Chapter 227
Scooter sighed. He was going to kill Roni. This was trouble he didn’t need.
“This again?” Andy came the rest of the way into the bedroom and pulled Scooter into a hug. “I think everyone’s going to figure out that you’re gay when we come in together, honey.” It was always just a little disconcerting when Andy and Roni seemed to share the same brain.
Scooter sighed. “It’s not that, baby doll,” he said. “Everyone knows I’m gay. Everyone has known I’m gay since I was a teenager. It’s just…we’re parents now. We need to look. Parental.” He sighed, then looked at himself in the mirror as he pulled on his jacket. At least he wasn’t still giving off serious twink vibes; he’d nurtured that underfed, wide-eyed look for a long time. That wasn’t who he wanted to look like anymore. He wondered if straight parents had this problem; that someone was going to look at them with their kid and think “nope, that’s not a responsible adult, that’s a faker, someone take the kid away.”
“I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention when you show up to walk her home, but at least half a dozen moms show up to pick up their kids while wearing pajamas. No one is really going to care if you’re wearing a grey T-shirt or a blue one.” Andy kissed his cheek. “They willnotice if we’re late, though.”
“We’re not going to be late,” Scooter sulked. He glanced at the clock, though, just to be sure. He grabbed his shoes and stepped into them, tying the laces as quick as he could. Once Andy put the idea of being late into his head, his heart rate was up and he was doing the math to compare walking versus driving and trying to find a parking space. Which was probably math that Andy was much better at, and he was the one who’d brought up being late in the first place.
Breathe, Stahl-Howard.
“Okay,” Scooter said finally. “I’m ready.”
“Come on then; Billie’s about to come drag us along by main force. Though I think she’s more excited about having the afternoon off and the ice cream we promised than the actual ceremony.”
Billie looked adorable. She’d decided this particular occasion called for dressing up, and had found the fluffy pink Easter-dinner, Southern Belle style dress Eleanor had picked out for her. She had even tolerated Andy combing her hair and putting it up—although that might have been that he’d done a distinctly Princess Leia in cloud-city style, Scooter couldn’t say. “Well, you look good enough to top a wedding cake, kiddo,” Scooter said.
“Is there gonna be cake?” she demanded, ignoring the compliment.
Scooter shrugged. They’d been asked earlier in the week to donate five dollars, so they had, but he wasn’t sure what the breakdown of that was going to be. “There’s an after graduation party,” he said. “Maybe cake, I don’t know. Chips, probably, at least.”
Ugh. What was it with kids and shoes? Scooter had to lift her up so Andy could put her shoes on because she couldn’t see under the dress in order to get them on. Scooter brushed the wrinkles out of Andy’s shirt. “Let’s go,” he said, ignoring the fact that he probably should have reminded Billie like four times to put her shoes on first.
He checked the time once more and decided to take the truck; he could drop Andy and Billie at the door and then park. They finally got to the school, and Billie took off almost immediately when she saw Kendra.
He parked, found Andy in the cafeteria/auditorium, and squashed himself into the child-sized chair next to his husband, his knees sticking up absurdly. “Well, this…this takes me back,” he whispered to Andy and pushed his ankle against Andy’s leg. Subtly, of course. Andy’d mentioned off-handed that his parents had never been to any of his various grade-school events. Scooter wondered what that was like, being the only kid in a class to look out into the audience and see no one looking back.
Andy chuckled. “More pleasant than sitting in the principal’s office at least.” He pressed his leg back against Scooter’s, looking around the room curiously.
Sarah Casper caught them looking and waved; pretty much the entire family was with her: husband, mother, D’ante and their other brother, a handful of kids who weren’t yet school-aged, a cousin. There were enough of Clan Sanders to take up the entire row, and then Elaine at the very end, looking half-asleep and leaning against D’ante’s arm. The room got crowded, then too warm, as more and more people squashed into the tiny space.
The head of the PTA stood up and gave some garbled information about the secondary school’s PTA and how everyone should join up, and parents with younger children, blah blah blah. Scooter tuned it out, watching the curtains move and tiny little shoes peep out from under it.