New Guy on the Street (Larry)

Chapter Twenty: Won the Battle and the Fight

It had been nearly three weeks since my mother and Mr. Wright decided to become official. Three weeks. That’s three weeks of seeing Mr. Wright nearly every day in a place that wasn’t school and three weeks of trying to sneak around with Louis. My mother had been home more and more often and spent all of her time with Mr. Wright. Not that I don’t like to see my mother happy, it’s just she never has time for me anymore (and she never used to either). Louis has noticed I’m not happy with this whole ordeal and has done everything he can to make me feel better about the two of them, including taking me on dates far from home, singing to me, and taking me to his bedroom for other reasons than to sleep.

While Mr. Wright dating my mother has brought Louis and I closer together than we ever would have been without, there also are some bad issues involved.

Last Sunday, Louis came over to help me finally unpack and rearrange my room, something I had been talking about doing for quite some time. Little did we know that Mr. Wright was coming over for supper that night. The two of us were joking around and playing with bubble wrap and packing peanuts when I thought it would be a good idea to try and give Louis the lovebite I had sworn to give him so long ago.

Some idea that was.

Right as my lips were attached to his neck, there was one knock on my door before it swung open. Luckily, I heard the knock and rolled off of Louis before the evil person who interrupted us could see what we were up to. The improve classes I had taken when I was about thirteen came back to me quickly as I started to laugh as if I had been laughing the entire time.

“What’s going on in here?” Mr. Wright asked before looking to Louis on the ground and pointing towards him. “What happened?”

It was my time to shine.

“Lou-Louis s-slipped on the p-p-packing pean-nuts,” I said in-between laughs, clutching my stomach for dramatic effect.

Damn, I’m good. Now Louis has to play along.

I watch as he slowly starts to sit up and groans in pretend pain. “No wonder they are trying to outlaw these things,” he says, picking up a few of the white pieces. “They’re bad for the environment and for your health.” I start to laugh again pretending that what he said was funny, though it wasn’t in the slightest way.

“Right,” Mr. Wright says while eyeing the two of us, “well, your mother said that dinner is almost ready. I think Mr. Tomlinson here needs to head home soon.” I nod, trying my hardest not to roll my eyes as Mr. Wright exits my room, leaving the door open.

As soon as I know he’s already walked down the stairs, I talk again. “Who does he think he is? He’s already trying to control my life and he hasn’t even been dating my mother for two weeks.” Louis leans over and brushes my hair back.

“It’s gonna be okay, Curls,” he says reassuringly. “We’ll finish this later, alright?” He stands up and brushes his bottom off before offering me a hand and pulling me up with him. He leans down a bit and presses his lips to mine. “Tell me how dinner goes,” he says while the two of us exit my room.

I walked him to the front door, wishing I could kiss him one last time before he left for the night. If Mr. Wright hadn’t been standing there, I would have.

Dinner that night was not the slightest bit pleasant either. My mother and Mr. Wright were making ‘lovey’ comments to each other which was making me have a hard time keeping my Mac n’ Cheese down.

Later that night, I FaceTimed Louis and the two of us talked until we fell asleep. I had told him about how I wished I could have taken the knife we used to spread the butter on our bread and stabbed Mr. Wright in the knee cap for kicking him out. Louis just laughed at my silliness.