Favorite character so far?

It was Friday afternoon. Drake had two more days to find a way to get eight thousand dollars by Sunday; to say I was scared was an understatement. Not only did he break off a two-week relationship with Reese but he also hasn't shown up to school for days. He sent us a text saying not to worry anymore cause he'll 'handle it'.

After getting kidnapped in plain sight it was obvious that Bobby wasn't playing around. If I suddenly disappear in the next week then Amour and Reese knew what to do. Last night after I was rescued by Amour I ended up sleeping over and getting my clothes in the morning. Now I'm not allowed to take the car for the weekend since I didn't tell Momma I was gonna sleep over. 

It's not like I planned on it, but I couldn't tell them what really happened. I can't risk my family getting hurt too. 

"Isaiah fix your face." Reese mimicked my expression, pouting her glossed lips while furrowing her freshly threaded brows.

I rolled my eyes and lightly shoved her shoulder. "Fuck off I'm thinking," I told her. She responded with a groan and dramatically fell back onto Amour's bed. 

Extra. 

Beside her, Amour was fumbling with the strings of his guitar, humming softly to himself.

"Did you tell Kingston about what happened?" Reese asked. 

"Yes," I said crossing my arms.

"And what did he say?" 

"He'll handle it," I pouted, knowing he would. 

I just couldn't stop thinking about what happened, it made me realize Bobby was deadly serious and wasn't afraid to hurt someone if he had to.

"Good, now stop talking about it," Reese urged. "I'm tired of hearing about Drake."

Reese took the breakup pretty hard. 

"Reesey I love you but, how do you not expect us to talk about what happened? Isaiah was literally kidnapped last night." Amour chimed in.

"Just drop it Amour! You're not even part of it." Reese snapped. 

Amour shot Reese a cold glare before rolling his eyes, focusing attention back on the strings of his guitar. The tension of the room was starting to get thicker than Rihanna. 

"I was just worried about Isaiah...bitch." He mumbled, the last part was barely audible but I heard it.

Amour's chocolate eyes found mine, his sincere smile made me feel like everything was going to be okay. It also brought back those stupid butterflies.

I smiled back. The silence in Amour's room grew heavy as we all sat there ignoring the big ass elephant in the room. 

Reese has an attitude cause she's mad at Drake for disappearing out of nowhere. What does she expect? His brother is in jail and he gotta find 8K by Sunday, he doesn't have time for her so she's taking it out on Amour and me. Now Amour's gonna get an attitude cause he doesn't play that. 

So here we are sat in silence, the strums of Amour's guitar echoing through the room. 

"So..." Amour trailed off. "Is this a bad time to tell y'all I'm gay?"

Both Reese and I snapped our heads in his direction, looking at him with wide eyes. 

"You're gay!" burst Reese. 

Amour looked at us like we should've known this whole time. "Uh, yeah?" 

"Why didn't you say anything?" I asked, suddenly starting to question myself again.

He shrugged. "Am I supposed to introduce myself as Amour the gay kid?"

"No, but–"

"That's why your little brother calls Isaiah your boyfriend!" Reese shrieked. 

I snapped my brows together. "What?"

Reese rolled her eyes like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Isaiah, 'novio' means boyfriend stupid. I told you that you shoulda took Spanish." she explained. 

"¡Amour, tu novio está aquí!" (Amour your boyfriend is here!)

"Él no es mi novio," (He's not my boyfriend,)

Oh. 

Wait.

"I'm not gay though," I stressed.

Amour and Shareese laughed. "No one said you were Saiah, my little brother just likes to make fun of me." Amour laughed.

Oh. 

"Only my close friends know," his smile started to fade. "With all the hate going on I'm perfectly fine with passing as straight until I move out of the hood."

Amour was right. If the whole school knew he was gay he would get jumped like twice a week. Most of the kids grew up here influenced by their religious parents who are still stuck in the '80s.

Besides, just because Amour is gay doesn't mean I was gay. I could find other guys attractive without being gay, Reese always talks about how sexy she thinks Kehlani is.

Reese is bi, Isaiah...

Okay, but I'm not bi. I thought to myself. 

I physically cringed at the thought of finding any other boy other than Amour attractive. I heard how girls talk about how fine Reece King and Micheal B. Jordan are, whenever Shareese shows me pictures I honestly just don't see anything that special. Sure they look nice but the moment I first saw Amour in my car I had these feelings I tried to hide for weeks.

I can't be gay.

I liked my house and I rather not get disowned by my father and kicked to the streets to become a crackhead. I grew up Baptist and went to church every Sunday as a kid. Gay wasn't even supposed to be in my vocabulary. 

"Saiah?" Amour's soft voice made its way through the clouds in my mind.

I avoided his gaze, only looking up to see Reese leaving the room with a smirk on her face.

"Listen, I don't want you to think of me as any different than you did before, I just–"

"Amour I would never do something like that," I said softly, fighting the urge to hold his hand. "I just had to figure out some stuff in my head, sorry...man."

Man?  Did I really just say that.

He giggled.  "I'm glad you took it well, it would be kinda awkward if I invited you to my show if we weren't friends anymore."

Amour handed me a flyer with his name printed largely at the top, below it was various other names of people who I'm guessing are upcoming singers. A collage of pictures was the background, Amour's being the biggest one since he was the lead performer for the night.

"You have a concert! Aye congrats!" I exclaimed, mindlessly pulling him into a dap.

Amour chuckled. "It's nothing too special, my tia works at this lounge and was able to pull a couple of strings for me; can you come?" he asked.

Duh.

"Hell yeah I'm coming!"

Your voice is something special.

***

Reese, Isaiah, and I sat on my living room couch watching horror movies on Netflix. I sat between the both of them holding onto a bowl of Takis, Isaiah's arm around the back of the couch while Reese laid her head on my shoulder. 

Apparently, her parents don't give a shit about where she is or what she does, I was surprised they let her sleep over my house knowing there would be two guys. My dad wouldn't let Mariana sleepover at any guys house unless he knew for a fact they were gay. 

I was happy nothing was different between the three of us, Isaiah didn't treat me any different and it turns out Reese is bisexual. 

"Can we watch something else? I'm tired of watching white people do dumb shit." Isaiah groaned. 

I laughed. "It's almost over," I told him as one of the characters got dragged into the woods. 

Isaiah rolled his eyes. "This is why black and Hispanic people aren't cast in scary movies, they know damn well they ain't takin' no shortcut into the woods." 

I looked over to Reese to get her opinion, she answered back with small snores. Accepting Isaiah's pleas I turned off 'The Ritual' and started scrolling through the movies on Netflix. Isaiah is the pickiest movie watcher in the world. After ten minutes of arguing over what to watch we finally settled on 'Dope'. 

As I pressed play Isaiah moved his arm around my shoulders causing our bodies to get pressed closer together. This is slowly starting to cross the straight line and move into the bi section but I won't say anything about it, Isaiah seems too sure of himself. 

"Amour," He says, causing me to gaze over to see his face a bit too close for comfort. "Yeah?" I ask.

"How did you know you were gay?" he questioned. I furrowed my brows together, wondering why he wanted to know. 

I shrugged before answering. "I don't know. In middle school, all the boys were talking about which girl they wanted to take to the Valentine's Day dance while I was wondering why I wanted Zac Effron to pound me into the ground."

Isaiah shook his head and hit me playfully. "You can't be serious," He laughed. 

"I'm never serious," I joked. "But if you really want to know, it's something you already feel deep down. You have this attraction to someone that you can't stop even if you wanted too." 

Isaiah listened to my words carefully and nodded his head. "When did you come out?" he asked, moving closer.

I sighed. "Freshmen year at my old school. It's not like I wanted to though. Someone outed me and I couldn't really do anything about it..." I trailed off. 

"Outed?" Isaiah questioned. 

"It's like when someone tells everyone you're gay without you wanting everyone to know you're gay," I explained. "A big secret everyone wasn't supposed to know." 

He frowned. "So what happened after that?"

"It took my dad some time to come around but my mom told me she would love me no matter who I liked," I let out a deep breath as I relived the memories from the past. "School was the worst part." 

"Why?"

"Because of the students at a white, Catholic, private school aren't very excepting of a gay Mexican kid," I told him. 

Joseph's Catholic School was full of racist, privileged, homophobic white teens. It was hard enough to walk through the halls with people yelling at me to 'go back to Mexico', being outed was the cherry on top of a fantastic time at that awful fucking school. Now they added 'fag' or 'fairy' to every sentence. 

"Damn, so you were bullied?" Isaiah asked.

"Was I?" I laughed. "That school is full of egotistical crackheads." 

"Wanna tell me about them?" 

"It's a long story," I said honestly. 

"I got time."

***