Welcome back. I sincerely apologize for the long wait. My life has been hectic at best, and I've barely had time to touch the computer, much less write. I would've waited longer to write more because this is really short, but I wanted to crank out the next chapter as soon as possible so I discarded that plan. Things should get back to normal in a couple of weeks, because then I won't be travelling for my school's band every weekend and I'll have time to write. I'll try my damndest to update this thing regularly until I won't have to try as hard, and even then it'll be a top priority.

The walk up to Robbie's house was silent. Cat's mind was elsewhere, with her friends, and Robbie didn't know what to say. The whole situation was awkward, but neither of them cared. He brought her to the help's quarters, reluctantly. The other in there were nothing like her, and he was worried they wouldn't like her; or worse, they would. His decision to bid for her had been poorly planned-out at best.

It's all because of Beck, really. He wasn't that serious when he said he'd try to buy her, especially after the crazy girl tried to get at him, But Beck convinced him to. For some reason he was really persistent about it, they negotiated throughout the whole ceremony, but he just couldn't pay for her. She would go for big money, and he didn't have the cash. Beck surprised him by offering to give him the money he didn't have, then surprised him even more by offering to take her off his hands. He said he only needed him to house her for a few days, then he'd take her. What Beck did with her was his business, so he wasn't curious about that part. However, he was curious as to why he was doing this.

He only smiled slyly and replied, "I need her."

So minutes after their conversation, Robbie was in an intense bidding war with some 300-pound man wearing obnoxious green aviator shades and an ill-fitting suit to match. Somehow he won, but he ended up paying the full $25,000 price limit for her. As he payed for her after the ceremony was over, and received dirty looks from the fat man, he began to wonder if this girl was even worth all the money. What could she do for Beck? She's not his type, and if he was looking out of the box, the crazy girl he took should have been plenty. What was his angle?

It never even occurred to him until Tori's car was pulling out of his driveway that the place that normally housed the once-criminals wouldn't be a good fit (and he didn't get anything out of his deal with Beck except cheated out of $20,000, but the last thing his family needed was any more workers so he wasn't that mad). Almost all of them were men well into the adult stage of life with bad attitudes towards others, and putting this girl into the middle of that would be disastrous. But he didn't have anywhere else to put her, so she would have to deal, as mean as that sounded.

He unlocked the front door and opened it carefully, so as to not wake up the others. "Well, here's where you'll be for a couple of days." He said timidly, unsure if he actually had her attention. She still had that far away look in her eyes. "Are you there…?"

Cat had to repress the urge to roll her eyes. Of course she was here, where else would she be? Her façade must be working better than she originally thought; if she looked that dizzy. But what did he mean when he said for a few days? …Where is she gonna be after then?

She nodded to answer his question and walked inside the house, towards the middle of the room. Inside the small entrance room, there was a table near the back left and a couple of couches in the back right, with doors on the middle of each wall and bookcases lining some of the walls. What the doors led to was anyone's guess. Robbie explained the layout of the house once he followed her in. "This is essentially the living room. You'll spend extra time here, with the others. That door goes to the bathrooms and clothes." He said, pointing to the door in front of them. Then he pointed to the right and said, "That's where the beds are. The door opposite that leads to the kitchen. You'll eat in there, for the time you're here."

"Why do you keep saying that?" Cat asked suddenly, stopping him from saying anything else.

"What do you mean?" He replied, cocking his head slightly in confusion.

"For a few days. Am I leaving?" She made sure to keep her voice childlike, to keep up the act. It was more difficult than she thought it would be.

"Well…yea." He nodded. "You'll only be here for a week, if that long."

Now it wasn't so hard; she was legitimately worried. "W-where am I going? Who's going to take care of me? Oh my God, are they bad people? They aren't, right? They won't hurt me, will they?" Her voice cracked near the end, and she could feel the tears threatening to fall. Even though she knew she probably would at some point (she has a nasty habit of keeping her heart on her sleeve; it never came in handy when in troubling situations), she didn't want to cry in front of him. She didn't want him to see her when she was so weak. As the tears started to fall, she looked down tried to hide her face with her hands. As she started to cry, she chastised herself for doing it in front of this boy she barely knew, but she couldn't stop.

He was quick to try and console her. "No, don't cry! You'll be fine." He said, walking closer and shaking his head. "At least, I think you'll be fine but you'll be fine! You're just going a couple minutes away, to my friend Beck's house. You'll be better there, he has people your age that you can be friends with, and I don't. It's a great thing that he's taking you, it is." He said. He tentatively put his hand on her shoulder, and only relaxed it when she didn't pull away.

"I'm so scared…" she managed to say through quiet sobs. Why is telling this to him?

"He's a great guy. And the girl seems…well…Beck's a great guy." He shrugged. The girl's a different story entirely, but maybe she could get along with her. Then again, maybe not; this girl's really dizzy and the other girl didn't seem like the type to like, or even deal, with people like that.

"Who's Beck?" She pulled her head up to ask. And why did he talk about that other girl like that?

"Oh, he's the other guy I was with. You'll love him, I promise. I do." He said with a smile.

She wiped her face with the back of her hand and stopped sobbing as best as she could, then turned towards him. "What's her – wait, what?"

His eyes widened once he realized what he said. "N-not like that! I mean, he's awesome and all, but – well you see – I don't –" Every excuse he could think of didn't help his case. They just made him sound stupid or gay, and saying them out loud would've probably sounded much more so, so he stopped trying. "Ahh, forget it." He waved his hand, as if waving away the conversation; but the issue was still in the back on if his mind. "What were you trying to say?"

She wanted to question it more, but she decided against it. Not her business whether or not he liked men. "What's the girl's name?" she asked, back on topic.

"Jadelyn, or something like that."

Her eyes widened and a huge smile broke out on her face. "Really? Oh my God, that's so great!" She threw her arms around him and jumped up and down. He probably had no idea why she was suddenly so excited and this would seem so out of the blue but at the moment she didn't care. She was happy and she needed a hug.

He stumbled back a few steps from the unexpected embrace, but soon after the misstep he gained his footing again and loosely wrapped his arms around her. The hug only lasted for a few seconds after that. "What was that about?" He asked a little breathlessly, while taking his arms back and fixing his glasses.

"Jade's my girlfriend. I can't wait to see her!" She clapped her hands and started jumping up and down, like she couldn't contain her happiness.

When he heard girlfriend, he raised his eyebrows. Did she mean a girl that's a friend, because girls do that for some reason, or…romantically involved? He should probably go with the safer option, and the one that made the most sense to him. "Okay. Well, best of luck with you and your friend." He said with a polite smile.

Okay, it's not like he had a problem with her, if she was talking about her being more than friends with the Jade girl. It was more about…the gay aspect of it. He was taught that stuff like that wasn't right, or normal, and it's been drilled into him ever since. His family had a really skewed view of society. They thought that men were men and women were women, and that men and men and women and women shouldn't be together. So every time he'd do something that wasn't stereotypically male, he'd get disappointed looks from his mom and his dad would give him some speech he never listened to. His grandparents, however, were more vocal about it.

They always made it a point to talk about the carrying on of the line, and how they weren't gonna let his parents allow him to be some pansy or loser. His grandma started setting him up on unsuccessful blind dates as soon as he had his bar mitzvah (she brought a date for him on his bar mitzvah, how crazy is that?) and his grandpa took him to sports games and his barber's shop, which was always filled with old men reminiscing about the 'good ole' days'. He even tried to take him to a gun range once, but they left almost immediately after Robbie shot his first gun because he cried from the recoil. But he was eight, and he gave him a really powerful gun, so could you blame him?

They still tried to set him up with girls and talk some manliness into him, even though it hasn't worked yet. Robbie let them, because if he didn't his parents would get mad and even though they wouldn't outright say it, he'd be able to see the disappointment in their eyes and he hated when he did. But it got to the point where it's more annoying than it should be. And…well, let's just say if his family found out that he enjoyed the male persuasion more than he should, they wouldn't like it one bit. It probably would be expected, but that wouldn't make the backlash about his affections any better.

So he stayed 'in the closet', even though he hated the phrase, and started making more of an effort doing the things he was guilted in to. It made him look good and straight and normal, like he was just a late bloomer, which would still be better than being attracted to men; and maybe it made him felt good inside, too, because he could pretend he was good and straight and normal. They'd both be in ignorant bliss, as long as Robbie stayed away from the thoughts that bound him and kept busy with family events that kept them in the shadows. When he started, he originally thought for a fleeting second that it would make his family suspicious as to why he suddenly cared about how to fix a car and dressed fancier on his hookups – even though they still weren't successful; that was something he wouldn't compromise – but they never did. All it really did was make them happier, and they never questioned it. He wanted to question it, but that would be the very definition of self-incrimination and he didn't care that much.

She noticed his hesitance. Was he homophobic? Is that why he reacted the way he did when he slipped and said he loved Beck? Because to be honest he acted more like he was in the closet, and if he actually didn't like gay or even bisexual people then that explained why he was. She had to remind herself again that his sexual identity wasn't her problem, and the most important question here was if she did correct him, would he treat her any differently? Well whatever he would do, she would have to deal with it for the next week. She didn't see much reason to keep it from him; honesty was always her strongest point. And yet I'm in this situation. "She's not my friend, she's my uh, girlfriend." She tentatively replied.

He should've called it. He pretended to act pleasantly surprised and kept up the polite smile. It felt fake; probably looked it too. "Oh? Well, best of luck for you and your…girlfriend." He said.

She could tell his smile wasn't sincere. If that wasn't, was his statement even real? "You're homophobic, aren't you?" She asked, dropping her act and narrowing her eyes.

"Homo – No, of course not! Why would you…" He tried to claim innocence, but he couldn't finish a sentence and was visibly flustered. How could she think that? Is that what she got from him?

She sighed and crossed her arms. "Of course you are. Out of all the people…" She shook her head. "Look, this isn't going to work. You might as well call your friend and tell him to come get me."

"I'm not homophobic, alright? I'm not." He emphasized his point with his hands, sweeping his arm out in the 'no' motion as he talked. "I don't know how you got to that –"

"Oh, no; you've got to be kidding me. I saw you react to what I said. If you're not against gay people, then you're one of them and you won't admit it."

That only flustered him more. He stuttered until he shut himself up when he realized the stuttering wasn't helping, then he stood there, growing more terrified as the silence drove him crazy with fear. The stuttering and silence only confirmed Cat's suspicions; that's not what she wanted to hear. She would've been fine with it if he'd continued his protests, but he didn't and he couldn't, and that was just as bad as saying he was. There had to be a reason he reacted like that, and if what she was thinking was right, then that was something she wouldn't wish on anybody.

He watched as realization and imminent pity shown on her face. It wasn't fair, she shouldn't pity him! He was the one better off; if anybody needed to be pitied it was her! She's stuck, forever! He wanted to scream and yell at her those exact words, to tell her that he didn't need her pity and didn't want it, that he was better than her and he pitied her, like it should be, but he couldn't. He couldn't do anything but stand there as tears formed and threatened to fall. "Please don't tell," He said, sounding so broken and scared, even to himself.

Cat only shook her head. "I won't." She moved closer to him and put her hand on his shoulder, pulling him to her. He quickly wrapped his arms around her and put his head on her shoulder, then let the tears fall. They stood there, Robbie openly sobbing and Cat staying silent, physically consoling him as best as she could.