I stood. Quickly. I said, “Don’t.”
Her eyes went wide. Her lip quivered. And she said, “I’m sorry. That’s not… I don’t know why I said that.”
“This is between us,” I said. “You leave him out of this.”
Eventually, she left.
“I CAN smell it,” Joe said quietly. We sat on the porch and watched the sun. “You’re sad.”
I said, “Yeah,” because I was.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I shook my head. “Not yet.”
He laid his head on my shoulder and said, “Okay.”
Later, after the sun had set and the stars came out in the sky, he said, “I won’t ever leave you.”
CHRIS SAID, “You bastard. Jessie’s heartbroken. Fuck you, Ox.”
Gordo called him an asshole.
Tanner said love was hard.
Rico said I was a heartbreaker.
Chris didn’t talk to me for three days.
On the fourth day, he came up to me, looking nervous.
I couldn’t stand that, so I hugged him.
He hugged me back. He said, “I missed you. I’m an ass. You forgive me?”
I said, “Sure,” and he grinned and bought me a sandwich at the diner.
He didn’t say anything about Jessie. But neither did I.
I TURNED eighteen. Thomas didn’t ask if I wanted the bite. I didn’t ask him to give it to me.
GREEN CREEK was small. Our graduating class only had thirty-four people in it.
But you would have thought the crowd numbered in the thousands by the way we all yelled when Carter walked across the stage.
He grinned and winked as he accepted his diploma.
Later, they said, “Oxnard Matheson,” and the roar that followed knocked the breath from my chest. The Bennetts. My mom. Gordo and the guys. They screamed and howled. You would have thought I’d accomplished the greatest thing known to mankind.
I’ll be honest. I wasn’t expecting that. It hurt, but in a good way.
Sometimes, pain can be good.
CARTER SAID, “I won’t be going far. Eugene’s only a couple hours away.”
“Won’t be too bad,” Kelly said.
“We’ll see each other all the time,” Joe said.