Tessa looked at her husband. The first morning sun shone through the window and fell onto the kitchen table.
"What did he say?", she asked her husband. As if she had not heard every word. But she wanted to hear it again.
Robert shrugged. "Oh, you know... He told me... he called me a liar."
Tessa scoffed. "He should know better. He is almost twenty one now."
"But he's still a little boy in his mind!"
Tessa managed to hide the flood of emotions that welled up in her. A little boy, she thought. Innocent and excited and trying and... "But he's not happy as one."
"Think why."
Tessa had never heard her husband being so harsh with her. He usually was quite calm when interacting with people. Except for Thomas. She wondered to what extent this was her fault.

Will walked into the small shop again. He saw the same young woman behind the counter as he had seen the first time he had been there.
"Hello", he said and smiled friendly, hoping it did not seem too faked. The last night's events did not leave his mind and he was seriously confused about everything that had happened.
"Hi", the girl greeted back. "Do you possibly have time for a talk?", he asked and the girl nodded. "As long as no other customer shows up, yes." Then, and to Will's surprise, she added: "Is it about Tom?"

"Yes." The young man in front of Nadia nodded slightly. She smiled as she held out her hand. "I am Nadia", she said. "William", he returned. "I assume the heartbreaker turned your head upside down, didn't he?", she asked. Again, after a short hesitation, William nodded.
"You don't possibly know anything about him, do you?"
Nadia chuckled. "Around here everybody knows everything about everyone. The question is, who we tell about it." The pleading look in William's eyes made her grin. "You really are madly in love, aren't you? And after such a short time. Did you already kiss? Such a stupid question. Of course you did."

Will was more and more confused. "What do you mean? Am... am I not the only one?"
He held his breath when she shook her head. "You must swear not to tell anyone! Promise me that! He trusts me and if he finds out I told you about any of what I'm going to tell you, he'll kill me. And you. Quite literally. But you need to know. Because I feel like you can actually help Tom."
Will nodded, intimidated by the girl's words. "I swear", he said shyly.
Nadia nodded in approval. "So, first of all, there is Chris. Chris is the leader of the gang, and Tom's number one lover. But he suppresses him. Like he does with everyone else. So, Tom had many other lovers, always for one night, sometimes a week. He always managed to keep it away from Chris. But he starts to get more careless. He got beaten up by his stepfather more than once in only the last days. He starts to guess something. Chris does too. Not even Tom gets himself into so much trouble all the time. He knows that. It's all going down in a devils circle. And you are the one to break it."
Will coughed slightly. "Me? How? Why?", he stuttered and Nadia looked at him with as much seriousness as possible.
"Because he needs you. He needs someone who dearly loves him. Right now!"
Will took a deep, shaky breath and looked down. This is really not, how I wanted this term to start, he thought, then said: "Fine. Fine, I'll try."