Page 30 of Never Forever

When They Fell In Love

Junior Year

Matt

“Hey Carrie,” I said, breaking the silence. We were in the back of my dad’s truck, which was basically where we spent most of our time together. Out of sight. Away from anyone who might see us together.

Those were the rules of us.

Carrie had laid it out for me pretty clearly over the summer. We could be together, we just couldn’t tell anyone about it in fear that it would get back to her mom.

Her mom still did not like me.

Because of the rules, I didn’t tell my dad about her. It felt weird not sharing something so big with my dad.

However, since my only option otherwise was not being with Carrie…well, that wasn’t an option.

She was curled up against my side and traced my nose with her finger. My eyebrows.

“Hey what?” she said, when I got distracted.

I put my hand over hers and held it down on my chest. I honestly couldn’t think when she was touching me.

“The Formal is in a couple weeks.”

“So I’ve heard,” she said with a smile.

“I want to go. With you,” I said, in case it wasn’t clear.

She sat up, her wild red hair tumbling down her shoulders. She wore my Calico Cove Track and Field sweatshirt and I couldn’t imagine a more beautiful sight in the whole wide world.

“Matt…”

“I know.” There’d be no corsages for us. No blurry pictures taken by my dad. I definitely couldn’t pick her up at her house. “We’d have to keep it low key. But it’s just a dance, Carrie. Your mom can’t freak out about us dancing.”

She bit her bottom lip, considering that. “Maybe I can tell Mom I’m going with a group of girlfriends and I can meet you?”

“Then it’s a date,” I said.

She smiled. “It’s a date.”

I pulledup to my house buzzing with satisfaction. Everything, and I mean everything, was all right in my world. I was going to the dance with Carrie. I would get to hold her in front of everyone at school and people could think whatever they wanted.

“Hey Dad, I’m home,” I called out, dropping the keys on the table by the door.

“In the kitchen, son.”

Oh shit. That was my dad’sYou’re in troublevoice. I struggled to think what I did wrong. Did I forget to take out the trash?

“What’s up, Pop?” I asked, as I walked into the kitchen ready to apologize for any mistake I’d made.

Sitting on the table, in a spotlight from the kitchen lamp, was the box of condoms I’d bought two towns over at a drug store where nobody would know me.

“Is there something you would like to tell me?”

I debated the strategy of going on the defensive and yelling at him about going through my shit and invading my privacy. But Dad had always made it clear, that I, and everything else in this house, was his. If he wanted to be nosy, he was going to be and I had to accept that.

I could pretend they weren’t mine. But I’d tried that over the years and Patrick Sullivan’s bullshit detector was top notch.

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