When We're Both Thirty

The Penultimate Penultimate Penultimate Chapter

"Oh fuck," Gerard says.

"What is it now?"

"I just got my eviction notice," Gerard replies, slamming his front door behind him and sighing. "Oh fuck. Fucking motherfucking fuck."

"Saying it in different ways does not change the fact that you have an eviction notice," Mikey says. "How much do you owe, and when is it due?"

"I'm not going to just let you pay my rent for me," Gerard says, shaking his head.

"Well I'm not going to let you just lose your apartment," Mikey says, "and I sure as hell don't want you living with me. You're gross. Plus I can't have company over with you there, and I sure as hell am not interested in hearing you and Frank when the two of you finally get together."

"Would you stop it with that?" Gerard asks, "I told you, I'm moving past this. I'm just going to forget about Frank."

"Gerard, forgetting about Frank would be like trying to forget the English language. You only speak English. That is your only language because you almost failed French for four years of high school. All you speak is English. So, you forgetting English would be impossible. The same can be said about you forgetting Frank."

"Frank is not a language."

"He might as well be," Mikey says, "Listen, dude, you love him. I know that, you know that, Frank knows that, my coworkers certainly know that, there is literally no one in the world who does not know that. It's kind of like the sun. Everyone knows the sun exists, because, look up, there it is. It's right there. That's the sun. The same can be said about your love of Frank. You love him."

"Mikey, it's eight at night. The sun isn't even in the sky."

"So? Does the sun just get scared away or something? Is it hiding in a little corner of the galaxy because the moon spooked it? No! The sun is still there, it's still there, it's just not visible for another couple of hours. It's on the other side of the world, but it's still there. Your love for Frank is still there. It may have been dormant for a couple of years, but you figured it out now, and there's no denying that. You love him."

Gerard shakes his head, "I don't want to think about him."

"That may be true, you may not want to think about him, but now that you know you love him, you cannot ever forget that."

"I just need some time to get over it."

"He is not a hurdle, Gerard, this is not a relay race. You cannot just 'get over it.' If anything, you need to get under it. And by 'it' I mean him. And by-"

"I don't need specifics!" Gerard shouts, stopping him, and throwing his pile of mail onto the kitchen counter. He looks at the little piece of paper that's surprisingly empty looking considering how huge it is. His eviction notice looks like any other sheet of paper does. It's white, it's got very little information on it besides the bolded print that specifies when Gerard has to be gone. He's got until the eleventh of November, which seems like years away, but it's not. It's his two weeks' notice, and if he doesn't pay his rent before that day, he really will be evicted for good. That gives him fourteen days to come up with almost a thousand dollars as an unemployed man with one of the blankest résumé's the world has ever seen. Only three days until Halloween and Frank's birthday. Honestly, the sound of being evicted is horrific, but not nearly as much as the terror he feels in knowing that Frank's birthday is only three days away.

He can't believe he's actually managed to get himself into this much boiling water. This is not how he saw adulthood when he was a little kid. He can't believe he has to deal with things like this. He thought that being adult would mean he'd be seeing rated R movies all the time, eating McDonalds for every meal of the day, and making out with supermodels. That was always the dream. He can live without the supermodels, he's okay without them, but he really does want to watch Rated R movies and eat McDonalds. If you can't have a giant bag of fries while watching people being brutally murdered than what is the point of adulthood? Taxes? Gerard never signed up for this!