Here is the new chapter.

Chapter Sixteen: We Talk Too Much

Gabe watched the car disappear around a corner and headed towards the front door. He let himself in and kicked off his shoes. He placed them and his hoodie in the closet. He walked towards the kitchen and to the laundry area. He dumped his uniform and bag in the washer and set it to wash.

"Ronnie? Where are you?"

He heard a sniff from the living room and Ronnie's voice a moment later. "Right here."

Gabe nodded. He headed back into the kitchen and grabbed some juice. He looked in the fridge for something to eat. He shut the door and noticed the pizza boxes on the oven.

"All right! Pizza!"

Ronnie's head poked up from behind the arm of the couch. "Don't eat all of it. Mom said to save some for dinner."

Gabe snorted. "There are leftovers; we'll be fine."

Ronnie's smaller form jumped up from the couch and moved quickly to the kitchen. She walked up behind her brother, grabbed his left earlobe and twisted it. "Gabriel Joseph; I'm serious! Do not eat ALL of the pizza!"

Gabe pulled his head out of the vice grip of his sister's hand and yelled. "Ow! What is your fucking malfunction?!"

Ronnie pushed her glasses up her nose and glared at her brother. Gabe rubbed his ear.

"I said don't eat all of it."

"Okay; I heard you the first time." Gabe seethed. "Now I know where you get that from. Mom does that look to me when I get in trouble."

"Well I told you…"

"Yeah, I got it. Fuck." Gabe growled. "Have a fight with one of the girls?"

Ronnie sulked as she took a seat at the kitchen island. "No, we had a great time. Alyson smokes way too much." Gabe looked at his sister in confusion. "It seemed like she was out there like every half an hour."

Gabe shook his head. "Believe it or not; that's cutting down for her." He took a glass and poured some juice in it; handing it to Ronnie. "I've got to give her credit; she trying to cut down. That's got to be hard for her."

"That's cutting down?"

"She told me that she used to do like a pack a day." Gabe nodded, taking a bite of his slice of pizza. "She doesn't even light up around me."

"You're kidding?"

"I'm not. Alyson said that it's not fair for me that doesn't smoke to continue to kiss an ashtray. Mrs. Manning joked that I should move in. She said that it would get her to quit altogether. Mr. Manning didn't laugh."

"What did you do to him?" Ronnie smirked.

"Something about dating his daughter." Gabe shrugged. "He's getting a little better about it now. He's actually a pretty cool teacher."

Ronnie nodded. "So how did the meet go?"

"Leaving the pizza alone now." Gabe took out some leftovers from the fridge and heated them up. "Not too bad actually. I won against my first opponent and ended up as a draw for the second."

"Two?"

"Bardell has two guys that are in the same weight class." Gabe stated. "Twins nonetheless, which was a bit weird. Pinned the first brother within time limit. The second brother was a little faster and we just ran out of time. It was kind of cool."

"Sounds serious." Ronnie smiled.

"I didn't think I would have liked it myself." Gabe opened the microwave and stirred the leftovers; putting it back in the micro and hitting start again. "It's great exercise and you have to plan on your feet on what to do next. I'm learning a lot in a short amount of time."

"How did the others do?" Ronnie glanced at the microwave, looking to see what it was.

"Leftover pasta from the other night. You want some?" Ronnie nodded. Gabe took out another fork for her. Gabe took the food out of the micro, gave it a quick stir and put it down between them. "Well J.J. took a loss, but he fought until the last thirty seconds. He got dropped on his back about halfway in; knocked the wind out of him. Kept up a good fight for a while though. Shane did well; he won against his opponent. Edgar is the one to watch though."

"Why do you say that?" Ronnie covered her mouth to make sure that one of the noodles didn't drop to the floor.

"Classy." Gabe smiled. "Edgar had the guy off of his feet and pinned in like two minutes. He's just a flash of motion. It was so quick."

Ronnie nodded. "He's pretty fast for someone his size." She took another forkful of pasta. "So did you enjoy rolling around with sweaty guys on gym mats?"

Gabe started coughing loudly. He took a good drink from his glass and put it down. He looked at his sister in surprise. Ronnie for her benefit; merely looked back at him innocently.

"Did I say something wrong?"

"You're evil, you know that?" Ronnie continued to look at him innocently. Gabe merely shook his head and took another bite. "Did you have a good time with the girls over?"

"You asked me that already."

Gabe shrugged. "I'm just saying. It's strange to hear you crying after having a good day."

It was Ronnie's turn to look at her brother in shock. Gabe merely took another forkful of noodles and chewed.

"How did you know I was crying?"

"You just went ahead and told me." He pointed at her as he spoke. Ronnie could only glare at him. He looked up from the container. "You want to talk about it?"

"Not really." Gabe shrugged as he mentally counted to five. "So can I ask you a question? And don't give me any crap about 'you just did, ha-ha'." Gabe motioned for her to continue. "So I'm up in the air about something."

"The date with Shane?"

"Are you psychic?" Ronnie looked at him, to which Gabe shook his head. "I like Shane; he's handsome, funny and athletic."

"There's someone else?"

Ronnie glared at her brother. "Stop that." Gabe merely shrugged. "Yeah there kind of is someone else."

"Does this someone else know about your feelings for them?"

Ronnie nodded. "Yeah I told her today."

"Her?" Gabe's eyebrows rose slightly. "You're playing both sides of the fence?"

"Yes I think so."

"You think so?"

Ronnie rolled her eyes. "Yes Gabriel, I think that I'm bisexual." She watched her brother; who really didn't react too much to her comment. "Well?"

"Well what?"

"Well aren't you going to say something? No smart comments?"

Gabe put the fork down. "What should I say? I could be a jerk and say that's its immoral and what not. You know I won't though. Both mom and dad would kill me; they raised us not to think like that."

"You really feel that way about it?"

Gabe looked at his sister, slightly hurt. "That hurts. You know that I don't feel that way."

Ronnie shrugged, raising her voice. "Well how do I know? You're so God damn nonchalant about me telling you I might be playing both sides of the fence…"

"I have no problem with it." Gabe smiled. "If that's who you are, then I accept it. I wouldn't care if you told me anything from I'm gay to I only have sex with animals. I would accept it because you're my sister."

Ronnie walked over to her brother and gave him a big hug; in which he returned. He lifted his sister off the ground, causing Ronnie to laugh out loud. He put his sister back on the ground and smiled.

"Why were you so worried about telling me?" Gabe asked.

"I don't know, it just felt weird to talk to you about this." Ronnie sighed. She turned to him with a small smirk on her face. "Sex with animals?"

Gabe shrugged. "It was the only thing I could come up with on short notice." Ronnie shook her head. The two siblings picked at the remaining leftovers, leaving a curious silence between the two of them. Gabe looked over to his sister.

"So how long have you been kicking this around in your head?"

Ronnie looked back at the leftovers and shrugged. "I'm not too sure." She took a forkful and chewed on it for a moment before speaking. "Do you remember when Scott left to go to California?"

"Your first boyfriend, yeah I remember."

"He was not a boyfriend!"

Gabe chuckled. "You went to the park on your own and he bought you ice cream. You did this several times before he moved. You kissed him a few times. Yes Veronica; that's considered a date, or in your case dates."

"I was twelve!" Ronnie exclaimed.

"Most pre-teens and teens are dating by eleven nowadays." Gabe pointed out. "We're late bloomers Ronnie. I know that some of the girls in our school are sexually active by the time they're about your age right now."

"Anyway," Ronnie said a little too forcefully. "I began noticing that girls started looking attractive to me as well. It was simple things at first; the way a certain top was worn, a specific perfume on different persons. It was small things like that ended up being a turn on for me. Those small things; in a scientific aspect made sense to me. We as people crave a certain combination of pheromones to find a specific mate. I guess I noticed that from both sexes."

"For you, that makes perfect sense." Gabe smiled. "Only you can justify how you feel in a scientific rationale. I guess my question is how did you keep something like this to yourself for so long? I mean, why bring it up now?"

"I guess that's the sixty-four thousand dollar question." Ronnie pondered. "I guess that I've spent so much time trying to figure out if it was right to have those feelings or not. I can only guess that my mind is okay with it now. The rest of me is trying to play catch up."

"May I present a theory?" Gabe asked, scratching his chin. "You stated that you talked to one of the girls about this. Could that girl be the one that left last? If so, maybe she was a catalyst to renewing those feelings? Maybe even reigniting and bringing them to the forefront and making things more difficult than they were?"

Ronnie smiled and blushed at the same time. "Only you can pose my concerns in a scientific manner."

"Hey you do what you have to do to get to the root of the issue. Blame mom for making us watch all of those science shows when we were growing up." Gabe took the last of the pasta and ate it. He took the container and forks and washed them in the sink.

"So what do you propose I do?"

"I think it's a simple answer." Gabe stated, drying off the kitchenware. "You go out on a date with each person. When both dates are completed, you go over each of them and answer truthfully how each date went. Add in the factors of how you felt on them and the experience and go from there."

"That's really insightful Gabriel."

Gabe shrugged. "I have my moments. Ronnie; even though I'm posing answering your question in a scientific way, don't go about this in that manner. Nikki and Shane are human beings and treating them like lab rats isn't really going to go over very well."

"Gabriel, I wouldn't…"

Gabe put his hands up in defense. "I'm just making sure sis."

They sat in a comfortable silence for a moment or two before Ronnie spoke up again.

"When should I talk to mom and dad about what we've talked about?"

"Do it at dinner. It's the only time where we'll all be together for a while." Gabe smiled. "Besides I'll have your back."

Ronnie nodded and agreed to this. Gabe shuffled up the stairs and took a shower. Ronnie ended up doing a little cleaning in the kitchen during that time. When Gabe came downstairs again, Spinner had just made it home and Jane wasn't too far behind. They had washed up for dinner and sat down together for a family dinner. The four had talked about their respective days. It was at this point that Ronnie had taken a deep sigh and looked at her brother. Gabe nodded his head and smiled to encourage her to talk about it. She stood up and cleared her throat.

"Mom, dad; I need to talk to you about something serious…"

We leave our characters to handle this amongst themselves.

So what did you think? Did it seem realistic of a conversation to you? I know that when I was working on this; it sounded eeriely similar to a conversation that I had with a fellow geek many years ago. I guess that it's funny how sometimes real life ends up in my story. It's funny to say that the truth may be stranger than fiction. In reality; it may be.

I've actually been sitting on this for the last few days. Between work and family time (spent at C2E2; which if you live in the Chicago area, I totally recommend), I'd forgotten that I had the rough draft on here. It should have been posted a few days ago, but it keeps up with my once a month policy. I'm planning on the next part of the story to be in two parts, but that may change as I see fit. It will be interesting to say the least.

Thanks go out to you my faithful readers that follow this story and me! I love that you guys keep reading this with the updates being so far and between. Thanks also go out to those of you that have read the story and just leave it at that. Apparently I'm doing okay, so thanks!

Coming up: Ronnie's date with Shane; let Chaos reign!