Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 73828 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73828 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 369(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Keith eyes me skeptically as he opens his laptop. “If you insist,” he says. “You know, Morgan is already seeing someone.”
“I don’t know that I want to hear about it.”
I won’t say anything to Keith since he’s Greg’s friend more than mine, but truth is, I reveled in their breakup. Morgan reached out to me via a Facebook message, which I haven’t read. That’s a big step that I’m not ready for. Not while I’m still feeling the sting of his betrayal.
“What about you?” I ask, trying to change the subject. “Are you seeing anyone?”
“No. I think I needed some time after you-know-who fucked me over real bad.”
“Yeah.”
“But don’t get me wrong. I’ve been having fun. Getting a lot of action on Grindr. Evidently, there’s a lot of demand for a wildly attractive, young, twenty-something bottom.”
“I have no doubt about that,” I say.
He keys away on his laptop for a minute. “Just one second. I need to send this file to Greg for a presentation we’re giving tomorrow for one of our lab classes. Speaking of school, how’s the bio class going?”
“It’s good. Just a lot of fucking studying right now. It’s all memorization.”
“You mention the whole pre-med thing to your parents yet?”
“No.”
“Isn’t it about time?”
“I don’t have a reason to tell them. They’re not paying for me to go to school. They don’t get a say in what I major in.”
“Fair enough.”
Another secret to keep.
“Just one more thing I need to send, and I’ll be done,” he says, continuing to type on his laptop.
“No, no. Go ahead,” I insist. My phone vibrates in my pocket.
Probably Mom. I’m heading to the mansion after I finish up with Keith to get ready for a fundraiser the family’s attending tonight.
I pull it out and see it’s from Tim: Gonna miss that ass tonight.
I snicker.
“What’s so funny?” Keith asks.
I can’t believe he even noticed, but he eyes me curiously. I must have made some sort of weird-ass expression or something to make him look at me like that.
“It’s just…something Mom said reminded me of an episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race.”
Another lie.
They’re really starting to stack up now.
When we finish up, I drive to the mansion.
“Mark, you’ll wear the Timberland suit we had tailored for you last week,” Mom says.
She sits across from me at the dining table, Dad in the chair adjacent to her. Wearing a dark blue dress and a pair of pearls, she’s dressed like a mother would be if she were planning to go out to a nice restaurant, but she isn’t leaving the house in that dress. It’s an outfit she wouldn’t mind a reporter catching her in if there was a fire and she had to make a quick escape from the house. Her hair—a vibrant blonde from a recent coloring appointment—curls around her face.
“The blue one. I bought a striped tie to go with it,” she adds. “Tammy said that one is more fashionable for kids your age, so you’ll like it.”
She thinks because I’m gay, I want to look hip and trendy. Or perhaps more aptly, she thinks I need to look like a good little gay boy who cares about those sorts of things. Tammy is Mom’s fashion designer. She comes up with everything we wear to events. Tonight we have a fundraiser where Mom will be speaking about cancer research for juveniles. I resent that she’s turned a subject that’s very personal for our family into a way of connecting with the public. Her public.
But she’s my mother, and despite how hard she can be…on me…on Dad…I know that she has a heart—and that she loves me. But it’s been hard to see that ever since Becky passed…when her passion for politics heightened. She became obsessed. And sometimes, it seems like Dad and I lost her to her constituents. Still, I feel like I have a responsibility to help her whenever she wants me to make an appearance. Even though it can be a pain when she needs me to behave and look a certain way, I can do those things for a couple of hours.
Mom takes a sip of chardonnay before saying, “If anyone from the press asks you about school—”
“I’ll tell them I’m just dicking around and doing drugs.”
She glares at me. It’s the first time she’s looked at me since we sat down for dinner. It’s her quiet disapproval she banks on to win my compliance. I concede.
“I signed up to help out with the Habitat for Humanity group at school,” I say, “and I’m doing well in all my classes this semester.”
I say it the way I would if she were a reporter asking me about the year.
Her lip curls upward with satisfaction.
She cuts the salmon on her plate and then takes a bite.
I wonder what she would think if she knew about the sort of vile things I let Tim do to me. Or if somehow one of our recordings leaked online. It would be devastating, but something about how much it would piss Mom off excites me. It’s one of the reasons I think I enjoy them so much.