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Chapter 1
Grace Bailey
***
Galveston, Texas
Nine years ago
I was nearing the end of my freshman year of high school when I found myself in the most humiliating experience I had ever been in.
I had always been a follow-the-rules type of girl—a good Christian girl from a good Christian family. So, this thing that happened with Alec Abramson, it really sent my family and me reeling.
Alec was my first and only boyfriend.
We had gone to different middle schools, and we met at the beginning of ninth grade.
We hit it off instantly and started dating in September of our freshman year. We spent Thanksgiving together, and then Christmas, New Year's, Valentine's Day, Easter, my birthday, his birthday, and summer.
Alec and his twin brother, David, were extremely popular at my high school. They had a lot of friends and family in Galveston, and they seemed to know everyone we saw in public.
Alec and I were an unlikely pair from the start, but we fell in love in spite of that (or maybe because of it). I had moved to the small island city of Galveston, Texas when I was in elementary school. We moved so that my father could take over his own church there. I was a preacher's daughter with a quiet life and no extended family in our new town. Our tiny church consisted of about thirty people, and most of them were over the age of sixty. I had plenty of extra grandparent-type figures in my life, but I knew no one my age in Galveston. My little brother didn't count. He was two years younger than me, and he was preoccupied with video games and model cars.
Alec was a skateboarding, soccer-playing, artistic, musician type of guy who broke rules and pushed limits and was completely irresistible. He and his brothers stood out in a school with a lot of good-old football-playing Texas boys.
I was attracted to him instantly. He was a bad boy on the outside, but with me, he was really cool, nice, and easy to talk to.
We spent an entire year together as boyfriend and girlfriend. We saw each other almost every day and knew one another well.
That was why I let things go too far.
We talked about it for a while before it happened. I was young. I knew I was young. But I had been with Alec for a whole year. I loved him, and I really thought he loved me. I knew premarital sex was the wrong decision for most people, but I honestly thought we were different. I thought we were like Bonnie and Clyde. I told myself that we were the ones who would break a few rules and still get our fairytale ending. I thought Alec and I would be different. I believed we were so passionately in love and meant to be together that it was okay for us to go ahead and do it.
I justified it and I let it happen.
And then, two days later, Alec wanted it to happen again.
I let it happen one more time, and then I had a giant panic attack—one where I thought I was actually dying.
During those near-death moments, I ended up confessing the details of my escapade with Alec to my mother.
We proceeded to have an argument that lasted hours and resulted in me crying and confessing my sins and praying for forgiveness.
There was even more crying when my mother told me I had to break up with Alec. I begged and refused and told her that I promised I would never let it happen again. I told her we would go back to just being a normal couple who waited until marriage to do things like that. She told my father what happened, and both of them drove the point home about how very young I was and how much of a terrible, horrible act I had done.
I was broken and regretful enough that they trusted me to still talk to Alec, knowing I wouldn't do that again.
I didn't mind promising them that I would refrain, honestly. The guilt, doubt, and fear that came with being intimate honestly weren't worth the temporary pleasure. No offense to Alec, but it was something I could definitely put off doing again for a while—until I got married, actually.
I was convinced Alec would feel the same way. He wanted this to happen, but he didn't make me feel like he would break up with me if I refused to let it. He hadn't forced me into anything, so I was relatively sure he would be okay with me telling him I wanted to take a step back and not do it again.
Apparently, I was wrong.
I tried to tell him today, and I had spent the last two hours attempting to explain how and why I would want to go back tonotdoing something we had done before.
Alec and I had met at my friend's house so that we could have this conversation at a place where my mom wouldn’t barge in. We were in my friend, Kate's, living room while she and her boyfriend were in the kitchen. They knew I had been crying, and they left us alone.
"I just don't see what it's hurting," Alec said. "It's not like we can go back. Neither of us are virgins any more. If it happened once, it's all the same."
