Okay, actual summer is a week away or something, but "my" last final is on Thursday and then it's off to Maine and less than a month before I'm myself again, and then we start to put stuff back in order.
It could have gone a lot worse. For the most part, my circle of friends and Andy's kind of merged, so it wasn't really weird for me to be around my actual friends, or for Andy to be around his, and it's kind of a weird thrill to not have them know who we are for real. Not in a mean way, but whenever Shawna says "hey, tell Andi such and such", I kind of tingle a bit. Same as when we switch phones in the evening and text for each other. And Mom & Dad have never made a mistake or shown any signs that they don't trust us, even though we've got a lot more chances to mess things up now that we're driving ourselves. They don't try to push Andy to act more girly or me to be more of a guy and redirect any comments someone else makes in their hearing off in another direction.
Still, some parts have been really frustrating. I kept waiting for the thing with Andy and Len to fall apart and occasionally freaking out when they were out, because what if tonight's the night where they fuck, and Andy likes it? Or he doesn't, and it's a huge rift and somehow all my fault? Or Len decides that "Andi" is some sort of cock-tease and I've got to live with that reputation next year? Nothing seems to have happened yet - I mean, I'm not checking to make sure my brother's still a virgin or anything, but I don't think he'd lie to me about this, and Len hasn't told "his friend Andy" anything about feeling like he's not getting anything he should. I almost wonder if he's gay and is somehow sensing that it's really Andy in there, but I don't know.
It was still kind of a kick in the guy to see them go to prom, though. As much as Andy had more or less avoided wearing any sort of really girly clothes for the whole school year, he didn't want to let Len down, so he sucked it up, had Mom and me teach him how to walk and dance in heel, spent time with Shawna shopping for a prom dress, and asked me to do his makeup. He looked kind of great, and I did feel kind of weirdly proud. We were both past freaking when Len kissed him by that point - Andy had kind of justified it as being like a high-five with the lips - although he did give me a signal to keep Len busy while he ran to the bathroom to regroup for a few minutes after Len gave him a deeper kiss on the dance floor. Which annoyed my date, but big deal.
My date, unfortunately, wasn't Shawna - I awkwardly tried to ask her out sometime in January, but even if it wouldn't have been weird before, dating her best friend's brother while her best friend was dating her best friend's brother's best friend would have been more than she was in for. She had a new boyfriend by prom, so I would have been out anyway.
Meanwhile, I somehow attracted Cindi Adams's attention. I don't know why - both Andy and I are pretty average, and she's, like, blonde and gorgeous, with perfect skin and a pretty face and somehow at the top of the track team despite having the sort of boobs that should be messing with her aerodynamics. We got stuck doing a project together in chemistry, though, and she decided that I was really funny, or maybe she'd just never not had a male classmate who didn't try to cop a feel and didn't make a big deal out of something like the time a tampon fell out of her bag and I got it back to her without trying to embarrass her. Heck, that was pretty automatic; it happened as we were leaving class on a Friday I didn't even remember doing it when she thanked me on Monday. She apparently decided I was going to be her new boyfriend a couple weeks later.
The thing is, she was a real bitch to me in junior high. Made all sorts of jokes about me being the flattest girl in the locker room when we changed for gym class, joined drama the semester there was a part I really wanted to play and just walked off with it, always shoved me aside into the lockers when she was in a hurry. I couldn't think of anything I'd done to her, and while it didn't really pick up after we got to high school, we mostly just didn't have our paths cross until she started finding reasons to be where I was as Andy. I was civil - no need for Andy to wind up with her and her friends as enemies next year - but soon a bunch of Andy's friends were saying that their girlfriends had mentioned that Cindi liked me and wanted me to ask her out. I figured we'd go out a couple times, I'd be a gentleman, it'd be a feather in Andy's cap next year, all that. Prom just happened to be our third date.
And, okay, it did feel kind of good when I stopped by her place to pick her up and she was wearing a dress to die for with a great wave in her hair. I admit, I kind of felt weird about the whole thing - was I thinking with Andy's dick or did I just appreciate the effort? And she wasn't really awful; she didn't remember being mean to me specifically, acknowledged that she was probably kind of a general nightmare a couple years ago, but didn't really feel the need to single anybody (like me) out for an apology. And she's not a bad date - she's secretly excited to try new foods, afraid that her friends will think she's some sort of nerd for it, for instance. She can dance. She likes karaoke as much as I do. And, like as much as I have spent the past year not feeling like myself at all, she's both confident about everything related to her body and able to make jokes about it. It's weirdly relaxing to be with her when we're just going to see a movie or something.
Which means that prom kind of had to be a disaster by design, because both Andy and I didn't want to get into a situation where circumstances just led to our first times because we got caught up in the moment. So while in the bathroom after that kiss, he swallowed some laxative and something else that would make throw up. I figured that insisting I bring him home rather than let Len do it would push Cindi away, because it would be clear "sis" was more important.
We got home without getting laid, and as we played Wii that night, we wondered if we were the first people to ever engineer that sort of escape from prom. And Cindi was, admittedly, kind of cold to me for the next week, but she forgave me, although she didn't exactly push for us to sleep together since (not that she had, or seemed upset that I wasn't trying to get her into bed; maybe I'm a good boyfriend for not putting pressure on her, which is funny).
At any rate, we got through our classes with okay grades and he enjoyed helping build sets for drama while I didn't hate being on the tennis team in the spring (I might actually be better than he was). Still, I am awful glad that we're heading up to Maine just as soon as Andy and I finish each other's last finals so that we can get this all sorted out.
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