Chapter 59: Relationship Bonds

Tuesday, January 29, 1985

During lunch, we checked the Batt for the on-campus movie options this weekend. Once we saw what was available, Angie and I immediately declared Friday a date night.

Yes, with each other.

The midnight movie this week was ‘Airplane!’ We had to see it! Again!

The others were easy to convince. Cammie and Mel had never seen it, which surprised me until I realized it shouldn’t. It had been my first PG movie without the parents, after all, and their parents had been more strict. Jas, on the other hand, had actually seen it with Paige on a Drama-freshmen outing. It hadn’t been a date, but it was still amusing.

This time, they’d be dating. Officially, anyway.

As we were leaving, Angie pulled me aside.

“You know where I’ll want to sleep after the movie, right?”

I nodded.

“We couldn’t, the first time.”

She giggled, saying, “No! Way too soon! That was just baby steps. Super-important baby steps, but baby steps.”

“There’s a problem.”

She nodded, and said, “I think we need to come clean with Cammie and Mel, the way we did about sleeping with Jas and Paige.”

“Makes sense to me, if it’s good with you.”

“I’m ... maybe a little nervous. Not really nervous, but a bit. It’s weird, but...”

“But we’re weird.”

“Yeah,” she said, grinning. “We are, and we should be. And they’re weird. They’ll understand.”

“I agree. They will.”

We hugged, then caught up with the others. Cammie and Mel gave us curious looks. Jas and Paige pretended to be curious, too.

Once we had a chance to, we quickly checked with Jas and Paige. They had no problem with it at all, and would probably have fun sleeping together. It might even be just sleeping!

After dinner, with Jas and I already on the living room couch, Angie made her now-familiar shout: “Family meeting!”

Cammie and Mel appeared with Paige bringing up the rear.

“What’s up?” Cammie said.

Angie said, “We ... have a bit of a confession. It’s one of those things no one needed to know except the people who needed to know, but now you two need to know.”

Mel put it together.

“Does this somehow have to do with you and Steve having a ‘date’ for ‘Airplane!’?”

“It does!” Angie said. “The long and the short of it is: Steve and I have been sleeping together for years.”

Mel looked shocked. So did Cammie, but she figured it out first.

“Wait!” she said. “You mean just sleeping, right?”

Mel blushed as Cammie said that.

“Yes!” Angie said, giggling, “And thank you for taking at least a few seconds to figure that out.”

“You got me!” Mel said, still a bit red. “Still! Explain! I admit my brothers are ... my brothers, you know. Maniacs! And, yes, they apparently are just fine at sleeping with girls — well, one girl, anyway — but, still.”

Angie said, “It started on a really bad night in January 1981.”

Mel looked confused, then bit her lip.

“Oh!” she said, blushing a bit.

“We ... I ... well, big brother, too ... we just couldn’t ... it...”

“We couldn’t be alone,” I said.

Angie nodded, slipping into my lap, where I gave her a hug. Apparently, it still had the power to sneak up on her. Me, too, though I was doing okay right now.

“So, we told the parents we were spending the night together because we needed to, and ... it worked,” I said. “We just held each other and went to sleep.”

Angie had gotten herself back together, and said, “Since then, it just ... became a thing. Not so much at first, but after we, um ... figured each other out ... more.”

“We somehow convinced our parents that we could share a hotel room for the first family vacation after that, and that settled things in place,” I said. “Oh, we pretended to use both beds, but ... no.”

Mel chuckled, and said, “I had to fight tooth and nail to get my own room on trips! It’d been fine when we were little, but once I hit puberty, and they hit puberty ... just no! Ugh!”

Cammie giggled and gave Mel a hug.

“Boobs are amazingly distracting,” she said, which got Mel red again, but also grinning and nodding.

“Anyway,” Angie said, “It’s been a thing ever since, and we’ll want to after ‘Airplane!’ It’s pretty special.”

Cammie and Mel exchanged a look.

“We’re good with it,” Cammie said.

“It’s sweet, really,” Mel said. “You two are like the ideal brother and sister. I love my brothers, but I still want to strangle them sometimes. Thank God for Emily!”

“Emily has worked wonders!” Cammie said, grinning. “They’ll be good brothers-in-law. Now.”

“I’m sure there are other little things like this,” Angie said. “If this is ‘little,’ anyway. We don’t mean to keep stuff from you. It just never came up before.”

Cammie shrugged.

“It’s little for us, but not little for you. And it’s not like you really kept it from us. It didn’t matter before. Now it matters, and you just told us.”

“We’ve got secrets, too,” Mel said, giggling. “Nothing big. Nothing that affects you guys. But, I mean, stuff we did that no one knows, or people we know did, or ... whatever. It’s not like everyone has to spill their guts about everything. Or even the big stuff, much less the enormous stuff, except we’re really glad you did.”

“Really, really glad!” Cammie said.

“We are, too,” Angie said.

“Very!” I said.

Wednesday, January 30, 1985

We put together our first psychology study group today. This was an odd semester, one that might never be repeated. All of us but Mel were in this class, and all of us including Mel were in logic. I doubted we would see that again.

In any case, we invited Matt, Lisa, and Claire to join our psych study group. I’d found out, after a bit of nudging, that Angie and Paige had sounded all of them out on whether they’d be okay having gay friends. The topic was going to come up, given that Dr. Huffines knew I was involved with GSS and knew Angie and Paige were gay. Sooner or later, we’d be singled out and discussed.

In any case, I had to presume that many people knew about the article. If they knew that, they knew I knew a lot of gay people.

They’d all passed the test. I had no idea what the test entailed, and I didn’t need to know. It was enough to know that they were officially okay, and that no one in psych appeared to suddenly hate Angie or Paige.

This was mostly a getting-to-know-you meeting. They needed to know we were serious about studying, and we needed to know they were, too. Goofing off was fine, but only if our work was getting done. Psych should be an easy A for every one of us, and we couldn’t afford to derail that. I thought it went well, and the others concurred later. No surprise, really. We were, after all, good hosts.

Thursday, January 31, 1985

The phone rang around eight. I was the closest, so I picked it up.

“Hello?” I said.

“Steve!” Jess said. “It’s great to hear your voice!”

“Hey, Jess!” I said, which got everyone else shushing each other.

Then they all shouted, “Hey, Jess!” just as she said, “How’ve you been?”

She giggled and said, “Tell them I said ‘hi!’”

“She says ‘hi!’” I said. Then, into the phone, I said, “Good! How’ve you been?”

“Stressed!” she said. “That’s why I’m calling.”

“Oh? What’s wrong?”

The girls looked a bit nervous.

“Nothing bad! Sorry!”

I gave everyone a reassuring smile.

She continued, saying, “No, it’s ... I promised to give you two weeks’ warning, and it’s two weeks out.”

“Oh!” I said. “Well, that’s cool! Two weeks!”

The girls bounced around a bit, and Angie grabbed for the TV guide. We weren’t big TV people and I for one had no idea what shows were on Thursday.

“I haven’t told anyone! Well, okay, yes I have. My parents know. But no one here. Some of them watch the show and ... it’s going to be kinda a big deal.”

“Hopefully a good one.”

“I ... think so. Some of them want to be actresses, and ... well, I’d say you know girls, but you know some unusually civilized girls. No one will literally claw my eyes out, but there will be ... angst.”

“As long as the angst is manageable.”

That got puzzled looks from my audience.

Angie had brought the TV listings over and stabbed a finger at one of the shows.

“So ... any hints?”

“Well...” she said, drawing the word out. “The show’s title is something two of you share.”

Angie had guessed right. That was cool!

“Relationship bonds?” I said.

Hearing that got a couple of the girls bouncing around again.

Jess giggled again.

“Yes! That’s exactly not it, in the right way. I’m actually allowed to tell people, mind you, but if I don’t tell you, tell you, then I can tell the girls around here ‘I never told anyone, so you’re not unusual.’”

“Nope. So, the guy who you’re not mentioning — was he really frazzled sometimes?”

I had to ask, not only because it would double-check the show but also because it would confirm a movie I loved would be ‘back’ this summer. Jess meeting Michael J. Fox at all was pretty amazing. If she knew more, why not find out?

She paused.

“No, he was really cool. He’s frazzled now, though. Surprisingly, he’s kept in touch with me. I mean ... well ... I’m not in touch with him like that! He’s got a girlfriend, plus, you know, I’m biding my time, not dating. Anyway, I ... oh ... wait a minute...”

Then she stopped and said, “You know something!”

“I know that a certain young actor was burning the midnight oil between a hit TV show and a movie in late 1984 or early 1985.”

“That sounds entirely too likely! Um...”

She paused for quite a bit, then said, “Okay, fine. Tell me it’s worth it. I mean, for him.”

“It’s so worth it!”

I could almost hear her bouncing up and down. The phone made some really weird sounds for a second.

“I knew it!” she said. “I told him, like, a week ago that it was all going to work out and be worth it!”

“That is very cool,” I said.

“My role is a one-shot thing. It’s really unlikely I’ll be on that show again, but my agent said again — just yesterday! — she thinks it’ll open the door at a couple of other shows. Not that there’s any connection — there’s not — but she’ll be able to point to an actual role with lines and stuff, where the episode doesn’t work if I suck.”

“The odds of you sucking are extremely low.”

Paige started pantomiming something that looked like sucking.

Jess, meanwhile, giggled.

“Yeah, well, it depends. Sometimes...”

I grinned, then said, “Sometimes.”

“Okay! So, mark it on your calendars, watch it, tell me what you think.”

“We will!

“You’re allowed to share it with housemates. And parents, I guess, and anyone who doesn’t know me. Really, it’s people who know me, just so I can say ‘I didn’t tell anyone.’”

“Will do!”

She paused, then said, “Thinking about it, I guess you’ll see the final version before I will, thanks to the time zones.”

“We can maybe call and spoil it for you,” I said.

“You do that!” she said. Then she paused and said, “Love you, friend!”

“Love you, friend!”

“Gotta run! Study group!”

“Have fun!”

I hung up and grinned.

“Oh, my gosh!” Mel said, bouncing. “My parents love ‘Family Ties’! Emily, Mark, and Morty watch it!”

“Ours do, too,” Angie said.

Oddly, I knew that, but I knew it in a strange roundabout way. I’d never known Mom and Dad had watched it when it was on until after 2000 in my first life.

“So cool!” Paige said. “I mean, one of us has already been on TV...”

“Not in the same way!” I said.

“You went toe to toe with Marvin Zindler! That’s high stakes!” Paige said, grinning.

“She has a point,” Angie added.

“And, if she wears a hat, no one will notice,” Cammie said.

That got an outraged squawk from Paige, followed by giggling from Cammie. Giggling, along with pleading for us to rescue her from Paige’s tickling.

When things calmed down, Angie said, “So ... that comment about Michael J. Fox ... was that about the movie I think it was about?”

“If it involves time, then yes.”

“Wow!” Angie said. “I didn’t realize he filmed the TV show and the movie at the same time. That is such a good movie!”

“What?” Paige said.

“Gotta wait for the time to be right to know that answer,” Angie said, smirking.

“Get her!” Paige said.

They did, but Angie wouldn’t talk. I wouldn’t, either.

I did mark the show on the calendar, though. We wouldn’t forget, but it absolutely wouldn’t do to miss Jess’s small-screen debut.

That, and we’d have to set the VCR.