A/N: To all my wonderful and beautiful reviewers: I am in love with you. Those were the best reviews ever, I'm so happy!
Krinklecut- You get a cookie for being the first to review! Haha!
Nasty Gogoune- Thanks! (Sorry I don't have a longer message for you... ha)
soul-searching813- Oh my goodness, I love you. Reviewers with long messages = love. (Not that I don't love you all) And the whole 'you've got a knack for this' made me smile for like, ever. My parents were getting worried that I was smiling so much... Oh, and about the 'Marco-back-in-the-closet-thing' is explained a little bit in this chapter I guess, but more in a later chapter (the next one...?)
donnatellaMarks- OH MY GOD! Your 'Silly Boys' fic is one of the best Marco/Dylan fics I've ever read, and I'm spazzing out that you like my story so much! Anyways, I'm not trying to be stalkerish or whatever... haha sorry.
KaitlinBell- AHHH!! I'm getting all these reviews from my fic writing idols, lmao! You're like the gold mine for Marco/Dylan fics, I love all your stories! (Especially your one-shots. Those are definitely the best.)
smoothNcreamy- Hahah I love your review. It woke me up, that's for sure. And since you were so demanding, HERE IS THE NEXT CHAPTER!
darkangel410pr- Thanks so much! I love it when people mention that they enjoy reading my stuff!
anjel919- Oh, thank you! I also love it when people use 'great' instead of 'good'.
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I woke up to a series of screaming and slapping going on around me. I could feel continuous blows to my cheek, and could hear a voice I recognized saying my name over and over again.
"Marco... Marco, come on. Wake up!" Zack gave me a huge shove before I finally came to. I fell onto the ground next to my bed, jamming my elbow a bit.
"Ow... what was that for?" I stood up, rubbing my elbow, and scowling at Zack. Kevin was sitting on his bed, taking swigs of beer, no doubt.
"You looked like you saw a ghost or something. We had to wake you up, man." Zack looked sincerely concerned, although Kevin didn't look as appealing, sitting on my roommate's bed, getting beer and corn chip stains all over the sheets.
"Yeah, dude. I had to like... talk to my ex. What the hell did you make me do that for?" Kevin finally acknowledged that I had awakened, and pointed at me with a soiled corn chip while yelling.
"Are you related to a Spinner Mason?" I just had to ask. I couldn't bear the temptation any longer.
"I have a cousin named Andrea Mullard. That help any?" He and I exchanged blank stares for a second, but Zack thankfully intervened before Kevin could bring me into his chip-eating, beer-drinking psyche.
"Marco, man, do you need to go see a doctor or something?" He rubbed a patch of my head where I had fallen.
"Ow... Ow... that hurts! Stoppit!" I slapped his hand away and moved to the other side of my bed.
"Uh, if you don't mind us asking, why the hell did you faint?" Kevin stared at me through the mouth of the beer bottle he was holding, even though I doubt that he could see me well through that disgusting brown glass.
I looked at Zack, who seemed to be wondering the exact same question. Then I looked back at Kevin, who still amazingly resembled Spinner in many ways. Too many things came flooding back into memory when I looked at Kevin, who made me think of Spinner, which made me think of Degrassi. The reason I had fainted, and why I had left Toronto in the first place.
"You're coming to dinner tomorrow, right?" Dylan looked at me with hopeful eyes.
"Where else would I rather be?" I looked up at him, my head cradled in the pocket of his shoulder.
He wrapped himself tighter with his jacket and brought me in closer to him. I could feel his warmth transact from his body to mine.
"I dunno. Maybe you had previous engagements with your other boyfriends or something." He grinned at the scowl that formed on my face. I didn't like it when he teased me, but he did it anyways. And when he did, I took revenge and teased him right back.
"Eh, none of them had anything more interesting. Jake wanted to go to Disneyland or something like that..." I looked at him, his eyes looking right back at me knowingly.
"Oh... you're gonna get it!" I knew that was my cue to leap up from his lap and start skating away from him at full speed. Of course, this was Dylan I was running away from. There was no way I could out-skate him, my hockey star of a boyfriend.
Sure enough, keeping away from him for about a minute and a half, he grabbed me and pulled me down onto the snowy grass next to the icy pond. We could only laugh at ourselves; we must have looked amazingly wacky next to the little girls practicing their ice skating tricks.
"Yeah, Dyl. I'll be there."
I was surprised that by the time I had finished reminiscing, I wasn't crying yet. That was the last memory I had of me and Dylan together. I never made it to dinner at his house, and I certainly didn't go to Disneyland. That was the farthest place on earth, it seemed, since the place I ended up at later that day was the closest encounter of hell I'd ever gone through.
I made it back to my house in quick time, my hair covered with snowy icicles and my jacket sopping with water generated from the snow and my body heat melting it. Dylan had offered me a ride home, but I was so happy, I didn't think my day could get any better, so I opted to walk home and admire the beautiful, snowy scenery.
"Ma! I'm home!" I banged my front door close and started peeling off my three plus layers of clothing. The smell of gingerbread cookies wafted through the hallway, leading me toward the kitchen.
My mother was standing in front of the kitchen counter, arranging just-made cookies into a basket that would go on the table, and be gone in about ten minutes, thanks to my father and brother. I never ate more than two, just to be considerate.
"Oh, hello, Marco." She smiled that cheery smile she always had on, rain or shine. She handed me a cookie and pointed to a glass of milk sitting on the table. It was as if she was expecting me or something.
"Hey ma." I kissed her on the cheek, which she oddly flinched at a bit, and sat down at the table. I pulled the newspaper towards me and began to read, when my father appeared at the doorway.
"Do they taste good?" He had an unusual glare in his eye; his fist was clenched into a tight bunch, hanging at his side.
"Yes?" I furrowed my eyebrows at both my parents, who were both staring at me. My mother had a tear dripping down her cheek, and my father was turning red. I had never seen either of my parents this upset since my brother crashed my father's $30,000 car a week after it was bought. It hadn't been insured yet.
"Marco, tell me. What was your last girlfriend's name?" My father began advancing towards me. The rage is his eye grew every step he took.
"E-Ellie." I dropped the cookie I was holding in my shaking hand onto the ground. I began to pick it up when my father stepped his black boot on it. I ended up staring at the toe of my father's foot and a mess of crumbled-up gingerbread. I could tell this wasn't going to be good.
"When did you and Ellie break up, exactly, Marco?" Pa was about a foot away from my face by now.
"Uh-um-about a year ago?" I knew that my father wanted me to look at him straight in the eye; I knew that was what I was supposed to do. It was Italian respect and tradition to look a person straight in the eye while speaking in my family. But I couldn't. I could tell what was happening. They knew.
"You haven't been in a relationship since then, have you, Marco?" There was no way now I was getting away from looking at him. He was mere inches from my nose. I could feel the steam and sweat coming from his body.
"Uh- well-"
"Don't lie to me, Marco. You know better than that."
"Pa, I-"
"God dammit," he breathed.
My mother squealed at my father's curse. It was against my religion to swear and word of any kind.
"So it's true? It's true that you have been seeing that goddamned boy?"
"Oh, Pa," I knew that he could see the fear in my eyes. He was trying intimidate me.
"Answer, me, YES OR NO!" He banged his fist on the table, making the china pot in the middle spiral to the edge of the table, my mother being able to save it a split second before it hit the ground.
I felt like crying now. I knew I should cry, they might take more pity on me. I was still their son, after all. They had baby pictures of me hidden under their bed, my mother kept my baby teeth in her jewelry drawer.
But I wouldn't cry. I was hurting too much inside to let it show on the outside. I knew my mother would always love me no matter what, but it had been and always would be Italian tradition that the woman served the man, and that was what my mother was doing.
This was my time to be brave for once, to not cry. I wasn't going to cry, because that was what I always did. Just for one time in my life, I was going to be strong.
"Yes." The words just slipped out of my mouth, clear and precise. It was time my parents knew, I supposed.
"Get out," my father growled.
"What?" I stood there, stunned, not able to move.
"I said, GET OUT!" He boomed. When I didn't move, he slapped me. He slapped me again, this time harder. He began to slap me three, four times.
My mother approached my father and restrained him.
"Go, Marco. Just go."
"Ma..." Now I knew I was going to cry, because she was crying now. I couldn't bear seeing my mother crying. It was too much for me to handle.
"Get a bag or something, and go. Please, Marco. Just get out." She pushed my father in the opposite direction of where I was standing, her head hanging the entire time. I had shamed my entire family, and she knew. She knew it.
"You have THREE MINUTES!" My father yelled from the other side of the kitchen, in the dining room.
I couldn't think now. Nothing was registering in my mind. All I could figure out was I had to get a bag, and get out of there. My parents had made that very clear.