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What was it about bad boys? she asked herself as she nearly ripped off her dress and pulled on a pair of jeans that she hadn’t worn in two years. She and Eddie had agreed that they’d wait until they were married before they went to bed together. There was a small group of kids on campus who had signed pledges to do the same thing. They hadn’t done that—“No one’s business but our own,” Eddie said—and they’d done a lot of heavy petting, but they hadn’t gone “all the way.”
Faith was sure Eddie knew that she and Ty had been lovers, but he never mentioned it and she certainly didn’t either.
When Faith was dressed, she started to open the door to her bedroom, but when she heard her mother in the kitchen, before she knew what she was doing, she was climbing out her bedroom window. As she did so she felt young again—which was absurd as she was hardly over twenty. But sneaking out to be with Ty—as she’d done so many times before—made her feel sixteen.
She heard the deep rumble of Ty’s car before she saw it and she knew he’d parked around the corner where Faith’s mother couldn’t see him. Her mother had always disliked Ty. Not because he wasn’t polite and respectful and had mowed their lawn for free since he was eleven, but because of his family. “Born from nothing, will always be nothing,” was her pronouncement.
Faith felt her long hair bouncing around her shoulders as she ran, and she knew that the neighbors were watching. She also knew that they’d hurry to tell her mother, but she didn’t care. As she ran she felt the four years of being in a straitjacket falling away from her.
“Baby, you look great!” Ty said as she got into the car beside him. Then, as he always had done, he put his hand to the back of her head and kissed her on the lips. They both laughed together and Ty revved the engine, put it in gear, and laid a strip of rubber as he peeled away from the curb.
Faith threw back her head and laughed, exhilarated at the feeling of freedom. She was free to laugh, to shout, to go and do and see—all the things she’d kept bottled inside her at school.
“Did you learn anything in college?” Ty asked as he turned onto the highway and shifted into third.
“Everything. Ask me about Shakespeare or Wordsworth. Ask me about Hawthorne.”
“No, thanks,” Ty said, turning to look at her. “You look better than when you left. Is that possible?”
“If my looks hadn’t got me in such trouble at school I’d call you a liar.”
“What does that mean?”
“It was a very conservative college,” Faith said, her eyes closed, feeling the wind on her face. “Big-busted redheads aren’t what they want to see.”
“I do,” Ty said as he leered at her.
They laughed together.
She opened her eyes in time to see him turn off the highway. “This isn’t the way to the lake. Unless they’ve moved it while I was away.”
“They had enough time,” Ty said, letting her know how very long she’d been gone. “I want to show you something.”
He drove down an old road that had grass growing through the pavement, and he had to slow down to a crawl to keep from tearing out the underside of his car.
“So what do you want to show me?” she asked. “Some isolated place that no one else has ever seen?” She wiggled her eyebrows at him.
“Can’t wait for me, can you, baby?”
Some part of Faith was sane and knew that now was the moment when she should tell him about her and Eddie, but she didn’t say anything. She felt better than she had in years and she couldn’t bear to ruin it. She knew Ty well and if she told him she was going to marry Eddie, he’d take her back to her house and leave her—and she’d probably never see him again. One time she’d said that he was ninety percent pride. He’d replied that that was because he didn’t have much else in life.
The road they were on cut through a field that had once had dairy cows but was now full of weeds. The man who used to own the land died when Faith was just a girl and his heirs lived in the East so no one had done anything with it in years.
Ty pulled off the road into the graveled area in front of an old brick building that had three open bays. At one end was a falling-down old office. It had once been an automobile repair shop, but now weeds had broken the concrete in front of the buildings. There was nothing around them and the wind whistled through the buildings and the trees. It was a lonely, desolate place.
She watched Ty get out of the car and look about with an expression on his face that she’d never seen before. She wanted to leave, but she got out and went to stand beside him.
“Why did you bring me here?”
“You remember this place?”
“Sure,” she said, rubbing her arms. It was a hot day but getting out of the wind was giving her goose bumps. “I don’t like it here.”
He put his arm around her shoulders and drew her to him, but he didn’t take his eyes off the derelict old building. “That’s because you don’t know what it is.”
“Something that’s waiting to collapse?”
Smiling, he tightened his grip on her for a moment, then let her go and walked to the building. He ran his hand down the side of it in a caressing, loving way. “It’s mine.”
