The Only Exception [BoyxBoy]

05 | ωє αℓℓ ωαит ℓσνє

I can pretend that I'm not lonely
But I'll be constantly fooling myself

Chapter 05 ~ We All Want Love

Ryan Rivera

When I had kicked my feet up on the ottoman, reclined further in my seat, stuffed my hand into the party size bag of Doritos, and settled in to binge watch How to Get Away With Murder, the last thing I expected was for Bobby to come knocking with strange news about my birth mother's whereabouts. It was so absurd of a statement that I had to blink several times to make sure that I wasn't seeing things. Unfortunately, this situation was very real–Bobby had officially gone mad.

"What are you talking about," I sighed as I began to walk back into the house, waiting for Bobby to follow suit. "Careful, don't step there."

He stopped in his tracks. "What?"

"My parents installed cameras, so you're gonna have to walk towards the kitchen."

I saw Bobby raise an eyebrow, but he didn't say anything else on the subject; instead, he followed my directions on how to get to the living room without being detected by the cameras. The good thing about being grounded was that I had enough time on my hands to figure out where these inconspicuous cameras were placed, and how much space they covered.

"Anyway," Bobby continued as he plopped onto the sofa next to me. Naturally, I placed my bag of chips between us so that he could have some. "I did a little bit of digging at the carnival. There was this ancestry booth thing, and I found your parents."

"Wow," I said, feigning astonishment. "Did you find my long lost brother, too?" It was probably a dick move to be reacting like this, but I was in a bitter mood. My brother was able to go to the carnival for football reasons, while I was forced to stay home. Because my parents didn't trust me being alone by myself, they gave Kahori a lump sum of money to be my baby sitter.

"Stop being a dick," Bobby spat. "This is serious. I know where your mother is. I called the number."

"Okay, so you're just going to skip the part where you tell me why you were snooping into my family history?"

Bobby's deep umber eyes burned into mine with a intense amount of irritation–much like most of his glares whenever I questioned the method to his madness. "I wasn't snooping. I was just trying to help, you know, because your parents suck. What if your birth parents are better? I'd do anything to trade in my parents for better ones."

Forcing myself to tear my gaze away from him, I stared straight ahead at the muted TV. Lately, I had been thinking a lot about my birth parents. Bryan and I didn't know much about them other than the framed photograph they had left with us when they dropped us outside of a chapel at just three years old.

I didn't remember much about my relationship with them, but I did remember feeling really sad and lonely when they walked away, constantly wondering when they were going to come back.

Just like back then, I still wanted to know why they abandoned us. It had to have been for a good reason, I've always told myself, because it was easier than thinking that my parents didn't love us enough to keep us.

I had been in the foster care system for ten years, bouncing from foster parent to foster parent, and never having a permanent home until three years ago when Jamie and Scar decided to adopt Kahori, Bryan, and me. We were probably more than they had ever bargained for, which is why I admired their resilience, but I'd be lying if I said I never sought that same love from my birth parents.