All Chapters of The Clay Connection: Chapter 71 - Chapter 80

ANTHONY’S POVI was so excited it was almost impossible for me to keep my cool!I was a little chilly from being outside for so long, but now that I was indoors, breathing in the amazing smell of freshly baked goods and oven-roasted turkey and seeing all the cute baby pictures of my boyfriend (I still couldn’t call him that without blushing my head off), I was as warm as spring itself.“Merry Christmas sir,” I said as soon as James came downstairs. He was smiling, but I could tell he was a little worried about something. This was the first time I was meeting with him since the night of the dance. I know Blake said that he was okay with he and I dating and everything, but I still felt nervous around him for some reason. I wondered how he felt and what he thought about me. Did he think the same way my father did, that I turned Blake gay?“I am so glad you could make it and I am sorry for dragging you away from your family this holiday. I hope Kyle and Bonnie don’t hate me too much.” He

ANTHONY’S POV“Tony! It’s so good to see you again. How are you?” I embraced Marlene, Blake’s grandmother as she hugged me. She didn’t smell like a grandmother (cookies and cream and mothballs). She smelled like the mall at Christmas mingled with sandalwood and a bit of old paper. “I am so glad you’re joining us for Christmas this year. I haven’t seen you in almost three years.”“That would be my fault,” Blake said and hugged her after I did. She gave him a big, wet kiss on his cheek and I thought that she may not smell like a grandmother, but she did act like one.“We are having a few guests over to dinner with us tonight. I’m sorry, but most of them are old boomers like myself and your father.”“Hey!” James whined in protest. “I am not old. I am barely touching forty.”“Dad, everyone here knows your age. Lying about it just makes you look pitiful.”“I don’t think you’re an old boomer,” I said and I meant it. Marlene Lindell was sixty-something, but she didn’t look a day over forty.

ANTHONY’S POVIt felt like the first day of first grade all over again, except this time, my parents weren’t trying to pry my fingers off the hinges of my father’s car door after dropping me off.I was wearing Blake’s (new so no one would know that I spent the night with him) clothes and one of the new pairs of sneakers he got me for Christmas. My stomach was doing jumping jacks like a professional and I wanted to throw up every single drop of water I had chugged down this morning at Blake’s insistence. Since my parents were STILL not worried about me and hadn’t bothered to enquire about my whereabouts, I had crashed over at the hotel Blake’s father set us both up in the moment we got back from Boston. The only downside to having to sleep on the same bed with my boyfriend was the fact that his father dropped in on us every five minutes to ensure we were keeping it PG 13 even though he masked it up by saying he just needed help figuring out how to maneuver the new website for our count

ANTHONY’S POVAs soon as we – Blake, Claire, Dante and I – stepped inside school the next day, I could tell that there was a dynamic shift in the way things used to be. Dante, Luke and Blake walked like they didn’t care about the stares that people were giving them. Claire was texting furiously on her phone, completely unaware of the environment she just walked into. I seemed to be the only one who was anxious and worried about the kind of backlash Blake and his crew were sure to get for humiliating the guys on the team by not showing up to their party.It was all over the students’ forum, how Blake ditched the party in favor of the arcade. I had no idea who took the picture, but there was a colored photograph of all of us in Playmates, the arcade close to the amusement park that Claire liked to go to. Their gazes said it all; Blake Lindell has forsaken the basketball team.“Frustrating piece of shit!” Claire’s rage filled but tiny outburst distracted me from the faces of the students

ANTHONY’S POVFamily meetings. Or, in this case, families meeting.Blake’s parents had insisted that we all got together to celebrate his getting into Duke and also to try and patch things up. We all knew he was going to get in, what with the fact that he was scouted by them and his parents were alumni, but I guess the main reason they wanted to get us all together was to make up.It was very awkward and uncomfortable to be sitting across my parents and sister on one of the big round tables in the VIP lounge of Sterling Hotel where Blake and Stella caught me spying on him. My palms were sweaty and my heart was thumping maniacally. Blake seemed to be at ease as he sat beside me, but I couldn’t really tell what he was thinking. Unlike me, he had perfected the art of keeping his emotions away from the surface unless he wanted you to see it, and right now, despite the tension and awkwardness in the room, he looked unbothered and unperturbed by it.“Thank you guys so much for honoring our