Title: Why Can’t Relationships be like Pizza?
Series: The Pizza Chronicles, Book Three
Author: Andy V. Roamer
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 03/15/2021
Length: 59900
Genre: Contemporary YA, LGBTQIA+, Contemporary, young adult, family-drama, gay, questioning, interracial, immigrant family, high school, pizza parlor, mentor, football, concussion, Day of Silence
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Description
As RV enters sophomore year, his friendships and relationships create more questions than answers. RV still cares for Bobby, but Bobby seems a different, more distant person. RV’s best friend Carole is distracted by the ups and downs in her relationships with her French boyfriends, while RV’s new friend Mark is more focused on his family’s troubles. School is a mixed bag. RV enjoys the Spanish club he has joined, which is run by his beautiful Spanish teacher, Señorita Sanchez. But he struggles with other subjects and annoying teachers and always has to watch out for the school bullies who seem to know how to stay under the detention radar.
As always, RV’s former teacher and mentor, Mr. Aniso, is there for advice, especially when near-tragedy strikes and RV needs Mr. Aniso’s counsel to stay strong and provide help where it’s needed most.
Why Can’t Relationships be like Pizza?
Andy V. Roamer © 2021
All Rights Reserved
Hola, Señor RV. ¿Cómo está usted?”
“Bien, Señora Sánchez.”
“Señor RV. Soy Señorita, no Señora Sánchez.”
“Ah, si. Perdóneme, Señorita Sánchez.”
“Gracias, Señor RV. Soy la señorita porque no estoy casada. ¿No es así?”
Whew! Got a workout from Señorita Sánchez in Spanish class today. She gets mad when we call her Señora, keeps reminding us that we have to call her Miss because she’s not married. I thought I knew that.
Maybe it’s because she has this serious look about her, like she’s a Señora. Hard to imagine her not married to some Spanish bigwig or rich businessman. She’s pretty old, maybe thirty or forty, but has as much energy as someone our age, and you don’t want to be caught asleep in her class. She’s very pretty too. I’ll have to ask Carole if all the women in Europe are so pretty, sexy even. Yeah, sexy. The guys all smile when she walks through the rows in class and make quiet jokes behind her back. Can’t say I blame them. She walks with a little swing in her hips and wears interesting dresses and multicolored scarves.
“Glad she didn’t call on me.”
I nodded. “Yeah, lucky me,” I whispered, frowning.
That was Mark, the guy sitting in front of me. We’re getting friendly. He’s a nice guy, pretty studious and quiet like me, so we have a lot in common. He lives in Roslindale, the next part of Boston over from us. He came to Latin School from eighth grade like me, not sixth grade, like most of the students. We’re Bs, the students who came to Latin into ninth grade. The As are the ones who came into seventh grade. A little discrimination there? Why should we be called Bs? We’re as good as the As.
So, we have that discrimination in common too. Maybe we’ll become real friends. It would be nice to have another friend, since Bobby’s so busy and Carole’s off in her own world these days, thinking about her François.
“See you in the cafeteria?” Mark asked at the end of class, after Señorita Sánchez gave us another whopper of a Spanish article to decipher for homework.
“Sure,” I agreed.
“I wish I were good in languages like you,” Mark said, when lunchtime came, and we were eating our sandwiches.
“Well, maybe I have a little head start, given my background,” I said. “But I still have to study hard. It’s not like Lithuanian and Spanish are the same.”
Mark knows about my background. That I’m a kid of immigrants from Eastern Europe. That I didn’t learn to speak English until I went to kindergarten. That we speak the Mother Tongue, Lithuanian, at home. I keep reminding him that while knowing two languages has some advantages, it has some disadvantages too. Like not knowing which world I’m in sometimes.
Mark looked a little dejected today.
“What’s the matter?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “I study hard too,” he said. “But I still have trouble remembering all this Spanish. The last thing I need to do is flunk a class.”
He complained about his parents putting pressure on him. I nodded in sympathy, telling him about my parents putting pressure on me.
“It’s only September,” I said, trying to reassure him, maybe myself too. “It’s too early to think about flunking.”
“I know,” he said. “I have to learn to concentrate and not look at Señorita Sánchez’s breasts.”
“Her breasts?”
“Yeah. Haven’t you noticed how big they are?”
I felt the old RV blush coming on. I had noticed them. They were big, but they hadn’t distracted me too much, not like they distracted Mark apparently. Should I have been distracted? There were Bobby’s words again, ringing in my ears. “Oh, RV. You’re so innocent.”
“Don’t you think about them?”
“Huh?”
“Señorita Sánchez’s breasts. Don’t you think about them?” Mark asked.
“Well, I guess sometimes, yeah,” I answered.
“I think about them a lot,” Mark was saying. “The minute I try to do my Spanish homework, those breasts come into my mind. And then I think about how they would look naked. It’s much easier than trying to conjugate or memorize the stupid preterito imperfecto.” Mark looked at me. “Don’t you think about women’s breasts?”
“Ah, sure.” I told him about the time I was going out with Carole and she used to show off her bras. “She wasn’t naked,” I said, “but that came pretty close.”
Mark seemed impressed.
I sat there thinking about Bobby and the times we kissed. Did I dare tell Mark about that? How would he react to any talk about being gay? Or sex for that matter? Mark told me he comes from a very Christian, born-again family. I think he’s a pretty conservative guy, so it didn’t seem like a good idea to bring it up.
Mark was talking about the Spanish homework again. “So, will you help me, RV?” he was asking.
“Oh, ah, sure,” I said, trying to focus on the conversation. “Maybe I can introduce you to my friend, Carole. She spent much of the summer in Paris. Some words in French are similar to Spanish, so maybe Carole can help us a little bit.”
“Wow, Paris. I’ve never been out of the country.”
“Me neither. Lucky Carole. It sounds like she had a great time.”
“Yeah, who wouldn’t?” said Mark. “If all the women look like Señorita Sánchez, man, I’d be going crazy.”
We made some more jokes about Señorita Sánchez and European women. Then we went off to our next classes.
I had a little time off from concentrating the rest of the afternoon too. I was thinking about Mark. He seems like a nice guy, and I like him. And I do hope we become friends. But with his background, would he have any patience for anyone gay? Born-agains hate gays. Well, maybe not all of them, but enough of them. I’ve never heard Mark say anything about gays one way or another. No calling anyone faggot or anything like that. But he’s too nice a guy to call anyone any names, so that doesn’t mean anything. Being gay probably doesn’t even enter into his consciousness.
“Oh, well. Pagyvensim ir pažiūrėsim.” LOL. That’s Dad’s phrase. “We’ll live a while and we’ll see.” Whenever he’s not sure about something, that’s what he says. I never appreciated why he says it so often. Maybe now I do, at least a little bit. It means he’s trying to figure things out in a complicated world. I guess even at his age he still has things to figure out in life, just like I do.
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Andy V. Roamer grew up in the Boston area and moved to New York City after college. He worked in book publishing for many years, starting out in the children’s and YA books division and then wearing many other hats. This is his first novel about RV, the teenage son of immigrants from Lithuania in Eastern Europe, as RV tries to negotiate his demanding high school, his budding sexuality, and new relationships. He has written an adult novel, Confessions of a Gay Curmudgeon, under the pen name Andy V. Ambrose. To relax, Andy loves to ride his bike, read, watch foreign and independent movies, and travel.
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