Luciano Ribeiro
The weekend of prom was simultaneously the best and worst weekend of his life. Best for the obvious reasons; his birthday of course, talking with Gio at prom, kissing Gio at prom, dancing with Gio—yeah, pretty much any Gio-related activity, then getting prom king, then even getting to have sex with him during the blackout at the after-party. His birthday was a series of highs, just one after the other, and for some reason, he had the naivety to think that it was the start of what would be a good few weeks, if not months.
But what comes up must come down, and down it went.
Several hours after that magical night, Candice was announced as dead and the happy emotions he had been feeling dissipated almost instantly. He remembered seeing the news on the television, then dropping the glass of water he had been holding in surprise, the glass shattering on impact. The noise must’ve alerted his mother or perhaps it was a noise that he had made that had alarmed her, but suddenly she was there, holding him as he cried.
The rest of the day was a blur of despair, one that he didn’t really remember nor did he want to. It was Aline’s birthday but he didn’t know if he had said anything to her besides the courteous ‘Happy Birthday’ just after midnight. He felt bad about being too wrapped up in the pain of losing one of his good friends to even acknowledge her birthday, but at the same time, obviously he was too wrapped up in his pain to acknowledge her birthday like duh what did she expect, him to get over it within the hour and throw her a big bash? That was unfair.
The funeral was a few days after he died, and there was nothing pretty notable about it, just sad. And Daniel being an assh0le—he had no idea how he and his sister were as good of friends as they were like what—but that was pretty much to be expected because he was always an assh0le so why wouldn’t he be an assh0le at someone’s funeral.
Time passed and then, out of the blue, he gets a message from Jacob, his ex Jacob from Brazil, whom he hasn’t spoken to in a long time. He broke up with Jacob shortly before departing Brazil in January, which was shortly after he confessed to cheating on him. Despite that event, they talked it out and the break up was pretty cordial. Then he further explored his feelings for Gio and they got together and he was pretty much vibing.
However, this Jacob message very much ruined the good vibes he was feeling in his relationship. The guy just out of nowhere announces that he’s coming to see him in Beryl Heights. Like. After no previous conversation.
The interaction brought up feelings that he’d long buried, hadn’t thought he had even felt anymore since he loved Gio so much. And yet when Jacob asked him if he could say that the relationship hadn’t meant anything to him… he couldn’t say that.
And so later today he would meet Jacob at a local cafe, hear what he had to say. And… he hadn’t told Gio about it. He’d told Aline, obviously, and she’d yelled his ear off for a good ten minutes on the phone. She clearly liked Gio a lot, and she probably would’ve told him herself about Lui’s planned meetup with his ex if it weren’t for the loyalty she had to him. He felt bad about not telling Gio about it, but he would tell him after it happened so it didn’t matter that much, did it?
If there was one thing about him, it was that he didn’t like lying. So to prevent lying he just had to avoid talking to Gio as much—which was hard since a) they were living in the same house and b) he liked talking to Gio. But today, he slipped out of the house early so that he wouldn’t have to endure an awkward car ride to the school, where two people were hiding stuff from Person Three, though Person Two is much more inclined to tell him about it than Person One. The ride would probably be filled with glares and passive-aggressive sentences from Aline and just general confusion from Gio.
Yeah, no thanks.
So, he walked instead, getting to school pretty early and managing to successfully dodge Gio until, well, right about now.
When he nearly walked into him.
There was probably a second of that ‘deer-in-headlights’ look to his face until he got it into the normal happy expression one should feel when they see their boyfriend. “Oh heyyyyy,” he said, chuckling awkwardly. “Didn’t see you there.” He got an inexplicable urge to throw finger guns, but he resisted as that would probably make it worse. You know what, maybe this was gonna go better than he thought. Maybe Gio hadn’t even noticed that he’d been avoiding him for the past day or two.
@CerealKiller ya
