Rating: PG for a couple of vague sexual references
Summary: follows immediately on from ‘Definitely…Maybe’. Kenny talks to Vicky and Larry and manages to hide the truth from both of them.
*****
Eventually his mother begins to get irritated by his moping around the house, so he tells her he’s going next door to wait for Larry to come home. What he ends up doing is sitting on the front porch of Larry’s house, trying to decide if he can get away with telling Larry what happened was all a mistake, because he was half asleep at the time.
He’s been sitting there for about ten minutes when Larry’s mom opens the door and almost trips over him.
“Kenny? What’re you doing home from school so early? Is something wrong?”
He stands up, brushing off the seat of his pants.
“”No. I just didn’t go to school today.”
“Are you sick?” Immediately she presses a hand to his forehead, frowning and studying his face for any signs of illness. For a moment Kenny wants to throw his arms around her, remembering all the times she sat up with him and hugged him and listened to him cry during the weeks that he lived with the Golds. But then he remembers waking up and feeling up her son, and he backs away from her, ashamed.
“Yeah, I’m sick. I mean, I was. I’m okay now. I think.”
Her forehead creases in confusion, but then she takes his arm and begins to lead him inside.
“Come on in and let me make you a hot drink. If you’re gonna wait for Larry, you might as well wait inside where it’s warm.” She steers him into the kitchen and tells him to take a seat at the breakfast bar while she heats up milk for cocoa. It’s all kind of Brady Bunch, but Kenny figures she gets off on playing happy families with a kid she and her husband haven’t screwed up, so he smiles and sits and waits.
“So how is everything?” she asks once she’s handed him his drink. Mrs Gold leans against the counter, holding her own mug in both hands. He watches the steam rising from it and shrugs. “Something wrong? Kenny, you know you can talk to me, right?”
Kenny tries to think of something to say, but suddenly his head is empty and his throat too tight to make words anyway. He’s spent the day in a sort of daze, replaying the morning over and over, and imagining a hundred different things that Larry might say to him when he gets home. This is the first proper conversation he’s had since he said goodbye to Larry.
“Kenny?” Mrs Gold puts her mug down and rushes around the counter. “What is it?” Without waiting for an answer, she hugs him tight. He opens his mouth to speak, but there’s nothing to say.
He waits for the lump in his throat to ease, letting her hold him and trying not to sniffle into her blouse. He’s done that before, but it’s still embarrassing. Eventually the urge to cry passes, and she steps back a little.
“Is it a boy?”
Out of nowhere, he laughs, a little manic, and has to choke back a bit of a sob at the end of it. He nods.
“Dylan?”
Kenny laughs again, then shakes his head.
“Someone at school? Oh, Kenny, tell me it is and you didn’t go to some club or something.” She reaches over for a roll of paper towels and tears one off for him so he can wipe his eyes. “Sweetie, I know it’s gonna be tough for you trying to meet people at school, but you’re just not old enough for those kind of places.”
“I didn’t meet anyone in a club,” he manages to assure her. It’s the truth too, and he thinks it’s kind of sweet that she still thinks he’s so innocent. Which doesn’t help how he feels about what he did with Larry, but he smiles at her anyway.
Mrs Gold sits down next to him and picks up her mug again, taking a sip before she speaks.
“Does he know how you feel?”
“If he did, I don’t think he’d speak to me.” He drinks his own cocoa, more for something to do with his hands than anything else.
“He’s straight?” Kenny nods, and she pats the back of his hand. He imagines having this conversation with his own mother; the very idea is so ludicrous that he laughs again. Mrs Gold frowns, so he tries to cover.
“Just my rotten, stupid luck, I guess. All the good ones are straight.” She offers him a sympathetic smile.
“It happens to all of us,” she tells him. “Well, maybe not exactly like this, but everybody falls for someone they can’t have at some point.”
“What are you supposed to do about it?” His voice shakes when he speaks, and he’s certain he doesn’t want to hear the answer. Because he knows she’s not going to say ‘keep on mooning over him ‘cause it’s the only way you’ll get to be around him’.
“Nothing.” He furrows his brow. “There’s nothing you can do, except try to get over it. Maybe find something else to take your mind off it. Honey, at your age there’s gonna be a different boy every month for you to obsess over.”
Kenny assumes her smile is meant to be comforting. He wonders whether he should tell her he’s been obsessed with the same boy for years, but she knows the only boy he’s known that long is Larry. Could there be anything more embarrassing than watching her figure out that it’s her own son who’s turned Kenny into such a wreck?
Before he can come up with a response, the door opens and there’s Larry, all worry and confusion, dumping his bag on the floor and rushing over to him. Kenny sets his mug on the counter and stands, about to jam his hands in his pockets, but Larry’s already right next to him, hands on Kenny’s arms.
“You weren’t at school today. What’s wrong?”
“Stomach ache,” he manages to say. “I’m alright now.”
Larry doesn’t look entirely convinced, but he hugs Kenny anyway, tells him he’s glad Kenny feels better.
“I got your homework,” Larry tells him, going to retrieve his backpack.
“Thanks.” He realises Mrs Gold is watching him. He smiles at her, and knows it looks fake.
Across the room, Larry hesitates for a moment, looking like he knows he’s being left out of something.
“Did I miss anything exciting at school?” Kenny asks him to break the silence.
“Let’s go upstairs. I’ll tell you about it.” And Larry heads straight for the stairs without bothering to wait.
Kenny thanks Mrs Gold for the cocoa, ignoring her confused look, and follows Larry up to his room.
Once they’re in, with the door closed beside him, Larry fusses around the room, turning on his computer and fishing books out of his backpack. Kenny stands by the door, figuring he might not be staying very long.
“So what did I miss?”
“Huh?” Larry looks up, confused for a second. “Oh! Nothing. I just wanted to talk to you without my mom around.” He sits down on the bed and motions for Kenny to sit beside him. Kenny hesitates, uncertain, but then Larry looks disappointed, so he sits. Being sure to keep at least a couple of feet between them.
“About this morning?”
Larry nods.
“Right.”
They both stare at the bed for a few moments. Kenny picks at the sleeve of his sweater, where one of the threads has worked loose. Eventually he decides he’s going to have to speak first; he’s the one who has to explain.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. I wasn’t thinking straight - I was still half asleep!” Kenny folds his arms and waits for Larry to get angry.
“No, don’t be sorry. I’m kinda glad you did it.”
He actually feels a little deflated, completely confused by Larry’s reaction.
“You are?”
“Well, yeah.” Larry shrugs, like he doesn’t know how to explain it. “I mean, I realised some stuff.”
“You did?” Suddenly he has that feeling again, of being completely disconnected from his body, floating about three feet above his body even though Larry’s still looking him in the eye. He thinks that if he looks away, he’ll fall and hit the floor. “What kind of stuff?”
“I guess…” Larry lets out a little embarrassed giggle, the kind Kenny always found adorable. “I realised I need to work on my…you know. My endurance. My staying power.”
“Oh.”
“I mean, it was my first orgasm in company,” Larry whispers, and laughs again. “You did kinda catch me by surprise. It would have been totally embarrassing if that’d happened with a girl. Now I know I gotta practise hanging on for longer. You know, trying to think of other things, or something.” He giggles. Kenny tries to join in.
“So it was like, practise?”
“Sure.”
Kenny picks some more at the loose thread on his sleeve.
“You wanna practise some more?”
Larry laughs louder, snorting a little.
“Not now! I mean, my mom’s right downstairs, and I’m not exactly…in a state of readiness.” He makes a show of looking down at his lap, and giggles again.
“But maybe some other time?” He’s surprised by how casual he sounds when he says it. He knows Larry’s naďve sometimes, but this is too much, and he knows he’s flirting with danger just by offering, but Larry’s still so caught up in thinking about sex with girls that he can’t even realise what they did could count as sex. Kenny’s not a girl, so it doesn’t count, and as far as Larry’s aware, Kenny’s not into him, so it doesn’t really count for Kenny either. It makes him surprisingly angry, and he finds he relishes the thought of maybe getting one over on Larry. Which probably makes him a complete bastard, but Larry doesn’t seem to realise just how torn up Kenny is over the whole thing, so that kind of makes him a bit of a bastard too. The whole thing is sick, he knows, but they’re both to blame.
Larry’s blushing, he realises. It’s cute. Kenny thinks he might hate himself.