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I pulled it up over her head and saw her in a sports bra for the first time, and I realized I really liked getting to see her skin. I had pulled the pillow from behind my head and pushed it over my lap so she wouldn’t see how badly I wanted to touch her. Since then, we’d done a lot of kissing and exploring with our hands, but there was a part of me that wanted to do more. Feel more. See more.
We continued fishing and drinking sodas, and I ended up betting Dustin five dollars that I’d catch something before he did.
I won, just like I usually did. On our way home, we stopped for gas, at which point an idea formed in my head.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I declared to my dad and brother and then darted inside.
I knew I didn’t have much time, so I searched carefully for what I wanted. The options were limited, but I found what I needed and took it up to the front, silently praying I was able to pay before my dad came inside.
“Just this?” Old man Barker eyed me suspiciously.
I blushed under his scrutiny. “Yeah, just that.”
He rang me up and slid the item into a bag as I handed over the five I had won. I gave him a brief nod of thanks and then hurried outside. Instead of keeping it in the bag, I removed it and shoved it into my back pocket so there’d be no questions whatsoever about what I had purchased.
Once we were back home and I’d helped put everything away, I began pacing the backyard. It was late June, and while I knew Callie would come by later, a part of me didn’t want to wait to give her what I’d bought. I wanted to see her face when she held it in her hand and realized I was thinking of her while I was out today.
“Mom, I’m going to ride my bike down to the park,” I called out, knowing she was in the kitchen.
She made eye contact with me, her sharp brown eyes assessing me for lies.
“Be back by dinner.”
I nodded and took off down the road.
If she talked to my dad, he might put two and two together and realize I was trying to see Callie, but I didn’t have a phone yet, and it wasn’t like they could track me or call and ask me to come back. I rode hard, standing up on my pedals to gain speed and distance from my house. The sun was setting, leaving pastel streaks across the horizon, but it was still sandwiched against a pale blue sky.
Within minutes, I was at the top of Callie’s driveway, staring at the rusted mailbox and the painted image of a skull with roses blooming from the eye sockets. Not once had I ever ventured down the gravel path or dared to get any closer to her house, but I was almost sixteen. Soon, I’d be driving, and my hope was that I could pick her up on dates, which would require me to get closer than her mailbox.
With a nervous swallow, I pedaled down the path.
Every few feet, rusty metal littered the patch of grass on either side of the dirt drive. Bike parts, truck frames, old wheels. Wildflowers grew among some of the rust, which was oddly beautiful.
Soon enough I was right in front of Callie’s house. It was two stories, but it looked even older than my house.
Dull windows, some patched up with plywood, lined the top story of the house, and the lower story was much of the same. Bed sheets hung as curtains, and car parts littered the ground and porch.
There didn’t seem to be anyone around until I heard the screen door screech open and a man with long, dark hair walked out. He wore a leather vest with a few white and red patches covering the right side, and in white lettering, the word “President,” was sewn into the left side of his vest. Dark ink covered his arms, down to his knuckles, and under the loose shirt he wore there was even more ink along his torso.
I knew this was Callie’s dad.
He was staring at me from a pair of eyes that seemed to match hers, and even his expression was similar to hers when she got upset.
“Who are you?” he asked harshly.
Words died on my tongue as I stared at him. All the warnings about him being dangerous came rushing back, freezing my limbs. I probably looked like an idiot just straddling my bicycle not saying anything.
“Well… you here sellin’ something or what?”
Sweat trickled down my neck as I stared up at him, until finally words came.
“I’m here to see Callie.”
By the way the man’s eyebrows lifted, this answer amused him.
“You the boy that got into a fight for her?”
I nodded, trying to think back to that day when everything changed between Callie and me. There’d been more fights since then. Turns out the boys at her school were pricks and liked to make jokes about her. It only took one time for me to overhear them joke about her being club pussy for me to lose it.
