Meant to be Broken [boyxboy] [Watty Awards 2012]

Chapter Twenty-Seven

On Friday afternoon, Ives checked his phone, hoping for a message from Tomi and planning to text him if he wasn't messaged first. Just as he had hoped, Tomi had texted him a few minutes before.

Hope your day is going well. Leigh was saying this morning that he and his boyfriend are going to visit Seth tomorrow. I said we were too, and he said we could all go together.

Ives had never met Leigh before, but he was more than willing to meet another of Tomi's friends. Works for me. Who's going to drive? he wrote back before his math class started.

He got the answer when he checked his phone at the end of class. Leigh offered. You can just come over to my house and he can pick us both up there.

That was a relief to Ives. He hadn't been looking forward to driving a half an hour into the city to the hospital. I'll be over as soon as I get out of practice.

Awesome. I'll let Leigh know we're accepting his offer. See you tomorrow.

Ives smiled. Can't wait.

The next afternoon, after a halfhearted archery practice, Ives pulled in the Miliani driveway. He parked next to a car he had never seen before, some sort of small red thing with an obnoxiously bright rainbow bumper sticker. Ives looked at the car, and came to the conclusion that it was not going to be a comfortable ride.

When he knocked on the front door, Tomi answered a moment later. Ives hugged him as he stepped inside, which made Tomi laugh. Inside, Tomi's mom was sitting in the living room with two guys about his and Tomi's age. The blond-haired one was saying something that made Mrs. Miliani laugh. Ives followed as Tomi led him over to them.

The two guys looked up as they walked in. Ives noticed that the one with the short, curly blond hair had a very strange eye color; his eyes were a pale shade of brown that was more like gold than anything else. Ives wondered if they were natural or if he wore contacts like the ones he himself wore to make his blue eyes violet.

Before Tomi could make the introductions, the blond guy stood up and held his hand out to Ives. "Leigh Cartwright," he said with a smile that could only be described as sparkly.

The only thing Ives could think was that there clearly was a reason why stereotypes existed, and that reason was that people actually fit them. Leigh was flamboyantly, one hundred percent gay. But his grip was firm when Ives shook his hand and replied, "Ives Fay."

Leigh smiled and motioned to the other guy. His hair was short and black, his eyes were blue-green, and he seemed to be the exact same height as Leigh. He smiled, too, but not as vibrantly as Leigh did, and offered his hand to Ives, with his name, "Kevin Walker."

Ives shook his hand and nodded. He thought it would be odd to repeat his name, because there was no way Kevin hadn't heard him say it to Leigh, and he was sure they knew about him from Tomi, anyway. So all he said was, "Nice to meet you."

"Well," Leigh said with a clap of his hands, "now that we've all met, shall we go see the wounded hero?"

"Yeah, let's go," Tomi agreed, though not quite as enthusiastically as his friend.

They all made their way to the door, and down the driveway to Leigh's car. Just as Ives had expected, the backseat was fairly cramped, especially with a big bag of random clothing items between him and Tomi. At least the car smelled really good. Ives had no idea how to describe the smell, but it probably had to do with the purple-colored air freshener attached to the front air vent.