Quarantine Bae

Quarantine Bae Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Ken’s POV

A quarantine can do crazy things to one’s mind.  You can lose it if you aren’t careful.  If you aren’t careful those lonely days may cause you to almost forget who you are. It may make you almost forget what’s important to you. Where is it?  What is wrong with you?   And you might...you just might…snap.

The Quarantine days could make you lose your mind.

“Please...SOUL!  STEP BACK FROM THE LEDGE!”  Saint screams out at the top of his lungs.

Soul turns around.  Hearing his brother’s voice doesn’t help.  If anything he lifts one foot over the ledge.  He looks like he is losing his balance for a minute.  He turns back towards the street and it makes him snap back into it.  

“We all saw this coming…” I whisper, “We all knew he was going to be the first one to snap.”

It could have been the lack of sunlight that had done it.  It could have been the isolation that did it.  It could have been the lack of exercise.   All I knew was that it was having a major effect on the mind and now Soul was going to be the very first victim of the Quarantine.

“You’re not helping,” Tivonte tells me.

As if I should.  I didn’t know Soul.  Not like that.  Saint was so desperate to get help that he went downstairs to call Tivonte.  It’s kind of pointless really.   Soul wanted to kill himself.  He wasn’t going to listen to anyone at this moment.

“Someone needs to help him,” Saint says, “He won’t listen to me.”

I can see the desperation in Saint’s eyes.  It was clear that the relationship between the two brothers had gone south the moment that Saint left him to die at that grocery store.  It got even worse when Soul had to do the ultimate thing and kill someone in self defense.  He wouldn’t have had to do that if Saint hadn’t abandoned him.   He did it for Jared.   The victim.  I never would be able to understand how someone could abandon their own family for someone they barely even knew.

It was sick.

If Soul died, I hoped Saint lived with that shame for the rest of his life.

“I’ll talk to him.”

We all turn in unison and see Jared standing at the threshold of the rooftop.  I jerk away from him and draft up a t-shirt over my nose.   The others don’t react, but I don’t get why.  

“You should be in isolation,” I state.

A few days ago Jared had been trapped in a room with someone who was infected.  What if the person got too close to him?  What if the person gave him the virus?  I notice the fact that Saint didn’t move.  What I don’t get though is why Tivonte doesn’t.

It’s Tivonte that comes to Jared’s defense actually, “If he had the disease, he would have shown symptoms by now.”

“You some kind of fuckin doctor or something?” I ask, “How the fuck do you know?”

“It’s not about any of this right now,” Jared states, “It’s about saving Soul.”

Jared pushes past us.  I’m kind of shocked when he does it.  I have to give him this much credit.  The kid had balls.  I hadn’t even attempted to have a conversation with Soul.  Soul just didn’t seem like he had it all going on upstairs since he killed that guy and the last thing I wanted was to be somewhat responsible for  him splattering the concrete like tomato paste.  

We stand there watching them talking for what seems like forever.  Jared is speaking very softly to Soul.  We can’t tell what is going to happen.

“He’s not going to be able to do it,” I cross my arms, “He’s going to make it worse.  We should call the cops.”

“They won’t pick up.  Not in this environment,” Tivonte says.

“He’ll save him,” Saint says.

Tivonte and I turn to Saint.  Saint has this look in his eyes.  I’d never seen someone look at another human being the way that he was looking at Jared right now.  

It was kind of annoying to tell the truth.  I wonder if Tivonte can see it, but if he can’t then just doesn’t want to.  I can see it.  Saint had feelings for Jared.  It was the only reason he had abandoned his brother and put his brother in the situation to lose his mind in the first place.

It’s so annoying that I feel like I have to remind Saint of something, “You barely even know Jared.”

“When someone has a good soul, you only need to meet them once.”

I grunt at that moment and roll my eyes so hard that they get to the back of my forehead.  Now he was talking about Jared having a good soul, instead of focusing on saving his brother Soul.  Soon he was going to just give Jared his name and start calling him a saint.  

What’s even more annoying is what happens next.

I see Soul step off of the ledge.  He steps off in Jared’s direction and Jared drafts his arm over Soul.   We stand there for a few moments watching the scene and I have to admit it’s a bit emotional just seeing Soul cry in Jared’s arms like that.  Whatever he has on his mind he seems to be letting it all out.  

A few seconds later Jared leaves Saint and walks over to us.

I’m confused as he approaches us.

“You just going to leave him out there?” I ask, “On the rooftop.”

“He just needs a moment alone.  He’s not going to do anything,” Jared states.

I am going to say something else but Tivonte shoots me a look, “Don’t…”

“I’m just saying that it’s dumb…”

“No one asks for your fucking opinion.  Can you stop being an asshole for once in your life?”

Having my boyfriend call me an asshole stings.  Having him call me an asshole in front of Saint and Jared just straight up burns.  No one comes to my defense.  If I was Jared they would have clamoured to defend me.  But I wasn’t.   The look he gives me intensifies.  I knew what that look meant.  That look meant that once again they were going to make me look like the bad guy.  As if I was the bad guy for wanting to leave the guy who almost committed suicide alone.

“What’d he say?” Saint asks, “This is all my fault, isn’t it?”

Saint was just now coming to terms with what he did to Soul.  I guess he wasn’t thinking with his dick any longer now that he knew his brother was on the verge of committing suicide.   He has this real guilty look on his face and I don’t think anyone should be trying to make him feel better about it.  He was wrong.

But then again we have Saint Jared on the scene and Jared quickly jumps to ease Saint’s ego by putting a hand on his shoulder.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

I roll my eyes again.

“I left him in that grocery store.  He killed someone because of me.”

Saint has these heavy tears in his eyes.   Either he was a really good actor he did feel guilty about the fact that he left his brother like that.  

“He was upset over something else,” Jared explains, “Guys it was Soul who locked me in that basement.”

Everyone gets silent.  I look over at Saint.  He had yet another reason to feel guilty.  He knew about the fact that Soul pushed Jared into that basement with the infected man.   He knew just as well as I did.  He was the one who had this great relationship with Jared and he never told him.   That was the thing about these people.  They were all fucking hypocrites.  Every last one of them.   They always wanted to make me into the bad guy but they went behind each other’s back hiding secrets.  

Tivonte’s pissed about it.  Once again he was jumping to Jared’s defense as quickly as possible.  His face goes straight up red and he looks like he has venom soaking into his eyelids when he turns to Soul who is still on the rooftop isolating himself.

“He did what?”

Tivonte takes a step forward towards Soul.  He looks like he’s ready to push Soul over the rooftop his damn self at that moment.  

It’s Saint who tries to stop him, “Please.  He isn’t in his right mind lately…”

“FUCK THAT!  He tried to kill my best friend.”

“I forgive him,” Jared states.

As much as it annoys me that Tivonte is hoping to Jared’s defense, it annoys me even more knowing that Jared is so quick to sweep what Soul did under the rug.  I felt like I was living in the twilight zone.

“What?” I ask.

“I forgive him.  I was the one who was attacked so it’s up to me to forgive him.”

“He can’t stay here,” Tivonte states, “He can’t be around us.”

Tivonte didn’t trust Soul.   I don’t know how it started but it was a build up that seemed to be escalating even worse.  I cross my arms standing back and waiting for Tivonte to completely explode.  I knew Tivonte had a bit of a temper and I doubt trying to kill his best friend was something that was going to make this anger any easier.  

“He stays,” Jared says.

“Jared you can’t be---”

“He stays!”  Jared says, “This has been hard.  Hard for all of us.   We’re all trying to get through this as best as we can but we’ve been through a lot.  And it’s not over.  The virus is still out there.  Jay Boom is still out there.   We have to stick together.”

I just know Tivonte isn’t going to have that.  I just know Tivonte is going to push past his best friend and beat the fuck out of Soul for what he did.  I am almost itching because I know my boyfriend.

Or at least I thought I did.

Tivonte, instead of being the angry guy that I knew he just crosses his arms and mutters off a soft, “OK…”

~

I go back to Saint’s old hot ass apartment thinking about everything that happened that day.   We’ve been in this apartment together for a while now.   It was uncomfortable but it was necessary to stay away from Tivonte.  Tivonte had issues with both Soul and I, which made it difficult for us to stay in their apartment downstairs with the air conditioning.  

Soul is the only one who is back there with me.  He looks like he’s been crying by how wet his eyes were.  He’s still out of it when we walk in the house and in the darkness I cross my arms.

“What all did you tell Jared?”

He doesn’t respond when I ask the question.  

“Did you hear what I just asked you?” I say to him getting a bit louder.

We are interrupted however by a knock on the door.   I get a bit irritated but none-the-less walk over to the door where I see Tivonte standing there.  He looked good.  He didn’t have a shirt on, possibly because of the heat and a shirtless Tivonte was something to behold.  His dark chocolate skin reminded me of a Hershey’s chocolate bar.   He has flawless skin.  The kind of skin you would see in a magazine somewhere.  He’s so tall too.  He’s just effortlessly sexy.  He’s the kind of guy so many straight girls would get upset about when they found out that he was gay.  It was because he was that damn sexy.

I try my best not to completely fold to him when I see him standing at the door.  I try to put on a nonchalant expression on my face.

“Hey…”

“Hey….”

It’s awkward.  I’m not sure why he’s standing at this door right now.  Ever since our fight we had gone out of the way to avoid one another.  

“It’s really fucking hot in here,” he says, “It’s probably best that you guys move back down to the apartment.  That way we can all keep an eye out for each other.”

I’m confused.  

“This coming from you...or Jared?”

I expect him to say that it’s coming from him.  I expect Tivonte to at least express some sort of emotion.  Maybe it was blind hope really.  Maybe I just hoped he missed having me around.  God I missed having him around.  I missed melting into this muscular dark chocolate arms of his.  I miss being manhandled by him.  I missed being his.

However the way he looks at me tells me that he doesn’t feel the same way.

“This is all Jared’s idea.”

“Damn…”

It feels like a bullet to the heart.   I figured Jared and Soul had that moment on the rooftop and Jared wanted him around but I had just hoped that Tivonte was the one who wanted me around.  I just hoped that he was my person.

That seemed not to be the case though.

He crosses his arms at the door, “Don’t give me that.  You been cheating on me…”

My heart skips.

All of a sudden it feels like my entire world comes crashing down.  This is why he’s been ignoring me.  This is why he’s been treating me so terribly.  He knew.  He knew the truth about me and Saint.  And as he’s standing there I wonder what the best way to deal with this is.

Do I lie?  Do I admit the truth?  Do I beg forgiveness?

Instead of doing any of that I just stand there like a fucking idiot wishing that this moment just never happened and that I was dreaming the whole thing.  Any moment I’d wake up and realize that me and Tivonte were back to where we used to be before all of this.

“Damn,” he states, turning away and looking away, “A part of me wished that it was a lie.  Every part of me knew it was true though.  That you were grimey enough to do what you inevitably did. But a part of me...some immature childish part of me just wished that it was false.”

People like Tivonte didn’t get emotional.  He’d always been tough.   He’d spent his entire life fighting against being the stereotypical gay man.  He’d never explained why but I figured it was something from his childhood.  Something that Jared knew about but something he’d never confided in me about.  I just knew that he always liked to be so damn tough all the time.  But right now I can feel the emotions even if he isn’t expressing it directly.  It seems like those emotions are seeping through his pores or something.  

They are coming out of him and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

I’m so angry at that moment.  He said he hoped it was a lie.  That meant that someone told him.

“Who told you?”

He shakes his head, “It doesn’t matter.  It’s true.  And to think that I was going to give you this…”

Just at that moment he digs in his pocket.  There is a little box that he pulls out of his pocket. A part of me almost faints when I see the little box.   My chest gets so heavy and tears well up in my eyes.

“Tivonte----oh my god…”

He doesn’t even show me the ring.  He just shoves the box back in his pocket.  It’s one of the cruelest things he’s ever done to me showing me something like that only to take it back.  I know he intends it to be cruel though.  I can see it in his eyes.  He wants to hurt me the same way that I hurt him.

“If I haven’t made myself clear, it’s over between us,” he assures me, “I’ve moved on…”

“What do you mean moved on?”

“You don’t want to know…”

“Tivonte please…”

He crosses his arms, “Fine.  You know what.  I’ll tell you.  I’m not like you.  I’m not going to go around hiding the truth.  The truth is….well,  the truth is that me and Jared did some stuff.  After I found out what you did I was emotional.  I was a mess.  And he was there for me.  We had sex.”

I can’t take it at that moment.

My knees give out completely.  All I see is shades of black at that moment when I am on my knees in front of the threshold.  I’ve never felt so defeated in my life.  The tears have built up around my eyes to the point that it feels like I’m looking at life through stained glass.  I look up at Tivonte and all I can see is the tall muscular figure looking back down at me.  He doesn’t feel bad when I hit the floor.  He barely even reacts to it.  He just stares down at me and that’s when I know that I probably have lost Tivonte forever.

“Tivonte please…”

I reach out to him but he swats my hand away, “Listen.  I just came up here to tell you that you’re welcome to come downstairs.  Truthfully the only reason I’m extending this courtesy is because Jared feels bad.  Honestly I don’t give a fuck if you come or not.  I’d prefer you not to.  But the truth is Jared feels bad.  So it is what it is.”

He’s beyond cold.  Beyond.

And I know at that moment that I have to return back to the apartment.  Even if Tivonte didn’t want me there I had to return.  

Because the truth if I couldn’t have Tivonte, I wouldn’t rather die than let Jared have him.

~

The dynamic in the household is awkward when we all get back in there.  Soul is talking more but he’s still being somewhat distant.  Jared and Saint aren’t talking.  Me and Tivonte aren’t talking.  It’s strange that the only one who seems to be having a conversation with everyone in the house is Saint’s son Squeak.  Right now he is running around the place asking everyone to play games.   The truth is they were already playing games, but he just didn’t know it.  This was a deep adult game of love, betrayal and emotions.   And this game was heightened with all of us being under the same roof.

This game was going to drive us all crazy.

“Quit…” I hear Jared’s voice.

Tivonte is openly flirting with Jared.  I watch them from the living room.  Tivonte was chasing after Jared with his eyes glued to Jared’s butt and his palms open wide as though ready to palm Jared’s ass.   What’s even more disturbing is that Squeak starts to mimic this and now both him and Tivonte were chasing Jared around the house trying to grab his butt.   Jared is acting like he didn’t like it.  He was acting acting as though Tivonte wasn’t a 10 when he was a mere 4...maybe even 3 and a half.  This was the most attention he’s gotten from Tivonte openly in their relationship and even if he was telling Tivonte to stop I knew that he was enjoying it.  I can hear it in his laughter.

“This doesn’t bother you?” I whisper over to Saint.

Saint, the other 10 who was somehow hypnotized by Jared sits up.  He had been ignoring it intentionally, but we all heard it.  The apartment was way too small and with no television there was so little distraction for him not to hear the commotion that Tivonte was causing with Jared all afternoon.  

“Nah I’m good.”

I look at Saint dead in his eyes.  We’d known that Jared didn’t have the plague but he was avoiding Jared as though he was highly contagious.  He wouldn’t even look Jared’s way.  

I cross my arms, “So let me guess.  You don’t have any feelings for Jared anymore?”

I’m being blunt because I was tired of beating around the bush.  The rest of them can go around hiding their feelings and only expressing it when it was convenient but that wasn’t me. That had never been me.

“I never said that,” Jared says lifting up his face to mine.

It hurt him.  He wasn’t going to admit it but the tension in his voice lets me know something was under there.  I could be wrong, but I knew a lot about the games people played.  And right now Jared seemed like he was playing a game.

“So you do have feelings for him?” I ask, “And you just going to sit around while him and Tivonte get close?  There’s something you need to know.”

“They had sex,” he says, “You’re not telling me anything I don’t know Jared.  Stop being so messy.”

“You know?  And you’re OK with that?”

He shakes his head, “Can you stop?  This is hard enough without you emphasizing it.”

There it was.  He was admitting that he was in the same boat as me.  If these were normal times we wouldn’t have had to sit around and watch as Tivonte openly flirted with Jared.  If this was normal times maybe we would have had the time to get over our exes.  But when you are stuck in a house with your ex and the new person he liked those dynamics changed.  Watching it with your own eyes was some of the worst things that I could ever have imagined.  

It was pain.

And I was glad to know that I was sharing that pain with Jared.

“No, no I can’t stop,” I state,  “I know this hurts you.  But maybe we can do something.  We can team up.”

There is a pause as though he is considering it.  He looks over at me and raises an eyebrow of curiosity.

“How?”

“Maybe we can find a way to stop whatever the fuck is happening between Tivonte and Jared before it’s too late.”

For a moment I think he’s considering it but it’s just for a moment because he quickly shakes his head over and over and says, “I don’t want any parts of what you got going on.  That’s not me.  Sure I like Jared...more than I feel comfortable admitting.  But I pushed him away.  I did that.  I can’t blame him now that he’s getting attention from someone else especially if I’m the reason we aren’t together.  And you are the reason you and Tivonte aren’t together.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You cheated on him,”  I state, “Remember.”

“It was you.  You told him?”    

“The truth sucks…”

With that he walks away.  

He was giving up.  Just like that.  He was willing to just sit around and let Jared get with someone else.  Well just because he willing to give up on Jared doesn’t mean that I was willing ot give up on Tivonte.  

Jared was right.

The truth sucks.

And I was going to make sure everyone knew just how much the truth sucked.

~

We are all sitting around having dinner later that week.   There was no news about the quarantine being lifted.  Military trucks were still roaming the neighborhood and they honestly made us feel a little bit better because of the Jay Boom threat.  I think it was Saint who makes the comment that maybe Boom’s gang got arrested for some of the crimes they’ve been doing around the neighborhood since we haven’t heard from them yet.  It was Tivonte who added that maybe we wouldn’t hear from them at all.

 Jared has cooked.  It was OK, considering our food source all came from cans at this point.   He has this thing where he wants us to all sort of act like some sort of family.  He says that this quarantine is going to bind us together and make us all really close...or some bullshit like that.   Jared has a tendency to get really sappy as times and maybe that worked for not making Soul kill himself but for the rest of us I don’t think this tension was bringing anyone closer.  

That’s when I pull out a bucket.

“I was hoping we can play a game…”

Saint almost immediately gives me this weird look, “Nah.  I think I’ll pass.  I’m tired of the games…”

“What?” Jared asks, “I think it’ll be a good idea.”

I shrug, “Yeah, just thought it will bring us closer.”

I say it with a smile.  Tivonte looks at me though like I had three heads, “Didn’t think you cared about group bonding.”

“Well I do.”

Saint looks like he is still ready to walk away from this game.  I think he’s suspicious because of our last conversation.  A part of me knows this game won’t be successful unless everyone was a part of it.  

Surprisingly though Soul comes out of nowhere and says, “I’m down.”

Hearing him openly express a look of positivity definitely changed the mood...for everyone.  This was someone who was ready to kill themselves just a few days ago.  

Reluctantly the rest of them nod and finally Saint who has the most reluctance says, “Fine.  I’ll play.”

I nod, “Cool.  So it’s pretty easy.  It’s just a question game.  I compiled a list full of questions.  We randomly pick a question out of the bucket and answer it.   I think it’ll get us all to know each other a little better.  I’ll go first.  Show you guys how it’s done.”

There is tension in the air.  A part of me felt like they didn’t know what to expect from these questions and maybe that’s why they were so tense.  It was important that I go first.  It was important that I made them feel a little bit comfortable about what was happening.

They all look up at me and grab a question out of the hat, “What is your biggest turn on?”

“Ok time for bed Squeak,” Saint sends his son to Jared’s room as soon as he hears the question.

We laugh a little bit as Squeak desperately tries to convince his father to stay up and hear the questions.   Saint picks him up with one arm through and drafts him away to the bedroom as quickly as possible.

As soon as he leaves, Saint returns and surprisingly has a smile on his face when he looks at me and says, “OK.  Carry on…”

“Hmm...I’d say rough sex…”

“I think we all knew that,” Jared laughs.

“Listen I come at the guy I want with raw feeling. I’m still a romantic…”

“I was there when you met Tivonte.  You grabbed his dick through his pants and hissed at him,” Jared calls me out.

Laughter breaks out through the house.  I’m surprised when even Tivonte laughs.  I don’t know what it means when he laughs.  Maybe it’s because Jared was making light of the situation.  Or maybe it was because he didn’t absolutely hate my guts.

Tivonte grabs for the jar saying, “OK me next...hmm...lets see.  OK.  This is a good one.   What is the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to you?  Geez…”

“It can’t be that bad,” Jared states.

“It’s bad.   When my ex girlfriend found out I was gay, she was so mad she went through all my facebook pics and tagged my crotch with all the girls that I fucked with the comment saying ‘playing on the other team.”

“Damn best friend, I never knew about that one,” Jared states.

“No one did.”

“Those girls should have been lucky to ever experience that crotch,” I point out.

I laugh hoping this would be a moment of levity between us but Tivonte doesn’t even look at me.  He just scoots the jar to the right and says, “Next person.”

It’s Soul who grabs the jar surprisingly.

“OK.  Name something you regret…” Soul reads the paper.

There is a pause.  We all look over at him.   The truth was we would all be a bit sensitive to Soul no matter what he read on the piece of paper.   You would think he was made out of glass when they react to him having to get that question.

I wondered, probably like everyone else, if he would bring up killing the guy at the grocery store.

“You don’t have to answer that question,” Jared says.

“Yeah,” Saint responds, “Pick another one if you want.”

They were babying him.  It was beyond irritating.  I want to argue against it but I don’t want to look like the asshole so I just cross my arms and mind my fucking business.

Strangely enough though Soul doesn’t pick up another question.

“It’s OK,” he says, “I’ll say that one of my biggest regrets is how I’ve been treating my brother.  I shouldn’t have been getting as angry as I’ve been.  I shouldn’t have taken my emotional shit out on him…”

There is a hush that comes across the room when he says it.  It’s heavy.  I look over at Saint’s expression and can see him internalizing a lot of what his brother is saying.

“I think that deserves a hug,” Jared states.

“I agree,” Tivonte adds.

I don’t know how it becomes this big Kumbaya moment when the two brothers both stand up and it’s Saint who grabs his little brother in the biggest hug that I’d seen before.  I have to admit that it’s emotional, even for my mean ass.  Seeing him hug Soul and let a lot of that negativity between the two of them go, even if just for a moment seemed to be just what they needed.  

Saint sits back down.  He doesn’t say anything but sometimes silence speaks a million words.  There are tears in his eyes.  I can tell that he didn’t only want this reaction from his brother but I think he needed it.  I think the divide between them had really caused him to go into a bit of a depression.

“Listen I want to thank you guys for being patient with me and Soul,” Saint says, “Jared, what you did talking to my brother the way you did...it means more to me than anything you could ever imagine.  And Tivonte, opening up your home for us…”

Tivonte shakes his head, “Listen, as far as I’m concerned Soul isn’t your only brother.”

He reaches over and shakes Saint’s hand but Saint pulls him in for another hug.  It is also emotional.  I look over at Jared and see him smiling the whole time.  It just felt different in the room.  It felt like everything was positive.  The entire mood had changed.

For the first time since this Quarantine had started, we were actually enjoying ourselves.

I manage to mouth out a short, “That was beautiful…”

“That was all you,” Jared says, “This was a great idea Ken.”

“Yeah,” Tivonte adds out of no where, “Thanks for doing this Ken.”

Hearing Jared be nice was normal.  He just had that corny niceness to him that you couldn’t shake no matter what you did to him.   Tivonte on the other hand was different.  He looks up at me and smiles at me.  It’s the first time he’s given me eye contact all day.  It was as though for the first time he saw me.

And I have to admit it feels good.

But I can’t help but to wonder why does it take Jared’s approval for him to finally acknowledge that I’ve done something good.

“You’re next, Jared,” I state grabbing the bowl but saying, “Here let me get one for you.”

I move my hand around quickly through the bowl and maneuver a piece of paper to come out.   As I do it I lean back in my chair.

That’s when I hand him a piece of paper.

It’s not one I pull out of the bowl.

It’s one that I have stuffed in my sleeve...

He looks down at the paper and mutters a, “Oh damn.”

I smile back at him, “What?  What is it?”

The entire room is looking at Jared.  He’s hesitating with the question.  It’s clear that he doesn’t want to answer it.  The look on his face definitely seems to say it all.  He is definitely seeming to struggle with this one.

“Who do you want to be with?”

I look over at that moment at Tivonte.  He has this stupid smile on his face.  He’s always been a bit cocky and over-confident.  After having sex with Jared a part of me wondered if he thought that the answer was going to be him.  He had to.  Tivonte was way too dominant of a man to think anything else.  

“Saint…”

The name drops out of his mouth and seems to hit Tivonte like a ton of bricks when he hears the name of Saint come out of his crush’s mouth.  I can’t help but smile when I see Tivonte just get his heart broken into a million bits.

Tivonte tries to save face with a laugh, “What?  You want to be with a straight guy?”

“Straight?” I ask.

Tivonte looks over at Saint.   Saint looks over at him.  Saint has this confused look on his face.

“You aren’t straight?” Tivonte asks.

“I...uh...it’s complicated…” Saint says.

“How?  How is it complicated?” Tivonte asks before turning to Jared, “Wait are the two of you...the two of you got something...oh shit…”

I think in his head he was playing over all the moments that Jared and Saint were alone.  All the moments that he thought it was just an innocent friendship but he had no idea romance was blossoming up right before his very eyes.

And that’s when I have to add it in.

I HAD to do it.

“Didn’t Saint tell you that he was the one that I cheated on you with?” I ask.

Saint looks over at me as though I’d just inserted a knife into his heart.   I mutter over to him, “the truth hurts”.  That’s what he told me right.  That’s what he told me earlier.  

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