(no subject)
Whee, more Bren and Lucian backstory!
Brendan waited impatiently while his mother examined Anna, fixed her hair, and fiddled with her collar, all while his sister shifted from foot to foot. Then, finally, Elise turned to him. “Goodness, so formal?” she asked, with a bright tone that made him nervous. She reached out and tugged the suit jacket off his shoulders. “I told you that a collar shirt would be fine,” she added.
Mournfully, Brendan watched while his suit jacket - and the story that was in the pocket - was hung up in the closet. “I just thought collar shirt meant suit,” he said with a shrug, knowing it was a lame excuse and not particularly caring.
Elise clucked her tongue once. “Well, I suppose it would be silly of me to get irritated with you for overdressing when it’s usually the opposite,” she said. “Now come along.” Brendan and Anna were tugged out the door. They passed the drive by poking each other, and Elise yelled at them quite a few times.
The dinner, although boring enough to make Brendan nearly fall asleep in the soup, was not anywhere near as excruciating as the last one had been. He honestly liked the host’s daughter, and chatted with her a little. He couldn’t remember how his parents knew hers - his mother had enough social acquaintances to fill her own phone book and he had never been able to keep track.
Lucian was there from the beginning, but Monica latched onto him, making it quite impossible for Brendan to even manage more than a shy hello. He sighed heavily. Lina, the host’s daughter, was a computer geek, and Brendan was amused to notice that her parents seemed to have given up the fight in transforming her into anything else. She was talking about taking an internship with Brendan’s father’s company.
“You want mine?” Brendan asked glumly. “You can have it.” And Lina laughed.
After dinner, Lucian managed to get over to Brendan for a quick word. “I think your sister is planning on marching me around the room as a trophy,” he said underneath his breath, and he sounded about as pleased with the idea as Brendan was about the idea of an internship with his father.
“Yeah, well, Mom decided it was informal dress, so I don’t have anything with me anyway,” Brendan said with a sigh. “Have fun with my sister.”
Lucian gave him a ‘gee, thanks’ look, before Monica reclaimed him and he was dragged away. Brendan was dragged off to the other room with the children, but managed to have a halfway decent time of it; Lina had just gotten a Dreamcast, and they started a multi-player Soul Caliber tournament. Something about hacking away at his opponents with an imaginary sword was quite satisfying.
It was nearly half past ten before Lucian wandered in. “Your mother’s looking for you,” he told Brendan, who wondered if this was actually true. He finished off his opponent, surrendered his controller to Lina, and followed Lucian out of the room.
“Really?” he asked.
“No,” Lucian said, “but I was going to throttle Monica.”
“My parents are going to kill us if they catch us closeted away again,” Brendan warned. “They might start to suspect something’s up.”
Lucian turned and raised an eyebrow at him. “Oh?” he asked, grinning a little, and Brendan flushed a bright red without knowing why. “Sorry, sorry,” Lucian said, waving his hand but not looking sorry in the slightest. “I had to, you know? Anyway, that’s okay, let’s just plop in one of the hallways. Since we’re not editing, there’s not much to catch us at.”
Naturally, this statement did not help Brendan’s bright red complexion, but he agreed. They found a room that was at the end of one of the hallways with a few comfortable chairs. “Wh-what was Monica doing?” Brendan ventured, eager to get the discussion off of himself and what he and Lucian could be ‘caught’ doing.
“Being herself,” Lucian said dryly. “Honestly, I don’t know how you’ve stood growing up with that woman in the same house. I would have strangled her to death by now.”
“It’s been tough,” Brendan said, nodding with mock solemnity. Then he laughed. “No, seriously, she’s been looking at apartments lately. I guess even she’s gotten tired of living underneath Mom’s thumb. Anna and I are already planning her moving out party. I told her I’d cheerfully carry boxes for three days if it got her out of the house. I’m not sure Mom thought it was funny.”
Lucian grinned at that. “You should get her some newspaper classifieds from New York. And Timbuktu.”
Brendan laughed. He sank more comfortably into the cushioned chair that he had found. They chatted for a few more minutes. It was easier than he thought it would be, comfortable and comforting. He glanced at his watch and was surprised to see that fifteen minutes had gone by. “Shouldn’t you be getting back to Monica?” he asked.
“Most likely,” Lucian said, but he didn’t look like he was going to be moving.
“Then . . . why aren’t you?” Brendan ventured. He added nervously, “I mean, I didn’t bring anything to work on, so . . . so it seems silly to just sit here when you should be out with the rest of the people, instead of sitting here with me . . .”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lucian said, sounding amused. “Why on earth would I want to go talk to Monica when I could be here talking with you? You’re the much more enjoyable and interesting person, I promise. Although,” he added, standing up, “I’d like to have a cigarette, so I’m going out to the porch. Feel free to join me.”
Brendan padded along behind him. “Smoking’s bad for you,” he informed Lucian solemnly.
“Life,” Lucian said, “is a sexually transmitted disease, inherited from your parents, that has no cure and is always, ultimately, fatal.”
Brendan blinked at him. “Thank you, Mr. Sunshine,” he said, but didn’t object further as Lucian lit up a cigarette and took a few drags. “Is that what you always tell people who tell you that you shouldn’t smoke?”
“Yeah,” Lucian said with a nod.
Brendan considered this for a few minutes. “You know, you’re right,” he said. “We’ve all got to die sometime. But I don’t see why you’d feel the need to speed your way into the ground and give yourself a nasty disease all at the same time. Lung cancer sure isn’t the way that I’d choose to go.”
Lucian reached over and tapped him on the nose. “Whatever happened to teenagers thinking that they’re immortal?” he asked mournfully.
“You’re dodging the subject,” Brendan accused.
“Why, so I am.”
Brendan sighed and let it go. “Let me try,” he demanded.
“Hell, no,” Lucian said. “For one thing, you’d cough a lung up; secondly, if your mother smelled the smoke on you she’d kill both of us, and thirdly, you just said that lung cancer isn’t the way you’d choose to go.” He finished his cigarette and dropped it, grinding it out on the pavement. “It’s such a nice night,” he said, looking up at the sky.
“Yeah,” Brendan said quietly.
Lucian lit up a second cigarette, and they talked for a while, and Brendan was astonished how easy it was. They talked about normal things - things like his classes, his sisters, how boring they both thought the party was and how much they wished they could be born into normal families and not worry about any of this.
He was not surprised when his mother stuck her head out. “What are you doing monopolizing your sister’s boyfriend?” she asked shrilly, and Brendan caught Lucian wincing. “Why are you even out here instead of in there with all the other kids?”
“He was out smoking,” Brendan said defensively. “I came out to say hi. Is that a crime?”
“Don’t you take that tone with me, young man,” Elise threatened. “Answer my other question.”
Brendan stuck his chin out defiantly. “I came out to see when we were going home,” he said, figuring that if he was in trouble, he might as well go all out. “I’m bored out of my gourd and it’s nearly ten thirty. I have karate tomorrow at nine.”
Elise puffed up, looking like she was about to go off on a rant, then caught sight of Lucian’s politely indifferent look and calmed down. “I was coming to look for you to say we were going,” she said, “and tell Lucian that Monica was looking for him if I saw him. Anna told me that you had left the room. Now let’s get going.”
“Fine,” Brendan said, and followed her, dragging his feet. Lucian came along with them. As he was waiting while his mother put her coat on, he caught sight of Lucian kissing Monica. It made him want to gag, and at the same time, made a dull feeling in his throat and the pit of his stomach. It made him want to cry.
~~~~
After that, they agreed that no matter how much they wanted to, there was no way that Lucian’s plan was going to work. For some reason, Elise was on the warpath and determined to keep the two of them separate. Brendan had no idea why, and he wasn’t sure he cared. Ever since watching Lucian kissing Monica, he couldn’t really bring himself to care very much about anything at all.
Lucian cornered him at a party nearly a month later. Brendan had been avoiding him whenever he could, hiding in his room when Lucian came over for dates with Monica, and had been politely shy when he couldn’t. “Okay, give,” Lucian said, pulling him aside as he was pulling on his coat to leave. Elise was still talking to the hostess, while her husband tried to convince her to leave. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Brendan said, not looking at him. “Really. It’s nothing.”
“Did you get in trouble for last time?” Lucian asked.
“Mom grounded me for a week for talking back to her. But it’s not a big deal. Honest.” Brendan shook Lucian’s hand off his arm, and stared studiously at the front door while he waited for his parents. Anna had been left with a sitter; she was lucky enough (in Brendan’s opinion) to have the flu. Monica had left earlier in her own car.
There was a long silence while Lucian watched him. “Did I say something?” he finally asked.
Brendan shook his head, not looking at him. “It’s not you. Honestly. I just - oh, I don’t know.” His hands twisted in the bottom of his shirt, and he was suddenly sure, with deep mortification, that he was about to cry in front of Lucian. Then he would just have to kill himself. “I’m going outside,” he said, and darted out the front door.
Not surprisingly, Lucian followed him. He lit up a cigarette. “Seriously,” he said, “tell me what’s wrong.”
“No,” Brendan said, and stared sullenly at the front walkway.
“If you don’t, I’ll have to assume that you’re mad at me,” Lucian told him.
“Maybe I am,” Brendan snapped. He couldn’t think of a decent way to tell Lucian that he’d seen him kissing his sister and was jealous over it. What a stupid thing to be jealous over. It wasn’t as if, because of two or three conversations, he had any claim on Lucian. So what if they got along better than he’d ever gotten along with anyone else? So what if Brendan felt more comfortable around him than he’d ever felt around anyone else? So what if Brendan wanted to rip his sister to shreds for getting her hooks into Lucian first? They were both guys. He couldn’t have any claim on Lucian, anyway.
There was a long silence. “Whatever it is, I’m sorry for it,” Lucian said, and there was genuine sorrow in his voice. “I wish you weren’t angry with me. I miss talking to you. You’re the only thing that makes these parties worth it.”
Brendan blinked back tears. “I saw you kissing my sister,” he admitted.
“Oh.” Lucian paused. Then, again, “Oh.” He didn’t seem to have anything better to say.
“It pissed me off,” Brendan said. “I don’t really have any excuse for why.”
Lucian thought he could think of several good reasons; he knew that he would personally be green with jealousy if he saw Brendan so much as holding hands with anyone else, let alone kissing them. However, he also knew that he couldn’t project his own emotions onto Brendan. He just wanted his friend back. “I’m sorry,” he offered, unsure of how to go about making reparations.
“I wish you weren’t dating her,” Brendan said, scuffing at the pavement.
“Me too,” Lucian said, and had to put real effort into not doing any number of things like hugging Brendan, kissing him, or saying what he really wanted to say, which was that he would much rather be dating Brendan instead. “She’s a real hussy, you know.”
Brendan managed a laugh. “Then why are you still dating her? Come on, you’ve done enough to satisfy your parents by now, and mine too. You know you have.”
Lucian blinked at him. “I thought you would have realized,” he said, after a long pause. “I don’t usually go to these parties. If I stopped dating Monica, I wouldn’t be able to see you anymore.”
Brendan’s mouth opened and closed a few times. He couldn’t think of anything to say.
“So,” Lucian said gently, “I have to keep her interested, and sometimes that’s going to mean kissing her. If that’s not okay, then I’ll stop dating her and you and I can work something else out. I just thought that you knew that was why I was still dating her.”
“No, it . . . it’s fine,” Brendan said, and let out a little laugh. He drew the back of his hand across his eyes. “I just . . . I don’t know why you’d put yourself through something like dating Monica just to be friends with me and help me with my writing.”
“That,” Lucian said, “is because you understand very little about yourself and how much I enjoy your company. And that’s going to be all for now, because any minute your mother’s going to come out here and throw a conniption fit at you for daring to speak to me again.” He tossed his cigarette into the trash. “Here,” he said, and handed Brendan a piece of paper. “It’s my number at my apartment. In case you need to talk to me.”
He walked away without another word.
Brendan stood there in silence for a few minutes, just trying to blink back tears, before his mother came out. “Ah, here you are,” she said imperiously, and Brendan meekly followed her back to the car. For the rest of the night, he couldn’t help thinking back to what Lucian had said, and the warm fuzzies it had left in his chest. He slept soundly that night and felt much better the next day.
That Monday, he found his salvation in the senior class play.
He would never be able to act; he sometimes got tongue-tied just speaking in class. Public performance was not his forte. However, he thought volunteering for set crew might be fun. He signed the list along with about twenty-five of his classmates and went home. His mother reluctantly agreed, making it clear that it was only because it was his senior class play and he could only do it once, and because it was an extracurricular activity he couldn’t duplicate anywhere else.
“When are these . . . these meetings, anyway?” she asked, sounding a little disdainful.
“They’re not really meetings,” Brendan said patiently. “We’re going to be building and painting stuff. Making furniture. Doing blocking.” He saw that he had lost her and hurriedly moved on before she decided it was too dirty a task for her little boy. “Mondays and Wednesday, from after school until five.”
“Until five?” she protested, outraged. Brendan crossed his fingers underneath the table. “That’s ridiculous! That’s nearly two and a half hours!”
“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” Brendan said, trying to be patient. “We’ve got to go around to antique stores and find props. We have to build sets and paint them. We have to figure out where it’s all going to go and then coordinate how to change one set to another. It’s a lot of work, Mom! And we’ve only got three months to do it in.”
“But until five?! You’d barely have time to do all your homework!”
“I’d be fine,” Brendan said. “I’d just do it after dinner instead of playing on the computer and video games or reading or writing or something.” He crossed his fingers again. Mentioning the writing was either going to go very well or very badly. He could see her considering it - Brendan getting home later but having less time to write versus the normal schedule.
“Oh, come on, honey,” Alan finally said, seeing that she was wavering. “It’s only for a couple months.”
“Well,” Elise said with a sniff, “All right. Fine. But I’m certainly not driving down there twice a week to pick him up.”
“I can pick him up on my way home from work,” Alan said, then glanced at Brendan, “if you don’t mind waiting until five fifteen or so?”
“That’s fine,” Brendan squeaked.
“Then it’s settled,” Alan said, and went back about his business. Brendan made a mental note to give him a very nice Father’s Day gift to make up for it. He meekly asked to be excused, and his mother shooed him away irritably. He crept upstairs into his room and dialed the number Lucian had given him.
He answered on the third ring, sounding rather dispirited. “Hello?”
“Uhm . . .” Brendan stammered, feeling more tongue-tied than usual with no clear idea of why. “Uhm, hello . . . uhm, is this Lucian?”
“Yeah . . .”
“It’s, uhm, Brendan. You know, Brendan Phillips.”
“I know which Brendan,” Lucian said with a laugh, and his voice took on a warmth and liveliness that hadn’t been there before. “Hi. What’s up?”
Brendan lowered his voice, although he doubted it was really necessary. “I think I found a way for you to actually help me edit,” he said. “Uhm, if you still wanted to anyway . . .”
“Of course I do,” Lucian said. “What’ve you got in mind?”
Brendan explained to him about the set crew, and how it met two days a week until four, but he had told his mother five, and his father wouldn’t pick him up until five fifteen. “The caf is open until nearly seven because of all the sports and band and other after school stuff, so we could just sit in there,” he said. “I don’t think anyone would bother us. It’s not much, but . . .”
“It’s great,” Lucian said enthusiastically. “An hour’s just about right, I think. Mondays and Wednesdays, you said?”
“Yeah, if that’s okay . . .”
“It’s fine.” Lucian dismissed his concerns with a word. “I don’t really have a set schedule - I paint when I feel like painting, and that’s about all. There might be a few days when I wouldn’t be able to make it, but that’s all. When does it start?”
“Next Monday. A week from today.”
“Okay. I’ll see you then.”
“I’ll see you then,” Brendan agreed, and hung up the phone. He felt like he might burst just from pure happiness. After hugging his pillow in glee for a few minutes, he sat down at his computer and began to write with abandon.
~~~~
Months passed like that. Brendan brought his writing to school in his backpack every day and worked on it diligently. By the time the senior class play was performed (a smashing success, and Elise was quite pleased when Brendan could point out actual props and parts of the set he had helped build), Lucian had declared Brendan’s novel ‘the best damn thing’ he had ever read by a writer who was still a minor.
“I think we’re ready to send it,” he said.
Brendan’s stomach did a flip-flop. “Uhm, well . . . I guess we could . . . but, it’s just . . . well . . .”
Lucian lifted an eyebrow at him. They were sitting out on the Phillips’ front porch, where there was a porch swing that Brendan loved. Monica had still been in the shower when Lucian had arrived for their date, so Brendan had ventured out onto the porch to keep him company while they waited. Even Elise had backed off of their friendship somewhat, since it seemed to be very good for Brendan, and she had no idea how often they actually saw each other.
“Nervous?” Lucian asked.
“Try terrified,” Brendan said weakly.
Lucian laughed. “Well, you know what they say about getting used to rejection,” he joked, then saw the stricken look on Brendan’s face. His voice gentled. “Bren, it’s fine. We might have to go through a few different publishers before we find the right one, but honest to God, it’s fit for print. I swear.”
Brendan managed a wan smile. “I believe you. I just . . . I just don’t . . .”
“Believe me?” Lucian asked dryly, and Brendan nodded and hung his head. “How about the short stories, then? Magazines might be more lenient.”
“I don’t know, Lucian . . .”
“Bren, you want to be a published author, and that’s not going to happen if you’ll never send anything out to publishers.”
“I know, but . . .”
Lucian sighed. “Okay, I’ll let it go for today. But Bren, you’re going to have to be prepared to send stuff out.”
Brendan rubbed his hand over his hair. “I don’t see why you’re so anxious,” he muttered.
“Because I want you to be happy,” Lucian said. “And sitting around here preparing for your internship this summer and college in the fall certainly isn’t doing that. Not to even mention the fact that your mother is bound to start throwing women you don’t want to date all over the place.”
“I might want to date them,” Brendan said defensively, trying to force back a blush. “I’m not a social leper.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Lucian said, wondering why Brendan was in a mood to take everything the wrong way. “But honestly, if your mother picked them out, what are the odds that you’d want to?”
“She picked you out for Monica,” Brendan said, reasonably enough. He snapped his mouth shut before adding the damning ‘and I’d date you’, which had very nearly passed his lips. Lucian regarded him seriously for a few long minutes. “What?” Brendan asked nervously, wondering if Lucian had figured out what he had almost said. His response, however, was absolutely nothing like what Brendan had expected.
Lucian leaned over and kissed him.
Brendan’s eyes went wide and he held still for a few moments while his brain tried to catch up with what had just happened. Lucian was kissing him. Lucian, who was dating his sister. Lucian, whom he had been going out of his way to almost ridiculous lengths to get as much as five minutes in his presence without really knowing why. Lucian. Was. Kissing. Him.
Confused, he pushed Lucian away. “D-Don’t,” he stammered. “I’m not - we aren’t - this isn’t right!”
“Yes, it is,” Lucian said, with utter certainty in his voice, and he leaned over and kissed Brendan again. Brendan sat there, trying to sort through the tangle of emotions he was feeling. After a few seconds, his eyes drifted closed and he surrendered to the gentle kiss. His lips parted underneath Lucian’s, and he let the older man kiss him without resistance. Lucian pulled away an eternity of a moment later. “You’re not kissing back,” he observed, his voice soft and low.
Brendan’s mind filtered through a few possible responses before, as usual, his mouth took over and the truth came out. “I don’t know how.”
Lucian chuckled, a noise that always did, and he suspected always would, go right down Brendan’s spine and make him shiver. “Like this,” he said, and kissed Brendan again. Brendan forced himself to stay alert and not just melt like he had the last time, and after a few moments began to hesitantly kiss back. Lucian pulled away and chuckled again. “Still a quick learner,” he said.
“Why are you doing this?” Brendan whispered, closing his eyes as Lucian landed a kiss on the side of his mouth, his cheek, his jawbone where it met his ear.
“Why?” Lucian pulled away, looking surprised. “I would think that the ‘why’ is pretty obvious. I’m kissing you because I like you.”
Brendan’s heart thudded painfully in his chest, and he felt tears pricking at his eyes. “Don’t,” he said, pushing Lucian away a little more sharply. “Don’t say stuff like that. Maybe you mean well, but - ” His words were abruptly cut off as Lucian kissed him again, and he struggled slightly until Lucian let him pull away. “Don’t,” he repeated, and looked away.
“Why not?” Lucian countered, and Brendan could see that the older man was as confused as he was - and perhaps even hurt by Brendan’s rejection. “I like you. I want to kiss you. You’re wonderful. You’re the first person in my life I’ve ever wanted to kiss this much.”
Brendan shook his head. “You don’t have to - ”
“Shut up,” Lucian interrupted. “Shut up and kiss me and stop believing you’re everything your mother has ever told you that you are.”
“That’s not as easy as you seem to think it is,” Brendan protested, and knew he was about to cry. He wondered if he could get out of the conversation, and then wondered abstractly if he could learn to not cry every time he got emotional. “It’s not easy at all!”
“The last part isn’t,” Lucian conceded. “But the first part is. Let me kiss you. Let me care about you.”
Brendan closed his eyes. Lucian seemed to take this as an invitation. He put his hand underneath Brendan’s chin and tilted it up, kissing him thoroughly. Brendan gave in and kissed back, too confused to do much of anything else, especially when his body so completely wanted to let Lucian do whatever he liked. After a few moments, he whispered, “We should stop.” He opened his eyes and saw Lucian’s hurt look again. “I mean, Monica will be coming out soon,” he added hastily.
“Oh. That’s right.” Lucian looked a little downcast, and released Brendan from his embrace.
Brendan pushed both his hands through his hair. “I can’t believe I was just kissing my sister’s boyfriend,” he said, and laughed shakily. “I . . . I think I’m overwhelmed.”
“Well,” Lucian said, leaning back in the porch swing, and apparently deciding to tackle it like it was one of Brendan’s run-on sentences, “what’s so overwhelming about it? Nothing wrong with kissing somebody.”
“Lucian,” Brendan said, “in the past two minutes I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that I’m a) apparently gay, b) crushing on my sister’s boyfriend, and c) he’s interested in return. That’s a hell of a lot to cope with. Especially the third one, since . . .” He blushed and looked away. “Since I sort of knew about the first two already, but I just hadn’t had to think about it before.”
Lucian glanced over at him. “You know there’s nothing wrong with being gay, right?”
Brendan snorted. “Tell my mother that. She’ll freak. I don’t think I’ll tell her . . .”
“Be my guest not to,” Lucian said. “I let my mother convince herself that I was straight. I even dated girls to get her to shut the hell up.”
Brendan let out a weak little laugh. “Uhm, so . . . so what now?” he asked. “The class play’s over, so . . . I don’t know when I’ll be able to see you again regularly, and if we can’t tell anyone about this, I . . . I guess it might have to wait until I get to school in September . . .”
Lucian looked like he would rather walk over hot coals than spend an entire four months without seeing Brendan. “We’ll figure something out,” he said, and kissed him again, disregarding whatever trouble it might get them into.
“We shouldn’t,” Brendan protested, but then Lucian was kissing him and he decided he didn’t care. “Lu . . . Lucian . . .”
The front door opened with a bang, and Brendan jumped to the other side of the porch swing. Monica raised an eyebrow at the two of them, but apparently hadn’t seen what they were doing, because she didn’t comment. Instead, she wasted one of her charming smiles on Lucian. “Ready to go?” she asked.
“Of course,” Lucian said, getting to his feet. Brendan watched as he walked away without looking back.
He retreated up to his room and flopped onto his bed, trying to sort through what had just happened. Eventually, he decided that he didn’t really care; the tangle could be sorted into one easy statement, which was that he was totally head over heels for Lucian and at the moment didn’t care about anything else.
It was only two hours later before he heard the front door open again, which surprised him; Monica and Lucian’s dates usually lasted at least three or four. They almost always went out to dinner and then somewhere else afterwards. He heard Monica’s shrill voice downstairs and went to see what was up.
“I can’t believe it!” Monica fumed, stomping around the living room while Elise tried vainly to calm her. “How could he break up with me?! We’ve been dating for nearly five months!”
Brendan’s mouth opened, and to his horror, words came out. “You didn’t like him anyway, so what do you care?”
“Of course I didn’t!” Monica snapped. “But how dare he dump me before I got a chance to dump him?!”
“Uh,” Brendan managed. He shook his head. “Gosh, I’ve just remembered that I don’t want any part in this discussion,” he said brightly, and scrambled back up to his room before either his mother or Monica could yell at him. He tried to write for a while, but couldn’t concentrate. He wanted to talk to Lucian too badly to get anything done. Since they were still downstairs yelling, he nervously dialed Lucian’s number.
“Hello?”
“Hi, it’s Brendan,” he whispered. “Why’d you break up with Monica?”
Lucian laughed. “I couldn’t very well date you both at once, could I?” he asked, sounding rather amused. “I thought I’d better get it out of the way. I - hang on.” There was a long pause, and Brendan could hear muffled voices. Then Lucian said quietly, “My mom’s here, probably to yell at me. I bet your Mom called her. I’ll talk to you later.”
He hung up without another word.
Brendan waited impatiently while his mother examined Anna, fixed her hair, and fiddled with her collar, all while his sister shifted from foot to foot. Then, finally, Elise turned to him. “Goodness, so formal?” she asked, with a bright tone that made him nervous. She reached out and tugged the suit jacket off his shoulders. “I told you that a collar shirt would be fine,” she added.
Mournfully, Brendan watched while his suit jacket - and the story that was in the pocket - was hung up in the closet. “I just thought collar shirt meant suit,” he said with a shrug, knowing it was a lame excuse and not particularly caring.
Elise clucked her tongue once. “Well, I suppose it would be silly of me to get irritated with you for overdressing when it’s usually the opposite,” she said. “Now come along.” Brendan and Anna were tugged out the door. They passed the drive by poking each other, and Elise yelled at them quite a few times.
The dinner, although boring enough to make Brendan nearly fall asleep in the soup, was not anywhere near as excruciating as the last one had been. He honestly liked the host’s daughter, and chatted with her a little. He couldn’t remember how his parents knew hers - his mother had enough social acquaintances to fill her own phone book and he had never been able to keep track.
Lucian was there from the beginning, but Monica latched onto him, making it quite impossible for Brendan to even manage more than a shy hello. He sighed heavily. Lina, the host’s daughter, was a computer geek, and Brendan was amused to notice that her parents seemed to have given up the fight in transforming her into anything else. She was talking about taking an internship with Brendan’s father’s company.
“You want mine?” Brendan asked glumly. “You can have it.” And Lina laughed.
After dinner, Lucian managed to get over to Brendan for a quick word. “I think your sister is planning on marching me around the room as a trophy,” he said underneath his breath, and he sounded about as pleased with the idea as Brendan was about the idea of an internship with his father.
“Yeah, well, Mom decided it was informal dress, so I don’t have anything with me anyway,” Brendan said with a sigh. “Have fun with my sister.”
Lucian gave him a ‘gee, thanks’ look, before Monica reclaimed him and he was dragged away. Brendan was dragged off to the other room with the children, but managed to have a halfway decent time of it; Lina had just gotten a Dreamcast, and they started a multi-player Soul Caliber tournament. Something about hacking away at his opponents with an imaginary sword was quite satisfying.
It was nearly half past ten before Lucian wandered in. “Your mother’s looking for you,” he told Brendan, who wondered if this was actually true. He finished off his opponent, surrendered his controller to Lina, and followed Lucian out of the room.
“Really?” he asked.
“No,” Lucian said, “but I was going to throttle Monica.”
“My parents are going to kill us if they catch us closeted away again,” Brendan warned. “They might start to suspect something’s up.”
Lucian turned and raised an eyebrow at him. “Oh?” he asked, grinning a little, and Brendan flushed a bright red without knowing why. “Sorry, sorry,” Lucian said, waving his hand but not looking sorry in the slightest. “I had to, you know? Anyway, that’s okay, let’s just plop in one of the hallways. Since we’re not editing, there’s not much to catch us at.”
Naturally, this statement did not help Brendan’s bright red complexion, but he agreed. They found a room that was at the end of one of the hallways with a few comfortable chairs. “Wh-what was Monica doing?” Brendan ventured, eager to get the discussion off of himself and what he and Lucian could be ‘caught’ doing.
“Being herself,” Lucian said dryly. “Honestly, I don’t know how you’ve stood growing up with that woman in the same house. I would have strangled her to death by now.”
“It’s been tough,” Brendan said, nodding with mock solemnity. Then he laughed. “No, seriously, she’s been looking at apartments lately. I guess even she’s gotten tired of living underneath Mom’s thumb. Anna and I are already planning her moving out party. I told her I’d cheerfully carry boxes for three days if it got her out of the house. I’m not sure Mom thought it was funny.”
Lucian grinned at that. “You should get her some newspaper classifieds from New York. And Timbuktu.”
Brendan laughed. He sank more comfortably into the cushioned chair that he had found. They chatted for a few more minutes. It was easier than he thought it would be, comfortable and comforting. He glanced at his watch and was surprised to see that fifteen minutes had gone by. “Shouldn’t you be getting back to Monica?” he asked.
“Most likely,” Lucian said, but he didn’t look like he was going to be moving.
“Then . . . why aren’t you?” Brendan ventured. He added nervously, “I mean, I didn’t bring anything to work on, so . . . so it seems silly to just sit here when you should be out with the rest of the people, instead of sitting here with me . . .”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lucian said, sounding amused. “Why on earth would I want to go talk to Monica when I could be here talking with you? You’re the much more enjoyable and interesting person, I promise. Although,” he added, standing up, “I’d like to have a cigarette, so I’m going out to the porch. Feel free to join me.”
Brendan padded along behind him. “Smoking’s bad for you,” he informed Lucian solemnly.
“Life,” Lucian said, “is a sexually transmitted disease, inherited from your parents, that has no cure and is always, ultimately, fatal.”
Brendan blinked at him. “Thank you, Mr. Sunshine,” he said, but didn’t object further as Lucian lit up a cigarette and took a few drags. “Is that what you always tell people who tell you that you shouldn’t smoke?”
“Yeah,” Lucian said with a nod.
Brendan considered this for a few minutes. “You know, you’re right,” he said. “We’ve all got to die sometime. But I don’t see why you’d feel the need to speed your way into the ground and give yourself a nasty disease all at the same time. Lung cancer sure isn’t the way that I’d choose to go.”
Lucian reached over and tapped him on the nose. “Whatever happened to teenagers thinking that they’re immortal?” he asked mournfully.
“You’re dodging the subject,” Brendan accused.
“Why, so I am.”
Brendan sighed and let it go. “Let me try,” he demanded.
“Hell, no,” Lucian said. “For one thing, you’d cough a lung up; secondly, if your mother smelled the smoke on you she’d kill both of us, and thirdly, you just said that lung cancer isn’t the way you’d choose to go.” He finished his cigarette and dropped it, grinding it out on the pavement. “It’s such a nice night,” he said, looking up at the sky.
“Yeah,” Brendan said quietly.
Lucian lit up a second cigarette, and they talked for a while, and Brendan was astonished how easy it was. They talked about normal things - things like his classes, his sisters, how boring they both thought the party was and how much they wished they could be born into normal families and not worry about any of this.
He was not surprised when his mother stuck her head out. “What are you doing monopolizing your sister’s boyfriend?” she asked shrilly, and Brendan caught Lucian wincing. “Why are you even out here instead of in there with all the other kids?”
“He was out smoking,” Brendan said defensively. “I came out to say hi. Is that a crime?”
“Don’t you take that tone with me, young man,” Elise threatened. “Answer my other question.”
Brendan stuck his chin out defiantly. “I came out to see when we were going home,” he said, figuring that if he was in trouble, he might as well go all out. “I’m bored out of my gourd and it’s nearly ten thirty. I have karate tomorrow at nine.”
Elise puffed up, looking like she was about to go off on a rant, then caught sight of Lucian’s politely indifferent look and calmed down. “I was coming to look for you to say we were going,” she said, “and tell Lucian that Monica was looking for him if I saw him. Anna told me that you had left the room. Now let’s get going.”
“Fine,” Brendan said, and followed her, dragging his feet. Lucian came along with them. As he was waiting while his mother put her coat on, he caught sight of Lucian kissing Monica. It made him want to gag, and at the same time, made a dull feeling in his throat and the pit of his stomach. It made him want to cry.
~~~~
After that, they agreed that no matter how much they wanted to, there was no way that Lucian’s plan was going to work. For some reason, Elise was on the warpath and determined to keep the two of them separate. Brendan had no idea why, and he wasn’t sure he cared. Ever since watching Lucian kissing Monica, he couldn’t really bring himself to care very much about anything at all.
Lucian cornered him at a party nearly a month later. Brendan had been avoiding him whenever he could, hiding in his room when Lucian came over for dates with Monica, and had been politely shy when he couldn’t. “Okay, give,” Lucian said, pulling him aside as he was pulling on his coat to leave. Elise was still talking to the hostess, while her husband tried to convince her to leave. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Brendan said, not looking at him. “Really. It’s nothing.”
“Did you get in trouble for last time?” Lucian asked.
“Mom grounded me for a week for talking back to her. But it’s not a big deal. Honest.” Brendan shook Lucian’s hand off his arm, and stared studiously at the front door while he waited for his parents. Anna had been left with a sitter; she was lucky enough (in Brendan’s opinion) to have the flu. Monica had left earlier in her own car.
There was a long silence while Lucian watched him. “Did I say something?” he finally asked.
Brendan shook his head, not looking at him. “It’s not you. Honestly. I just - oh, I don’t know.” His hands twisted in the bottom of his shirt, and he was suddenly sure, with deep mortification, that he was about to cry in front of Lucian. Then he would just have to kill himself. “I’m going outside,” he said, and darted out the front door.
Not surprisingly, Lucian followed him. He lit up a cigarette. “Seriously,” he said, “tell me what’s wrong.”
“No,” Brendan said, and stared sullenly at the front walkway.
“If you don’t, I’ll have to assume that you’re mad at me,” Lucian told him.
“Maybe I am,” Brendan snapped. He couldn’t think of a decent way to tell Lucian that he’d seen him kissing his sister and was jealous over it. What a stupid thing to be jealous over. It wasn’t as if, because of two or three conversations, he had any claim on Lucian. So what if they got along better than he’d ever gotten along with anyone else? So what if Brendan felt more comfortable around him than he’d ever felt around anyone else? So what if Brendan wanted to rip his sister to shreds for getting her hooks into Lucian first? They were both guys. He couldn’t have any claim on Lucian, anyway.
There was a long silence. “Whatever it is, I’m sorry for it,” Lucian said, and there was genuine sorrow in his voice. “I wish you weren’t angry with me. I miss talking to you. You’re the only thing that makes these parties worth it.”
Brendan blinked back tears. “I saw you kissing my sister,” he admitted.
“Oh.” Lucian paused. Then, again, “Oh.” He didn’t seem to have anything better to say.
“It pissed me off,” Brendan said. “I don’t really have any excuse for why.”
Lucian thought he could think of several good reasons; he knew that he would personally be green with jealousy if he saw Brendan so much as holding hands with anyone else, let alone kissing them. However, he also knew that he couldn’t project his own emotions onto Brendan. He just wanted his friend back. “I’m sorry,” he offered, unsure of how to go about making reparations.
“I wish you weren’t dating her,” Brendan said, scuffing at the pavement.
“Me too,” Lucian said, and had to put real effort into not doing any number of things like hugging Brendan, kissing him, or saying what he really wanted to say, which was that he would much rather be dating Brendan instead. “She’s a real hussy, you know.”
Brendan managed a laugh. “Then why are you still dating her? Come on, you’ve done enough to satisfy your parents by now, and mine too. You know you have.”
Lucian blinked at him. “I thought you would have realized,” he said, after a long pause. “I don’t usually go to these parties. If I stopped dating Monica, I wouldn’t be able to see you anymore.”
Brendan’s mouth opened and closed a few times. He couldn’t think of anything to say.
“So,” Lucian said gently, “I have to keep her interested, and sometimes that’s going to mean kissing her. If that’s not okay, then I’ll stop dating her and you and I can work something else out. I just thought that you knew that was why I was still dating her.”
“No, it . . . it’s fine,” Brendan said, and let out a little laugh. He drew the back of his hand across his eyes. “I just . . . I don’t know why you’d put yourself through something like dating Monica just to be friends with me and help me with my writing.”
“That,” Lucian said, “is because you understand very little about yourself and how much I enjoy your company. And that’s going to be all for now, because any minute your mother’s going to come out here and throw a conniption fit at you for daring to speak to me again.” He tossed his cigarette into the trash. “Here,” he said, and handed Brendan a piece of paper. “It’s my number at my apartment. In case you need to talk to me.”
He walked away without another word.
Brendan stood there in silence for a few minutes, just trying to blink back tears, before his mother came out. “Ah, here you are,” she said imperiously, and Brendan meekly followed her back to the car. For the rest of the night, he couldn’t help thinking back to what Lucian had said, and the warm fuzzies it had left in his chest. He slept soundly that night and felt much better the next day.
That Monday, he found his salvation in the senior class play.
He would never be able to act; he sometimes got tongue-tied just speaking in class. Public performance was not his forte. However, he thought volunteering for set crew might be fun. He signed the list along with about twenty-five of his classmates and went home. His mother reluctantly agreed, making it clear that it was only because it was his senior class play and he could only do it once, and because it was an extracurricular activity he couldn’t duplicate anywhere else.
“When are these . . . these meetings, anyway?” she asked, sounding a little disdainful.
“They’re not really meetings,” Brendan said patiently. “We’re going to be building and painting stuff. Making furniture. Doing blocking.” He saw that he had lost her and hurriedly moved on before she decided it was too dirty a task for her little boy. “Mondays and Wednesday, from after school until five.”
“Until five?” she protested, outraged. Brendan crossed his fingers underneath the table. “That’s ridiculous! That’s nearly two and a half hours!”
“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” Brendan said, trying to be patient. “We’ve got to go around to antique stores and find props. We have to build sets and paint them. We have to figure out where it’s all going to go and then coordinate how to change one set to another. It’s a lot of work, Mom! And we’ve only got three months to do it in.”
“But until five?! You’d barely have time to do all your homework!”
“I’d be fine,” Brendan said. “I’d just do it after dinner instead of playing on the computer and video games or reading or writing or something.” He crossed his fingers again. Mentioning the writing was either going to go very well or very badly. He could see her considering it - Brendan getting home later but having less time to write versus the normal schedule.
“Oh, come on, honey,” Alan finally said, seeing that she was wavering. “It’s only for a couple months.”
“Well,” Elise said with a sniff, “All right. Fine. But I’m certainly not driving down there twice a week to pick him up.”
“I can pick him up on my way home from work,” Alan said, then glanced at Brendan, “if you don’t mind waiting until five fifteen or so?”
“That’s fine,” Brendan squeaked.
“Then it’s settled,” Alan said, and went back about his business. Brendan made a mental note to give him a very nice Father’s Day gift to make up for it. He meekly asked to be excused, and his mother shooed him away irritably. He crept upstairs into his room and dialed the number Lucian had given him.
He answered on the third ring, sounding rather dispirited. “Hello?”
“Uhm . . .” Brendan stammered, feeling more tongue-tied than usual with no clear idea of why. “Uhm, hello . . . uhm, is this Lucian?”
“Yeah . . .”
“It’s, uhm, Brendan. You know, Brendan Phillips.”
“I know which Brendan,” Lucian said with a laugh, and his voice took on a warmth and liveliness that hadn’t been there before. “Hi. What’s up?”
Brendan lowered his voice, although he doubted it was really necessary. “I think I found a way for you to actually help me edit,” he said. “Uhm, if you still wanted to anyway . . .”
“Of course I do,” Lucian said. “What’ve you got in mind?”
Brendan explained to him about the set crew, and how it met two days a week until four, but he had told his mother five, and his father wouldn’t pick him up until five fifteen. “The caf is open until nearly seven because of all the sports and band and other after school stuff, so we could just sit in there,” he said. “I don’t think anyone would bother us. It’s not much, but . . .”
“It’s great,” Lucian said enthusiastically. “An hour’s just about right, I think. Mondays and Wednesdays, you said?”
“Yeah, if that’s okay . . .”
“It’s fine.” Lucian dismissed his concerns with a word. “I don’t really have a set schedule - I paint when I feel like painting, and that’s about all. There might be a few days when I wouldn’t be able to make it, but that’s all. When does it start?”
“Next Monday. A week from today.”
“Okay. I’ll see you then.”
“I’ll see you then,” Brendan agreed, and hung up the phone. He felt like he might burst just from pure happiness. After hugging his pillow in glee for a few minutes, he sat down at his computer and began to write with abandon.
~~~~
Months passed like that. Brendan brought his writing to school in his backpack every day and worked on it diligently. By the time the senior class play was performed (a smashing success, and Elise was quite pleased when Brendan could point out actual props and parts of the set he had helped build), Lucian had declared Brendan’s novel ‘the best damn thing’ he had ever read by a writer who was still a minor.
“I think we’re ready to send it,” he said.
Brendan’s stomach did a flip-flop. “Uhm, well . . . I guess we could . . . but, it’s just . . . well . . .”
Lucian lifted an eyebrow at him. They were sitting out on the Phillips’ front porch, where there was a porch swing that Brendan loved. Monica had still been in the shower when Lucian had arrived for their date, so Brendan had ventured out onto the porch to keep him company while they waited. Even Elise had backed off of their friendship somewhat, since it seemed to be very good for Brendan, and she had no idea how often they actually saw each other.
“Nervous?” Lucian asked.
“Try terrified,” Brendan said weakly.
Lucian laughed. “Well, you know what they say about getting used to rejection,” he joked, then saw the stricken look on Brendan’s face. His voice gentled. “Bren, it’s fine. We might have to go through a few different publishers before we find the right one, but honest to God, it’s fit for print. I swear.”
Brendan managed a wan smile. “I believe you. I just . . . I just don’t . . .”
“Believe me?” Lucian asked dryly, and Brendan nodded and hung his head. “How about the short stories, then? Magazines might be more lenient.”
“I don’t know, Lucian . . .”
“Bren, you want to be a published author, and that’s not going to happen if you’ll never send anything out to publishers.”
“I know, but . . .”
Lucian sighed. “Okay, I’ll let it go for today. But Bren, you’re going to have to be prepared to send stuff out.”
Brendan rubbed his hand over his hair. “I don’t see why you’re so anxious,” he muttered.
“Because I want you to be happy,” Lucian said. “And sitting around here preparing for your internship this summer and college in the fall certainly isn’t doing that. Not to even mention the fact that your mother is bound to start throwing women you don’t want to date all over the place.”
“I might want to date them,” Brendan said defensively, trying to force back a blush. “I’m not a social leper.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Lucian said, wondering why Brendan was in a mood to take everything the wrong way. “But honestly, if your mother picked them out, what are the odds that you’d want to?”
“She picked you out for Monica,” Brendan said, reasonably enough. He snapped his mouth shut before adding the damning ‘and I’d date you’, which had very nearly passed his lips. Lucian regarded him seriously for a few long minutes. “What?” Brendan asked nervously, wondering if Lucian had figured out what he had almost said. His response, however, was absolutely nothing like what Brendan had expected.
Lucian leaned over and kissed him.
Brendan’s eyes went wide and he held still for a few moments while his brain tried to catch up with what had just happened. Lucian was kissing him. Lucian, who was dating his sister. Lucian, whom he had been going out of his way to almost ridiculous lengths to get as much as five minutes in his presence without really knowing why. Lucian. Was. Kissing. Him.
Confused, he pushed Lucian away. “D-Don’t,” he stammered. “I’m not - we aren’t - this isn’t right!”
“Yes, it is,” Lucian said, with utter certainty in his voice, and he leaned over and kissed Brendan again. Brendan sat there, trying to sort through the tangle of emotions he was feeling. After a few seconds, his eyes drifted closed and he surrendered to the gentle kiss. His lips parted underneath Lucian’s, and he let the older man kiss him without resistance. Lucian pulled away an eternity of a moment later. “You’re not kissing back,” he observed, his voice soft and low.
Brendan’s mind filtered through a few possible responses before, as usual, his mouth took over and the truth came out. “I don’t know how.”
Lucian chuckled, a noise that always did, and he suspected always would, go right down Brendan’s spine and make him shiver. “Like this,” he said, and kissed Brendan again. Brendan forced himself to stay alert and not just melt like he had the last time, and after a few moments began to hesitantly kiss back. Lucian pulled away and chuckled again. “Still a quick learner,” he said.
“Why are you doing this?” Brendan whispered, closing his eyes as Lucian landed a kiss on the side of his mouth, his cheek, his jawbone where it met his ear.
“Why?” Lucian pulled away, looking surprised. “I would think that the ‘why’ is pretty obvious. I’m kissing you because I like you.”
Brendan’s heart thudded painfully in his chest, and he felt tears pricking at his eyes. “Don’t,” he said, pushing Lucian away a little more sharply. “Don’t say stuff like that. Maybe you mean well, but - ” His words were abruptly cut off as Lucian kissed him again, and he struggled slightly until Lucian let him pull away. “Don’t,” he repeated, and looked away.
“Why not?” Lucian countered, and Brendan could see that the older man was as confused as he was - and perhaps even hurt by Brendan’s rejection. “I like you. I want to kiss you. You’re wonderful. You’re the first person in my life I’ve ever wanted to kiss this much.”
Brendan shook his head. “You don’t have to - ”
“Shut up,” Lucian interrupted. “Shut up and kiss me and stop believing you’re everything your mother has ever told you that you are.”
“That’s not as easy as you seem to think it is,” Brendan protested, and knew he was about to cry. He wondered if he could get out of the conversation, and then wondered abstractly if he could learn to not cry every time he got emotional. “It’s not easy at all!”
“The last part isn’t,” Lucian conceded. “But the first part is. Let me kiss you. Let me care about you.”
Brendan closed his eyes. Lucian seemed to take this as an invitation. He put his hand underneath Brendan’s chin and tilted it up, kissing him thoroughly. Brendan gave in and kissed back, too confused to do much of anything else, especially when his body so completely wanted to let Lucian do whatever he liked. After a few moments, he whispered, “We should stop.” He opened his eyes and saw Lucian’s hurt look again. “I mean, Monica will be coming out soon,” he added hastily.
“Oh. That’s right.” Lucian looked a little downcast, and released Brendan from his embrace.
Brendan pushed both his hands through his hair. “I can’t believe I was just kissing my sister’s boyfriend,” he said, and laughed shakily. “I . . . I think I’m overwhelmed.”
“Well,” Lucian said, leaning back in the porch swing, and apparently deciding to tackle it like it was one of Brendan’s run-on sentences, “what’s so overwhelming about it? Nothing wrong with kissing somebody.”
“Lucian,” Brendan said, “in the past two minutes I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that I’m a) apparently gay, b) crushing on my sister’s boyfriend, and c) he’s interested in return. That’s a hell of a lot to cope with. Especially the third one, since . . .” He blushed and looked away. “Since I sort of knew about the first two already, but I just hadn’t had to think about it before.”
Lucian glanced over at him. “You know there’s nothing wrong with being gay, right?”
Brendan snorted. “Tell my mother that. She’ll freak. I don’t think I’ll tell her . . .”
“Be my guest not to,” Lucian said. “I let my mother convince herself that I was straight. I even dated girls to get her to shut the hell up.”
Brendan let out a weak little laugh. “Uhm, so . . . so what now?” he asked. “The class play’s over, so . . . I don’t know when I’ll be able to see you again regularly, and if we can’t tell anyone about this, I . . . I guess it might have to wait until I get to school in September . . .”
Lucian looked like he would rather walk over hot coals than spend an entire four months without seeing Brendan. “We’ll figure something out,” he said, and kissed him again, disregarding whatever trouble it might get them into.
“We shouldn’t,” Brendan protested, but then Lucian was kissing him and he decided he didn’t care. “Lu . . . Lucian . . .”
The front door opened with a bang, and Brendan jumped to the other side of the porch swing. Monica raised an eyebrow at the two of them, but apparently hadn’t seen what they were doing, because she didn’t comment. Instead, she wasted one of her charming smiles on Lucian. “Ready to go?” she asked.
“Of course,” Lucian said, getting to his feet. Brendan watched as he walked away without looking back.
He retreated up to his room and flopped onto his bed, trying to sort through what had just happened. Eventually, he decided that he didn’t really care; the tangle could be sorted into one easy statement, which was that he was totally head over heels for Lucian and at the moment didn’t care about anything else.
It was only two hours later before he heard the front door open again, which surprised him; Monica and Lucian’s dates usually lasted at least three or four. They almost always went out to dinner and then somewhere else afterwards. He heard Monica’s shrill voice downstairs and went to see what was up.
“I can’t believe it!” Monica fumed, stomping around the living room while Elise tried vainly to calm her. “How could he break up with me?! We’ve been dating for nearly five months!”
Brendan’s mouth opened, and to his horror, words came out. “You didn’t like him anyway, so what do you care?”
“Of course I didn’t!” Monica snapped. “But how dare he dump me before I got a chance to dump him?!”
“Uh,” Brendan managed. He shook his head. “Gosh, I’ve just remembered that I don’t want any part in this discussion,” he said brightly, and scrambled back up to his room before either his mother or Monica could yell at him. He tried to write for a while, but couldn’t concentrate. He wanted to talk to Lucian too badly to get anything done. Since they were still downstairs yelling, he nervously dialed Lucian’s number.
“Hello?”
“Hi, it’s Brendan,” he whispered. “Why’d you break up with Monica?”
Lucian laughed. “I couldn’t very well date you both at once, could I?” he asked, sounding rather amused. “I thought I’d better get it out of the way. I - hang on.” There was a long pause, and Brendan could hear muffled voices. Then Lucian said quietly, “My mom’s here, probably to yell at me. I bet your Mom called her. I’ll talk to you later.”
He hung up without another word.