Some guys wouldn’t findanyof that funny.
“For the record,” Hobbit chimed in, “I think Tom’s hot, too.”
“You also tried to kiss Hobbit,” Sadie reported.
“Oh, good.” Jules was horrified as he looked over at his friend. “Sorry?”
Hobbit was actually blushing. “I didn’t mind. But then you called me David, which kinda ruined it for me.”
“Yeah,” Sadie said. “You had alotto say about David, who apparently givesreallygood head.”
Oh,fuck. “I actuallysaid...?” Jules’s voice cracked and he closed his eyes and considered dying. Just melting into a puddle of shame and vanishing for good. Because, God, he’d hate it if David talked about him like that.
“It’s okay,” Shelly said, from her perch at the end of the bed. She put her hand on his foot. “It really is. It stays in this room, right, you guys?”
They all nodded solemnly. Belle, and Hobbit, and Sadie, and Tom. It was all Jules could do not to cry.
Shelly squeezed his toes. “It’s all just like... a giant, weird blank, isn’t it? Last night?”
Jules nodded, too, then, still unable to speak.
“But it’s okay. You’re okay, because we stayed with you,” she told him. “Hobbit was like your guard dog. And yeah, you got a little bit goofy last night, but so what? No one minded. We all know maybe a little too much about David now, but... It’s really okay.”
That Shelly, who’d experienced something very similar without her friends around to protect her, would be offering him comfort was... It was almost too much.
“Are you really all right now?” Hobbit asked, concern in his eyes. “Because when you first started throwing up, I thought maybe you were back because you kept saying you were sorry, but...”
Jules had to clear his throat. “I don’t remember anything until... what I guess was that final red bucket,” he admitted. He closed his eyes and he got a flash of blurred memories from right before the nothingness. He was... crawling? Toward Hobbit at the picnic table...? Then Hobbit was beside him, solid and fierce.I’m right here....
“Thank you for not leaving me,” Jules told him as the tears in his eyes threatened to overflow. “There’s so much about this that doesn’t make sense, but... please can we debrief later? Because... I really want to go home. I really...” There was nothing he could do or say to embarrass himself more than he already had last night, so... “You guys, I really want my mom.”
The ER was busy. Apparently Friday nights made for busy Saturday mornings at the local hospital.
It had taken a while, with Hobbit by his side the entire time, but Jules had finally been given a little curtained cubby with a narrow bed. Nurses had come in and taken some of his blood, he’d peed into a cup, plus he’d been hooked up to a saline IV because he was extremely dehydrated. He’d also been given a breathalyzer test, which was a little insulting since he’d been very clear about the fact that he hadn’t been drinking.
At all.
His mother was less impatient about it. “They’re just doing their due diligence,” she pointed out.
“Probably a lot of liars come through their doors,” Hobbit observed from his chair beside Jules’s bed.
Jules had given his mother the nutshell version of the story. That girls in their school were being targeted at parties by someone who slipped some kind of debilitating drug into their drinks. He and his friends were actively trying to find out who was doing this.
She was, understandably, not thrilled.
“So you think that’s why this person targeted you,” she’d asked. “Not because...?”
“I’m gay?” he finished for her. “No. I mean, yes, I think that’s why they targeted me. It wasn’t because I’m gay.”
She drew in a deep breath. “It’s... really been okay? The school? It’s not too... Conservative? Backwards? Narrow-minded?”
“Oh, it’s all of that,” Hobbit answered for Jules.
“It’s very okay,” Jules reassured her, speaking over him. “I’ve made a really great group of friends, which is the most important thing.”
“Well, I certainly like this one,” she said, gesturing to Hobbit, right in front of him, as was her way. “He’s a keeper.”
Back at Jules’s house, Hobbit had been incredibly polite but positively adamant about continuing to stay with Jules, even coming here with them, to the hospital. Hewasquite the unstoppable force.
