Thirty Five Days

21: Driving

Needless to say my mother was not as excited as I was about the prospect of Gerard driving me to school.

"It defeats the purpose of being grounded really, doesn't it Frank?"

"No– being grounded means I can't do anything with my friends outside of school hours and this is technically school hours since he's making sure I arrive promptly at my first class. And you'd hate for me to miss out on my education by being late to class, wouldn't you?"

"Frank,you've managed to walk to school on time every single day the whole time you've been at school so I don't see why that would change now.Besides, the main reason I am objecting to this is because you had Gerard round here yesterday after I said you couldn't and you like him so this car journey is gonna mean more to you than if it were simply somebody's brother dropping you off at school."

I knew it was a bad thing that my mum knew I liked Gee. There was never a chance that she was going to leave that piece of information in the caring, not angry part of her brain. Of fucking course she had to throw it back in my face now.

"Look,if we hadn't had this argument I would have had time to walk to school but now you've made it necessary for me to go in the car with Gerard by telling me that I can't."

"Whatever,just go. This is not me saying you're not grounded any more by the way, this is me saying that you're clearly not going to listen to me anyway. I imagine I could protest until I was blue in the face and you would still go with so just go. Now, before I change my mind."

I didn't even wait long enough to thank her, thinking that might just have brought me to the end of my luck.

The car ride went fairly smoothly – Mikey sat in the back seat with his headphones playing loud enough that I could hear his music and I satin the front and chatted with Gee. We talked about nothing really,just an exchange of pleasantries and idle chit-chat. When we reached school Gerard simply stopped talking and switched off the car engine,waiting for Mikey and I to get out. We were barely two steps away from the car before Gerard had started driving again.

"What was that about, Frank? I don't think he ever offered me a lift to school, even when he was going as well."

Mikey sounded genuinely confused which made me smile to myself – Gee liked me enough to do something for me he hadn't even done for his own brother.

"Oh,err I dunno really, he just offered me a lift yesterday so I said yes. I didn't realise it was anything special, and hey, you got a lift to school out of it so I wouldn't complain too much."

"Wait, you saw him yesterday? I thought you were grounded."

"I am grounded but er, he came round to give back a comic that he had borrowed from me last time he visited. He asked about the lift just before he left."

Mikey just shrugged in response, as we both headed downstairs towards our first class of the day.

AN:

Hi everyone, I am so sorry that this hasn't been updated in so long and that this is such a short chapter - I thought it was best to get something else added to this story rather than just letting it waste away and not do anything. In truth, university is really stressful and I find it hard to balance writing this and submitting course work. Despite this I'm not going to discontinue the story because it means a lot to me and is reflective of a pretty rough time in my life. It is I guess on a semi-hiatus but I promise I will update (and eventually) complete it. Once again, thank you for reading it and if you liked it, please do comment/vote (if nothing else it works as a sort of motivation for me because it proves that people are actually reading this) <3