The Boys and Me

60. Love Can Be Easy

Walking inside, I was greeted by loud shouts coming from the other end of the house. I sighed with a smile, recognising the sound as two boys playing video games.

"They're going pretty hard, aren't they?" I asked Cori, who was in the living room. She nodded with a laugh.

"They always used to be like this, but this year was just different for a while" She said.

"That's partly my fault. I know that me coming into things caused more than a few tiffs between Zane and Heath, between all of them" I said and she smiled.

"They're all stubborn. I'm glad it was you that did this because only you could have brought them back together this way. But it wasn't all your fault, they were like this until Heath joined them, because they couldn't hang out anywhere else but here. Then Scotty got into the mix and had Heath doing all these crazy things like getting initiation tattoos and getting into trouble with the cops to prove he was serious" She said.

"Did that stop?" I asked.

"Scotty stopped asking him but he'd gotten the taste for it again and he was more secretive than when he was fourteen, we didn't know half the things he did. He didn't stop until you." She said.

"Don't blame Scott for that, he has an odd way of showing his trust in others" I said and she shook her head with a smile.

"I know he does, it's just without his input Heath wouldn't have gotten as close to juvie as he did. Can't blame a mother for caring about her son" She said and I nodded.

"Definitely not. I'm glad I made things okay again" I said and she sighed.

"He made you get one too, didn't he?" She asked.

"One what?" I asked, wondering if she meant the tattoo.

"The initiation tattoo thing, that stupid word marked on my sons body for the rest of his life" She said and I sighed with a nod.

"Yeah, he didn't make me though. He told me I had to but I knew if I had refused then he wouldn't have made me" I said.

"So you agreed to it?" She asked, confused and I nodded.

"I've always wanted tattoos. I guess this was kind of a cool way to start" I said and she shook her head.

"Do you mind me asking if I can see it?" She asked and I shook my head, lifting my shirt and showing her the delicate word on my hip forever.

"I thought he would have made you get the word 'nerd'" She said with a laugh and I laughed too.

"He almost did but Zane changed his mind. This was the day I mopped up his broken nose, the first day he trusted me and vice versa" I said, the day having been one of the most up and down days of my entire life. Well, at that point at least.

"Don't let that Scotty get to you Al, you're better than anything he could do to you" She said and I nodded.

"I know, and I think he knows too. He treats me different and I'm pretty sure it's not because I'm a girl and they're boys." I said and she shrugged.

"Who knows? Maybe he's in love with you" She joked and I choked on my laughter.

"Bad joke?" She asked and I nodded, laughing.

"The worst. There is no way in hell we'd ever be interested in each other, we piss each other off too much." I said and she laughed.

"I guess you're right, I've heard of how you two are together and I don't think the universe would ever allow that to happen" She said with a wink and I nodded.