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Suddenly nothing is funny anymore as Beau is kneeling in front of me, his hands on my knees. Oh no. He’s touching me. He’s touching me, and I like it. I’m wearing a skirt, and the man is practically between my knees.
Well, no, he’s not. My legs are clamped together like my mother taught me but still. He could be.
Lord almighty, if we had sex, I’d probably pull a groin muscle trying to straddle this bear of a man.
Woof.
“Mary.”
“You were saying?”
“I’m telling you, none of this is a joke. I wore the jacket because I thought teachers had a dress code and shit. I literally came home for the summer to chill and hang out with my mom while we went through my granddad’s estate. I had to grab something out of my grandparents’ closet.”
Ah. That explains the mothball smell.
Looking into his eyes, I can tell he’s not bullshitting me. He really thought he had to wear a jacket and tie to work in the middle of July.
“Oh,” is all I can think to say.
“When you never showed up to our weekly tutoring session, I thought you were sick. I asked teachers, your friends. It was so messed up that nobody knew. I went to your house. They said you transferred to a college prep school but wouldn’t say where. I was bummed, Mary. I missed you. I missed you more every day, but nobody had any answers.”
Wait, he went to my house? The thought of that, that he cared enough to find out where I had lived, and to show up unannounced to my childhood home, softens my stony resolve.
Bottom line, he’d always been kind to me. And I’ve been behaving terribly today, assuming the worst.
“Were my parents there? Who did you talk to?”
Beau gives my knees the lightest of squeezes. “Your mom said you were finishing up at a prep school but wouldn’t say where. Your dad came out and…well, I left in a hurry.”
I snort. Yes, knowing my father and how worked up he’d been in those days over what I was going through, I’m not surprised.
“Prep school,” I repeat derisively, my eyes stinging.
Beau rears back and rises to full height. “So, that part wasn’t true?”
I shake my head, looking up at him sheepishly as if I was the one who spread the big lie. “They sent me away to my aunt in Oklahoma. To punish me, hide me, and homeschool me—though I already had the credits to graduate early. Really, to hide me. And so that my aunt could, um, ‘adopt’ my baby without, you know, a legal hassle.”
My stomach churns at the thought of what I almost allowed to happen before I grew a spine.
Beau’s eyes widen, and he gestures wildly with exasperation. “Baby?” His throat bobs.
“That’s right, Beau. Dauterive High School’s resident Mary Sue was seeing a boy she’d met online while gaming. I wasn’t allowed to date, so I kept Ryan a secret. On Homecoming weekend, I told my parents I was spending the night at a girlfriend’s house. It wasn’t unusual, so they didn’t think anything of it. In reality, I drove to Texarkana to meet Ryan in person. We were too young and stupid. He used an expired condom he’d been carrying around for years. It broke. One lousy night of sex and boom. I got pregnant.
“I pretended everything would be fine, but it wasn’t fine. I waited two months to tell my parents. And that’s why you didn’t see me after winter break; I would start showing soon. In their minds, they had to act fast. I’d have been eight months along at graduation, and it would have been obvious to everyone in town.”
He makes a sound of disgust, and I wince. “You wouldn’t have been the only teen mom in East Texas," he says, sounding on the verge of exploding. "Come on, now. Why would they take such extreme measures?”
I shrug pathetically, suddenly feeling as small as I did on the day I told my parents the truth.
Beau is pacing now. “It’s like…it’s like one of those crusty old novels you made me read, where they send the girl away lest she disgraces the family. Ridiculous.”
It takes a moment to realize Beau's disgust is not aimed at me. But at what was done to me. Relief floods my veins.
Beau is correct. It didn’t have to go like that. I had figured that out, thank god, the second my baby boy took his first lungful of air. Micah and I hightailed it out of Oklahoma as soon as I could find a friend with an infant car seat to come and get me.
We moved back to this town, the only home I knew, not giving a shit what people thought. We couch-surfed while I scrimped and saved, and I even temporarily moved back in with my parents. They eased up on me, and they fell in love with their grandson -- how could they not? -- but things have never been quite the same. It feels good to have someone like Beau on my side. My inner 17-year-old is finally being treated with compassion and understanding. My heart stirs in my chest.
Beau’s pacing stops, and he stares out the window onto the football field.
