[Twice Featured Noteworthy Novel & Staff Pick on Tapas.io] ✔
[Previously featured on Tapas.io's LGBTQ+ Community collection] ✔
One night. That was all it took for Senn Reyes' life to change drastically--and permanently.
Senn Reyes is a seventeen-y...
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Monday
To Senn, the only good thing that came forth from the whole situation with Elio and Joyce, was the fact he was mostly occupied by jealousy nowadays. Sure, whenever he laid down in bed at night he thought about his parents and what he missed most about them. Or Liam, and the fact he missed his baby brother's cries in the middle of the night.
It had been frustrating whenever Liam kept them all up at night—especially on a school night—but he'd do anything to have Liam scream for their mother in the middle of the night. He wouldn't mind stepping on Lego again and again because Liam wasn't the best at cleaning up after himself since he had been only three years old.
Senn even missed changing his diapers when he was still a baby, or vomit, or whatever substance baby Liam produced and threw out one way or another.
He still thought about them whenever he woke up in the morning and realized he wasn't in his own room. He missed them at breakfast, he missed them at dinner. He even missed them invading his privacy for stupid little things.
But when he walked into the lunchroom on Monday, Lucas in his company, his feelings of jealousy and longing were bigger than the feelings that came with losing most of his family. It felt both liberating as it felt as if he betrayed them by caring more about Elio's presence by his side than theirs.
Though, it felt mostly sickening how badly he wanted to be the one kissing Elio on the cheek in the middle of the lunchroom; not Joyce.
It wasn't fair.
He had spent a great night with Julian, and still he was jealous over Joyce placing a simple kiss on Elio's cheek. If only they knew what he had been doing on Friday.
Would Elio be jealous?
More importantly, would he even care in the slightest? He had called their kiss a stupid mistake, made because they were drunk. It had been Elio's words; it didn't mean anything. So, probably he wouldn't care.
The kiss on his cheek in itself, however, meant a lot to Senn, and it made him pivot on his heels and walk in the complete opposite direction without telling Lucas why.
"Senn?" Lucas sounded confused, but the proximity of his voice told Senn he decided to follow him without an explanation from Senn. "Dude..."
"Just drop it, okay?"
"Drop what?" Lucas asked when Senn sat down at an empty table. "You said you didn't care about them..."
"I don't want to talk about it, okay?"
"Yeah, dude? I know you explained something to Avan, because he's suddenly on your side and defending you for disappearing."
"So?" Senn avoided eye contact, unwilling to talk about things with Lucas while at least a dozen students could overhear their conversation. Besides, with all due respect to his friendship with Avan; Lucas was more important to him. He had no idea how he'd react to the truth about his disappearance on Friday, or the real reason why he was sick and tired of seeing Joyce and Elio melt together most of the day.
