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“Have you ever had sex?” he asked.
“No,” she answered, feeling his breath on her neck. “Have you?”
“No.”
She didn’t dare move as his mouth was in such close proximity to hers. “Why? Are you saving yourself for marriage like the other kids in our Sunday School class?”
“Naw, I’m going to bang everything I can while doing blow.”
She jerked around and caught his smirk. “Not funny, Sanderson.”
He took the notebook from her and began his own inspection.
“Are you saving yourself for marriage?” he asked, as if avidly interested in the pictures of the three girls on the front cover.
“I’m waiting, but I’m not sure if it’s to save something as much as waiting for the right time and person to share something really special with.” She didn’t mean to give him an in. Rather to be honest about what she was thinking about the whole matter. But there it was.
Sitting between them like a bowlful of hope and curiosity and what-ifs.
“Maisie Wellborn. Isn’t that your mom’s sister?”
Mia’s eyes glanced up with alarm. “Why do you ask?”
“Well, for one, everyone knows the story about how your grandparents mistreated your mom and her sister, Maisie. Like a cautionary tale.”
“Your mom doesn’t like my mom.”
He shrugged as if it wasn’t a really big deal. “She’s okay with your mom. Just has some history with her she can’t shake. That sorta thing is pretty common in small towns with people who’ve known one another since birth and have all kinds of opportunities to cause bad feelings. Sooner or later, people are going to disappoint one another. It sucks, but those few bad times tend to stand out more than the good.”
“There you go, impressing me with your philosophical musings,” she said, hip-checking him again. “Did your mom like my…um, Maisie?”
“Dunno. Never mentioned her. From what I understand, it was always your mom people talked about.”
“Oh,” she said, her shoulders deflating.
“But the other reason I asked about your mom’s sister is because that’s the name written on the inside of this notebook.” He opened the cover and pointed to the loopy writing of the name in pen. With hearts dotting the I’s.
Interesting, given the number of hearts in her name and all of the exclamation points before and after, Maisie seemed to have thought highly of herself. Like, a lot.
She kept reading. And, there in faded ink, under the name Maisie Wellborn, were the words, “My Diary.”
