Be Rad - 26. Chapter 26

September 8, 1980

I wandered into the kitchen for breakfast and ran into Roger. “Good morning,” I said cheerfully, but with a raised eyebrow. “You're here awfully early. How was traffic?”

“I wouldn't know,” he said with a smile.

“Roger, I'm afraid that you've deflowered my father, so I must ask your intentions,” I said in a really bad Southern accent.

“I really like him. He's cute, he's smart, and he's a fucking gymnast in bed.”

“Uh, too much information there Roger,” I said. He was so fun to talk to, to banter with. I wonder why Stefan let him get away. For Greg, I guess. I could see that.

“So I intend to deflower him as much as I can.”

“Deflower who?” JP said, walking in and giving me a worried look.

“You,” I said. “I was simply asking Roger's intentions toward you since you're spending a lot of, er, quality time together.” We just looked at each other and then I got a big smile. “Dad, you're blushing.” That almost never happened. Roger and I started laughing, and JP couldn't help but smile despite his irritation.

“You better not be this mean to Claire's boyfriend on Saturday,” he told me.

“So I can be mean to your boyfriend but not Claire's?” I asked.

“Am I your boyfriend?” Roger asked, feigning innocence, and piling on.

“The answers are 'no' and 'maybe'.”

Roger and I looked at each other. “So maybe I can be mean to you and to Claire's boyfriend?” I asked.

“Enough. I came in here to eat, not to be embarrassed.” JP had gotten to the end of his ability to joke about this.

I got up to head to school. “I'm sorry Dad. Just a little innocent teasing. I like him. He's nice to talk to, and nice to look at.”

“Yes he is,” JP said. The look he gave Roger made me think that it wouldn't be too long before they were back in bed.

Ace came bustling in, out of breath. “Brad, can I have a ride?”

“Sure. What's wrong with your car?”

“Rafael's going to get it serviced today.” He grabbed a couple of bananas and followed me to the Ferrari. “Man, this car is bad! Cass loved it. She loved it so much she blew me.”

I looked at the seat, as if I was going to find cum stains. He rolled his eyes. “So why are you friends with Dan?”

“What do you mean?”

“Dad said I should ask you why you're friends with Dan. That means there's more to the story than you just befriending an asshole.”

“His father was killed in Vietnam. Just like mine.” And then all of the tumblers fell into place and the puzzle was solved. “He died later in the war though, in 1971 when things were winding down. He actually got to meet his dad.”

“Does he have a stepfather?”

“Yeah, but they don't get along too well.”

“So why is he such an asshole, and why does he keep trying to piss me off?”

“I don’t know.” Ace didn't usually think too deeply about things that didn't directly concern him.

“Robbie thinks he was testing me to see if we were together, to see how I'd react, to see how defensive I'd get if he attacked him. That rings true, because he did the same thing with Lark.”

Ace pondered that with limited interest until he realized the implications. “You think he's figured out you're gay?” I shrugged. “You know, I don't really think he'd out you. I think he's just the kind of guy who likes to figure things out.”

“That's a pretty big risk to take,” I said. “What do you think I should do?”

“I don't know. You sure fucked up on this one.”

I looked at him with intense irritation. “You're friends with a complete asshole, let him hang around, he tries to piss me off, he succeeds, and it's my fault? If it was up to me, I wouldn't have even been near enough to him to let that happen.”

“I'll talk to him,” Ace said. A lot of good that would do. They'd end up agreeing to play tennis. We pulled into the school and I headed to class. On the way I saw Dan in the hallway. I walked by him and said nothing, he did the same.

There was a code of conduct, unwritten of course, in situations like this. It was kind of like the rules about the duels people used to fight. If you got into a fight, you didn't apologize or have some meaningful reconciliation unless the fight was with your best friend, or at least a really good one. That did not apply here. So barring that, you just ignored each other in the hallways unless you truly hated each other, in which case you'd get in a fight every time you saw each other. That didn't apply here either. That left the final option, the most common one. That's where you pretty much ignored each other in the hallways for a while. Then when there was less tension, you'd try a nod. First, it was a downward nod, which merely acknowledged the other guy existed. That went on for awhile. Then, it was an upward nod, the kind that said you were kind of glad he existed. And then finally, when the two of you were with a group of people doing something or watching something together, you'd make innocuous conversation. Then peace was solidified and you could be friends or acquaintances again.

Only I wasn't sure I could afford to let that happen. If Dan knew about Robbie and me, he could start dropping hints that would make people watch us more closely. I tried to be so careful, but I was totally in love with Robbie. A person who knew what they were looking for might just be able to figure me out. Or Robbie. He was less disciplined than I was. And then if enough people deduced that we were together, we'd be outed, in a de-facto kind of way. Oblivion. I stood at my locker, pondering what to do. I turned and headed back down the hallway to see if I could find Dan.

Another code here was that I needed to find him alone. That way neither one of us was faced. I spotted him walking into the bathroom and heard the first bell ring. That should clear things out. I headed in after him and just stood by the sink staring at him.

“What do you want? You come in here to suck my dick?” A freshman walked in.

“Get the fuck out of here!” I yelled, and he scurried away. Yelling at freshman was what you were supposed to do. “I came in here to apologize to you.”

He shook his dick, zipped up, and turned around. “You came here to apologize to me?”

“Yeah.” I saw him try and fight the anger, or fight it from fading away. “I wanted to know if you were busy after school. I thought maybe I could try to make it up to you, take you out and get some food or something.” I had blown past all of the acceptable benchmarks here. This was approaching a “date” type of conversation. I'd gone as far as I could. The ball was in his court.

“Cool. I'll meet you in the parking lot after school.”

“Cool,” I said, and we both went to class.

The day crawled by. I told Robbie what I was doing. He understood the code, but thought I was nuts. I found that I was actually a little nervous, wondering whether he'd be there or not. I need not have wasted the energy. He was standing underneath one of the arbors on campus, waiting for me.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” he replied. He followed me to my car and we hopped in. “Nice car.”

“It is. Totally cool.” I fired up the engine and headed out. I drove toward the freeway and headed North toward the City. “I feel bad about losing my temper and hitting you. But I want to know why you were trying to piss me off.”

“I wasn't trying to piss you off,” he said.

“Come on Dan. You worked on Lark until he hated you, and at the game you were pushing me in the same way.”

“I don't know,” he said.

I turned around and headed back to Escorial. I parked the car and motioned for him to walk with me. I needed to pick some buds, so I figured we might as well walk down to the “Pot Ravine”.

“You don't know why you try and pick fights with me?” He said nothing. “Ace told me about your dad.” He looked at me with fire in his eyes. Really pissed off.

“He has nothing to do with this!”

“Duh. My father was in the Navy. He got killed while serving too.” Build common ground; build some kind of bond I thought.

“I didn't know that. How?”

“He was on the USS Thresher. There was an accident and she sank with all hands. I think that's why I'm so obsessed with the ocean.” Reel out some personal info. Gain his trust. We got to the pot plants and I picked some buds and pulled out my pipe. We each took a few hits.

“My Dad was hit by friendly fire. His own country killed him.” He couldn't hide the bitterness.

“I'm sorry. That really sucks.” He nodded.

I could feel the mood change, and knew I'd gotten him to the point of talking. “You like guys.”

“Yeah, I have lots of friends,” I said.

“No, you're gay. You like to have sex with other guys.”

I maintained my aura of calm, even though inside I was boiling. “What makes you say that?”

“I saw you with Lark, I saw you with Doug, and I saw you with Robbie. Doug even said you fucked around a little bit, but nothing big.” I wondered what “big” meant.

“So is that why you've been such a dick? You're trying to pick on these guys to see if I care about them?”

He nodded. “I could tell that you and Lark were just buds after a while. And I could tell that you were more into Doug than he was into you. No, that's not right. You were into Doug; he was into you, he was just too afraid to admit it. But I wanted to know about this new guy.”

“Why?” I asked quietly.

He turned to face me and his hand was behind my neck, pulling me in, and our lips met. He kissed me earnestly, pushing his tongue against my mouth until I let him in, and then kissed me with even more amazing passion. It took my breath away. “Because if you weren't into him, I was going to see if, well...”

“I get it,” I said, smiling. His kiss was intoxicating. I tried to stop myself but I couldn't. I pulled him back in and kissed him just as passionately as he'd kissed me. Then we were on the ground and he was on top of me, dry fucking me. Our pants were on, our shirts were on, but our lips were connected, and our cocks rubbed against each other through the material. There was something about him that was so dangerous, so forbidden, that drove me nuts. We both blew our nuts in no time at all. The sexual tension released, we headed quickly back to the house to clean up before the cum soaked into our pants.

“That was pretty intense, but I shouldn't have done it,” I told him.

“I could tell this one was more serious. You're totally in love with him.”

I nodded. “You're timing is a bit off. If we'd had this conversation last year, things might be different now.”

“It's cool. I guess I just had to know. Think we can be friends?”

“You know Dan, now that we've cleared away all of this shit, I think, for the first time, we actually can.”

That night I lay in bed with Robbie and tried to decide what to tell him. We slept in my room now, together. I liked it, I liked having him near.

“What's bothering you?” he asked me.

“I talked to Dan today.”

“Oh yeah. How did it go?” I told him the whole story, the whole thing, the walk to find the buds, the way he kissed me, how we “wrestled” around, and how we were friends now. He didn't say anything.

“Is that OK? Did I do anything wrong? The last thing I want to do is hurt you. Or mess up what we have.”

“You kept your clothes on. I'm not thrilled that you kissed him, but I guess in this case keeping us all in the closet was worth a kiss. You did great baby. You did great.” He seemed to sense that I was still insecure, so he made love to me, slow and meaningful love, and changed my insecurity to bliss.

September 13, 1980

Two weeks and I was already sick of school. Still, I liked having Billy and Robbie playing football. It made going to the games much more fun. The game this Friday had been our home opener, against Cupertino, and we'd gotten our asses kicked. It seemed like everyone on the team had fucked up, including Robbie, so the coach called a Saturday practice and worked them until they damn near puked. I looked across the table and saw him looking worn out, exhausted, and smiled. He'd just had time to get home, take a shower (and fuck) and make it to dinner. The guest of honor was seated across from me, a few chairs down.

When Jack got here he looked like he was about to piss his pants. I was originally planning to be around to make him feel more at home, but he got here about the same time Robbie got home, so I had to excuse myself for a while. It was either talk to cute, unobtainable Jack or sink my dick in Robbie's ass. I have my priorities, after all.

By the time I came back out, he was totally relaxed. JP was there, chatting away about Stanford and campus life, while my mother plied everyone with food and drinks.

“Jack, do your parents allow you to drink wine?” My mother asked from the end of the table, recalling me back to the present.

“On special occasions,” he said. He was so full of shit.

“Well, you are welcome to have wine, but you must stay until you are sober or allow us to drive you home.”

“Yes ma'am,” he said, taking the glass of wine from her.

“So where do you plan to go to college?” JP asked.

“I don't know. Depends on where I get accepted.” Not the best answer to give a college professor. “My grades are pretty good, I've got extracurriculars, and great SATs, but I don’t know if they're good enough to get me into Stanford.”

“Is that where you want to go?”

“It's my dream,” he said, and this time I could tell he was being honest. “I want to go to Med School, so where better to start out than Stanford. Plus I like Paly.” We all nodded at that. What was not to like about Palo Alto?

“And here I thought you were just another pretty face,” Tonto said.

“Thank you ma'am,” Jack said politely. But he did more than that. He turned his face toward Tonto and gave her a dazzling smile. His two dimples perked up, his eyes seemed to sparkle, and he just oozed charisma. I looked at Tonto and it was like he had her hypnotized. This guy knew how to work it.

Dinner went pretty quickly. He had a couple of glasses of wine, no big deal, and then we all went swimming. With suits of course, since Claire was with us. Robbie just sort of floated around.

“I'm going to call you the Jellyfish,” I told him. Billy wasn't doing any better. They migrated toward the deep end where they could stay almost completely submerged and just bitched about the coach. Ace blew out of there as soon as he could, off to see Cass.

“Any parties tonight?” I asked.

“Nope. It's a dry weekend,” Jack said.

“Just as well. I'm kind of tired anyway.” I headed down to the deep end to torture Billy and Robbie. Jack and Claire stayed in the shallow end. Claire was sitting on his lap and they were just moving around in the pool, slowly, kissing and giggling. Were they fucking right in front of us? I watched a little longer and decided that they weren't. Damn close though. They hopped out of the pool and headed for the dressing room. Jack was tenting big time. He was a big boy. I sat there staring at his dick, mentally calculating his size.

“What?” asked Robbie.

“Six and a half inches, I'm betting.” The three of us broke out laughing.

“So what's the deal with you at the party?” I asked Billy. We hadn't talked about him and Doug. He had made a point of avoiding the topic. But it was just the three of us, and he was a captive, so what the fuck.

“Just a couple of horny guys fucking around,” he said dismissively.

“So you're not gay?”

He glared at me, ready to lash out, then calmed down, remembering that here, with us, it was OK to be gay. “I don't think so. I was just wondering, you know, about what other guys’ bodies are like.”

“That's cool. I think all guys do that.” Robbie nodded. Billy got a big smile on his face.

“Really?”

“Fuck yeah,” Robbie said. “I mean, you know that your own body does certain things, and looks like it does. I wanted to know what was unique about me and what was the same.”

“Not me. I'm gay. I just wanted to blow other guys,” I said. That cracked them both up. I had forgotten about Claire and Jack until I heard moaning from the dressing room. It had a higher pitch, so it must be Claire. At least he was making her feel good.

“Ah ah ah,” Billy started saying loudly, imitating her moans. Robbie and I chimed in. Finally it stopped, and a very very pissed off Claire and a very very nervous Jack practically ran out of the pool area. The three of us were laughing so hard we almost choked.

September 23, 1980

School was getting harder and more boring at the same time. It must require a lot of work for teachers to achieve that special formula, it couldn't just come naturally. It seemed like we'd all fallen into a funk. We'd won our football game last Friday, barely, and against Homestead, and they really sucked. So the coach was pissed off again, and he worked the team damn near to death all weekend. No going out, no parties, those were his rules. I didn't see how he could possibly police that, but Robbie told me that all coaches have toadies that will rat out everyone else, so that was that. Another dry social weekend at Gunn.

And we had to write a fucking term paper on the fucking “Scarlet Letter.” It wasn't due until the end of the semester, our big project, but I was already starting on it. I thought about what a total dork I am when it comes to homework. Oh well. Not many people at Gunn have a 3.7 GPA. That's what homework and study will get you.

Ace had let his GPA really drop last semester. That's why, I found out, I got a Ferrari and he didn't get one like it, or something similar. Stef wanted to buy him one, but JP wouldn't let him. His GPA was around 2.5 for the semester, dropping him below 3.5 cumulative, and JP just about had a coronary. He fumed that if Ace couldn't take school and his future seriously, he didn't deserve exotic sports cars. I thought about that as I labored through Nathanial Hawthorne's masterpiece, and decided that a couple of hours of homework a day was worth a Ferrari. I think Ace figured it out too. He was working his ass off this semester.

There was a soft knock on my door. “Come in!” I yelled. It was Claire.

Claire is a tough girl. It takes a lot to bother her, or to get to her. She's the kind of person whom you just don't fuck with, she's that tough. But when she walked into my room with bloodshot eyes, I could tell she was upset, really upset. She rarely cried, but today, she had obviously done a lot of it.

“What's wrong?” I asked, jumping up to give her a hug. “Did Jack hurt you?” I'd kill that mother fucker with my bare hands, I thought. Then I caught myself. Wow. That's some rage. That must be how Ace feels.

“No. I need to talk to someone and, well, I trust you. You tease me, but it's always good natured, and you never do it to hurt me. Even though sometimes I want to kill you.”

“You mean like when I first introduced Jack to Mom and Dad?”

“Yeah, like that. Only it worked out really well. I notice that you do that, pretend like you're torturing me but it's in my own best interest. Jake at the party. Remember that? I thought Ace was going to pop a vein.” We laughed, and it was good to see her laugh.

“I'm always here for you Claire, you know that.”

“I know. And don't tell the others, but you're my favorite brother.”

“Me? I figured it would be Ace, because he's so ready to defend you, or Billy. I mean, he is your twin.”

“No. You. You treat me like a person. Ace treats me like I'm some sort of doll that no one can play with or I'll break. Sometimes I just want to scream at him and tell him that there's a real person in here.” I chuckled at that. She was pretty dead on.

“And Billy, well he does his own thing with his own friends. I mean, I know he loves me, but he doesn't really pay much attention to me. I think he's too preoccupied with his own stuff.”

She took my hand and held it. “But you've always been there for me, not to hurt someone who bothered me, but to back me up. I always knew that if I was in trouble, you were the one I'd go to. That's why I'm here now.”

I gave her a hug. What an incredibly ego-boosting conversation. Just then the door flew open and Robbie came in, all pissed off and sweaty from practice. He's an intuitive guy, though, so he realized that he'd interrupted something.

“Maybe we should talk later,” she said.

“No, now is OK. Robbie needs to take a shower anyway.” I looked at him and he winked at me. We had gotten so good at reading each other.

He sniffed his armpits and made a nasty face. “Wise Brad speak truth,” he said, in a stupid Indian imitation. He headed across the hall to his room, shutting the door behind him.

“Sorry about that,” I said. “Where were we?”

“I'm pregnant.” I just stared at her. Pregnant? I saw her start to cry.

“Are you sure? I mean, maybe you're just late?”

“I'm over two weeks late Brad. Yes, I could be late, but I know I am. I can tell.” I swallowed hard. I had no idea how you'd know if there was another being growing inside of you.

“That's a pretty big deal,” I said.

“I know. I don't know what to do. I haven't told Jack yet. He'll dump me like a rock. And I really love him Brad. I know what you think,” she said, stopping me before I could get started. “You're only 16. You don't know what love is.” She pretended to mimic my voice. “Well, I may only be 16, but I know what love is. And I love him. He's adorable, he's sweet, and he’s caring. He watches out for me. He does little things to show me that he loves me too.”

“That's really cool Claire. I'm happy for you.”

“No it's not! It's not cool. I'm so happy with him now, but I'm going to lose him.”

“Didn't you use protection?”

“Most of the time,” she said. “I know how totally fucking stupid that is. I know that if you don't use rubbers all the time they don't work. But he's so cute, God, I could never say no to him.” Me either, I thought playfully.

“You could have gone on the pill,” I persisted.

“Well that doesn't do me much good now, does it? Looking at the past and figuring how I fucked up is not that hard to do. Looking into the future and deciding what to do next, that's the hard part.”

“You know the options. You can have it or not.”

“It? It? That's not a very compassionate pronoun!”

I laughed. “You're the only one who would correct my pronoun usage during such an important discussion. I only used “it” because we don't know if the baby is a boy or a girl.”

That made her cry again. “I'm carrying our baby, mine and Jack's. What a pretty baby it will be.” Claire wasn't modest about her own appearance, but she was right. It would be a baby born to model, right out of the womb.

“You dodged the subject. What are you thinking about? Keeping the baby, or not?”

“I don't know! I just don't know. That's why I came to see you.”

“Alright. Well, I'm going to lay it out for you. The first thing that you have to do is go talk to Dad. Mom will have to know too, but Dad will fix the problem. He's the best person I know when it comes to that.”

“I was hoping you could do that. You're as good a problem-solver as he is.”

“No I'm not. You know how he tripped up Robbie's mom and that creepy minister. He thinks things through. You know you have to tell him.”

“I know. I guess I was hoping I wouldn't, but you're right.”

“Look Claire. If you want to get an abortion, I could take you down there and be with you the entire time. But I think you'd really feel bad if you didn't talk to Mom and Dad first, and they'd hate me forever if they found out.”

“I guess you're right.”

“Before you talk to them, though, think about what you want. They'll have their own ideas, but they're smart, logical people. You need to have an idea of what you want, what you feel, because they can't tell you that.”

“I want you to go with me to tell them.”

“What?”

“I want you to be there. I don't want to do this alone. Will you go with me to talk to them?”

I hugged her. “Of course. I'm always there for you. Let me know when you're ready and we'll go.”

“I'm ready.”

“Then you've already thought about this. You already know what you want to do?”

“Yes,” she said.