“Gavin, listen to me. Whatever Uncle Drew and Aunt Jenny have taught you, there’s still time for you to unlearn it. There’s still hope for both of you to live normal, happy lives,” Uncle Carter pleads.
“Dad, you are talking out of your ass right now. We are already living normal, happy lives.” Gavin wraps his arm around my shoulder and pulls me in close to him. A black olive covered in ketchup drops out of my hair and lands on the ground by my feet with a splat.
Uncle Carter looks back and forth at us. “But you’re covered in food. First it’s food, then it’s Skittles and a trip to the emergency room, and the next thing you know, you’re out on the streets begging strangers for honey and jumper cables. JUST SAY NO to weird sex, GAVIN!”
Gavin starts to laugh and I probably would too if I wasn’t in complete and utter shock at the words that came out of his mouth a few seconds ago.
“Dad, we have not been taking sex lessons from Uncle Drew and Aunt Jenny. Don’t worry,” Gavin reassures him.
Uncle Carter gets up from the couch and rushes toward us, wrapping his arms around both of us and squeezing us to him. Just as quickly, he lets go of us and backs away toward the door.
“Well, alrighty then. You two kids have a nice evening.”
It’s Halloween and my favorite holiday of the year. I should be a little more excited right now, but I’m not. Gavin and I still haven’t discussed the bomb he dropped on me last week. Well, I haven’t discussed it. I’ve done everything I can to avoid talking about it, including taking advice from Aunt Jenny.
“If you ever want to distract a guy from talking about something serious, just mention your period. It works every time. When Uncle Drew asks me if his butt looks big in a pair of jeans, I just tell him I’ve got cramps and he runs away screaming.”
We’ve spent almost every day together and it’s pretty obvious at this point that I’m not ready to talk about the whole “love” thing.
“So, don’t you think we should talk about what happened at my place the other night?” Gavin asked.
“My ovaries feel like their being ripped out of my body right now, and I’m losing so much blood it could kill a horse, and you want to talk?!” I shouted in panic.
“I just … I think my phone’s ringing. At work. I’m going to get in my car and drive to work to answer my phone. The phone. At work,” Gavin mumbled before turning and racing out of my house.”
It’s killing me not telling him I love him. But I have to figure out a way to get rid of my pretend gay boyfriend and still keep him as my friend without Gavin knowing what I’ve done. Piece of cake.
“Later.”
“When later?”
“Just, later, alright?”
“But when? Isn’t it time yet?”
“Jesus Christ, Drew, will you stop asking if it’s time to go yet? We’ll go when the pumpkins are finished being carved,” Uncle Carter complains as I walk into Aunt Claire and Uncle Carter’s kitchen.
Uncle Drew grumbles and flops down in one of the kitchen chairs.
Every year, we all go to a Halloween Walk in the Woods that the local Metro Park puts on. Uncle Carter always volunteers to carve a few pumpkins for their displays, and each year he tries to one-up the other volunteers on the level of pumpkin carving difficulty. This year, I think he’s taken it to a whole new level.
“Sweetie, you should know by now to never tell Drew we’re going somewhere. You just throw him in the car when it’s time to leave,” Aunt Claire reminds him as she comes into the kitchen. “Hey, Charlotte! Cute costume.”
I look down at my knee high white socks, black four-inch Mary Jane’s, short plaid skirt, and white button-down tied under my boobs, and I have to say, I’m pretty proud of myself. Rocco brought the outfit over earlier and helped me get dressed and even put my hair into pigtails.
“Where’s Gavin?” I ask as I take in the scene in front of me. There are pumpkin guts everywhere, and Uncle Carter is so deep in concentration on carving the pumpkin in front of him that he doesn’t even notice Uncle Drew has carved an extra piece of pumpkin into the shape of a penis and is currently pinning it to the back of Uncle Carter’s pumpkin.
“Jenny’s with him in the bathroom helping him finish up his costume. Oh my God, Carter. Who’s going to get the pumpkin guts off of the ceiling?” Aunt Claire asks as she stares above the table.
“Don’t worry, I’ll scrape them off. It’s my fault. The electric drill had a mind of its own,” Uncle Carter replies as he starts gathering up all of the newspapers from the table with piles of guts on them.
“Is there any particular reason why you thought power tools were necessary when carving pumpkins? Our kitchen looks like Home Depot covered in shit right now,” Aunt Claire complains as she looks around the room and sees a drill, a sander, an electric nail gun, a circular saw, and a soldering iron, along with enough extension cords to plug something in all the way to China. “Oh my God, there’s pumpkin on the curtains.”
“What’s up, bitches and hos?!” Tyler shouts as he walks into the kitchen with a five-year-old little boy in tow.
“Yay, Tyler’s here,” Uncle Carter deadpans.