Davi Medrade

I for one never had any problem with AJ (or whoever else) having casual sex. My problem is with the lies he told and the hurt that he caused in order to get it. He has been told time and time again how much he was hurting people. Even if he hadn't been explicitly told, there was no way that he didn't know anyway. So, if he won't learn that lesson one way, there is no other option than for him to learn it another way. I take no enjoyment from people getting hurt, regardless of how much they might deserve some pain, but I am glad that he got a little taste of the medicine he has been so nonchalant about dishing out. If there was a way for Billy to give him a stern talking-to that would make him change his ways, I'd be all for that. But that has been tried before, and it didn't work, so pain is the only teacher left.

Right? Right? It was great! Thanks, Comicality!

Considering the pace of this story, I find it hard to believe that anything will be resolved in this book. I mean, it's just a fact: things take a long time to happen in this story. This premise of having a chapter per in-universe day certainly has pros and cons. I just hope Billy comes clean real soon. The longer it takes, the worse the fallout will be, and the longer it will take to resolve.

I'm worrying that Jimmy might just out Billy, hoping to scare Brandon away.

So this deal with Jimmy is another case in which they both do something wrong, Jimmy more so than Billy, and yet Billy is the big, bad monster who is supposed to shoulder the blame alone? That's just what happened with Bobby. He did awful things to Billy and Brandon, and because Billy didn't have the strength to resist him, it's all Billy's fault. Bobby can't even think of taking some responsibility before Billy is already absolving him and taking all the blame. At first I thought it was a characteristic of Billy's personality, but apparently it's one he shares with Sam too. Billy even mentioned the fact that Jimmy went behind his back to badmouth him to Brandon, and Sam doesn't even acknowledge it. As if that's just a regular thing that people do to each other and any sort of real anger towards it would be an overreaction. Billy was wrong in starting a relationship with Jimmy. That much is clear. And I understand it's good for him to deal with it and get some growth out of it. But acting like Billy is a monster for what he did while completely ignoring what “poor Jimmy” did is just not fair.

I feel bad for Jimmy. I really do. But I just can't get over him going behind Billy's back to badmouth him to Brandon. Anyway, considering his behavior, I doubt it would have really worked, even if Billy did return his feelings at first. The way he was so clingy and jealous, that wasn't healthy. I agree.

A-fucking-MEN! Preferably before Brandon ends up hurt again. Billy having sex with Jimmy again, right after meeting with Brandon, was a huge red flag for me. It reeks of entitlement. When it comes to sex, Billy seems completely unable to just go without for a little while. Like, “Brandon made me horny, and he won't have sex with me yet. I can't just be expected to deal with this. The world owes me a boy to fuck whenever I'm this hot and bothered.” I thought having sex with Jimmy should be the last thing in his mind. I thought such a meeting with Brandon would be enough to tide him over through at least the end of the day. I just hope this time it was the catalyst that he needed. I hope his decision at the end is true, and that he can follow through. Though I understand it might not be. Resisting the pull of hormones is hard. Especially for a 15-year-old boy. Especially when that boy is Billy Chase.

Yeah, I hope Jimmy finds happiness. But first he needs to find a bit of punishment for what he did. Though I think losing Billy for good and knowing his own actions basically sealed the deal would be punishment enough.

Oh, I don't know. I think the time for Trace has passed. The “will they/won't they” aspect dragged on a bit. I wouldn't have any issues with Billy having different relationships and flings, if he really did. But all he does is: he gets involved with a boy, all the while thinking about Brandon, then breaks up with that boy because he isn't Brandon. It would be easier for me to enjoy those relationships if Billy enjoyed them as well, and despite what Billy may say at the beginning, he isn't really enjoying them. I was all for Billy and Lee, for example. He was enjoying that. But then Lee's hangups got in the way… I would be all for Billy and Sam as an endgame. Or even as a longer stopover. When they got together it was thoroughly HOT (except for that last time). But I don't see Sam even considering giving women up for good to have a real romantic relationship with Billy, so… And I'm not saying Sam can't be bisexual (bisexual people seem to be conspicuously absent in this story, by the way), but if he gets in a relationship with Billy he'd have to give up women for as long as that lasts, and I just don't see him doing that. And considering how Billy gets when he sees Sam getting close to a girl, I don't think he'd be fine with an open relationship. (I do realize I'm responding to chapters and comments posted over four years ago. It may look a bit silly, but hey… It's contemporary for me.)

Oh, give me a break. Jimmy went into this with his eyes wide open. Sure, Billy shouldn't be going through this pretense, and he shouldn't be telling Jimmy he loves him, but Jimmy knew full well that the one Billy really loves is Brandon. So much so that he went out of his way to keep Brandon away from Billy in order to try and carve some space for himself. I just hope that Jimmy doesn't get the same pass that Bobby did, where his horrible actions were just swept under the rug because “he only went so far because he loved me”. If there is one thing this story really crystallized for me is that the saying “all's fair in love and war”, when taken literally, is complete bullshit.

“I like this arrangement. It's been nothing but fun so far.” Your subconscious might be trying to tell you something, Billy.

A-fucking-MEN! Jimmy goes on this whole tirade about how Brandon hasn't been even talking to him, and Billy just eats it up? Without remembering why they are having that discussion in the first place: the fact that Jimmy has been LYING to Brandon in order to keep them apart? “Too weak to stand up against the temptation” — that's is the least surprising part. It's like, Billy's motto or something. I struggle to remember any real temptation that he was strong enough to stand up against.

Stevie has been known to lie in the past, so I don't trust him 100%. But the words Brandon used at the party were a bit uncharacteristic. Still, the one who said Jimmy said those words to him beforehand was Stevie, so… I mean, it's not impossible that Brandon told Stevie what he said to Billy and then Stevie came up with this story that Jimmy put those ideas in Brandon's head just to screw with Billy. My little theory doesn't seem all that believable even to me, but I'm just saying it's not impossible. On the other hand, if Stevie is telling the truth, that would explain Brandon's erratic behavior towards Billy. Though it's easier for me to believe that Stevie is lying than that Jimmy could be so… duplicitous. But then, in the past Stevie lied because he knew Billy wanted Brandon back and he also knew that Brandon, who was his boyfriend at the time, still loved Billy as well. So it's easy to see what he had to gain by lying then, but I can't think of a reason for him to be lying now. Which kinda lends credibility to what he said. So far, he doesn't seem like the kind of guy that would stir up trouble just for the sake of it. I'm conflicted. I want Billy and Brandon to get back together, and if what Stevie said is true, that would be a step in that direction. But I like Jimmy. I'm almost hoping that if they are to get back together, they don't do it so soon, if the alternative is Jimmy being turned into an asshole to catalyze that. Either way, I see drama in the future. And that's what I come here for, so… Amazing work, @Comicality.

I second that.

Why does Billy (and apparently not just him) almost always add Bobby and Jimmy's last names when referring to them? For comparison, I don't think I even know Brandon's or Stevie's last names.

Billy's gonna do it with AJ, isn't he? I mean, considering things up until now, I'd be more surprised if he didn't. He knows it's a very bad idea, but has that ever stopped him before?

Billy has done things that infuriated me. I struggled a lot more with his believability as a character before than I do now. Not in this arc. I remember his interactions with other people and he doesn't particularly seem unreasonable, at least on the surface. When he told Sam and Jimmy what he thought about their actions versus how they expected him to act, and when he mentioned how Simon went away after he got a girlfriend, all I could think about was, “Where's the lie?” I mean, we all know this is short-sighted and this new persona will crash and burn, and I hope when he stops with the bullshit he'll be horrified by what he's been doing. Not the casual sex part, the hurting people and not caring part. We should keep in mind that this is his journal. He's the one writing it. We don't get to read about what really happened, only how Billy understood what happened. If he is lying to himself, if this not caring thing is just an act, it makes sense that he wouldn't suddenly come clean and become objective every night while writing in his journal. My problem with him was never that he didn't care. It was more that he didn't seem to be able not to do the wrong things despite knowing and worrying that he shouldn't be doing them. So I don't buy it for a second that he was able to just turn that off in an instant. He is lying to himself, and we don't have an objective third-person narrator to tell us that, so we have to infer that for ourselves. I don't see this as the actual arc. This is the setup. I think the “meat” of the arc is Billy dealing with the consequences of this selfish phase, and rebuilding his relationships, and gaining understanding as to why he may have misread some situations (and considering where we are now it could end up being an important part of the next book). Of course, we can't get to that part without going through him doing the bad things and damaging the relationships and misreading the situations first, and that's where we're at. Or I'm totally wrong and this is the main part and once he goes back to normal people will forgive him over a couple of chapters. The thing I do worry about is that despite my belief that it's an act, it's still how he's acting, and his actions, towards these particular people, aren't something I'd want to take a lot of time reading about. I'm not saying it's a good thing or a bad thing, but sometimes things in this series take a while to happen. I guess that's the sometimes advantage, sometimes disadvantage of the premise of having a chapter for each and every day of in-universe time. Here's an extreme analogy: I have read a lot of stories with kids being abused. But if I came across a story like that, with abuse going on, in detail, for several chapters straight, and it were told from the point of view of the abuser, I'm pretty sure I would drop it. Even if I had reason to believe that the abuser would get his due (which is the payoff that motivates me to read such stories in the first place), there's only so much I'm willing to stomach (and/or time I'm willing to spend) reading through until it gets to that part. There is an example of that in this very series: when Billy was cheating on Brandon with Bobby. I just skimmed over Billy and Bobby's interactions in that arc. I didn't have the stomach (or rather the calmness) to read them in full. Of course, there's only so much skimming I am willing to do before dropping a story altogether, but for me it didn't quite get to that point (obviously, since I'm still here).

Yeah, I'm having a hard time buying Sam's little speech. Either Billy is a completely unreliable narrator, or Sam was in fact expecting Billy to almost read his mind and be ready when Sam wanted it and to completely shut down that side of things when Sam wasn't in the mood. Sharing something emotional didn't really seem to be what he was after. Then again, it wasn't particularly smart of Billy to get involved with him to begin with. Sam is straight. That wasn't news for Billy. What did he expect? My problem with what Billy is doing is not what he is doing, but with whom. He is in fact hurting people without a care, and that doesn't make for a very appealing protagonist. I do believe he actually cares; I just hope it won't be long before he figures that out.

Hopefully this is temporary. Like, he'll be over it really fast. Really fast.

I was facepalming so hard throughout this chapter. Who does he think he's fooling? Not expressing feelings is not the same as not having them (which could apply to multiple things in this chapter), so I feel bad for Lee. I don't think he deserved to be treated like this. Casual sex is fine, but only provided that neither person has feelings for the other, or, at the veeeery least, that they both know that's what it is.

I'm a bit annoyed with his preachy holier-than-thou attitude of late. Casual sex can work well, and can be quite fun, but it requires two (or more) people who don't have romantic feelings for each other. Billy seems to be the kind of guy who develops romantic feelings for basically any boy who says “hi” to him. Except, for some reason, if the boy in question already has feelings for him (Brandon being the exception). I still don't really get, as boy-crazy as he is, why he just ruled out both Bobby and Jimmy outright. It's as if knowing a guy likes him from the start is a turn-off for him or something. In any case, this whole “lowering standards” talk gets old really fast.

Right? I can hardly believe he's the same kid that infuriated me so much in the first two or three books. Then again I guess showing him growing up is kind of the point. And for me this series is so… gripping. Just a little while ago, after reading this for literally the whole day (and over half of each of the last three or four days), I tried to take a break and play a game on the computer, but I couldn't. I had to stop halfway through (something I don't particularly like doing without very good reason) so I could keep on reading.

Holy fuck! (No pun intended.)

Damn, Brandon. That was so on point. I'm impressed.

“I wish that Brandon and I could at least be good friends again. JUST good friends.” Billy, even you don't believe that.