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Richard chuckled nervously, looking up at his daughter. Something seemed different about her, but he didn’t know what. “No, I didn’t. Did you spend the night somewhere last night?”
Katy knew her father meant the best in anything he said, but this was one of the downsides to living with her parents: questions like this. She simply smiled. “Yeah, I did, Dad.” Before her father could ask anything else, Katy turned and continued heading down the hallway. She stepped in her bedroom, pushing the door closed behind her.
Today felt different; she suddenly felt freer than she’d ever felt.
Chapter 8
The next several weeks were like a new chapter in life for Katy. Everything about her world changed after that first night at Brennon’s place. Their meet-ups downtown became somewhat of a regular thing. After a few of those, Brennon surprised Katy one day. He called from the school parking lot shortly after the school buses filled with children pulled off, saying he was outside with Greek Salads. Katy was so wonderfully surprised that she nearly tripped and fell rushing toward the back of the school building to let Brennon inside.
As the fall slipped into the early stages of winter, the cold bite in the air seemed different this year for Katy. Her relationship with Brennon, which had long been as Melanie’s older brother, was no transforming into a genuine friendship. They had so much in common. Brennon even went as far as to get Katy in touch with some teachers who moved forward with becoming a principal so she could talk to them and get some idea as to what to expect on her own journey. She thanked Brennon. His wisdom and guidance were truly amazing and cherished, and she was grateful for that.
Katy loved their walks in the parks. Brennon introduced her to some of the other beautiful parks in the city that she hadn’t even known existed. If the background or landscape was iconic enough, as Brennon would always say, Katy would get her phone out and take a selfie. These pictures weren’t to be uploaded to anywhere; rather, they were for Katy to look at at night when she was lying in bed and to think about. There was something about having a secret relationship going with Brennon that made it all the more thrilling. As time passed, they made love more regularly. There were afternoons where Katy was just about to hop onto the interstate when Brennon would text her, suggesting maybe she stop by his place before heading back out to the country. And she always obliged, which led to passionate lovemaking unlike anything she had ever dreamed.
Katy looked at her phone throughout the night. Fall had come and gone rather quickly, it seemed. And now December had shown up packing a bit of a bunch. Shortly after November passed on by, the temperatures dropped drastically. After a couple weeks of random up and down temperatures and days of snow showers, a cold chill had moved into the area and brought with it several inches of snow. Katy watched her phone impatiently, expecting, and somewhat hoping, that the automated system would call and say that school was canceled for in the morning. She loved her students as if they were her own children, but she could sure use tomorrow as a day off. Just the idea of driving down barely-plowed rural roads to get to the interstate sent fear riveting through her when she thought about her morning commute into the city.
“Oh, Sara,” Katy said, looking down into a pile of papers on her bed she had spent the better part of the evening grading. Sara was a student who was clearly very bright and intelligent, but like many of her other students, there were issues at home that surely affected the child’s learning abilities. And Katy could see it in the little girl’s grades. This was the third paper this night from Sara where she got most of the answers wrong when other students didn’t. “I’m going to have to figure out how to work with her.”
Just as Katy moved on to grading the next student’s paper, the wind howled and pummeled her bedroom window. Her head jerked up and she looked out. She then stood up, parted the curtains, and looked out at the steeples down in town. Snow drifts and white hills made seeing anything far away a bit difficult. When Katy turned around to sit back down and get on with grading, her phone rang. She anxiously grabbed her phone, truly expecting it to be the school's automated system saying that school would be canceled for tomorrow. She was far from let down when she discovered it was Brennon calling. She smiled as she answered. “Hello?”
“Hey,” Brennon said. Katy found Brennon’s phone voice to be so smoothing. “I’m not disturbing you from doing anything, am I? I meant to text you, but I’m driving now. Thinking about heading out your way.”
“Thinking about heading out my way?” Katy asked. She couldn’t help but to look up and out at the snowy hills. “And no, I’m not doing anything super important, I guess you could say. I’m grading these papers. So many of them. I’m going to have to have the kids start doing more coloring book exercises. Make it easier on me.”
Brennon chuckled. “Yep! That’s the way to go. I played many a movie in my days of elementary teaching. Just make worksheets that go along with the movies and set those little buggers down in front of the television.” He chuckled again. “So...yeah, I’m thinking about heading out your way.”
“For what?” Katy asked, dropping her pen and little Roger’s worksheets. “Brennon, you know how bad it’s snowing, right? Plus, if I’m not mistaken, my mom and dad are both home right now. You remember I was telling you how both of them are starting to ask these little questions because they notice I’m not home as much. I know they think I have a guy friend of something, not that it matters. You weren’t trying to come over and visit with them, were you? You know my father can and will talk your head off.” She scoffed and rolled her eyes.
“Oh, Katy,” Brennon said. “Don’t say it like that. And no, that’s not exactly what I was thinking. I was thinking about coming and picking you up so maybe we could do a little riding around.”“Riding around?” Katy asked. She couldn’t believe what Brennon was proposing. She only drove in the snow when she absolutely had to. “In this snow? Brennon, are you serious?”
“Yup, I sure am,” Brennon said. “I’m on the highway out to see you right now.”
Katy stood up and glanced down at herself. It had been one of those days where she came home from the school and changed into sweat pants and an old t-shirt. Her hair looked every bit of disheveled. She certainly hadn’t been in the frame of mind to where she thought she was be braving the burgeoning snowstorm outside of her window. “So, you’re serious? You’re really on the way out here.”
Katy listened as Brennon named off the exit he was approaching, as well as a river the interstate crossed over. “Okay, okay,” she said. “I’ll go ahead and get changed. Wait… Where would I meet you? Do you want me to drive to that shopping center plaza thing again and we meet there?”
“No, that’s okay,” Brennon said. “I can just pull up in the yard and you come out and get in and we leave. Unless you don’t want to.”
Katy darted over to her bedroom door and pulled it open so she could see if her parents were still home. No sooner than she stepped into the hallway had she heard her father downstairs on the phone. Furthermore, from the sound of things, her mother was down the hall in their bedroom cleaning out something. Katy watched as she sat a few boxes of junk in the hall outside of the bedroom door.
“Um,” she said, now focusing back on Brennon. “I have an idea.”
For the next couple of minutes, Katy and Brennon went back and forth with where would be a good place to meet. Katy admitted she just wasn’t in the mood to answer the inevitable questions that would come her way if either of her parents got a glimpse of Brennon in the driveway. The secret lovers wound up deciding on meeting at a Circle K gas station at the nearest busy intersection between where she lived and the interstate exit. When Katy hung up, she was lost in a moment of confusion then she darted around her room as she changed clothes and got ready to go.
“I don’t believe this,” Katy mumbled to herself, unable to wipe the smile away from herself. She hated driving in the snow, but there was something about sneaking away with Brennon that made her the least bit worrisome. Within ten minutes, she had changed into a nice pair of black leggings, a white sweater she rarely wore with a thick-necked collar, and had even grabbed her earmuffs. After sliding into some booths, she teased her hair a bit then grabbed her keys and headed downstairs.
Katy purposely moved as quietly as she could as she headed down the steps. From the sounds of it, her father was still on the phone, but she couldn’t decipher which room. Her mother was still setting things out into the hallway from her and her hu
sband’s bedroom. Katy managed to slip by their bedroom without catching her mother’s attention. When she got to the bottom of the steps, her father had been walking around the living room while he talked on the phone – a habit he and his siblings always had, or so Katy noticed throughout her life. Katy waited at the bottom of the staircase for her father to pace himself clear to the other side of the long rectangular-shaped room then pulled the front door open and rushed out onto the porch.
“Oh wow,” Katy said as she pulled the door shut. A strong wind was whipping through the area; some of the taller, thin trees swayed side to side. The snow drifts climbed the few steps leading up from the buried walkway onto the porch. Katy quickly turned her back to the wind; clumps of snow landed on her face, some getting caught in her eyelashes.
Katy pushed through the window snowstorm and made it to her car. She took deep breaths, getting over the stinging on the sides of her face and her earlobes. If this had been for Eve or any of her other friends, she might’ve ran back into the house and simply told them the weather was too bad to come out. However, being that this was for Brennon, and that their secret relationship was blossoming without the questioning eyes of interfering family members, all of that didn’t matter. Katy started her car then carefully headed down the slightly slop driveway and out onto the road.
Katy pulled into the Circle K parking lot ten minutes later and parked off to the side, well out of the way of any customers coming into the lot. She was just about to call Brennon when she saw his car pull into the lot off of the road. He then pulled up next to her. Brennon was starting to get out of the car to open Katy’s door, but Katy beat him to it. In what seemed like the blink of an eye, Katy had jumped out of her car and into Brennon’s front passenger seat.
“Well, dang,” Brennon said, backing up and heading out onto the road. “I was about to open the door for you.”
“That’s okay,” Katy said, buckling herself in. When she finished, she smiled at Brennon. They leaned in and kissed one another briefly. “So, what is going on?”
