The Stepfather (MxM) ✓

Chapter 22

The rest of the day went off without a hitch. Violet came home early from work in order to celebrate it, donning me with presents in the form of bright coloured clothing that I would never have picked out for myself. But, then again, a lot had changed in the last couple of months – including my wardrobe. I actually wore a blue shirt the other day, so that was progress.

The purple pants that looked like a not-so distant relation to Barney, however, was a lot more progress than I was willing to take.

Both the label on the bag and the signatures on the card indicated that the gifts were from both Alex and Violet – giving me the distinct vibe that Alex had branched out on his own accord with the very camera that I was itching to get my hands on. But I couldn't, unfortunately, considering that birthdays had their own set routine that you had to follow. Especially when it came to spending it with family.

And the weirdest thing about that was that I really didn't mind carrying out that routine. It wasn't as though my birthdays to date were anything memorable. I got up, went to school (sometimes), and stayed out as long as I could so that Henry could get sufficiently pissed enough to pass out and not bother me for the rest of the night.

And if I was really feeling it, I got myself a bag of chips from the chipper as a birthday treat. But there were no chipper chips to be seen that evening, rather we went back to that exact restaurant that we went to within the first couple of nights of me arriving. It was kind of surreal, especially when they sat us at the exact same table as last time.

That had only been a couple of months ago, and yet so many things had changed. I had ran away that night. In hindsight, I both understand and completely don't get why I did that. But there was nothing I could do about hindsight. 

Point was, I had progressed a lot more since then.

I actually liked the people I was spending time with (Kelly, oddly, included but that was likely mainly out of mutual half-respect for one another) and the people that had, eventually, came to feel like family. Hell, Austin even came along and did his now infamous walrus impression for Alice. Albeit, in the absence of chopsticks he opted to use rolled up napkins which surprisingly didn't ruin the show.

I laughed, I overate – I had fun. Wasn't that the weirdest part?

No, wait. The one thing weirder than me having fun (I know, can you imagine?) was that when we all said goodnight and Alex gave me a happy birthday kiss in an ambush when I was going to the bathroom – I smiled until I fell asleep.

Since when did I get so whipped?

Time passed progressively quickly after the milestone that was my seventeenth birthday until we were even closer to facing the next big bump of life.

School.

Which, okay, shouldn't have come as much of a shock as it did when Violet brought home the applications form for the local highschool. It was a legal requirement that I attended, and considering that Violet didn't give me permission to finish up before my sentencing was up – I had to go. Apparently I would be a Junior which, okay, was pretty unfortunate considering that Austin and Kelly were both seniors. But I tried not to let that get to me too much, Austin wasn't the kind of the guy to drop a friend just because they were a year younger.

Despite the fact that he had multiple other friends due to his alleged popularity, friends that he did try to get me to meet by attempting to drag me along to a number of parties. I never went, of course, but I usually got a complete low down of them from both Austin and Kelly (always invited by Austin, and even though he never noticed I definitely noticed the delighted blush that bloomed over her cheeks every time he mentioned bringing her).