Breathe, Tommy (BxB) (Frat)

One ・Fratty Freshman

PART I

~Tommy

"Come on, sweetheart," Mom coaxes me as she gets out of our silver Chrysler Pacifica, the only family car she and Dad didn't rock-paper-scissor for. I barely hear her because the less sane part of my existence is too busy yapping:

Put in some earbuds and ignore everyone, but also: Attend all the frat parties, get all the girls, and earn the 'Fuckboy' title. Make them think you're straight and your secret will be safe.

Mom taps the window, snatching my attention. She gives me a consoling smile while ignoring the smudged glass — courtesy of Olive's (my humble eight-year-old sister who's still oblivious to Dad's dopey-ness) fingers — and tugs open my door.

I get out and join her, Olive, and Dad who's distracted by the idyllic campus exterior now he's coming here for the first time. It looks far better than my high school back in Georgia.

"Baby," Mom sighs. Worried or happier than ever for me, I can't tell. "We'll be a long way away now. I need to know you're going to be okay. I cannot believe I'm leaving you all the way here."

"I'll be okay," I assure her, "told you not to worry, this will be better than before," but how do you convince a mother to go against her innate need to nurture and protect?

She leans over to kiss my cheek just as Dad opens up the trunk. There's a familiar whine to his tone as he says, "Tommy, get your ass back here and help me."

"There are nicer ways to tell him to do something."

"Well, if I don't throw 'ass' in my every sentence to him, he won't listen. The boy's fucking deaf when I don't," Dad defends his incompetent parenting only to deliver more who-gave-you-permission-to-be-a-parent? parenting. He's supportive of my sexuality, his lowkey offensive jokes are his loving way of showing it; took him by surprise though when he found out while Mom let out a sigh of relief, glad I'd finally told them.

Olive's gone off to explore and doesn't hear him swearing. I watch her sit on the mown grass and roll about in giggles in her summer dress, a sun yellow that expresses her evergreen sparkle. She loves the outside. Well, until her eyes start itching and she gets all snotty and Dad's fumbling around for her allergy sprays and drops, forgetting where he put them, then Mom's intervening with the second supply in her purse. He's such a mess and she's his full-time cleaner. It works, in the least unprogressive way. She loves him like that. I don't know how she does it.

I love him for accepting me no matter what, but he has no filter. Sometimes it's triggering, sometimes it's freeing...him being his untempered self without a care in the multiverse. Sometimes I know Mom's whacking him across the mouth with a non-vulgar dictionary in her head. Then the love takes over.

"Alex, say hindquarters, rear end, fudging, etcetera. We didn't give birth to raise our children around that kind of language."

"You say 'we' figuratively, right? Because I don't remember doing the giving birth part," Dad winks. The infinite amounts of myself cringe. Mom rolls her eyes, grabs one of my boxes, and heads towards the dorms. She needs a long-lasting pair of sneakers to run from his issues.

"Freya, I love you, you are my high school sweetheart, and I swear to not swear again." What a clown.

"Oh, yeah, of course, Al. I think you got that engraved on my wedding ring, isn't it? Think you even put that in your vow, too." PassiveAgressive.com.