(He is Cheating Love)

Tristan stood facing the standing mirror he had just bumped into in his conquest to pull his shirt off, over his head. He remembered the reasoning behind awakening so early. His mother, who was a flight attendant on a private airline, was on a two-week journey to different areas of the world with her boss and his guests. She left him to fend for himself so he had to wake up early to get his own things ready. Tristan was just happy to have the house for himself for a couple of weekends. All he could think about was the amazing parties he could throw.

Suddenly, he remembered that he wouldn’t have been alone this weekend if not for the mistakes made in his parents’ marriage. The very idea of his father made his smile fade. The way his father used to grit his teeth in his mischievous, toothy smile. His unruly, mopped, brown hair made Tristan shiver. He couldn’t help but to hate his skinny, druggy of a father.

His father had been out of the picture since Tristan was seven. He had left his mother for some sleazy red headed woman. Tristan never really craved a father as others did. He had his mother and, not to mention his aunt, who loved him very much and did almost anything for him.

He also had two younger brothers. He could remember the twins very easily as pictures of them still littered the walls profoundly. Their brown hair reminded him of his father, and their freckles made them look six, instead of sixteen. Derrick and Damian had been two when his father left and they never remembered him. They once told Tristan that this thought pounded upon their minds every waking second because of a yearning for commitment and love from a father. They often reminded Tristan that closest thing they ever had was he. The twins often got into minor trouble because of this craving for attention. However, they were bound to make a horrible mistake eventually.

One night however, after they finished their sixth out of their twenty-five hours of detention, they decided to go to a friend’s house instead of straight home as they were instructed. At the house, they drank numerous varieties of alcohol and then attempted to drive their car home. The two of them were on the highway only four miles away from their house when the lights of a semi-tanker blinded them. They swerved the car into the next lane and died on impact.

Enough of a flashback for Tristan, he was already running a bit late for school. He definitely didn’t want to be late for the second day of Senior year, so he rushed into his bathroom and stripped the rest of his clothing as the shower water warmed up. He set his usual morning hair products out on the counter with his razor blade and headed to the kitchen to put a Pop-tart in the toaster. He rushed back and jumped into the shower.

Unexpectedly, the memory of Emma Cicely was floating in his mind. Her body was so slender and smooth. He could imagine feeling her soft blonde curls. He prayed to bump into her at least once a day. To talk to her would be enough. However, he longed for more. He thought about her every second of every day. His arms ached to hold her close to his body and his body ached for her to hold him back. Then he realized that his body didn’t ache at all but he was feeling good.

The closest thing he had ever come to this relationship was when she fell off the top of the cheerleader’s pyramid at a football game. He was playing “Last Resort” to the team and was sitting on the bench when the mighty pyramid of girls started to tumble. He unfortunately, caught not only Emma but also the entire squad, which knocked the wind out of his lungs very rapidly. He was in such awe that they fell on top of him he was too shy to convey any conversation with Emma.

He remembered the worst time when this relationship ever seemed to hint at a chance also. The Monday after that football game, a rumor flew that he was in love with her. Therefore, her boyfriend walked up to him, while he was naked from head to toe, and punched him square in the face. The most embarrassing part of this confrontation was that he lay for three hours, unconscious, naked upon the linoleum. When he awoke, all of his friends had left the showers with him behind. Her boyfriend had stolen his clothes and he had nothing to wear but a small pair of gym shorts, and a T-shirt printed with the school emblem upon his abdominals. He quickly awoke from this daydream with a shutter of remembering the pain mentally and physically he felt for the days following that extrusion.

His shower started to get cold by the time the conditioner was flowing from his medium-length hair. He quickly rubbed on a dab of body-wash, washed it off, and raced to get his now cold Pop-tart. He grabbed it and set it upon his desk drawer while he dressed in his usual attire. He had a black T-shirt with a wispy skull emanating from its middle. He usually wore long sleeved shirts downstairs but since his mother was not here, he did not have to cover his tattoo. He was eighteen and there wasn’t anything anyone, except his mother, could do about it.

He ran out of his house quickly and jumped into his car slamming the door to his Jaguar Mark II Sedan. Fuck, he forgot his fucking Pop-tart. He would have to wait until lunch to eat. He started the car and after many turns of the key got it started. He switched gears as he drove down the street from his house in the opposite direction of his school. Every day since sophomore year Tristan had went out of his way for three dollars from each of his best friends to pick them up and drive them to school.

His friend Thomas had an old beater and it worked fine. It was actually better on gas mileage also, but Tristan was sure that showing up in a Geo was not Thomas’s idea of cool. So everyday Tristan drove down Maple Avenue to pick up Thomas and then turned onto Wicker Drive to pick up his other best friend Greg. Then he would speed to school and show up almost exactly ten minutes before they let students in to begin the school day. He would park out behind the bus station and smoke a cigarette with his friends before going into the building.

Every group of friends had its flaws. Either two of them would hook up or one would ignore the others and hang out with their significant other. It was bound to happen in the twenty-first century that a group of male friends would have these same flaws. Greg and Thomas were the one’s hooking up though.

Tristan had known that they were both secretly gay and that they secretly liked the other for the last three years, since Freshman year. They both however, didn’t know the other was gay until exactly a year ago today when Tristan lost his temper with how they used to bicker.

They would pretend to be mean to the other one in hopes that the other would not notice how much the other really cared. One day they were pushing and shoving in the car and Tristan was bumped and swerved into the next lane nearly dodging another car. He immediately pulled over and screamed it out to both of them that they liked each other and then drove off to school in the silence. When they stopped behind the bus station however the silence was interrupted with sounds of conversation between the two. They started going out the second day of junior year and had been nearly inseparable ever since. However, they showed no affection for each other in school the moment that they were out of the parking lot they started to grope and kiss and frequently grossed Tristan out with other activities.

Tristan placed his attention on the road once again. He turned around a corner onto Waling Avenue. He really wished he hadn’t forgotten his breakfast on his dresser because his stomach was begging for it now. He kept looking forward but slipped down and turned the newly tweaked radio that was adjusted for his car. He turned it onto his favorite station and listened to the music until he saw the road sign that was marked as Maple Avenue. He turned and prepared for another day of normality.