Choices(Waiting for Forever BK 1) (13 page)

“I’ll take a beer. They’re kind of hidden in the bottom,” Mr. Mayfield replied, his voice a little sheepish. He sounded like a kid who had been caught with his hand in the candy jar. “Just please, don’t tell your mother.” Jamie laughed and came back a minute later with the three cans, which he then distributed. His father sighed and opened his beer.

“You might not believe this, son, but there was a time, before you were born, that your mother would have been happy to join me in a cold one. When we were first married, we’d go out drinking and dancing with your Uncle Glenn and Aunt Peg.” Jamie looked at his father with skepticism. Apparently, he couldn’t believe, much like I couldn’t, that Mrs. Mayfield ever drank or went dancing. The church didn’t allow such things, and she was such a strong-willed woman when it came to following God’s laws. Mr. Mayfield sighed, and he suddenly looked older and tired.

“When she was about seven months pregnant with you, we were coming home from your grandmother’s place upstate, and a deer wandered into the road ahead of us. I tried to swerve around it, but I couldn’t, and we hit it head on.” Even now, seventeen years later, Mr. Mayfield paled at the memory. “You and your mama almost died. It was the scariest night of my whole life. But, by the grace of God, you both came out of it alive. That night, your mama decided that Jesus spared the two of you for a reason. She’s been devoted to him ever since.” Jamie’s father shook his head and set the can on the ground near his feet. As an afterthought, he added, “It’s not that I mind her finding religion, really; I just miss the woman I married.” He looked up, realizing he’d said that last bit out loud, maybe going a bit too far.

We sat quietly for a while, taking in his father’s story. I was dying to talk to Jamie alone. He had almost not been born? The thought sent a sliver of ice into my stomach, chilling me through to the bone despite the heat of the afternoon. It wasn’t until Jamie and I both got virtually simultaneous bites on our lines that the melancholy mood that had settled over the afternoon broke. Jamie’s father jumped off of the stump he had been using as a chair to help us reel in our catches.

All in all, we caught about half a dozen good-sized fish. Despite my protests, Mr. Mayfield insisted I take half of them home for Richard and Carolyn. I had to say it was a pretty good day, and I felt more comfortable with Jamie’s father than I had. When I went to church with them or stayed over, it had always seemed that he and Jamie’s mother were on the same page when it came to religion. It helped to know that sometimes he struggled with it too.

A few hours later, they dropped me off with a handful of fish and a head full of questions.

“Brian, what?” Carolyn asked, a little wary, as I brought my haul into the kitchen and set the fish in the sink. To me, they didn’t look like dinner; they just looked like dead fish in the sink. It was kind of gross, actually.

“Mr. Mayfield insisted that I take them. I didn’t want to be rude,” I told her, watching the dead eyes staring up from their stainless steel tomb.

Carolyn looked a few more times between the fish and my fairly green face and said very calmly, “So, pizza good with you for dinner?”

8

N
INE
thirty.

It was just seven minutes later than the last time I had glanced over at my clock. Reclined on my bed with the John Marshall paperback Jamie had lent me, I tried not to think for the hundredth time that night what they were doing. Jamie was out on a date with Emma for the first time since our intimate night in the tree house. It made me physically sick to think about them together, no matter how necessary it was. Honestly, more than feeling bad for myself, I felt worse for Jamie. He hadn’t wanted me to know about the date at all and had been upset when his mother asked him about it in front of me earlier that day. We had been in the kitchen getting a soda from the fridge when she’d asked him what time he’d need the car.

I never said a word to him about it, even when he tried to reassure me. The pretense of dating her was hard enough without burdening him with my feelings. Before I left, however, he pulled me up to his room and pressed me against the back of the closed door. He held my face in his hands and pressed his lips to mine in long, slow, deep kisses. Never saying a word, he did everything he could to make me feel his love, to make me feel how special I was to him. It helped to quell the molten jealousy that burned through my veins.

That was, until I was alone with nothing to dam the flood of my own imagination.

As the numbers on my clock changed, marking the passage of each and every minute they spent together, I tortured myself by living their date in my mind. At seven, I imagined him at her house, making small talk with her father while he waited for her to finish getting ready. Of course, when she came into the room, he would kiss her on the cheek and tell her how pretty her mousy hair looked. He would hold the door for her as they left, assuring her father that he would be a gentleman and have her home on time. I’d love to just slam the door in her face and take him on our own date.

At seven thirty, I thought about them having dinner together at some secluded, dimly lit restaurant where he would hold her hand as they decided between the pasta and the chicken. Of course Jamie and I would have been taken out and beaten for that same handholding. The injustice of it rankled me, and I looked around my room for something to distract me from the mounting anger.

The book managed to hold my attention for about an hour, by which time I imagined they’d be at the movies. Emma would probably pick something sickeningly romantic, or maybe something scary so Jamie would have to hold and console her.
While he sat in the theater with his arms around her, trying to calm her fears, would she turn her face and kiss him?
Maybe they were making out in the back row, while I sat gripping his paperback tight enough to rip the spine.

When I glanced at the clock again, it was nearly ten. Surely the movie was over.
What will they be doing now?
Jamie didn’t have to have Emma home until eleven since school was out. I tried desperately not to imagine them driving out to the bluffs.
The kissing I’ve learned to tolerate, but what if she talks him into something more?
I could just see her wondering if maybe he didn’t like girls because he didn’t want to feel her up. Nausea made my stomach churn at the thought of her hands under his shirt on his perfect bare chest or of her unzipping his jeans.

Jamie would do anything to protect us, to protect me.

Damn it, it’s supposed to be me he’s out with, not her. Not her!

I doubted I would ever really know what happened between them, because Jamie would do everything he could to spare my feelings. There was no way I would be able to sleep that night with my mind racing with all the possible things that… girl had done with my Jamie. Setting my useless paperback book aside, I went down the hall to the bathroom and pulled the allergy medication Carolyn used from the medicine cabinet. I’d seen her take it enough times to know it was supposed to make you sleepy. I popped two pills from the foil wrapping and took them with a paper cup of water before returning to my room. I’d never taken anything like that before, but I just couldn’t stand the pictures in my head anymore.

I lay down on my bed, closed my eyes, and dreamed of my own date with Jamie.

“L
ET
’
S
go out,” I suggested quietly to Jamie as we finished the supper dishes. Tonight was the first time we’d seen each other in a week. He had been spending time with Emma, building the farce and adding to the charade. Their displays of affection continued to irk me, but I kept my feelings to myself; Jamie didn’t need the added stress of my discontent. The imaginary relationship, imaginary to him at least, was taking its toll. He felt deep-seated guilt for lying to her; I could hear it as he slept during our nights together. Tossing and turning, moaning and murmuring in his sleep, it was fairly obvious that his conscience, his soul, was tormented. I didn’t feel the need to add to the torment by asking if he’d felt her up yet, so mostly we avoided talking about her. Deep down, I didn’t really want to know anyway.

“What do you mean?” he asked, setting the plate he had been washing back into the hot soapy water before turning to look at me. It took me a moment to stop imagining those warm suds over his naked hip and stomach. My mind wandered briefly, as it had done so often of late, over what it would be like when we didn’t have to hide anymore. Heaven could be defined simply by taking a long shower with Jamie and not having to worry about parents or anyone else coming between us. His expectant expression caught my eye.

“On a date,” I explained in a low voice so Richard and Carolyn wouldn’t hear me. “I want to go out, just you and me—maybe dinner and a movie?” I had been thinking about asking him for weeks without any real expectations, but now that it was out there, my hope grew exponentially. I had been saving the pocket money I’d received from Carolyn for weeks now in order to pay for it. Since I was asking him, I would be the one paying. He would still have to drive, but it would be a real date, just us.

“Are you crazy?” he growled at me under his breath. “Why don’t we just go ahead and bring along the bats they can use to beat us to death with?” His tone was cold, mocking. I was instantly disappointed, and angry.

I had no answer for him.

I turned, drying the glass in my hand, so he wouldn’t see the pain in my face. This was just one more thing that girl could have with Jamie that I could not. They could get married, have kids, and still be invited to the Sunday barbecue. Jamie and I could have none of that; we would always be outcasts because of what we felt for each other. We couldn’t even have one simple date. Everything was about her, not about us.

According to the clock on the microwave, we continued to do the dishes, not speaking, for exactly seventeen minutes. Focusing on the clock instead of Jamie’s silence and anger made the time actually pass instead of solidify like the feeling in my chest. I hung the damp towel on one of the drawer handles while he rinsed out the sink.

Then I just stood there, waiting.

“Let’s take the garbage out,” he mumbled, pulling the half-empty bag out the back door, which he left open behind him. I followed reluctantly, feeling once again like a petulant child. I hated feeling like that, hated that we were forced to resort to talking about our love life over the garbage cans in our back alley.

“We shouldn’t have to hide,” I told him once he’d pushed the bag down into the can and replaced the lid. He sighed, and despite the fact he was only seventeen years old, he sounded weary.

“I agree, we shouldn’t. In a perfect world, it should be you I’m holding hands with while walking down the street. It would be you I’m kissing after a romantic date. We don’t live in a perfect world, Brian. In this world, in the reality we live in, if anyone realizes just how much I care for you, it could mean both of our lives. Is one date, one night spent in the company of others, really worth that?”

“I’m not talking about sitting in your lap in the movie theater! I’m talking about going out for crappy fast food and an action flick that no self-respecting girl would go see with us. I’m talking about just maybe getting a little bit of what that girl gets with you. Apparently, that’s all I deserve, and I won’t touch you.” For the first time, rather than looking down and getting teary, I looked him straight in the eye.

“Brian, I—” he started, but I cut him off.

“Let’s go inside. Maybe we can sit at opposite sides of the couch and watch a movie.” I held my arm out, palm up, indicating for him to go first. He looked at me and then began walking back up the weed-strewn sidewalk to the house. His footsteps were slow and heavy as we made our way up the back porch, but instead of going inside, I leaned in and closed the heavy wooden door and sat down on the worn wicker couch.

Jamie sat next to me and, under the cover of the dark night, reached over and held my hand. We sat looking out at the backyard and listening to the crickets for a long time. Then he squeezed my hand, and when I looked over at him, his face was impassive.

“I’ll pick you up Friday night at seven, Brian.”

I nodded. I wanted to say more, but he squeezed my hand lightly again and then got up and walked into the house. I sat outside a few minutes longer, knowing that when I went back into the house, he would have gone home.

He had.

The next two days went painfully slowly without him. He was upset, that much was certain, but more than that, he was scared. He was also right. If anyone suspected we were more than just friends, they would hurt us. It was a whole new level of selfish for me. Not only was I putting myself at risk, but Jamie as well, and for what? We were perfectly happy in our tree house. I just wanted that one small thing, one small victory against them, those who hated us without knowing it. Emma Mosely had something of Jamie that I couldn’t have, and it made me mad because I wanted that kind of acknowledgement from him. I just hoped—no, prayed—it wouldn’t end up costing either of us more than we could afford to give.