undeniable feelings | a stephchelle story

Chapter 29 - going home

— MICHELLES POV —

I feel a gentle tap on my shoulder. I look up briefly to see my nan peering down at me. I raise my head and stretch out my arms.
"I'm here now love, do you want to get in the car?" She soothingly whispers, helping me up and propping me beside Stephanie, who's head is leaning against the car door as she's drifting off to sleep herself.

The back door car shuts and I hear the engine start. I lie across Stephanie's shoulder, wrapping my arms around her waist as she fiddles with her hair with her fingers.
"So what happened exactly Stephanie." I briefly hear as Stephanie sits up to tell the story, her fingers still combing slowly through my long hair.

"Do you want the long long story?" Stephanie sighs, implying that she's going to tell my nan about her parents, and Toby.
"Okay." My nan confusingly says, not expecting what she's about to hear.

"Okay, so when I was 13, my brother fell in love with a guy, so pretty much my brother was gay, and when he came out to my parents, he got kicked out of our house." She begins. "So being gay is quite a scary thing for me as it is. There's also this boy in my life called Toby, he's really controlling and homophobic like my parents. I pretty much made the mistake of coming out to toby and he beat me up badly for it, and said that if I don't stay away from Michelle over summer, he'll tell my parents about me being gay, and I'll get kicked out of my house. So just then at the beach, I saw some of his friends, and I know for a fact they'd tell him what I'd been up to. So they said that they won't say anything to Toby if we give them the remains of our money."

I glance up from shut eyes to see as Stephanie is explaining, tears are once again falling from her eyes, I sit up beside her and bring my forehead into contact with hers, staring deeply into her and reassuring her.

"Why doesn't he want you to be gay? Why can't he just let you go?" My nan questions.
"He's really popular, so if the entire school find out about his girlfriend turning gay, it'll supposedly ruin his reputation. He also thinks gays are stupid" She sobs.
"That's awful." My nan protectively rages, her eyebrows lowering "nobody deserves to be treated like that, especially you." She angrily shouts.
"And when Stephanie goes back to school, we won't be able to hang out during the day, Toby's going to make her hang around with him." I add.
"I wish there was something we can do." My nan sighs, looking off into the distance in search of inspiration.
"There's nothing we can do." Stephanie sobs "he has me in a situation where he can use anything against me, and it'll lead to me getting prevented from ever going home or seeing any relatives again, my parents will make sure of it." She whimpers.

This scares me for her a lot. I really wish there was something we could do, but as of right now, nothing is looking good for her. I just have to make the most of this summer I have with her before school starts again, and I'm going to make it the best summer for her.