Page 19 of Cheater and the Saint
6
Saint
“How’re your classes this semester? Do you like them? Are the kids being nice to you?”
I smiled at my mom’s million questions and started answering them, one by one: great, yes, and yes. The last one wasn’t one-hundred percent true. No one was being mean to me or anything, but I wouldn’t quite call itnice.
Well, other than Leo. He might’ve made fun of me a lot, but I learned he wasn’t doing it to be cruel. Unlike the jerks that’d done it to me in high school.
“How are you?” I asked after moving the phone to my other ear so I could turn on the kitchen sink and rinse off my plate.
“Well, Kathy wants me to go with her to some rodeo, and you know how I’m not into all of that country-bumpkin stuff. But she says there’s a man there who she wants me to meet, and I don’t know… should I go?”
Kathy was Mom’s best friend and was pretty much like my crazy, awesome aunt, even though we weren’t actually related. She was my godmother, but I addressed her as Aunt Kathy.
“Honestly, Mom, I think you should go. It’d be nice for you to start dating again. Take a leap of faith.”
Even though Mom had me when she was sixteen going on seventeen, she’d taken it seriously. Unlike some teen moms I’d heard of that dropped their baby off at their parents’ house and went out partying all the time, refusing to take responsibility, my mom had put me first in everything. Sure, there’d been a few boyfriends through the years, but nothing solid, and I knew she wanted that, especially now that I was grown and out of the house.
She got lonely. I could relate to that.
“Really? You think so?” she asked, and I pictured her biting her thumbnail in the nervous manner I’d picked up from her. “Rodeos are so boring.”
I laughed as I ran my plate beneath the water and placed it in the dishwasher. “We do live in the south, Mom. Rodeos are to be expected. Go. You’ll have more fun than you think. Believe me. And if the rodeo sucks, at least there will be funnel cake and potentially a sexy man.”
“Okay, pumpkin,” she said. “I’ll call Kathy and tell her I’m in. You take care of yourself, okay? I love you with all my heart.”
“Love you, too.”
I was still smiling after we hung up.
I’d always been close to my mom. Growing up, she and Aunt Kathy were all I’d had. My grandparents had been in the picture a little, but not as much as Mom wanted them to be. They were super religious and had been ashamed that she’d had a child out of wedlock. The fact my birth dad hadn’t stuck around and left her to raise me alone didn’t help matters any, either.
There was a memory from when I was like five or six where my grandfather called Mom a harlot. I hadn’t known what it meant back then, but I remembered the look on Mom’s face when it happened, how her eyes had watered, and her fists had clenched at her sides. I’d never seen her look so defeated than she did in that moment. From then on, I’d only seen my grandparents on holidays.
And when they found out I was gay… well, it became even less than that.
After rinsing off the rest of the dishes in the sink, I went over to the window and peered outside. It was hard to believe it was already mid-September. The fifteenth to be exact.
That Saturday afternoon, the campus was buzzing with activity. Fall had come a bit earlier than expected, so the weather was beautiful and sunny, not too hot or humid and in the upper seventies. Some people sat on blankets in the grass with textbooks instead of going to the library and being cooped up inside all day.
Probably the most surprising thing of all was that Leo hadn’t gone out much the past two weekends. The previous one, he’d stayed in and actually did homework. When I’d walked out of my bedroom last Friday night and seen him at the kitchen table with his laptop and textbook open, I about shit and fell back in it.
He hadn’t gone out that weekend so far, either. Last night, he’d watched some action movie in the living room, and when I’d gone into the kitchen for a snack, he’d invited me to watch it with him. And I did.
We’d talked more lately. Our conversations hadn’t been anything too deep, but I’d learned he had an older brother named Heath who had a tendency to be too nosy but meant well. Leo also mentioned how he didn’t have a major yet, and he was unsure of what he wanted to do with his life career wise.
I hadn’t told him much about me, other than a few basic things, but I’d listened to him and communicated with someone who wasn’t in my computer, so I still took that as progress.
“Any wild plans for tonight?” Leo asked, pulling me from my thoughts.
I turned from the window to see him standing in a pair of jeans, no shirt, and leaning against the kitchen counter. His tan skin along with the toned muscles of his chest and abdomen drew my eye first, and I had to remind myself that he could, indeed, see that I was totally checking him out.
Shit.
“Uh. No. Just the usual,” I answered, tearing my eyes from his abs and moving my gaze upward to his face. Which was just as freaking attractive as the rest of him. Honestly, there was nowhere I could look on his damn body that didn’t send blood rushing to my dick. So I stared at his left ear. “What about you?”
“Tayte asked me to go out, but I said no.”
