Seeds of Tomorrow

Four

Brynleigh was already on his nerves and they had barely even arrived at the party. Mark just wanted to kick it with some buddies but his girl clung to him like white on rice. She was insecure as fuck, constantly accusing him of talking to other girls, checking them out and cheating. Yes, he may or may not have messed with his ex, Olivia, a few times but that was the past, she needed to let that shit go.

"Aint they your friends?" Mark asked, pointing to a few blond girls in cut-off shorts.

"Yeah, but I want to hang out with you," she told him.

He took a long swallow of Coors's light, "You know you don't always have to be right next to me, you don't see anyone else here acting clingy as fuck," he said glancing at his friends for approval and being met with howls of laughter. Brynleigh looked down, clearly wounded before reluctantly joining the group of girls.

"Dude the fact she acts like that makes me want to cheat on her," Mark told Rocco who nodded, "You're lucky Evie ain't up your ass all the time."

Rocco shrugged his broad shoulders, "Wouldn't bother me any," he replied earnestly, "I like having her around."

"Bruh, you just say that now because you ain't never had any other bitches," Mark grinned, "Trust me, you gonna think differently later."

That was always Mark's go-to, you just never had anyone else as if having a girlfriend for the reason of liking her and enjoying her company was completely unheard of. Rocco would just nod in agreement because Mark would argue and argue, reminding him he's a virgin and whatnot. It was what it was. Though it did irritate the piss out of him that Mark acted like it was simply because his nephew (Rocco always chuckled when referring to himself as that) just couldn't get anybody when it wasn't the case.

He just knew he needed to make better choices than his own family, especially when he got old enough to realize that while blended families were totally a thing, most kids his age didn't have half-siblings with several different parents. Rocco himself had a total of six siblings. Two from dad and mom, Atira. Four from bio mom whom only the oldest two, Junior and Sophia,  were full siblings, his older sister Lisette had an unknown father, same with his younger sister Giana.

And then if he looked at Uncle Fernando, he had a whole grip of kids with a grip of baby moms. And Uncle Brad, rest in peace, he himself had three kids with three women. And to make shit even more confusing, Fernando married the mom of Brad's youngest kid who then became the mom of Fernando's youngest.

Confused yet? If so, you weren't alone because it blew everyone's mind. Rocco used to listen to his friends talk about how messed up or weird their families were but he felt like nobody would believe him and if they did, it was hard to keep track of who dated/married/had kids without a flow chart. So he always just used the "well Mark is my uncle", as his weird example or that his biological mom was in prison.

Point being, Rocco wasn't trying to deal with a whole mess of baby mommas and casual relationships. He loved the idea of having a nice stable relationship with no extra drama.

"Aye Rocco," Josh said interrupting his thoughts, "You wanna hit this?" He asked between coughs, a Super Mario Bros bong in his hand.

Uhhh yeah. What kind of question was that? Hell yeah. Rocco nodded, laughing at the piece itself, "Where you find this?"

Still coughing, "My brother," he choked.

"That's hella dope, bruh," Rocco told him appreciatively. Mario had been his A1 since day one, he fucking loved Mario, regardless of his age. He took a fat hit and coughed his ass off. Never could understand how his dad and uncle could blaze all day and not cough or even act high.