Page 2 of Strictly Curious
“What are you doing?” I finally asked him. It was going to bother me if he kept staring.
“Is this as weird for you as it is for me?” he finally asked.
I rested on my elbow and scrunched my eyebrows. He was the one who’d crawled into my bed. He was the one who said he’d wanted to talk earlier in the day.
“What are you talking about? I didn’t even know my dad was seeing anyone. He said he was going to a conference for work and came home with you and your mom,” I explained.
Garrett sat up and nodded. “Yeah, mom gave me a similar story. Work conference. Some place called Las Vegas.”
That sounded about right. I laid back down and stared at the ceiling, as Garrett fell onto his back next to me. I debated if I should have him move back to the floor.
He was staring at me again when I rolled my head to face him.
“We should sleep,” I said. He nodded and closed his eyes, his head still turned in my direction, so I stared back at the ceiling instead.
I pinched my eyes closed and tried not to think about how strange it was that in the matter of a day my entire world changed. I went from being an only child to having a mom and a brother.
Where was his dad? Did dads get sad after babies were born too? Did something else happen? Maybe it was like my friend Sammy. His parents fought a lot and that was why his parents weren’t together anymore.
I had to stop thinking about it. I had to stop thinking about the boy snoring softly beside me. He didn’t seem to have any trouble falling asleep.
Garrett - Age Twelve
Twoyears.Howhadtwo years flown by? I still couldn’t wrap my head around Mom coming home from that trip and telling me to pack a bag. Much less when she loaded me into a car with a strange man and then went to his house.
The scared boy who had greeted us, or more like ran away from us, was fascinating. His blond hair and bright blue eyes which expressed so much of his emotions pulled me in. When he’d suddenly run, I had this need to check on him, so I snuck away and followed him upstairs.
Those first few weeks were a change. Tyler wasn’t used to having other people in his home, much less a brother and a mom. I tried really hard to make things easy for him, and I really wanted to be his friend.
The more I got to know him, it was obvious that Tyler was less outgoing than I was. He had only a small group of friends that he played with at school, who accepted me easily, offering trading cards and video game codes so that we could find each other online.
It didn’t take long to realize Tyler was a lot quieter than I was. He was content to keep to himself and his friends, where I was always seeking new people. I never seemed to want him out of my sight. He was pretty to look at, and I knew that feeling wasn’t normal. He was also funny, and I wanted to spend all of my time talking to him.
“Garrett?” Tyler’s gentle calling of my name pulled me from my thoughts, and I looked at him from over the top of the game controller. I hadn’t realized I’d spaced out while we’d had friends over and my character was once again dead on the screen.
“Dang it, sorry. Wasn’t paying attention,” I muttered, coming back to life and focusing on the game. Tyler got up from the other couch and plopped next to me, causing me to lean into him, and he rested against me. One of my friends, Gabriel, looked between the two of us, but said nothing. Without thinking about it, I hooked one of my arms through Ty’s and kept playing.
He felt warm and comfy next to me. I found my thoughts drifting away from my game again. Tyler chuckled as another shot I could have easily dodged took me out. His whole body shook with the simple action.
“Damn, man. Can you pay attention?” Gabriel said.
Mom popped her head out of the kitchen glaring at him and he shrank down in his spot on the couch. “Sorry Mrs. Mason!” he called.
I laughed because normally my mom was pretty chill and it was still weird hearing her name as something different. She had been cracking down on my friends and their language recently, however. Something about just because us kids were getting older didn’t mean we needed to act like little adults yet.
“Sorry, Gabriel. I don’t know what’s up,” I lied. I knew exactly what was going on. Tyler plastered to my side had me completely distracted, but I wasn’t about to ask him to move because he was always a distraction no matter where he was in the room.
“Whatever, man. Let’s just play. I don’t want to head home yet.”
Cassie seemed disinterested as she got up and went into the kitchen with my mom. I wasn’t exactly sure why she always tagged along. I knew Tyler didn’t like her as much because she wasn’t always the nicest to him, but she was pretty and I got along with her.
Tyler’s friend Maisy seemed to follow Cassie’s example. Go figure the girls didn’t seem as interested in the video game despite Maisy playing with us sometimes. The girl was cool as shit. Today, however, she didn’t want to hang.
When one more shot took me out Gabriel threw his controller down and glared across the room. He was obviously getting frustrated that I couldn’t focus and I couldn’t blame him. I extracted my arm from Tyler and stood to stretch.
“Sorry.” I knew the constant apologies weren’t enough for how frustrated he was at me, but it was worth it to see what the girls were getting up to in the kitchen. “Maybe we should take a break for now.”
Gabriel nodded, and we went into the kitchen to see what was going on. We found the girls sitting around the kitchen island with Mom, drinking glasses of milk and eating the cookies Mom had made earlier today. She was telling them some random story about when I was little which was always embarrassing. Why did moms think it was necessary to do that to their children?
