Foreign Love

XIX - 'Hollywood!'

Chapter 19: "Hollywood!"

A month and a half later, things seemed to be going perfectly fine with my life. For once. My relationship with Nikolai was strong, my grades were at their very best and whatever I had with Andrew was left in the past for good, at least for me.

Every now and then, he would run into me and try to talk me into a subject of his interest, often how I felt about him, but, after the third or fourth time, I was perfectly able to resist his persuasion, and never give him a decisive answer.

My parents had no problems at all with my relationship with Nikolai, especially my mother. Nikolai was very interested in Politics and they were often discussing a certain country's political situation, giving different opinions about it and agreeing — or not — with each other.

My father's opinion about Nikolai was quite neutral, just as his opinion about politics in general, although he showed no objections to what we had either. He preferred Andrew because he could always talk about something with him, as they both had similar interests, but he never stated that to me.

Not directly, at least.

"Your new boyfriend seems like a nice guy, Tom." He said one time during dinner. "Too bad I lost my soccer pal." He added.

My mother added her own opinion about the matter on another occasion. "I think your boyfriend's the one, Tom. He's a woke type of guy. He discusses politics like someone my age would and I think our country needs more young people like him. I couldn't have wished for a better son-in-law.

Everything was going well until Summer came.

If you're in the final year of high school, as I was, you must know that by the last two months of the school year, you're already expected to have most of your life planned, since, from then on, you only have a few weeks left, which is very little time when compared to the importance of the decisions you are about to make.

But my academic life was already planned, I managed to choose between Oxford and Sorbonne — I chose the former — and I'd already applied to it. All that was left for me was to wait for an answer to come.

My only problem was that I hadn't told Nikolai about it. I decided to only do it in case I really got in. I was quickly getting attached to him and feared I would break his heart when I told him about college.

Nikolai walked me to school pretty much every day, except when he really couldn't do it, and those were the worst days.

A warm late-June Wednesday, just three days before the annual promenade dance — "prom", if you will — and ten days before our graduation, was one of those days.

The night before, I got a text from him telling me that he wouldn't be able to walk me to school because he had some stuff to do at work.

As I was leaving home, I heard some strange sounds coming from the Fox's house. Giggles and moans, mostly. It's wrong, I know, but I decided to take a little peek.

I found the source of the noise to be their porch. The wall wasn't very tall, so I just got close enough to it and stood on the tip of my toes, and boy, was I surprised!

"MABEL!?"

She was making out with Cheryl and I didn't know if I was more surprised by the fact that Mabel, the number one hetero girl, who had dated guys mostly everywhere she'd gone, was making out with another girl, or that Cheryl Fox, who'd had a crush on me for as long as I could remember, was that girl.

"Tom?!" Cheryl exclaimed, quickly backing away from Mabel. She blushed several shades of red, diminishing the contrast between her ginger hair and pale skin.