Want Me (BoyxBoy)

-7-

I roll my eyes. "I don't give him any special attention. We're just best friends."

"Same for me and Maya."

"You didn't finish telling me about your family," I say to get us back on topic.

"Because you interrupted me," he points out.

"Well, tell me about your parents if you don't have any siblings."

"My parents... uh... Both mine are dead." Oh. "My dad overdosed when I was eleven, and my mom died by suicide a year later. I have foster parents, though."

"You're close with them?" I ask.

"No. I left the day I turned eighteen."

"Oh." I'm guessing they weren't the best foster parents then.

He lets a sigh out. "I didn't have a good childhood, and it bums me out to think about it. But I want you to know me, so I want to be honest and just tell you. Unless you don't want me to dump a bunch of trauma on you."

"No, you can tell me," I tell him, genuinely interested to hear about it.

"Well, like I said, my parents died while I was still young. My dad wasn't really physically abusive, but he used to come home drunk or high and would yell a lot. My mom found him dead in his car one day while I was at school. She took his death pretty hard and ended up taking her own after a year of depression. So that resulted in me getting put into the system and then placed with a foster family. They were great but ended up getting divorced, so they sent me back. Then I got placed with my most recent family. They were halfway decent, but I never felt like they cared about me. Just the check that came with me every month. So, I left when I was old enough. I always assumed they would've eventually kicked me out anyway."

That sounds... like it was hard. How did he handle that so well? So young? He seemed to turn into a decent guy after growing up in unhappy homes. He's healthy, has his own truck and apartment, and I assume he has a job. I wonder what he does for work.

"I need to tell you something else, but I'm afraid it'll push you away."

"What is it?"

"I'm not a great person." What? I was just thinking he turned out decent. "Well, I don't think I'm terrible, but there's some things you should know. I sell weed for a job."

"Oh. Okay?" That's not that big of a deal.

"That's not the bad thing."

"What do you mean?"

"I've done time before. I got arrested and had to serve two months."

I widen my eyes. "What'd you do?" Please don't tell me I'm in the car with a crazy criminal.

"I took the fall for my friend. I was out selling, and right when I ran out and was about to go home, he met with me and asked me to hold onto a dime of coke while he went inside this store. Cops ended up coming into the alley, and I got busted with it. He was on his second strike, so I admitted it belonged to me. They wanted me to do a year in prison, but I only did two months and got out in October."

"Oh. Uh, how'd you get out early?"

"I snitched."

"Oh." Well, that's a shitty thing to do.

"On said friend." That's even shittier.

"Oh. Because he's the reason you got put in there?"

"No. I'm not proud of it because I'm majorly into loyalty. The only reason I did it was because he was getting into heavier drugs. I could tell when he came and visited me the few times he did. I thought it'd help him being off the streets for a little while. The cops have been wanting him for a while, but they couldn't catch him with any drugs on him. So, I told them when and where he'd be with some. They told me he'd only had to do six months. They were super strict on drugs there. Drug dogs and everything. It was rare for somebody to get something snuck in. I thought it could be a type of rehab for him. But he tried to run and got arrested driving a stolen car, so he's in there for five years now. And now I feel like I've fucked him over. I haven't even visited him because I know he has to hate my guts."