Round 3: Laurent

Oliver Laurent and his wife Kylie Grey are Elders. Oliver’s son Ellis Laurent is a Teen.

* * *

Ellis’s relationship with Liss was moving much faster than he had ever expected. Being with her made him feel dizzy, like he was on a ride he didn’t know how to stop. Only he didn’t want to stop. Being with Liss made him feel, for the first time since he had started high school, like he didn’t actually want to go back to childhood after all. He could grow up and still be who he was. He was an uncomplicated guy who just liked to have fun, and that was okay. It was what Liss liked about him – she had said so.

Lately, though, she seemed more and more unhappy, and he wasn’t sure what to do about it. Or maybe she wasn’t unhappy, exactly; maybe she was just… restless. Her birthday was coming up, and she kept wanting to talk about plans for after they graduated, even though he wouldn’t be graduating for a while yet. He didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life – certainly not throw himself into climbing the career ladder like his father had. He would get a job he liked, get married, maybe have a kid or two. He would work but not too hard, eat lots of good food, have as much fun as possible. It seemed like a decent plan to him.

But Liss had all kinds of big dreams. She wanted to be a famous artist, or an astronaut, or work with computers. She wanted to travel the world. She wanted to live in one of the mansions on the hill and have a maid and a cook and a limousine. And she seemed disappointed when he didn’t have dreams like that.

But physically, things between them were still good. Really good. He figured that if she could still kiss him like that, things must still be okay between them.

Until Dmitri Fish came over one day.

He and Liss were sitting on the couch, snuggling and chatting, while his father ate a late breakfast beside them. He was surprised to see Dmitri – they had gradually grown apart, and hadn’t been talking at all lately – but offered him a friendly greeting. Dmitri just stood there, watching him and Liss.

He didn’t say anything to Ellis – he just asked to talk to Liss outside. They talked for a long time, and Liss never did come back in. The next day, everything between Liss and Ellis was back to normal. But it made Ellis wonder. Before he and Liss got together, he had just assumed there was something more than friendly between Liss and Dmitri. Had he been right all along?

Meanwhile, Oliver wasn’t doing very well in his own relationship either. Kylie’s behavior was getting stranger and stranger, and although he kept trying to talk to her about it, she only shut him out. Their chemistry was as strong as ever, but Oliver was beginning to wonder if that was enough.

When it only affected him, he could deal with it. But when Kylie started yelling at Ellis for no reason, he couldn’t ignore that. No matter the bond between him and Kylie, his son had always been everything to him, and he wouldn’t let Kylie treat him like that.

He tried to talk to her about it, but the discussion got more heated than he intended, and she didn’t even seem to understand why what she was doing was wrong.

And while he would have liked to devote all his attention to Kylie, the household was having other problems. Slowly but surely, they were running out of money. If not for his bad back, he could still be working, but as it was, nobody was bringing in any income. And after a couple of expensive home repairs, they were getting to the point where sooner or later they wouldn’t even have enough money to eat.

Oliver started trying to sell the food he was growing in his garden. It helped out a little. But his garden was still small, and he didn’t know how to grow the biggest and juiciest vegetables yet, the ones people would pay good money for.

He kept quiet about his money worries in front of Ellis. Ellis knew they had been having financial trouble, of course, but he didn’t know the extent of it. Oliver wanted to keep it that way.

It took a long time, but Ellis finally came to a decision. He didn’t want to lose Liss. If she was lying to him when she said that nothing was going on between her and Dmitri, there was nothing he could do about that. But he could do what he could to make sure he was the one she chose. And if that meant thinking about his future, then so be it.

It seemed like a long time ago now, but he and Dmitri used to talk about opening a bar together when they graduated. He didn’t want anything to do with Dmitri now, but the idea of opening a bar still excited him in a way no other career possibilities did. He could still do it on his own – he didn’t need Dmitri. And if he was going to plan for that, he needed to learn to mix drinks – and cook, too, if they were going to serve food. He couldn’t experiment with drinks, since his dad didn’t keep alcohol in the house, but he started buying cookbooks and reading them, and treating his dad to his own culinary experiments for dinner.

Then one day, out of nowhere, Dmitri dropped by. This time Liss wasn’t there, and this time Dmitri didn’t just stand there staring at him. Instead he came right out and said what he had come to say: Liss had been stringing both of them along, and they had to figure out what to do about it.

Ellis was horrified when Dmitri told him how long their secret relationship had been going on, and that for months Liss had been telling Dmitri he was going to break up with Ellis. But he knew he shouldn’t be surprised. The signs had been right there in front of him. It was his own fault if he hadn’t wanted to pay attention.

He wasn’t willing to give Liss up, and neither was Dmitri. But neither of them wanted to keep going the way they had been, either. Together they agreed: they would confront Liss, and they would make her choose. Whichever one of them she chose, the other would step aside – it was only fair.

To his own surprise, Ellis realized he didn’t hate Dmitri, even after finding out he had been secretly seeing Liss for so long. Liss had treated both of them unfairly; that wasn’t Dmitri’s fault. But that didn’t mean Ellis wouldn’t do everything he could to make sure Liss chose him.