I awoke to a start as suddenly I was sprayed in the face by three jet streams of water. Opening my eyes suddenly and saying words unfit to hear, I saw Tommy, Jake, and Landon standing by my bed holding super soaker water guns. "What the hell is going on?" I sputtered out.
"Good morning," Tommy answered with a grin. The way he said "morning" sounded more like "moaning," but I knew what he meant.
"Snow day," Jake replied with his own smile.
"How did you three get in my house?" I asked looking at them. Then I fixed my attention on my Dad in the background, standing in the doorway with his own mischievous smirk. I simply grinned at him, glad to see him finally having fun with something.
"Get dressed," Landon ordered me. "We're going to build a snow man."
The three boys filed out of my room, and my dad walked in. "You mad at me?" he asked, hardly able to hold back his laughter at my surprising awakening.
"Nah, Dad. It's cool. Just a little bit shocking, is all."
"Oh, well, they seem like nice boys. Don't wanna keep em waiting for too long."
He left the room and I got out of bed. It had been a few weeks since I had first started attending R-SALT, and the four of us had built somewhat of a friendship, but this was the first time that my dad had ever met my new friends.
Suddenly, the realization of what Jake had said hit me. A snow day? In Riverton? I ran to my window and was shocked to see a solid few inches of white powder covering the ground for as far as my eye could see. I never remembered any snow accumulating in Riverton before, nevertheless inches. I grinned to myself and started to get dressed for my first snow day.
After dressing myself in the warmest clothes I could find, which was no easy task considering I had never had much of a reason to have winter clothes before, I stormed down the stairs and into the living room. "I'm going out with the guys, Dad!" I called out to him.
"Hold up, Liam. You need boots."
"What? My regular shoes will work just fine, won't they?"
"You'll track snow everywhere and it'll soak straight through to your socks. You can borrow my boots there."
Knowing better than to argue, I slipped off my regular shoes and stepped into my dad's boots. Before I could be corrected for anything else, I took off out the door.
I had been outside as it snowed before, but never when it had actually built up on the ground. Apparently the newness of my experience showed on my face, as for the first ten minutes or so, Landon could not stop laughing."What are you laughing at?" I evantually confronted him.
"Your face," he said with a laugh.
"Oh yeah, a wise guy, eh?" I asked with a laugh back.
"Have you never been in the snow before?"
"I've lived in Riverton all my life," I told him.
"This is the first time any snow's piled up since we've been born," Tommy explained.
"This is nothing compared to back home," Landon mused.
It was our turn to laugh as Jake filled Landon's hood with snow and turned it over onto his head, causing him to squeal in surprise and dance about like an idiot. "So much for Mr. Tough Guy, huh?" I asked Tommy. I was replied to by a snowball hitting me in the back of the head, obviously thrown by Landon due to his uncontrollable giggling.
The next couple of hours were spent in what had to have been one of the most epic four-man snowball fights in the history of Riverton, Alabama. All four of us were exhausted by the time we finally decided to call a truce, complete with handshakes full of snow.
After the snow-war, we decided to get to work on the snowman that they had originally come over to build. Since the other three of us had no experience in building a snowman, Landon instructed us in what he called "the noble art of snowman-making," telling us exactly how to roll the snow to get the best parts of it in the right spots. It didn't seem like it was all that complicated to me, but I bit my tongue and let him feel like the master of snow-art.
Before long, Tommy, Jake and I had mastered the snowman and were well into our work. We didn't even notice when Landon slipped away from the group to start a solo project until he announce it with an over-important "Ta-da!" The three of us turned around and saw a pile of snow that came up to about my waist, looking mostly like a mess.
"What is it?" Jake asked curiously.
"It's a snow dick," Landon replied with a laugh. Upon further inspection I saw that it was indeed an icy reproduction of the male genital system, designed with incredible attention to detail.
"Poor Frosty," Tommy said with a chuckle.
"He must have made Crystal mad," Jake replied laughing.
"Isn't it kinda big?" I asked Landon.
"They come smaller than that?" He wiggled his eyebrows at me, obviously trying to imply something about his own endowment, and I hit him in the face with a snowball.
"Just destroy it before Brandon sees it, ok? I really don't need him telling Dad we're out here making snow dicks."
He walked over and kicked it at the base, causing the snowy penis to crumble into oblivion. "Liam, go get your hose and wet our snowman there. The ice'll make him last longer," he commanded. I retrieved the hose from the side of the house and handed it to Jake, who did the honors as I turned the water on at the spicket.
From our spot in the yard, I saw a boy walking alone down the sidewalk. As he looked to his side to watch us play in the snow, I saw his face and noticed that it was Kenneth, the boy from my last period class who had ignored me my entire first few weeks. I decided to give it one more chance, and waved him over towards us. "Hey, Kenneth, isn't it?" I asked. Once again, he only nodded. "If you don't have anywhere to go, why don't you come play in the snow with us for a while?"
His eyes scanned the four of us, apparently considering the offer seriously, before his eyes locked on Tommy. "I got somewhere I'm going," he replied bluntly. His voice was smooth and soft, but there was a certain edge to it that I couldn't quite place.
"If you're sure, I guess I'll see you next time we have school," I said. He nodded once again and walked off.
I returned to the group and noticed that Tommy was eying me irregularly. "Are you two friends?" he asked looking at me.
"No, that's the first time that we've talked. I invited him to come play in the snow with us, but he said he has somewhere to be."
"Good. That guy is nothing but trouble."
"What's the problem between you two? It seemed like you were the reason that he wasn't going to come over," I said.
"None of your business," he responded coldly.
"Jeez, no need to be an ass about it," I said rolling my eyes as I turned around. I felt a strong push from behind and fell face-first into the snow. "What the hell was that!?" I yelled, turning on my back to look up at Tommy.
"I said it's none of your business. Drop it."
"Is the snowman frozen yet?" Jake asked, obviously trying to diffuse the situation between Tommy and I.
"Yeah, he won't be going anywhere for a while," Landon replied, his eyes going back and forth between Tommy and I like he was watching a tennis match. He helped me to my feet and brushed my back off for me.
"Let's go inside," I said, my eyes still on Tommy. "Maybe Dad can make us some hot chocolate."
"Jake and I have to go," Tommy replied, the sound of forced gratitude thick on his voice.
"But I wanted hot choco-" Jake started to whine, but he was quickly cut off by the forceful voice of Tommy.
"I said we're leaving."
Tommy ushered Jake into the truck that was waiting in my driveway. Landon and I walked inside, leaving our respective footwear on the porch out front. "Hey there, Mr Lazy," I said teasingly to Brandon when we found him on the couch in the living room, watching TV in his pajamas.
"Who your friend?" he asked looking at Landon and me.
"Landon, this is Brandon. Brandon, Landon."
Landon giggled slightly behind me. "You rhymed," he told me. I rolled my eyes and lead him towards Dad's office where, sure enough, I found him hard at work over some files.
"Hey Dad, is it cool if Landon and I make some hot chocolate?" I asked.
"Yeah, go ahead, you know where all the stuff is," he told me, not turning away from his work. "And if Landon needs clothes to change into, you should let him borrow some of your stuff."
"OK, thanks Dad," I replied as we turned and left the room. "You wanna change?" I asked Landon.
"That would be nice," he replied. I walked up the stairs to my room and showed him inside.
"I think my clothes should fit you. We're about the same size," I said as I went to the closet and opened it up. I found a black shirt from a concert I had gone to long ago, and a pair of sweatpants. "These OK till those dry out?" I asked Landon. He nodded and I handed them to him.
Landon immediately started stripping down and, as much as my mind told me to leave the room and give him some privacy, other parts of my body rooted me to the ground as soon as I saw his body. He was no muscle god, in fact, he was fairly skinny for our age, but something about the way his body was shaped definitely had some major sex appeal. "Do you wanna take a picture before I put these clothes on?" he asked me teasingly as he stood in front of me in only his boxer-briefs.
"Sorry," I apologized quickly. "I was thinking about...something else."
"Would you like to put my boxer-briefs in the dryer too?" he asked laughing some.
"In your dreams," I replied, taking his wet clothes with me as I left the room. I went downstairs to the laundry room and stuffed them into the dryer before making my way to the kitchen and starting on the hot chocolate. After procuring enough to fill two mugs to the very brim, I grabbed the bag of marshmallows and took the two winter-themed mugs up to my room where I found Landon sitting in my computer chair.
"Santa or Frosty?" I asked him.
"What?" he replied.
"Your mug, do you want Frosty or Santa?" I showed him the two mugs, and he pointed at Frosty.
"May as well, after I castrated the poor guy," he explained.
"So now you'll drink his innards out too?" I asked with a laugh.
He nodded. "I'm just a horrible person."
I laughed some as I settled on my bed with the bag of marshmallows and took a sip from Santa's head. "Marshmallows?" I offered.
Landon walked over and sat next to me on the bed before putting a handful of marshmallows in with his hot chocolate. "That was pretty intense out there with Tommy," he said.
"Yeah, what's his problem anyways?" He leaned back against the wall that my bed ran along, and I sat cross-legged by the pillows so that I could listen to him.
"Tommy and Kenneth have some problems that not even I could write," he explained.
"Like what? What could make them hate each other so much?" I asked curiously.
"Well apparently they had a thing a while back, but eventually Kenneth cheated on Tommy. So when Tommy got pissed, he did everything he could to make Ken's life hell. Vandalism, arson, defamation of character, all kinds of things he could get some serious jail time for. Well, the thing is, Kenneth never had any proof that it was Tommy, except for the fact that he bragged about it to anybody that would listen." Landon had been calm at the beginning of his story, but by this point he had worked himself up into yet another animated frenzy.
"Calm down, Shake," I said in an attempt to be able to understand the rest of the drama."
"Yeah, sorry," he said. "Well Tommy eventually started dating Ken's twin sister. As you can imagine, that didn't sit well with Kenneth, so he got revenge by spreading the word that Tommy is a pedophile."
"What? Is he?"
"Not to my knowledge," Landon told me as he took a long sip of his chocolate drink.
"That's pretty messed up."
"Yeah, well there's more to it than that, but Tommy won't tell me anything about it, and Kenneth hasn't talked to anybody in ages."
"Doesn't anybody know what it is?" I asked.
"Nah, or if they do, they're very tight-lipped about it."
"So nobody knows. We're in high school. Nobody can keep a secret."
"True, but nobody knows more about keeping secrets than the gays of Alabama," he countered as he finished his hot chocolate and put the mug on my bedside table.
I had to laugh at that. "Well, remind me not to get in between those two."
"Don't get between those two," he said with a smirk. I put my mug down, reached out and punched him gently on the shoulder. He punched me playfully back and, before I knew it, we were wrestling on the bed.
I could only concentrate on how good his body felt on top of mine, and he soon had me pinned down to the bed, his knees on my shoulders and the crotch of the sweatpants I had lent him strangely close to my face. I looked up at him and heard a throat being cleared from the doorway. Looking that way, I saw my dad and must have turned a bright shade of crimson.
"I was about to ask Landon if he'd like to go to dinner with us," Dad said, "but that's pretty obvious to all of us, I think."
If it was possible, I turned a brighter shade of red. "I'd love to, Mr Vale, but I'll need to call my parents first to make sure that it's OK."
"Well, why don't you climb off my son and you can use my phone?" he asked, obviously trying to embarrass me as much as he possibly could.
"I have my own," Landon replied as he climbed off of me and left the room. I laid still, trying to hide my obvious arousal from my father.
"He seems like a nice boy," Dad said yet again before leaving the room. I felt like my face was on fire, I was blushing so hard.
Landon came back into the room a few minutes later, by which time I was, thankfully, back to normal. "Mom and Dad said I can stay as long as I'm back after dinner. They think that we're going to be back in school tomorrow."
"OK, cool," I replied as I sat up. "I guess you'll probably need to change before we go."
"Any idea where we're going?" he asked.
"Knowing Dad, probably a steakhouse or something along those lines."
"Oh, that's cool. I like meat." I wiggled my eyebrows at him and he started to laugh.
Landon and I hung out in my room mostly for the next couple of hours until the buzzer on our dryer announced that his clothes were dry. He changed into them, this time in a different room, as I changed into a polo shirt and some decent-looking jeans.
We piled into Dad's car, Landon up front with Dad and me in back with Brandon, and he started to drive. "So, Landon, tell me a bit about yourself?" Dad questioned. I knew what he was doing but either Landon didn't, or he just didn't care. I sat back and listened as he revealed himself to my dad. I learned some things about him myself, such as the fact that he was a huge Shakespeare fan, his favorite play being Twelfth Night, and that he was a published author online. I made a mental note to myself to read one of his stories later.
We eventually arrived to a small steakhouse that my dad loved to eat at, and we quickly got out of the car. Brandon took Dad's hand, and I had a sudden, weird idea that Landon was going to do the same with mine. He didn't, however, only brushing my shoulder with his slightly as we walked into the restaurant. Dad asked for a table, and we were led towards the back of the restaurant. As we walked, I heard somebody say to their table partner, "that's one of the kids from the fag school. Guess Vale's kid is one of them too."
"Shame the little one's exposed to that perversion," the woman of the table commented.
I looked to Landon for his reaction, and he shrugged it off. "Sorry," he said. "But they all pretty much know who goes to R-SALT. Should I leave or something?"
"No, don't be ridiculous," I told him. "Why would I say that?"
"Well, I don't want anything bad said about your family cuz of me," he replied as we were seated.
"Those who mind don't matter," my Dad told him. I finished the phrase.
The rest of the dinner went off without a hitch. Dad sat next to Landon, and I was across from him with Brandon sitting across from Dad. Landon seemed completely relaxed around my dad and Brandon, even getting very excited when he was asked about his stories. He went into his normal twitchy mode, and started talking too fast for anybody to understand him. Dad laughed and asked him to calm down, causing Brandon and I to start laughing as well. Landon fit in really well and before I knew it, it was time to leave.
We got back into the car in the same positions we were in on the way up, and Landon gave Dad directions on how to reach his house. I don't know what I expected, but the small house that we pulled up in front of was not quite it. The house was tiny and rather shabby, looking like it was lucky to even be standing. I bit my lower lip softly as we pulled up in front of it, and noticed Landon looking straight out the window to avoid eye contact with anybody.
"Thanks for dinner, Mr Vale," he said softly as he reached for the door handle.
"No problem, Landon, it was our pleasure."
"Wait," I said. "I'll walk you to your door."
"No, you don't have to," Landon objected, still not looking at anybody in the car.
I ignored his objection, and scrambled out of the car. I walked around to the other side and opened his door for him, allowing him to step out. He looked at the ground now, instead of at me. We walked slowly up the the door of the house, where he stopped and slowly looked up into my eyes. "Thanks," he said again. "I had a really nice time today."
"Me too," I told him honestly. "It's been one of the best I can remember."
"Sorry you had to see my house like this, I was kinda nervous about it."
"It's no problem," I said smiling at him. "It's not all that bad."
"I was just...I dunno...worried, I guess."
"About what?" I inquired.
"That you wouldn't, y'know, like me, once you saw my house."
"Money doesn't have a thing to do with whether I like someone or not," I told him. I was suddenly aware that he and I had gotten closer to each other with every sentence.
I felt his hands circle around mine slowly and gently, and his mouth suddenly pressed against mine in a quick kiss. I looked at him for a few seconds, then gave him a smile which he returned tenfold. He giggled and rushed inside the house before I went back to the car, grinning but blushing as red as a tomato.
I shut the door and Dad started to drive off into the darkness. He didn't say a word as I leaned my forehead against the window and looked out at the sky. "He seems like a nice boy," my father said with a chuckle.