Freefall

By Codey

Editing, web page design, and graphics by Blue

Chapter 04

“Hey, Bri.”

“Hey, Scott.”

“So you got there OK, I see.”

“Yeah, late last night.”

“Everything cool there?”

“Just like old times. We just sort of fell back into the old routine. It’s like we hadn’t seen each other for a few days instead of a year. How are things there? Have they called out the National Guard to hunt me down yet?”

“Actually, it’s pretty quiet. They both have a big-time mad going on, but neither has said anything to me, except to ask me where you were last night.”

“What did you say?”

“I said I hadn’t seen you since morning and you hadn’t said anything to me about going any place.”

“...And?”

“That’s it. They haven’t said anything else to me. I’m pretty good at playing dumb, and I think they know I wouldn’t tell them anything anyway.”

“Thanks, Bro.”

“How long are you planning on being away?”

“As long as possible. I know I’ll have to be back for school but that’s over a week away. Hey!”

“What?”

“I just looked at the caller ID on Tim’s phone. It says it’s me on the phone.”

“Ha-ha-ha, well, there’s no sense in wasting the time on my own.”

“How’d you get my phone from Mom and Dad?”

“Stole it from their room. They probably think you took it when you left.”

“Thanks a lot, Scott. I’m sure they needed another reason to lock me away. Now, I’m not just a perv, but a thieving perv.”

“Think about it, Bri. Do you really want them to have your phone right now?”

“Why not?”

“Damn good thing you have a smart big bro! You’re gone and they don’t know where. Do you want them to have your phone with all your friends’ names and numbers in your contacts list?”

“Oh, I never thought of that. Thanks, Scott.”

“Hey, I have your back, lil bro. That’s what brothers do.”

“This is confusing me.”

“What is?”

“Why you’re being so good to me.”

“I told you. That’s what big brothers do.”

“But, all our lives, you’ve called me names and treated me like dirt.”

“Of course I did. That’s the other thing big brothers do!”

“Ha-ha-ha...”

“So, what do you guys have planned for while you’re there?’

“I don’t know. Today, we’re just going to hang out and catch up with each other’s life. Later today, some of Tim’s friends are coming over so he can introduce me.”

“Sounds cool. I have to head for work or I’ll be late. If you need me, call me, OK?”

“I will, and thanks for being so cool with all this, Scott.”

“No problem, Bri. Hang in there, Little Bro”.

“I will; bye, Scott.”

When I woke up that first morning in Chicago, I was disoriented at first. I was unsure where I was. I knew this wasn’t my bed and there was someone in it with me. As the sleep left me, I remembered. I was safe. I was at Tim’s.

I opened my eyes, rolled onto my back and saw Tim. He was sitting cross-legged on his side of the bed watching me. “What?” I asked.

“You still do it.” he answered.

“Do what?”

“Snore,” he responded. “It brings back some good memories, Bri.”

“I don’t snore.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Don’t.”

“Do! I know you do, because it wakes me up and I have to listen to it. You don’t think you do because you’re used to it and sleep right through it,” he said, grabbing his pillow and hitting me with it.

“You’re as full of crap as ever!” I answered, grabbing my own pillow and hitting him back. It was soon a full-fledged pillow fight, as we bounced around his room, trying to get in a good shot. Both our morning woods were tenting our boxers but, as ever, were no concern to either of us. We’d almost immediately settled back into that familiarity that had always been a part of our relationship. What’s a little thing, like a piss hard-on between best friends?

His dad walked by the room and stood at the door watching the pillow fight. He was shaking his head, but still wore a smile. “Some thing’s never change, do they?” he asked with a chuckle. “You two better settle down before the lady of the house hears you,” he said, turning to walk on down the hall. Both of us laughed and threw our pillows at his retreating back. “And pick up those pillows,” he said, without bothering to turn around.

“Whose turn for first shower?” Tim asked, as if it were only a few days since we’d been together.

“Mine,” I answered like I always did.

“No, it’s not. It’s my turn.”

“Well, if you knew that, then why did you ask?”

“Just checking...just checking, Bri.”

“Can I at least piss first?”

“That might be a good idea,” he said, looking down at my tented boxers. “It looks like little Brian is about to explode.”

“Screw you,” I said, turning to head for the bathroom. What I’d said suddenly hit me, and I looked over my shoulder to see if it had upset him. He was going through his drawers looking for clean clothes and humming to himself. He was unfazed by a gay guy saying, ‘screw you.’ “Tim’s dad is right,” I thought “Some things never change. Or do they?”

A few months ago, I’d not have given a second thought to saying something like that to Tim or any other friend. All this crap with Mom and Dad, though, had me second-guessing everything. Things had definitely changed at home, and I’d gone from being the good son to being the devil incarnate. I found myself worrying about bullshit stuff that wasn’t important. Their treatment was changing me and I didn’t like it. It was going to be good for me to be here for a week. I could find the old me, maybe, and start being him again.

After I’d gone to the bathroom and started back to Tim’s room, I had an evil thought. I locked the bathroom door, stripped off my boxers, stepped into the tub, and after pulling the shower curtain closed, took the first shower.

When I got back to Tim’s room, he sat on the edge of his bed staring sternly at me. He got up and headed to the shower without saying a word, but stopped at the door and turned around. “I suppose you thought that was funny?” he asked.

“Yep, and as a matter of fact, I still do think it’s funny.”

“Wrong! Gawd, Brian, your sense of humor sucks. We really need to work on that.” Then he added with a twinkle in his eye, “The only way that would have been funny is if I’d done it to you. You’re gonna pay for this, dweebo. It may be when we’re old and gray and in a nursing home, but someday, this is gonna jump up and bite your ass!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever, jock-boy.”

“You’ll see,” he said, heading for his shower. “Just you wait. You’ll see.”

We were still arguing when we entered the kitchen for breakfast. “Good morning,” Tim’s mom said. “I see everything’s back to normal already.” She laughed.

“Good morning,” we each replied, going over and giving her a kiss on the cheek.

“What was all that ruckus I heard when you two first got up?”

Tim and I looked at each other guiltily. “Nothing,” we answered in unison.

She looked at us and then over to Tim’s dad. When he looked up from his paper, she raised one eyebrow and just stared at him. He looked over at us and gave us a “sorry, guys” shrug of his shoulders and said to her, “Pillow fight.”

“I figured so,” she said.

Tim gave his dad a mock look of horror and said, “You’re a narc!”

“Just call me George,” his dad laughed. “I cannot tell a lie.”

“Well, I hope you two got it all out of your systems,” his mom said. “Both of you know the rule about wrestling in the house.”

“Mommy,” Tim whined in his best two year old voice, “It’s all Brian’s fault, he’s being mean to me this morning.”

“Totally undeservedly too, I’ll bet.” his dad said sarcastically from behind his paper.

“I was talking to my mommy, Mr. Narc-Man.”

“I may be a narc, but I know who I have to keep happy around here. You’ll soon be eighteen and we’ll be lucky if we see you once a month. Your mother, on the other hand, I have to live with for the rest of my life.”

“You have to live with?” his wife asked, setting a platter of pancakes on the table. “I’m sure you meant to say, ‘who I long desperately to spend the rest of my life with,’ didn’t you dear?”

“Of course, Sweetheart, that’s exactly what I meant to say,” he said, blowing his wife an air kiss.

Tim was staring at the platter of pancakes. “Blueberry pancakes? We haven’t had blueberry pancakes since we moved here.”

“Don’t worry, dear, I know you and your father don’t like them, so I made plain ones for the two of you. I thought it’d be a nice gesture, to make Brian’s favorite breakfast, his first day here.”

Tim turned and looked at me. “When I do something wrong around here, I’m put in solitary confinement and I’m lucky if I get bread and water. You’ve been here less than twelve hours and have already committed a misdemeanor and a felony, and she’s making blueberry pancakes for you?”

I looked at him in puzzlement.

“I mean, OK, the pillow fight was just a minor misdemeanor, but make no mistake about it, stealing that shower was a felony that you will pay dearly for someday!”

“Stealing a shower?” she asked her husband in bewilderment.

He merely shrugged and said, “It’s probably best not to ask, we probably don’t want to know.”

She nodded in agreement. “You’re probably right, we don’t want to know,” she laughed.

After we’d sucked up all the available food, Tim and I went out the back door to rest and build up our appetites for lunch. We sat down on the rear steps and I got my first look at their new house and yard.

The suburb we lived in, near St. Louis, was nice; really nice houses and big yards. This house was nice alright, but looked out of place on one of the tiniest yards I’d ever seen. “Not much grass to mow,” I said, looking at Tim with a knowing smile. He hated mowing, and their yard back home was the largest in the neighborhood. I looked forward, every week, to see what scheme he’d come up with to try and talk me into helping him mow. I mowed for other people as a way to earn money for my college fund and, in a way, enjoyed mowing. There was something about mowing that appealed to me. I think it was partly the feeling of being in control, with no one telling me how to mow. I’m sure, though, that the biggest appeal was the sense of immediate gratification you got from mowing. All you had to do was stop and look around, and you could see what you had accomplished.

“Yeah,” he said, “ten minutes instead of the two hours it took us at the old house.”

“Six hours.” I corrected him.

“It never took us six hours.”

“Not to mow, but if you add the four hours it took you every week to con me into doing half for you, then it adds up to six hours,” I laughed.

“You always knew I was conning you, didn’t you? So tell me, why didn’t you ever just offer to help?”

“It was too much fun watching you scheme and sweat. And besides, if you knew I knew, why didn’t you ever just ask me to help?”

“I think if I’d asked, it would have taken all the fun out of the game. Don’t you?”

I thought for a minute before answering, “Yeah, for both of us.”

We walked through the little passage between their house and the one next door towards the front. “These houses are awfully close, aren’t they?” I asked.

“There’s more room between them on the other side,” he said. “This whole street was six family tenement buildings, at one time. On the side, where there’s more room, is where the stairs were to the two upper floors. It’s part of an urban renewal scheme. You can buy the houses cheap from the city, that got them for unpaid taxes, and then you spend more money renovating them than you could have torn them down and built new houses for.” He laughed.

The narrow passageway we had walked down was creepy. “I don’t think I could live this close to another house,” I said.

“It has its advantages,” he said with a leer. “When we first moved here, there was a girl about our age in the bedroom just across from mine. Sometimes she’d forget to pull her shade down and I’d get a real show!” he said laughing.

“And knowing you, I bet sometimes you’d ‘forget’ to pull your shades and give her a ‘real show’ too,” I said.

“Hey,” he replied, “doesn’t the Bible say somewhere to give and you will receive? And you know I’m a good Christian boy. I had to do what the Bible said.”

“You freakin’ perv!” And we both broke out in near-hysterical laughter.

“What are you two laughing so hard about?” his dad asked, as he came out of the house on his way to work.

“Nothing,” I answered, but not Tim. Oh no, not my best friend in the whole world. I felt the sharp sting as something jumped up and bit my ass.

“Brian just told me the funniest joke ever, Dad. Why don’t you tell Dad the joke, Brian?”

I couldn’t do anything except stammer.

“Come on, Bri,” Tim went on, “It won’t take long and it’s clean.”

“Well...uh...nah,” I was still stammering, trying to come up with something to say, “I don’t think your dad would like this joke. It’s childish and immature.” Kind of like his son, I wanted to say, but didn’t. Luckily, I got a reprieve from his dad.

“I’d love to hear the joke, guys, but I’m really rushed for time.” He started walking towards his car but stopped and turned around again. “Brian, how about holding a little time open for me this evening? I think we need to talk. OK?”

He must have seen the panic I felt building up inside me. Did they want me to leave already? He walked back to me and put his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry, son. It’s nothing serious. We just need some reassurance that our other boy is handling things OK and will be OK. We’ve been really worried about what’s been going on in your home.”

“Thanks,” I said as the tears began to build.

He saw them and set down his briefcase and wrapped me in a big hug. “You’re going to make it through this, Brian. And we’re going to be right there beside you all the way. We’re on your side.”

I watched as he walked back to his car and, just as he unlocked his door, Tim yelled, “Dad! Wait!” And he grabbed the briefcase and ran it out to his dad.

The two of them hugged each other as I watched in envy. When Tim came back, I asked, trying but not wholly succeeding, to hide the envy I felt, “How’d you manage to get so lucky?”

“I don’t know,” he answered, “but I sure did luck out, didn’t I?” Then he put his arm around my neck and rested it on my shoulder, farthest away from him, and looking me in the eye, asked, “You know the best thing about him?”

“What?” I asked, dropping my eyes.

“He has more than enough love for the both of us.” And he gave me a squeeze.

I looked back up and saw tears in his eyes. “Thanks, Tim. You have no idea how much I needed to hear that.”

“Well, I meant every word of it.”

We stood there, side by side with teary eyes, and watched until his dad turned the corner and went out of our sight.

“Well,” Tim finally said, giving my shoulder a final hug, “aren’t we a couple cry-baby wusses? Come on bro, we need to find something manly to do.”

“Like what?” I asked, following him into the house.

“Two things come to mind, but since sex is out of the question, we’ll have to settle for food. – Mom!” he yelled, as we came into the living room.

“What?” she said from the sofa. “You don’t have to yell, Tim.”

“I didn’t know where you were.”

“Did it ever occur to you to look for me before screaming your head off?”

“I’ve thought about it lots of times but screaming is faster,” he laughed. “Mom, do we have any fruit?”

“You have to be kidding. You boys couldn’t possibly be hungry. We finished breakfast just an hour ago!” she said.

“We know, but Brian’s constipated. He’s plugged up pretty bad and needs some fruit to get moving again.”

I felt my jaw drop to my chest and couldn’t believe what he had said.

“Oh, I’m sorry Brian,” she said, turning to me. “Sometimes sitting for long periods, like the bus ride yesterday....” She stopped when she saw the look on my face, and I saw the realization that she’d been had again cross her face. “Timothy Gerald Mathers!” she said, turning back to Tim.

“OK, OK,” Tim laughed, “he isn’t constipated but we still want some fruit, don’t we, Bri?”

I was still speechless, and watched as his mom walked over to him and pinched both his cheeks, pretty hard too, from the look on his face. “You, Son, are going to be the death of me! But if you do, I’ll probably die with a laugh as my last act on earth.” Then she pulled his head down and kissed him on the forehead. “There’s some peaches in the pantry. You boys can have those.”

We grabbed a couple peaches each and were headed upstairs to Tim’s room, when his mom asked what we had planned for the afternoon. Tim told her we were just going to hang around; maybe play a few video games and just talk and try to catch up with each other’s lives. “Oh yeah,” he added as an afterthought, “My homeys are coming over later to meet Brian.”

I had just taken bite of peach, and almost choked on it when I heard Tim say that. Tim looked at me and hit me in the back a few times to keep me from choking. I heard his mom saying she’d better go shopping if there were going to be five bottomless pits there for dinner. I could barely hold in the laughter and knew it was just a matter of time until I lost control. I hurried up the stairs to Tim’s room and, by the time he got there, I was rolling on his bed laughing my ass off.

He walked in and gave me a strange look, almost like he thought I’d lost my mind. “What’s with you?” he asked. “What’s so funny?”

“What’s so funny? You have homeys now, and you ask me what’s so funny?” I said, laughing even harder.

He just shook his head and sat in his computer chair watching me. “Are you enjoying yourself?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“You’re messing up my bed, you know.”

“It was already messed up.”

“Well, you’re making it worse.”

“I can’t help it.”

“Hicks!” he said, watching me and eating his last peach. “You come to the big city and don’t know how to act. Get with it, Bri! This is Chi-Town, not some hick suburb of St. Louis. This is the real deal. You have to be cool here.”

“And having homeys makes you cool?” I laughed. “Can I borrow some of your baggies and bling-bling before they get here? I wanna make a good impression on your homeys.”

“Get real, runt! Any of my clothes would be baggies on you!” Tim answered, laughing nearly as hard as I was by now.

We finally calmed down, and I was looking for my second peach. I asked Tim if he’d seen it.

“I ate it.” he said.

For some reason, this seemed funny to both of us and we spent another few minutes laughing like fools.

I was amazed at how easily and quickly Tim, his family and I had slipped back into that comfortable closeness that had been our previous relationship. Now, here I was, sitting in his room in Chicago, waiting to meet his new friends from up here.

I felt a sudden cold chill. When Tim had moved to St. Louis, I already knew the people he became friends with and most of them had already been friends of mine. These were three strangers though. All I knew about any of them were what Tim had told me on the phone. What if I didn’t like them? What if they didn’t like me? I felt a need for reassurance.

“Tim?”

“What?”

“Am I your homey too?”

Seeming to sense my need, he looked at me and smiled. “Are you kidding, Bri? You’re always gonna be my numero uno homey.”

Feeling reassured, I thought about that for a moment. “I guess that makes me your homo homey then, doesn’t it?” I laughed.

“Well, one of my homo homeys, anyway,” he answered with his own laugh. Almost immediately, his face froze in regret. “Dammit, Bri. Dude, please pretend you never heard that. I was talking without thinking and should never have said that. Forget it, OK?”

“Forget what?” I said. “I never heard a word.”

“Thanks, Bri.”

I just gave him a smile. Even though I’d promised to forget it, I knew there was no way I could. “One of his homo homeys?” my mind kept asking over and over.