Biggest Flirts (Superlatives #1)(44)
Author: Jennifer Echols

I shifted uncomfortably on the very comfortable black vinyl seat. “Well, I guess it started when I was nine, and my mom was in a car accident.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him flinch like he’d been hit. “Oh! Tia, I’m sorry.”

“No, she’s not dead or anything.” I turned to smile at him, reassuring. “At least, we assume. I haven’t heard from her in a while. What happened was, she hurt her back, and she got on pain pills, and she couldn’t get off. I was so little that I didn’t really know what was going on, except that something was wrong, and my sisters wouldn’t tell me. Even now when I bring it up, they say they don’t want to talk about it. But I gather that she made friends with the people who kept getting the pills for her, and she started a relationship with one of them.”

Will took a long, slow breath, giving himself time to think of some way to respond to that. He exhaled without coming up with an answer. I knew how he felt.

“My parents had Izzy when they were seventeen,” I explained, “and Sophia when they were nineteen, and they kept having kids. It’s what my mom said she wanted. But I know it was hard on them both. The accident and the pills—it’s unfortunate, but I think that opened the door to my mom’s downfall. And she walked through it. She started sneaking out to be with the guy she met. She told my dad she was trying to get back something she’d missed out on when they were younger.”

“And so you’re not going to miss it,” Will broke in.

I shrugged. I supposed there was a big contrast between my mom and me, but I’d never given it much thought. “Once when my mom went to see this guy, she forgot about me and left me home by myself. I was ten. I was fine by myself. I should have just stayed cool. But she hadn’t told me she was leaving. I couldn’t get her on the phone because she’d left it in her bedroom. I panicked and called my dad. He went to find her. And that was the end of their marriage.”

I felt Will’s hand on my bare leg. Then he mistakenly groped across his art pad and finally found my hand. He asked quietly, “Your dad didn’t get her help or anything?”

“They had been talking about it,” I said, “but after she left me at home so she could cheat on him, no. Every once in a while, she’ll go see one of my sisters and say she’s going to clean up, but we’ve stopped believing it.” I looked toward the house again. The front right bedroom on the second floor, the one with the window nearly obscured now by out-of-control palms, had been mine. All my own.

“So!” I turned to Will. “How did my family shrink? That got rid of one of us. Then my oldest sister—that’s Izzy—got pregnant when she was—hey! our age. It wasn’t exactly a shotgun wedding because my dad has a pistol. Ha ha ha, a little humor there for the boys who want to fake-date me.”

“Ha ha,” Will said uneasily.

“Izzy moved in with her new husband, and that marriage lasted all of six months. My dad felt more pressure to make money fixing up the house, but also to work more hours, so he could help her out. She was pregnant again by that time. She had to go to court to get her ex to pay child support. And when that finally calmed down, my sister Sophia married her boyfriend because he’d joined the navy and he was about to spend a tour on a submarine. Then she got pregnant. And then he cheated on her.”

“On a submarine?” Will interjected.

“No, when he came back to town. And when that calmed down . . . say it.”

“Your sister Jane got pregnant?”

“Her name is Violet, and see, that’s what she thinks everybody assumes, so she goes out of her way to tell everybody she did not get pregnant out of wedlock. Her boyfriend moved south of town for a job. She dropped out of high school to go live with him because she missed him so much. She only had a couple of months left until graduation. That was one of the stupider moves my family members have made, though definitely not the stupidest. And that is how I got rid of my entire family in seven years, except for my dad, and why we have downsized to the point that the next thing smaller is a mailbox.”

Will squeezed my hand. “And that’s why you say you don’t want a boyfriend.”

I drew my hand away from his. He was probably right. But knowing where my heebie-jeebies came from didn’t make them go away. Suddenly the heat of his skin was burning mine.

“It’s not just a sex thing,” I said quickly. “You can have a boyfriend without having sex. You can have sex without getting pregs. It’s not sex that messes people up. It’s love. You can have sex and protect yourself and still keep out of trouble. It’s love that starts to tangle everything up, and makes you think that an army private who’s been to juvie would make a great dad, and that seventeen is the perfect age to start a family. When my sisters and I used to talk about sex, it wasn’t embarrassing as long as we were being honest. It’s love that confuses things and makes you unable to explain later why you didn’t use a condom. Love and pressure and the feeling that you’re everything when you’re with this guy, and when he leaves you, you’re less than you were before. If you fall in love, you attach yourself to somebody, and you can’t do what you want ever again.” I examined his drawing of my house. With one finger I traced the outline of my bedroom.

I felt him watching me quietly from his side of the car.

“Sorry,” I blurted. “You probably didn’t do it with Beverly before you left, after all. You’re a virgin, and I’ve just told you some things you weren’t ready to hear.”

He didn’t say a word.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” I said to fill the silence. “Some of my best friends are virgins.”

Now his silence was making me uncomfortable. Normally I accepted that I was a talker and didn’t beat myself up for my big mouth. But right now I felt like I was blathering on and couldn’t stop. The only way to fix the blah blah blah was with more blathering, apparently. “You didn’t do it with Angelica, did you?” I asked.

At least that got a rise out of him. “No!” he exclaimed. “I’ve only known her a week!”

That seemed like plenty of time to me, but whatever. “Beverly from Minnesota was your only one, then.”

Because of his silence, I assumed that the answer was yes.

“There’s your problem,” I said. “You want to do it with someone you’re in love with. Love gets you in trouble. If it were only sex, you could have been getting it on with Angelica by now. But you fell in love with Beverly, and you vowed to make it home to her as soon as you could. Now that she’s cheated on you, you’re caught between two worlds. You can’t move back, and you can’t move forward. You’re stuck.”