“Again, we’re getting off topic,” I said, glaring at Joey.
“Actually no, that’s a good point,” Greg said. The guys nodded.
Ryan will be proud of you, I reminded myself. You want to be captain. This conversation was annoying as hell and it didn’t exactly get better once some of the guys did share some complaints. However, I don’t know. There was some complaining about me, or just the gayness of it all, which included Zach too, but it turned into just venting about anything that bothered us with the team.
Which meant I wasn’t the only one getting mocked. Maybe I won’t be as close with everyone as before, but maybe there’s some people I’ll get even closer with, like Ted. Maybe they do just need some time and they didn’t get it when my parents were suddenly being weird to me and I needed a support system. This was, like, their chance to adjust.
When we wrapped it up, I went over and spoke to Ted. Thankfully, some people complained about his hair. “Thanks for what you said, even if it wasn’t actually very nice towards me or Zach.” More self-serving than anything but technically it was in support of us.
“Gotta know your audience.” Which implied there was support there, even if it hadn’t been obvious.
I wasn’t sure about that. “Yeah, you’re cooler than you used to be. But that doesn’t mean you’re actually okay with us.”
Also, unthankfully, he was not ready to take constructive criticism about the green hair and seemed to think we were just jealous.
“Look, this is probably gonna sound really dumb,” he said, sounding embarrassed. “To say, oh I’m alright with gay people now, my cousin Daniel is gay.”
“Is that what happened?” I breathed a little easier because he knew, and I didn’t have to keep that a secret.
“Yeah, basically,” he laughed. “I’m a jock or whatever and he’s… whatever he is.” He pondered that. “Goth? Emo? Anyway,that’sthe most annoying thing about him. Not that he’s gay.”
“Oh, uh cool?” Was that his idea of acceptance? Hating something else more than another thing.
“Turns out? I don’t care about sexuality or whatever as much as I thought. Daniel’s still the only member of my extended family that’s remotely good company.” He took on a serious tone, looking at me somberly. “We have, like, at leastthreefamily reunions every year. When we just saw everybody the year before! Why?” He shuddered, then shook off the thoughts. “No way I can go through that on my own.”
“Uh, it’s good to have family?”
Ted made a face. “I don’t care if you’re gay, but don’t get all girly, Chambers.”
I rolled my eyes.
“My opinions have changed. Daniel and I spent the summer together and I got this awesome hair. I mean, maybe I don’t totally get it because he hooked up with Zach, but. To each their own or something.” Ted shrugged.
Huh.
The lesson, I guess, was happiness isn’t life going perfectly. It’s knowing how to deal when things go wrong and enjoying the things that are right.
Or maybe the lesson was you never knew what to expect. Sometimes life surprised you. In a bad way where you thought people had accepted you, but they’d only ignored what they didn’t like for as long as they could.
However, life could also surprise you in a good way. Where people like Ted changed their mind. Where you spent a night with a bunch of strangers you’d never met before who happened to be of the Jewish faith and they danced with you and took pictures and were totally at ease with you being gay.
There was good and bad, I guess. And maybe it just depended on what you decided to focus on.
* * *
Ryan
Not everything needed to be new and different. Date night with Luke had happened before and no matter how many times it happened, I still wanted more.
He picked me up and I went outside with him, but we didn’t immediately go anywhere. We stood on the porch and he told me, “I thought about what you said, after we tried to prank Zach.”
“You should always be thinking about what I say,” I responded immediately. “I just assume that’s what you’re doing if I’m not around. You sit quietly and ponder all the wonderful things I say.” Don’t know why I needed to inform him, since he obviously knew he did that as he was the one who, you know, did that.
Oh, wait. “Except in this case,” I amended. “When I say something dumb, you’re allowed to forget about it.” And never bring it up again.
Not that me being dumb happened very often. And if we forgot about it, then it didn’t exist, so it never happened. That worked out well for me.
“You weren’t being dumb,” Luke protested lightly.
