Andante con Brio

I

To be honest, Eddy was getting pretty fed up with the view of the street from this window. Seriously, how many hours had he stood here, waiting for Brett to arrive? How many weekends had he sat at his desk, doing as much homework as he could in as short a space of time as he could, whilst glancing out there, at the world outside, full of people who were free to live their life as they wanted? As they were? 
It had been a long, long school year, the months stretching out into oceans of drearyness. Brett had been a rock, though. It had been true, what he had promised him in Perth, all those months ago when they had traveled there together to be in the Richard Petti masterclass. Brett had invited him to everything he possibly could at the con, and it had indeed made it better. 
Well, it had made it survivable. 

But today, today he was feeling positive, and the street had seemed to take on a new shine. 
Okay, so maybe he still hadn't told his mum that he was going to audition for the con. Maybe the plan he had made in Perth with his conductor friend John - to drip-feed her information so she had time to get used to it- had been a complete bust, because it had turned out that his mum had a serious knack for just ignoring little pieces of information like that and turning the conversation around to topics she liked more. 
Like him becoming a doctor. 
Eddy sighed deeply. Yeah, he was about to have to tell her about his plans for real, because the deadline for applying to the con was just a few days away. And his forms were all filled out and ready to go, hidden in a stack of papers on the corner of his desk. Oh, he knew very well why he had waited so long to tell her, of course, even though he was well aware that that might earn him even more wrath when she did at last find out.  
Because he was eighteen, today, and she had no more legal hold over him, from today, at least. She couldn't stop him, not really, any more. And he had managed to be allowed to go to music theory class all year, even if it had meant that he had also gone to the med school introduction days he had wanted to avoid like the plague, even if it had meant that he was fully signed up to take the med school entrance exam in just a couple of months time and he had the fat books on his desk to prove such. Not that he planned to take it. That was something else he had yet to tell his mother about. 
Maybe, maybe he had been a chicken, he knew that. But at least he was an alive chicken. At least he was a chicken with chances, chances to make the coming years much, much better. 

He hadn't even begun to try to drip-feed her information about the fact that he was gay, and even less about the fact that he had been firmly with Brett for years. No, that information, drip-fed or not, was about twenty five bridges too far. Because he knew very well where she stood on homosexuality. 

God, why was life this complicated? 
He shook his head and sighed. 
Eddy. This was supposed to be a happy, positive day. No more of this gloominess, okay? 
He nodded at his reflection in the glass and squared his shoulders. 


It didn't matter how many times he saw the figure walking around the corner and down his street, his heart still jumped. 
Bretty. 
His sweet Brett, the best guy in the world, who by some miracle loved him back just the same. He turned around and ran down the stairs, his hand on the rail to stop himself from slipping in his haste, and opened the door before Brett had a chance to ring the bell. 
"Hey." he said quietly. 
"Hey. Happy birthday, bro."