A few weeks later, I step into the kitchen to find Gil and Gigi putting on jackets.
“We’re running errands. Want to come?” Gil says.
“No, thanks. I’ve got a little more homework to finish.”
“Do you need anything other than what’s on your list?” Gigi asks, lowering her phone into her bag.
“Nope, that’s all. Thanks,” I reply, grabbing a glass out of the cupboard.
“See you later,” Gil says with a wave as they both head to the garage.
I fill the glass with water and wonder where Brad is. On weekends, we usually study together after his morning workout, but I haven’t seen him since I woke up a couple of hours ago. I guess I could’ve asked his parents, but I’m being especially cautious around them. That generally means not even mentioning his name because I seem unable to control my smile whenever I think of him.
I suppose I could call him, but I don’t want to seem like the overbearing girlfriend.
After I down the water, I put the glass in the dishwasher and then start to head upstairs, but the sound of the garage door opening causes me to pause. Either Gil and Gigi forgot something or Brad’s home.
I linger on the bottom step and crane my neck to see around the doorway. I catch Brad’s back as he shuts the door.
“Hey,” he says when he rounds the corner.
“Hey.”
“What are you doing?”
“Wondering if I should call you,” I say.
“Yes. The answer is always yes,” he replies with a smile.
“I didn’t want to be annoying.”
“You could never be annoying. So you missed me, huh?” he says with a smirk.
I try to come up with a sarcastic reply but completely fail. Instead, I settle for the truth. “Maybe a little.”
Rather than respond, he wraps his arms around me and lowers his lips to mine.
“Your parents,” I warn him, taking a step back.
“Gone. I saw them leave.”
“Still. They could come back. What if they forgot something?”
“We’d hear the garage door open.”
“What if they came in through the front?”
“We’d hear the front door open.”
“What if they have video cameras around the house?”
“You really are paranoid,” he says with a laugh. “Luckily, my plan was to leave anyway. Have you had lunch yet?”
“No.”
“Do you have anything else to do?”
“Not really.”
“Come on, then,” he says, reaching for my hand and then leading me through the doorway, stopping only momentarily to grab my jacket from the closet.
I protest until it’s clear we’re going to the park. I guess it wouldn’t be too unusual for siblings to be seen eating lunch together at a restaurant, but I’m worried someone would see right through our act. It’s a small town where everyone knows everyone, so it could easily get back to Gil or Gigi.
A few minutes later, we end up at the park—our park—and it’s quiet as usual. I get out of the car and start to head to the dock, but Brad stops at the trunk, where he grabs a plastic grocery bag.
“Lunch,” he says, holding up the bag, when he joins me.
“That’s sweet. Thank you.”
We sit down at a picnic table, and then Brad starts pulling items out of the bag one by one. Crackers, cheeses, and deli meats end up sprawled in front of me.
“I got you a surprise,” he says with a twinkle in his eye.
“This whole thing is a surprise.”
Grinning, he says, “It gets better.”
Then he hands me a little bottle of Sunny D and a coloring book with crayons. It’s one of those pretty adult coloring books with geometric shapes—much nicer than anything my mom ever got me.
The corners of my eyes prickle, and I worry I’m going to cry in front of him. I’m not used to getting gifts for no reason. Actually, I’m not used to getting gifts at all. Plus, no one’s ever done anything this thoughtful for me before. How did he even remember my story? It was late at homecoming when I told him, plus he had the whole Michelle thing on his mind.
“I was going to get you some flowers, but then I realized you couldn’t take them home. For a moment, I thought about leaving them here, but knew you wouldn’t like how”—he uses air quotes—“‘wasteful’ that would be.”
“You thought right,” I reply, thumbing through the book. Flowers are nice, but they would be a waste in our situation, since I could only enjoy them for the hour we were here. This is a hundred times better. “Thank you,” I say, closing the cover and smiling at him. “This was really sweet.” Leaning across the table, I kiss his cheek, but he catches my lips with his own and turns it into something much more.
These are the moments I look forward to every day. The stolen kisses and touches when no one else is around. In the car when we’re at an empty intersection. Behind the gym at school. In an empty theater during a matinee showing of an awful movie.
Some days, we only manage to hold hands on the way to school, but other days, like today, we get much more.
His tongue slips between my lips and I feel that familiar twinge of guilt winding its way through my body for doing something I know we shouldn’t be doing, but I’ve learned to live with it. The pure thrill I get from our … whatever it is we have … has a way of pushing the guilt to the back of my mind. At least while we’re kissing. When I’m alone, I sometimes persuade myself we should stop sneaking around, but the moment his lips land on mine again, that thought flies right out of my head.
I never imagined someone like him would have any interest in someone like me, but he does. It’s crazy and stupid and dangerous, but I’m loving what we have, even if it’s a little messed up and a lot inappropriate.
We eventually separate and dive into the food. Once we’re stuffed, I open the book and beginning coloring a spiral design. Brad’s sitting on the opposite side of the table, so he starts on the top while I take the bottom.
“Does this bring back good memories of your mom?” he asks.
“Yes and no.” It’s good in that I’m reminded of a time when we got along, but bad in that anytime I think of her now, I remember our last meeting.
“What was the worst part of living with her?” he asks.
I pause, my turquoise crayon poised above the page as I stare at the black lines of the swirl. I wasn’t expecting our conversation to go there, although I’m sure he has lots of questions about my past. It’s not like I go around offering details all the time.
Lowering my crayon, I focus on the page in front of me, carefully following the curve with a turquoise line. “That’s a hard question to answer,” I say.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want,” he replies.
I shake my head. “It’s not that.” Well, not entirely. It’s still embarrassing to give him glimpses into my world, but he knows it wasn’t all rainbows and unicorns. “There are really two different kinds of bad with her. There’s the physical stuff like being hungry. There were times when she forgot to pay the electric bill, so the little food we had spoiled, but I still ate it. You knew it was going to make you throw up, but you didn’t care because your stomach already hurt so bad.”
“God,” Brad says, blowing out a breath. “Aren’t there supposed to be programs to make sure kids have food? How did that even happen?”
I shrug. “It was usually in the summer, when I didn’t get meals at school. When I was young, my mom had WIC, and later on, she got food stamps, but there’s a whole underground where she could trade them for cigarettes or beer.”
“Classy,” Brad says with an edge in his voice. “Starve your kid for cigarettes.”
His comment causes my lips to curl up. I should probably be mad at him, but what he says is true. It’s not like I haven’t had the same thought hundreds of times. It’s actually kind of reassuring to know he’s on my side.
“Then there’s the whole emotional thing,” I say, filling a spiral with color. “She’d let me down over and over again, but I kept trying. It was actually kind of pathetic.”
“Pathetic how?” he asks without looking up.
“Like, why did I care? Why did I want her to love me so much? Why did I try over and over again? Apparently, I’m a glutton for punishment.”
“You’re not a glutton for punishment. You’re an extremely selfless person, even when people don’t deserve it.” He reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. “You gave her lots of chances to be a mom, and she never stepped up.”
He’s right. I gave her more chances than she deserved. I look up, meeting his gorgeous eyes, and see a strange mixture I can’t quite place, although there seems to be a fair amount of compassion with at least a dash of pity. Maybe two dashes. That’s my cue to shut up about my past.
“Sorry my life is kind of messed up,” I say, switching my turquoise crayon for salmon.
“Why are you apologizing?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. You and your parents are so squeaky clean.…”
“You think I’m squeaky clean?”
“I know you’re squeaky clean.”
“I could be hiding something monumental from you.”
“Like what?” I ask with a smile.
“I could be the mastermind behind a for-profit underground homework exchange network.”
“You’re not.”
“I could have a police record.”
“You don’t.”
“I could be in the witness protection program for turning state’s evidence about horrible crimes.”
“I don’t even know what that means, but, no, you aren’t. Tell me one honest thing no one else knows about you.”
“A bad thing or a good thing?”
“Either.”
He taps his crayon on the paper, leaving orange dots around the outside of the design while he thinks. After a few moments, he says, “I want to go to Duke next year.”
I give him a confused look. “That doesn’t seem so earth-shattering. Why haven’t you told anyone?”
“Have you met my dad?”
I laugh at his seriousness. “Still, Duke’s a great school. I’d think he’d be happy.”
Brad shakes his head. “My grandpa went to Wake. My mom went to Wake. My dad went to Wake. Even two of my uncles went to Wake. I have to go to Wake Forest. I’m the last hope for my entire generation of Campbells.”
“Seriously?”
He nods. “I have five cousins, but two of them joined the military, one went to Princeton, one got a Fulbright to Cambridge, and one went to some technical school. I’m the last hope. Believe me, I’ve heard that plenty over the last two years.”
“It’s not like you’re saving the world. It’s just a school. Who cares if there’s a missing Campbell generation there?”
“Exactly! Maybe you need to have a talk with my parents.”
A loud flock of geese fly overhead, drawing our eyes upward. We watch them clear the pond and then disappear beyond the forest, which is becoming dotted with oranges and reds as fall sets in. “Why Duke?” I ask.
He shrugs. “It’s a good school like Wake Forest, but it’d be exciting to live on a campus I haven’t visited hundreds of times with Mom and Dad. It’d be a new adventure. A completely new start. It’d be … my school.”
“What do you think your dad would say if you told him?”
He shakes his head. “He wouldn’t want to hear it. The only correct answer is Wake.” He pauses. “I just … I just wish Dad would lay off me for once and let me make a major decision for myself. I don’t get why he trusts me most of the time but thinks I’m unable to make the big decisions. It’s frustrating.”
“I bet it’s because he loves you and thinks he’s helping.”
He blows out a long breath. “I know,” he says. “I know he’s not trying to be difficult. He truly believes this would be the perfect opportunity for me. Maybe he’s right. It’s not like I’ve gotten an offer from anywhere other than Wake and EGU. Since I’m not going to EGU, Wake may be my only option unless we win the state championship.”
“Could that happen?”
“Maybe. It’s looking good to get into the semifinals, but any further will be tough.”
“Well, if no other schools work out, Wake Forest isn’t a bad only option to have.”
“Nope,” he says, returning to the picture in front of him. “It could be much worse. So, where do you want to go to school?”
“You’re assuming I’m going to college.”
“Of course you’re going to college. What else would you do?”
“Get a job.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Walmart?”
“You did not just say that.”
“Why? What’s wrong with Walmart?” I ask, laying down my crayon and staring at him.
“Nothing’s wrong with Walmart,” he replies, staring back. “It’s an acceptable place to buy low-cost housewares or even have a summer job. It is not, however, a place to have a long-term career.”
“We can’t all be headed to Ivy League colleges with our pick of careers, you know.”
“Wake isn’t Ivy League.”
I roll my eyes. “You know what I mean. Walmart is a good option for me.”
“It just seems like it’d be a waste of your potential. I could see you as a social worker or a nurse. Maybe an elementary-school teacher. I don’t know, something where you’d help people.”
“I’m not looking for a career. Just a job. I’ll need money to live. A job at Walmart seems the quickest and easiest way to do that.”
“So, money’s the problem? You’re afraid you can’t afford college?”
I shrug. “Not necessarily. If I could get into a state school, I’d get free tuition.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m in foster care. We get a few special perks. It’s the price of … putting up with what we have to put up with.”
“Definitely not worth it,” he says, shaking his head. “But at least it’s something. Have you started looking at schools?”
“No. I’m not sure I’d be accepted anywhere.”
“What’s your GPA?”
“Two-point-eightish.”
“You could get in somewhere, especially if you got it above three this year.”
“Maybe. We’ll see.”
“You are applying to college even if I have to hold your hand while you fill out the paperwork.”
I smile at his words and sit up a little straighter. “Thanks.” I’m sure he doesn’t realize it, but he’s only the second person—after Sherry—who has ever believed in me. I’m still not convinced I could get into college, but Brad’s confidence makes me a little more optimistic.
While I finish coloring in the small piece of white left in the design, Brad stands and comes around to my side of the table. He straddles the bench, facing me, and his arms circle my waist.
Lowering the crayon and closing the book, I turn to face him. He’s wearing a dangerous grin, so I reflexively look around the park to make sure we’re alone. We are.
“Thanks for the fun date,” I say, propping my left leg on the bench.
“Sorry it couldn’t be somewhere more interesting.”
“I like this place,” I say with a smile. “It’s ours. Where we first kissed. Our first date.”
“Where we first did some serious making out?”
I raise my eyebrows. The most we’ve done so far is kiss. Granted, we’ve had some intense kissing sessions over the last few weeks, but that’s been the extent of it.
“Strictly PG-rated, of course,” he says, “just in case some unsuspecting kid comes by to play on the swings.”
“That would be embarrassing.”
“There’s always my car,” he suggests.
I’m not sure how much privacy his car would provide in the middle of the parking lot on a sunny afternoon. I bite my lip as I consider the idea.
“Or in the woods,” he continues.
I glance at the trees across the water. That wouldn’t be bad, but we’d have to walk like half a mile around the pond to reach the woods. I shake my head.
“Our basement? Mom and Dad won’t be back until close to dinnertime.”
“No way. I’m not making out in your parents’ house. That’s too dangerous.”
He looks around us as though there’s someplace right here that’s even more private, but unless we want to make out in the bathroom, there’s not.
“Okay, your car,” I say, standing and taking his hand.
“Yeah?” His face lights up, making it clear he didn’t expect me to agree. He must not have any idea the effect he has on me.
“Yeah, but you have to move it to the corner spot and back in so we can see if anyone is coming.”
“You realize no one has ever come by all the times we’ve been here, right?”
“That could easily change.”
After climbing into the car and changing parking spots, he lifts the parking brake and turns off the ignition.
“So,” he says, sliding his seat back.
“So,” I reply, taking one last look around us. The coast is clear. I climb over the console and into his lap, my arms hanging loosely around his neck.
“Okay,” Brad says, taking a deep breath. “This is a nice way to spend the afternoon.”
I laugh and then bite my lip. I wonder what he was thinking when he suggested some serious making out. And what I’m willing to do. No sex. Not yet. Even though I’d love to see how different—better—it’d be with Brad compared to Chase, that’d be pushing the limits of our inappropriate relationship a little too far. Not that he’s thinking about going there, I’m sure. He’s a virgin.
There are lots of other things we can do, though. “So, what did you have in mind?” I ask.
He smiles. “I’m not sure. I didn’t think you’d actually take me up on the offer.”
“Well, I have,” I reply with a grin.
“Yes, you have.”
I move one leg so I’m straddling him with my knees next to his hips.
He gulps. “I should mention I don’t have any condoms, so this will have to stop short of … that.”
“That?” I ask with a laugh. “You made fun of me for not being able to say virgin, and you can’t say ‘sex’ all of a sudden?”
He smiles. “I can say ‘sex’; I’m just not a fan of the word. It’s kind of … impersonal.”
“So, what do you prefer?”
“I’m not sure. ‘Making love’ is kind of corny, and I don’t want to use a certain curse word for it because that makes it seem trashy.”
“Getting jiggy with it?” I suggest.
He wrinkles his nose.
“Hanky-panky?”
“That sounds like something out of a country-western song.”
“Intercourse?”
“That makes me feel like I’m back in sex ed.”
“Get busy?”
“You truly are gifted in the vocabulary world,” he notes, grabbing my butt and rearranging me on his lap. He peels off my jacket, then slides his hands under my shirt.
“You’re on lookout,” I say, as I kiss the side of his neck.
He nods, but doesn’t say anything as his hands glide up my back.
“Sleep together? Home run?” I whisper, getting back to our conversation.
“Okay, stop. You’re scaring me,” he says with a laugh. His hands still. “Let’s use something all our own.”
“Like what?”
He purses his lips and appears deep in thought for a few moments before saying, “Playing chess.”
I laugh at his suggestion. “You can’t be serious. That’s totally random.”
“I am serious. Random is perfect. We could talk about it when others are around, and no one will know.”
“But what if one of us wanted to play actual chess?”
“Do you play?”
“No, I don’t even know how.”
“Me neither,” he says, smiling.
“You’re serious?”
“Sure.”
I laugh again and shake my head. Playing chess it is. I honestly don’t care what we call it, especially since it’s not going to happen for a while still.
“Of course, if you wanted to … play chess today, I could make a run to the store,” he says, nuzzling my neck.
I glance at his pink cheeks and smile. “As tempting as that sounds, I think I’d like to wait.”
“Are you sure? I can be there and back in five minutes flat.” He gives me his goofy smirk, making it clear he’s joking. Well, mostly joking. I’m not sure what he’d do if I gave him the okay.
I playfully nudge his shoulder. “Not gonna happen today. Sorry.”
He laughs and says, “It was worth a shot.”
Did I really just tell him no? I never said no to Chase, even when I really didn’t want to do it. Now I want to do it, but I tell Brad no? It’s strange, but I feel a weird sense of pride. Like I just aced a geometry test. Of course, that would take a ton of work, and this was just one word. It’s kind of ridiculous I’d be proud of myself for something so simple, but I am.
I reach under his shirt, finally getting a taste of the abs he’s teased me with for weeks. I consider pulling his shirt over his head, but then worry what someone would think about a shirtless guy in a car if they happened to walk by.
Instead, I lower my lips to his, as his hands begin roaming around my back again, slowly working their way lower.
Zzzzt … zzzzt … zzzzt …
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he groans.
I grab his phone from the console and peer at the name while handing it to him.
Michelle.
“That can definitely wait,” he says, silencing it, then tossing it onto the seat next to us.
“Why is she calling you?” I realize I sound like a jealous girlfriend, but the words escaped my mouth before I could stop them.
“I have no idea.”
“Maybe you should’ve answered?”
“No way.” His lips find my neck, and I try to get back into it, but the phone begins vibrating again. It’s distracting. It’s like Michelle is sitting in the seat watching us. And judging us. Or judging me at least.
“Have you told her you’re not interested yet?” I ask, glaring at the vibrating phone-slash-invisible Michelle next to us.
“More or less,” he says, reaching over and silencing it again.
“Is it more or less?” I ask, snapping my head back to him.
He rolls his neck and drops his hands. “Way to ruin the mood, Hailey.”
“I think Michelle already did that.”
“She’s nobody to me. You realize that, right?” he says, reaching for my hand.
I pull it away as I reply. “Then you would’ve told her weeks ago and she’d be leaving you alone right now.”
I crawl back over the console, move his phone to the dashboard, and slump in the passenger seat. I don’t know why I’m treating him like this. I believe him when he says he doesn’t like her, but why can’t he stop her from acting the way she does?
“First fight, too,” he says, as the phone starts vibrating again. “This place really is ours.” He frowns as he starts up the car and heads back to his house.