Page 80 of Roll With The Punches
“School starts up again in a couple of weeks. No more overnights until then. Future overnights, you sleep in separate rooms, until you’re both seventeen. We catch you sneaking around when you think we’re asleep, the overnights will totally end while you live under my roof. When you’re here together, the bedroom door stays open if you’re both in there. I’m not stupid enough to try to forbid you two from messing around before you’re both seventeen, but expect that, until that time, you’re going to get an annoying amount of oversight that you never dreamed of before. When we know you’re alone together, I will be calling and texting and if I don’t get immediate replies from you, those alone times will also end until you’re seventeen. Ditto if Stu and Jeff call or text. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir,” Em said.
“I’m not doing this to be an asshole. I’m doing this because breaking trust has consequences. Here’s whatkillsme, honey. Had you two come tome, at least, when you first got together, werehonestwith me, and told me what was going on? I would have sat you two down for a real-world talk about the facts of life for gay folks, and I would have been willing to…overlook some things. Give you some privacy. Because I was a kid. And it’s not like you two can get each other pregnant.”
“That’s whatIsaid,” Em mumbled.
“Oh, you didnotjust say that to me,” Brandon snapped. “Because that isnotwhat this is about, and I knowdamnwell you’re smarter than that, Emma.”
He glared at her until she finally looked down again. “Sorry, sir.”
“Thankyou.” He took a long, deep breath to rein in his anger. “And just because you can’t get pregnant with each other doesn’t mean you’re immune to STIs. Here’s what also kills me. Em, you complain you can’t trust your mom. Or Pat. Or Corey. Yet…” He held out his left hand, indicating the obvious. “Want to tell me how this is any different?”
Tears rolled down her cheeks now, and Grace’s, but he fought the urge to swoop in and comfort them.
They didn’t accidentally finish off dessert during snack time and tried to hide it.
They’dlied, repeatedly, for over a year.
Knowingly, and with the purpose to skirt around what they’d known damn well would have been rules and boundaries put into place to address it.
“Also, for the next four weeks, Emma, once one of us is home, you hand off your phone until morning on weekdays, and we’ll hold it the entire time you’re home on weekends. And wewillbe monitoring your phone. Whether it’s me, Jeff, or Stu. You just lost electronic privacy for the next four weeks. No texting through the computer either, or e-mailing each other, and no Facebook. Your laptop stays on the kitchen counter, or on the dining room table. It does not go in your room. If you need to talk about a school assignment, you will come get me and I will give you my phone to call her while you are right there with me. Yes, that’s mean of me, but you need to understand how seriously I take this.”
“Yes, sir.”
“No messaging apps, either, trying to backdoor contact, or I’ll block Grace’s number from our cell account, forbid you from talking to her or seeing her outside of school for fourweeks, plus you’ll end up with a cheap flip phone that can’t text. Understand me?”
“Whoa,” Jeff murmured next to him. Brandon knew the girls couldn’t hear Jeff, and it was more a comment of shock than it was trying to get Brandon to slow up.
Brandon gently squeezed his hand but didn’t take his focus from the girls. Four weeks might as well be forever to them at their age, and considering he had never issued punishments like this to Emma before, he strongly suspected she wasn’t going to try to slip around him this time out of fear of him following through and doing exactly what he said.
“Remember how you ripped me a new one that night when you met Stuart and you thought I was cheating on Jeff because you didn’t stop to talk to me first?”
Emma nodded.
From the surprised glance Grace gave to Em, he realized maybe she hadn’t heard that story.
“At any point in this past year-plus time did you stop to think that lying to us was a bad idea?”
Em nodded.
“But it didn’t stop you.”
She shook her head.
“Are we clear on these rules? Because I do not want to find out in a few weeks or months you’re trying to find a loophole.”
“We’re clear, sir.”
“Do you agree you should be punished for breaking our trust like this?”
More tears. “Yes, sir.”
He focused on Grace. “You try to help her get around these new rules, and you’ll make things worse for both of you. Understand?”
“Yes, Pop. I’m sorry.”
“So am I. I love you like a daughter. But you’re not my daughter, and I can’t guarantee what your parents are going to give you in terms of punishment. Due to you both knowingly lying to us, I’m not going to go to bat for you for leniency, either. I doubt your parents are going to have a problem with you being gay and dating Emma. I strongly suspect they’re going to be just as angry about the lying as I am. I do promise that, if I’m wrong, and they hassle you about being gay, we will—”
