“Dude,” Joey said to me. “Weaksauce, you queer.”
Ted clapped him on the back. “Shut up, you big fag.”
“Mr. Summers!” cried a scandalized voice.
Oh god, it was Santa Claus. I mean, the principal.
Oh god, it was the principal!
That was even worse than Santa. As far as I knew, Santa didn’t have a tolerance policy he was in love with.
We really should have seen that coming.
On the bright side, I don’t know. At least it didn’t happen sooner? Only Ted got in trouble. Being one player down was better than several players down. And being down Ted was better than Zach or me. So yeah, that was… Ted was just arguably our third best player and what if he couldn’t play? Oh my god.
We were so screwed.
In the bad way. The worst way.
Epilogue: One More for the Road
Get it? Because driving.
Ryan
Driving was a lot easier when you were facing the steering wheel. And the road. I hadn’t driven yet, but I could already see that. Even if this went terribly and I melted his wheels or somehow drove us into the sun, I was still better at this than the time I’d been facing the wrong way.
If I drove us into the sun, then at least I drove ussomewhere.
It was also easier when I was the only one in the driver’s seat and Luke knew what we were doing. And when there were no Zachs or Zach’s brothers judging me.
My house resided toward the edge of town with a lot of properties dedicated to farming and agriculture. The remote setting meant not a lot of cars traveled down this road, so I could practice driving here.
In the afternoon light, Luke’s blonde hair almost glowed, but I tried very hard to keep my eyes ahead of me instead of looking at him. I’m already so great at this. And Luke was improving too. He didn’t tell me we were in a car. He covered that in his last lesson.
“I’m still not sure what to say,” Luke started, so already this could be going better. “I know how to explain baseball stuff and anything I’ve had to teach Lily, but I never really thought I’d have to teach anyone to drive until I had kids.”
“You want to have kids?” I wondered idly.
And then it seemed to sink in at the same time for both of us that we were two people who were dating and now we were two people who were dating and discussing kids.
“I mean, I. Hah.” He fidgeted. “Is this discussion gonna cause you to freak out?”
Hmm. If it did, I was in the driver’s seat, so I could just turn on the car and speed away. But he was in the seat next to me, which meant I’d be taking him along for the ride unless I stopped to push him out first but that seemed rude. I wanted my boyfriend to stay my boyfriend, so I probably shouldn’t push him out of the vehicle whether it was moving or not.
HEY BRAIN! ANSWER THE QUESTION!
Could we talk about kids without freaking out?
“We’ve been dating a while,” I reasoned. “We love each other.”
There was a nervous, swoopy feeling in my stomach, but I could possibly handle a discussion about this. Anything we discussed wasn’t legally binding and it was all just imaginary; I excelled at discussing imaginary things.
However, this topic felt like jumping the gun a bit. “I mean, there’s several things we need to figure out before kids and we’re really young,” I reasoned. “But I guess knowing where the other stands isn’t a bad thing.” We were currently sitting.
And there was the whole,I wanna be with your forever and ever, Ryanthing he told me. We’d sort of brushed against the topic of college, so why not? Bring on the major life discussions! No, don’t get overconfident.
“Oh,” Luke eloquently told me. He waited for something. I looked around. Nothing. “Really expecting you to be spazzier about this,” he explained.
