𝗕𝗟𝗢𝗢𝗗 𝗔𝗦 𝗧𝗛𝗜𝗖𝗞 𝗔𝗦 𝗪𝗔𝗧𝗘𝗥 ⚔︎

9

eddie whistled a merry tune as he marched through the house, his keys jingling in his pocket with every step. he was just about to leave to attend to business at le diamant, but he realised he had forgotten some rather important documents up in his bedroom that he had been reading over the previous night. he walked past the doorway to the kitchen and spied cecelia, to whom he said a cheerful good morning to just before he bounded up the grand staircase.

as he wandered down the wide and spacious upstairs hallway, he went past giovanni's room, the door to the en-suite, and then jesse's. both rooms were empty as the boys had gone to chantelle's new house to help her unpack and move some heavy furniture around.

eddie's whistling came to a halt when he did a double take of jesse's room. the place was a complete and utter dump — bundles of clothes had been strewn carelessly across the floor, as well as a few empty glasses standing on the edge of his wooden dresser.

he tutted in dismay. "oh, for god's sake..."

he quickly began moving a few things around to their correct position, such as the alarm clock and the old telephone, before swooping up the dirty laundry off of the floor. he went around to the other side of the bed, closer to the window, getting down on his hands and knees and dragging out a crumpled t-shirt from underneath. however, as he did so he noticed a magazine, buried between a few books.

with prying fingers, eddie took hold of the magazine and brought it into the light so that he could see it properly. upon reading the title, he gulped and raised a brow — it was june's issue of playboy. he looked inside and was immediately met with pictures of naked girls. he curled his lip in disgust. he couldn't believe his son would buy such filth. he had been a young man once and he understood that young men had certain desires to be filled, but to possess pornography under his roof? it was not respectful in the least.

after flicking through a few of the first pages, something dropped out into his lap. hidden amongst the pages of playboy was another magazine, but this time the cover was much different — bearing a handsome, muscular man, wearing nothing but a black speedo. the title at the top of the page read 'blueboy' in red letters.

out of pure curiosity, he flicked through. his mouth dropped open and he felt his breath getting caught in his throat.

blueboy was full of pages upon pages of naked men.

eddie immediately snapped it shut in a state of shock. he stayed still for several moments, holding the two magazines in each hand. he stared at them both in bewilderment.

no, it wasn't true. it couldn't be true. his son — jesse lavigne — a homosexual.

no, surely not. jesse couldn't be gay! he liked playing sports and fixing cars and rode a motorcycle and (occasionally) brought girls home to dinner. homosexuals didn't do that kind of thing: he liked all the things that normal men liked. when jesse was a little boy, he had never asked to join the ballet, or pranced around in his mother's high heels, or tried on her dresses and gave everyone a 'fashion show' of sorts, like a homosexual would. those things had never interested him. eddie could only remember one time when chantelle had put him in her makeup — but he had only been 9 years old and unable to resist his sister's desperate pleads. other than that, there was nothing — no clues, no key events, absolutely nothing that pointed to the fact that jesse was gay.

eddie scratched his head. wait a minute. was jesse even gay? he had the playboy magazine too, and the boy had clearly been reading it, considering the soft curls around the edge of the pages and the creases near the spine. he had even folded the corner of a page with a particular girl in a set of white laced lingerie.