The Tuxedo Man (boyxboy)[Wattys 2016]

Chapter 8 - Codes

[Picture: Eric Bradley Chancellor. Video: Nobody Love - Tori Kelly]

"Mom, I'm begging you, it's a waste of a free ticket!"

She remains unfazed, keeping her arms crossed in front of her as she stares at me with disagreement. "I don't buy this story of Ella just randomly getting a free ticket."

"You can call her parents and ask them." I say, taking everything from me to not stress every word in the sentence. "Max could take me and make sure that I'm really going to a Tori Kelly concert."

She huffs. "I know how siblings work. It's easy to cover for another."

"Then you take me!"

A shake of the head. "I'm in no mood to get dressed and drive right now."

I am literally so desperate right now, I'm almost up to the point where I'm going to offer to do chores for the rest of the week just so that she could let me go. It's a little bit awkward still having to ask my parents' permission to go out at the age of seventeen. But hey, what can I do about it? I live under their fucking roof.

I don't hand out the offer yet as I'm still trying to convince her to let me go, with the one week of chores being the last resort, my one final strategy, my trump card.

"Let him go." I hear Max say behind me. I turn my head to look at him as he takes a seat by the kitchen counter, peeling an orange. "It's going to be a concert. They're way too young to be doing anything that you're thinking."

"It's not like I'm gonna get drunk." I add.

Max is mom's second head. If Max agrees to letting me do something, then it's most likely that she'll agree as well. Dad lets me do whatever the fuck I want, which is really liberating and fun, as long as I let him know where I am and how I'm getting back home. I assume that he trusts me that much because I'm a fellow male, and I've pretty much proven to them that I'm able to take care of myself. Whenever mom is in the city however, you're going to be obliged to tell her where you're planning to go and await for her blessing; you know, scratch that, make it whenever mom is in the state of California. Hell, even Max needs to let mom know whenever he's gonna go out with his friends, and the man is twenty three years old, fully capable of moving out of the house and living on his own.

She glances at Max before she returns her gaze at me, and I raise my eyebrows in pity, praying that she's going to let me go. I've already changed my clothes and everything, all that's left is to wait for Ella's brother to pick me up as he's driving us to the concert; that is, if Max isn't taking me.

"You're going to be with Ella?"

I nod.

"And no one else?"

"Her brother might be there." I answer. "See? We have adult supervision."

She flicks her wrist, sending me off. But I notice that she turns to Max's direction as well, doing the same thing. That's silent for You can go but your brother is taking you.

He takes the last piece from his orange before getting up and grabbing his keys as we exit the house. I text Ella about the situation, and let her know that picking me up isn't going to be necessary. We get in his car and immediately after he starts driving, he speaks.

"So how's your text crush going?"

I get flustered as I remember the night Dylan and I shared. In hindsight, it was fairly good for a first date, and it wasn't as awkward as I thought it was going to be, thanks to him being witty and my determination of keeping the conversation going, even though our mouths were full.