Falling Out of Line

I had already told Sean and Cory that I was having a friend over, and while Cory cleaned the house frantically, he and Sean asked me numerous questions about him. Like I said, they love paying attention to me. It was a little overwhelming, since it was a complete 180 from my previous foster life, but I would definitely learn to adjust.

"His name is Lewis. He was the first friend I made at school." I told Cory while he danced around the house straightening things.
"Is this the boy that walked you to school on your first day?" He said before throwing the drapes open.
"Yes. He's really weird, but once you get to know him, he's a great guy."
"Well. we're glad you're adjusting so well to suburbia, Tyler. It took me half a year to get used to it." Sean laughed.
"I don't get why you hated it so much at first, Sean. It wasn't that different from the town we lived in when we were kids." Cory muttered as he dusted the entertainment center.
"Yeah, I know, but in college, I got so used to city living-"
"We lived in a college town-"
"-That was like a city. Anyway, it was a lot more exciting than the suburbs. I don't know how I would've survived without my flatscreen TV." Cory glared at him. Sean's eyes widened before he smiled nervously and ran to kiss Cory on the cheek. "And you, of course."
"Mm-hm." Cory rolled his eyes and went back to dusting.

I considered telling Cory it didn't matter if the house was spotless because Lewis wouldn't care about that, but I've learned to just let Cory do what he wants with the house. If he's cleaning or cooking you stay out of his way unless you want to loose a finger.

"We're both glad you've made such good friends, Tyler." He set down the duster. "Now, I'm going to get cleaned up and start cooking."
"What are you cooking for now?" Sean wrapped his arms around Cory's waist.
Cory smiled at him. "Lauren's fundraiser."
"God, I hate that woman."
"I do, too, but she virtually runs this town, so I've gotta play nice to her."
"Why do you have to be nice to her? Who cares if she doesn't like you? She's a bitch."
"Sean, language." Cory looked over at me.
"I'm almost 18 - I've heard that word before." I looked at him.
"That doesn't mean I like to hear it. Anyway, I like living in the suburbs because, aside from Lauren, it's so friendly and hassle-free and all the women love me. Plus, there are so many perks to being out here, like the parties and the fun people you meet, and the way everyone is friends with someone skilled or famous. If Lauren had any reason to hate me, she could turn everyone against me and it would be just like high school." He pouted.
Sean kissed him and brushed the hair out of his face. "No one hated you in high school. They envied you."
"The jocks certainly hated me."
"Jocks will always hate outsiders - it's written in their DNA. Meanwhile, only a handful of them get to stay popular jocks in the future. I haven't seen any jock from high school hit it big, but look how happy we are now."

Cory smiled and they kissed again... or rather... started making out.

"Okay, I love you guys, but this is gross." I frowned. The doorbell rang. "Take it upstairs or something - I don't want Lewis to see my parents... my dads... you... okay this situation is beyond weird."
I heard them laugh as I opened the door. Lewis smiled up at me. "Hi Tyler."
"Hey Lewis, come on in." I stepped aside. "Please ignore the gross displays of affection coming from my dads - they have no home training."
He laughed and walked up to them. "I'm Sean and this is my husband Cory."
"Nice to meet you. I'm Lewis."
"If you boys need any food, I'm going to be cooking all day, so feel free to come down and steal some." Cory smiled at him.
"Alright thanks." I grabbed Lewis's hand and led him up stairs.

When we got to my room, I turned on my iPod speaker and closed the door. We sat on my bed facing each other. It was a little awkward because we were supposed to sharing... well pretty much our life stories. Where do you start with this kind of thing?

"So, um, I like your parents." Lewis smiled.
"Oh yeah me too. They don't really act like parents though, and half the time they're just making out, but I like living here."
"What was it like before you moved here?"
"Well, I went from foster home to foster home most of my life. I never met my parents since they gave me up when I was a baby. I spent most of my life at the orphanage though. For some reason, I was never really accepted into my foster families."
"Why is that?"
I sighed. "I don't know, maybe I gave off a bad vibe or something. Usually my foster parents would pretend I wasn't there, and the foster kids would hate me either because they thought I was stealing attention away from them or because I didn't bother trying to make friends with them. I always ended up back at the orphanage somehow."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. It's not your fault. It didn't really bother me... except for this one family... the Dresrens. The mister and missus were sometimes home, sometimes not. They worked, but it didn't consume all their time. I still don't know why they adopted me though because they had two other nearly grown kids. I guess they didn't want to feel lonely once their kids left the nest. I liked living there for a while because I got to fade into the background at school and at home and no one would really bother me.

My foster parents liked me because I wasn't a big hassle and I kept to myself, but I guess their real kids got jealous. Their son Michael and their daughter Kelly started plotting against me, and I didn't realize it until they had already won because they were so nice to me before.

Uh... okay, one day I came home from school and Kelly was just being friendly and wanted me to help her make dinner for her parents, saying she wanted to surprise them with something nice, so I helped out in the kitchen. I noticed she was acting a little weird, but we weren't that close, so I couldn't say she was acting out of character. She kept touching me and was being suggestive... turns out she was coming onto me. I didn't know what to do, so I just pretended like it wasn't happening, but she kept doing it a couple times after that, so I told her this had to stop. Of course, we were alone when I told her that, and she didn't listen to me - she just moved closer and got really flirty, and that's when my foster parents came in and saw us. Somehow, Kelly blamed the whole thing on me and said I was trying to rape her. I was kicked out pretty soon after that, but not before Kelly told me what she really thought of me..."

I winced as her harsh words came flooding back to memory. "You're a reject. You have no friends and your own parents didn't even want you. As if anybody could actually like you..." That was nothing compared to what I faced at school. Before I could be transferred out, Kelly and Michael had spread the fake story to the entire school, and even after I left, my bad reputation followed me everywhere. Being an orphan accused of trying to rape your foster sister isn't a name that goes away easily.

"...Anyway, I was hard getting people to like me after that, and I wasn't exactly well-liked to being with. I stayed in the orphanage after the Dresren experience ruined any chance I had of getting adopted, or at least I thought I had until Sean and Cory came along. I'm glad my reputation hasn't followed me to Cranbrook yet, but I still want to be careful. That's why I don't want anyone to know anything about my life - it's so easy to put the pieces together once you hear one fact."
He chewed his lip. "I'm sorry that had to happen to you, Tyler. But, if it hadn't happened, maybe you wouldn't have ended up with Sean and Cory and your new life here. I'm not saying it's a good thing that it happened, just trying to find a silver lining."
"No, you're right. Thanks." I smiled at him. He smiled back.
"Now I feel bad for feeling sorry for myself."
"Don't. I don't want any guilt or self-pity here."
"Well.. that's gonna be kinda hard. Okay um... my mom and dad have always been a little, well, clueless. They work most of the time because they're both surgeons. I haven't seen them for more than a full day in years. I have to deal with my three sisters tearing through the house every day. They don't like to acknowledge that I'm their brother because I'm weird and nerdy.

The only real friend I had before Naran was this boy named Eddie. He was amazing. We would go on adventures in our backyards all the time like we were Tommy and Chuckie from the Rugrats. I was Chuckie because I was nowhere near as brave or imaginative as he was. He was like the brother I never had. We would always get in trouble for talking in class and starting food fights and getting in all kinds of trouble. We grew up together... but when we hit puberty, and he started like girls and I... started liking guys... well... he thought I was a freak and he got super pissed because I hadn't told him all these years, but I didn't know I was gay until I was 12. Still, he was mad and he stopped being my friend. It wasn't his fault though - his parents were very religious and it was practically burned into their brains that homosexuality was wrong.

I was never popular at school, so when Eddie stopped being nice to me, I became a major bullying target. At first it was just name calling, but then I started getting beat up. It got so bad that I wound up in the hospital. I hadn't told anyone about the bullying before, but my parents forced it out of me. The main bully got expelled, and the whole school got mad at me for tattling on him. Life wasn't getting any better at that school, so my parent sent me to a private school - Cranbrook. It got better, but I'm still labeled as the gay weirdo nerd... and Eddie goes here too, so even though we still don't talk, he's popular enough to give me a bad rep."
"Sorry you had to go through that."
He shrugged. "It's in the past and I really don't care if I'm not popular. I just wish people weren't so ignorant. There's nothing wrong with being gay or being myself, but still, you don't see lots of people running up to hang out with me."
"It's stupid and it's wrong, but I've found that the better friends to have are the ones that are on the outside with you." I put an arm around his shoulders.
He looked at me and smiled before we hugged. "I'm glad I met you, Tyler."
"Same here." I ruffled his hair. "I don't know about you, but I like to stuff my face after an emotional talk like that. Wanna go raid the kitchen for food?"
He giggled and nodded his head. We jumped off the bed and went downstairs.

Cory had made surprisingly a lot of progress since we had gone upstairs. The table was covered with finished trays of food and the counter-top had ingredients all over it - eggs, flour, sugar, sauces, seasonings, and a number of weird cooking utensils that look like torture devices.

"Watch out!" Cory came running towards us. We stepped aside as he took the lid off a pot on the stove that was ready to boil over. The foam bubbled down and Cory sighed. "You boys hungry?"
"If you're too busy, we can just wait-"
"No no!" He cut me off. "Help yourself. The women at these fundraisers don't eat that much anyway - they all have to watch their figures."
"You've had the same figure since 4th grade." Sean said, coming into the kitchen.
Cory growled at him. "What did I say about you teasing my lack of muscles?"
"I'm sorry. You know I love every inch of your body."
"Shut up." Cory turned away when Sean tried to kiss him.
"They argue like this a lot, but you can tell that they love each other." I told Lewis. He smiled and nodded.
"They're so cute together!" He watched Sean as he scooped a bit of frosting off a cupcake. Cory scolded him for it and told him to just take the whole cupcake, but Sean said he didn't want the cupcake, just the frosting.
"And this is why you're going to get fat." Cory teased.
"No, your amazing cooking is why I'm going to get fat. I can't believe you're a better chef than your mom." Sean said while scooping more frosting up.
"She'd die if she heard you say that."
"Don't get me wrong, I love your mom, but ever since you took that culinary course, you're cooking has been blissful."
Cory blushed and looked back down at his mixing bowl. "It's not that good."
Sean stuck a frosting covered finger into Cory's mouth. "You taste that and tell me that's not that good."
Cory rolled his eyes and moved Sean's finger out of his mouth when the frosting was gone. "You need to wash your hands more thoroughly - I still taste paint."
"Sorry."
"Paint?" I asked.
"I'm trying something new." Sean smiled. "It's not finished yet, but you can check it out when it's done."
"Sean likes to try his hand at art sometimes, but he' should stick to teaching." Cory told me.
Sean frowned. "Hey."
"What, I can't tease you sometimes?" Cory smirked.
"What do you teach?" Lewis asked.
"English and Creative Writing. I write too, but I've been suffering from some major writer's block lately. I thought taking up on some art projects might help the creative juices flow."
"He's filled the entire garage with art supplies and pounds of paper." Cory shook his head as he took some rolls out of the oven.
"Well I can't work in my office - it reminds me of school!" Sean whined.
Lewis and I laughed.

We helped ourselves to food before heading downstairs to play video games in the den. Lewis wasn't very good, but he used the excuse that he didn't a lot of games at home. After a while we gave up on the video games and picked up some Nerf guns. Sean came down and saw us having a Nerf battle, and when he joined in, it turned into a full on war. Cory came to see why we were being so noisy, and we attacked him. He got mad and went back upstairs to the kitchen. Soon Sean called it quits so he could go apologize to Cory. Lewis and I sat on the chairs to rest. We talked for hours before he went home. When I went back upstairs to Sean and Cory, they gushed over how nice and adorable Lewis was. It wasn't until they mentioned how "flamboyant" he was that I really started paying attention.

"What do mean?" I asked.
"Oh come on, it's completely obvious that he's gay." Cory said.
"He just told me he was gay yesterday! How is it that you can tell just by meeting him for a few hours?"
"Sean and I have years of experience with gay interactions. It's like... we have gaydar now."
I shook my head. "Still, I don't see what you see."
"Of course you don't, because you don't have a gaydar yet." Sean joked.

I rolled my eyes and went upstairs.

Now that I knew why Lewis was an outcast at school, I was gonna try being more friendly with him. I've gotten used to being a loner, but that doesn't mean everyone enjoys it.