Kiss My Textbook

Take deep breaths Frankie, deep breaths. I kept repeating that in my head since the moment Gerard kissed my cheek. I didn’t know what to do and the thought plagued me until that Thursday when I had to go to tutoring.

I took off down the road toward Gerard’s feeling a little down since he had his ‘Bertybot’ while I just sat around hoping for him to my prince. For such a nice spring day I felt like nature was betraying me and my feelings. Why would Mother Nature do that to me? While I was feeling at my worst she had all the flowers in full bloom and the birds chirping. “Why, Mommy Nature? Why?”

My response was only the mild breeze as Gerard’s house came into view. My pace slowed since I wanted to wait as long as possible so I wouldn’t have to face him. To my great luck it seemed that my pace did nothing since I was at Gerard’s door. I pressed the door bell and waited while hearing a squeal and someone falling. The door was soon open by a person I had never seen before. The guy was fairly tall but then again who isn’t tall to short little Frankie? He was a blonde with dark bushy looking eyebrows.

He seemed to notice who I was and squealed. “Gee-bear you never said Frankiekins was this scrumptious! Where’s Mikey-bear he has to see him!”

I looked to where the strange guy was looking to see Gerard on the floor rubbing the back of his head. He must have been that falling noise I heard. “Uh, hello,” I stammered out since I didn’t know what was going on.

The blonde turned his attention back to me and smiled, “You must not know who I am. Well anyway, I’m Bert but you’ve must have heard my name as Bertybot. Come inside I want to know all about you!” I was soon dragged inside the house and sat on the sofa. Gerard had gotten up and sat himself next to me.

“So,” Bert started, “you must be Frank Iero of course! I have heard so many things about you from Gee-bear!”

“Bert,” Gerard groaned, “Stop it.”

“Don’t be that way Gee-bear! Oh I have to call Danzy, Jephy and Quinnster to come see him! Mikey-bear come up here and see Frankiekins! He’s absolutely delicious!”

This Bert was starting to scare me as he pulled out his cell phone and dialed some numbers while there was somebody coming downstairs. This boy was tall and lanky with glasses and his hair looked a total mess.

“Frank,” I turned my attention to Gerard, “if you’re wondering who that bag of bones is that’s my younger brother Mikey. Also sorry about all this commotion, Bert has just come back from a trip and decided let’s bother Gerard.”

“I heard that,” both Bert and Mikey shouted in unison. I did a double take on Mikey since there was barely any resemblance between him and his brother. They were polar opposites in my eyes with Gerard being the shorter of the two and with darker hair and an upturned nose. Mikey had lighter hair, much more height on him, and much plainer features.

Soon the doorbell was ringing again and Bert once again answered the door squealing as he did. Three guys walked in one being a blond and the other two with darker hair. Bert had pushed them by their shoulders to the living room where Gerard, me and Mikey were.

“Frankiekins,” he said to me, “I want you to meet my friends.” He sat the two with the dark hair down keeping the blonde standing. “This is Quinnster,” Bert soon pointed to the dark haired man whose hair was bit shaggy, “that’s Danzy,” then he finally pointed to the other dark haired man with shorter straighter hair, “and that’s Jephy.” Bert gave a happy laugh, “See what I meant guys he’s so scrumptious for Gee-bear!”

“I see what you mean Bert baby,” Quinnster said kissing his cheek. They all were an odd bunch in my eyes but I think Bert topped it all. All of them were smiling at me and it was making me really uncomfortable.

“Oh, I have just the perfect idea to get to know each other! Truth or dare anyone?” Bert asked clapping his hands in contentment. Danzy, Jephy, and Quinnster all agreed with Bert and the game began with me and Gerard being forced into it.

“Wait,” Quinnster said, “I think we should tell Frank here are real names.”

They all nodded in agreement.

“I’m Quinn,” said the blonde.

“Jeph,” said the dark haired one with straight hair.

“Dan,” said shaggy hair.

I nodded and looked over at Gerard who was rubbing his temples in frustration. He seemed to be extremely miffed about this current situation while Mikey looked oblivious to it all. I tapped Gerard’s shoulder and he opened his eyes to look at me.

“What?”

“Are you okay?” I asked feeling sorry for him.

“Just fine, this is standard for Bert,” he said closing his eyes again and rubbing his temples.

“Okay! Gee-bear, truth or dare?” Bert started making Gerard wince.

“Dare,” he said continuing his temple rubbing.

“I dare you to,” Bert started, “make out with Mikey!”

“I’m out of here,” Mikey said bolting from the room and back upstairs.

“Aww, Mikey-bear come back” Bert shouted.

“Okay, I’m out of here as well come on Frank we have your lessons to work on,” Gerard got up and grabbed my hand. He took us downstairs to his room where he flopped onto his bed and let out a sigh. “Sorry about Bert and his gang. They are a bit wild.”

“It’s fine Gerard, now what am I learning today?”

“Well what are you guys doing in class? Sequences, quadratics, foiling?”

I tried to recall what we were doing in class today but since I was too busy worrying over who Bert was to Gerard. “Uh, we were working on quadratics but it didn’t seem to sink in the way the teacher explained it.”

“Well,” Gerard sighed, “all it is, is a x squared plus b x plus c equals zero. Each letter being a, b, and c are coefficients. You know what a coefficient is?”

I nodded my head no.

“Okay, it’s a constant multiplicative factor for a certain thing. So say your teacher asks what is the coefficient of 6x squared the coefficient of x squared is 6. Are you following me?”

“Sort of, Gerard but um could you put it in common English?”

He grabbed a piece of paper and patted the bed next to him for me to take a seat. I sat next to him while he started writing on the paper. He wrote

x=(-b±√(b^2-4ac))/2a

“That,” he pointed to the equation on the paper, “is really this.” He started to write on the paper again.

ax2 + bx + c= 0

I nodded my head yes since that was sort of easy to understand.

“Alright now I’m going to show you what the coefficients are so you understand what I mean,” he circled the a, b, and c, “each of those are coefficients. You got that Frankie?”

I nodded yes again. We kept going on like this for quite a while. I was starting to understand this quadratic crap now that Gerard had broke down for me. My session was almost up when it was really sinking into my brain and Gerard was getting back to his old self.

“I think that’s enough numbers for today Frank. We can keep going with quadratics next week unless,” his hand brushed mine, “you want to work on something else.” I looked Gerard in the face and saw a sparkle in his eyes. His face seemed to inch toward mine and mine toward his. Soon our lips connected and it was pure bliss. There was a hidden fire and passion in Gerard’s kiss and it sent me straight to heaven. My arms took a mind of their own and laced around his neck while Gerard lay back pulling me on top of him.

A soft moan could be heard from my prince while my fingers started playing with his hair. We had to come for air and that’s where all the fun began. “Next week,” I panted, “we’re working on us.”

Gerard nodded and I got up to leave.