsteps we heard coming up the stairs, Theo was lounging on the air mattress while I reclined on my bed and we tossed a baseball from my little league days back and forth. That was how mom found us. She'd popped her head in and suggested that Theo go home because it was a school night and I'd almost certainly not done any of my homework yet. She wasn't wrong.
Monday morning had me in a bad mood from the start. I'd quickly grown accustomed to Theo's presence beside mine, but I wouldn't get a chance to see him again for a few days now. I had also completely forgotten about what had transpired at the game until I walked into school that morning. Patrick hadn't been on the bus, so I believed he had just walked to school, which was not uncommon for him. He liked the solitude of it or something, he'd told me when I'd asked out of confusion once.
By the time I entered the sophomore wing, there was already a large crowd at the end of the hallway. I couldn't make out what was happening, but Mr. Phillips and Mr. Collins pushed back out through the crowd towards me. Phillips was walking Patrick past me to the main office and Collins was doing the same with Scott, who was much more reluctant to comply. They were yelling at the rest of the students to get into their homeroom classrooms as handled the two.
Eva found me and stopped following her boyfriend, knowing that she wouldn't be allowed in the main office. She pulled me into one of the empty classrooms that wasn't used as a homeroom and filled me in. Patrick had confronted Scott and Kirk about Friday night. Things became heated, words became screaming, which in turn became shoving, but it hadn't gotten much beyond that.
Fighting wasn't common at school, so any hint of it led to a big crowd almost instantaneously and teachers descended quickly. Eva said Patrick had been steaming all weekend about their behavior but hadn't been able to reach Theo since the incident. "We couldn't reach you either," she added, giving me a suggestive look.
I sighed and decided it was best just to fill her in on as much as I wanted to share, which was everything except the more intimate details of our nights and days together. She was ecstatic to hear the news. When I expressed uncertainty as to whether we were in a relationship, she confidently declared we were. She and Patrick had gone slow, I remembered. It was her first relationship and they hadn't so much as kissed for two weeks. Simpler times, I laughed to myself.
Patrick entered homeroom with a note from the secretary, Mrs. Marsden, a sweet old lady who must've been eighty at minimum, which he handed to our homeroom teacher, Ms. White. I'd expected him to have been sent home for the day along with Scott.
I'm glad Patrick wasn't, but that probably meant I would have to see Scott again today as well. Patrick made his way to his seat, which was next to mine. I got up as he did so and made my way to sign out of the room to go to the restroom, signaling him to do the same in a few moments. I went to the nearest boys' room and kicked the stalls to make sure we wouldn't be disturbed. Patrick entered maybe three minutes after me.
"Dude, what the fuck are you doing picking fights on a Monday morning?" I let all my frustration out at him at once.
"Someone had to teach that prick a lesson and you couldn't because it'd draw attention to you. And, I am Sir Patrick the Ally."
"That was a stupid joke. Why do you always take things so literally?"
"Because some things are just right and others are just wrong."
I let out a long exhale, giving up on trying to chastise my friend. "So what'd he give you? I'm shocked that you're still here."
"Yeah, me too. Coach Morris said we were both 'good kids' with no records so we should just be getting a week of detention each." What was left unsaid was that they were both athletes and their parents each donated sizable sums to school. Coach Morris was the athletic director and an assistant football coach, known for being incredibly lax when it came to punishing athletes, particularly football players like Patrick and myself.
"At least you didn't get suspended or anything. That's what matters I suppose."
"Fuck that noise. Why weren't you or Theo responding to my texts?"
"We had better things to preoccupy ourselves with," I couldn't help but smirk as I said that.
"You bastard. Here I was plotting to defend Theo's honor and you were taking it yourself."
"First of all, my boyfriend can defend his own honor and, if not, I'm there, so don't try to play hero all the..."
"Wait, hold up, boyfriend!? Bro, congrats, man. You two finally got your heads out of your asses" He paused for a moment and I was about to respond, but then he added, "and into each others'," like a punchline in a bad stand-up act.
"You're gross."
"What, don't y'all move faster than us normies?"
"Okay, there's a lot to unpack there, but relative to you and Eva, yes, we have gone faster than your snail's pace."
"You get it in?"
"I never want to have anything above a PG-13 conversation about what Theo and I do with you, ever."
"You're no fun." I wanted to tell him to check out the gay section of Pornhub if he was so interested, but he kept up his questioning. "I can't believe you've been gay for two weeks and already have a boyfriend, you dog."
"I'm going to revoke your ally knighthood, asshole. I've always been gay."
"Dude, I'm fucking with you."
"And...I don't exactly know if we're boyfriends yet," I wince saying it, embarrassed at my own inclination for hyperbole, but it was better than Theo finding out through Patrick that's what I'd called us and him getting weirded out.
"You better get on that, Charles. Twinks are in high demand among the gay community," saying that last part like he read it out of any anthropology textbook and twink was a bolded word that was defined in the glossary.
"Never use the word 'twink' again. It's just...wrong coming out of your mouth."
Patrick looked like he was about to respond, but the bell rang for first period. We dashed back to homeroom to pick up our backpacks and then across the building to the math department, bursting through the door just as the second bell sounded. This earned a reproachful glare from Mrs. Perkins, but she didn't say anything and began the lesson without comment. We sat down at our assigned seats, one in front of the other, and kept our heads down as we scrambled to catch up on the notes that had already been gone over.