Page 72 of No Kind of Hero
“I can’t . . .” She put a hand to her head. “I can’t think. It’s too . . .” She wanted to say,You won’t talk to me, but you want to marry me?But she didn’t. She just said, “I don’t know. I’m not sure.”
“Fine.” Now he was getting up, pulling on his shirt, buckling his belt. “You’re going to be late. Let’s go.”
“Evan . . .”
“No,” he said. “Let’s go.”
The ride back to the beach felt completely different. She was still pressed against Evan’s back, but he felt stiff, unyielding.
And when he pulled into the nearly deserted lot, her father’s car was there. Evan coasted to a stop behind it, and her father got out of the driver’s side. And her mother got out of the passenger side.
Oh, boy.
She climbed off the bike and tried not to feel sixteen. She was a college graduate. She was going to law school. She was twenty-one, of legal age to do absolutely anything, including have sex with Evan.
Her mother spoke first. Her dad just looked at Evan. Hard.
“When Candy told me your car was here every night,” her mother said, “I thought she must be mistaken. There are lots of Honda Civics. But then you told me you’d gone to that party on Saturday night, too. When Candy told me tonight that Melody was sorry you hadn’t come, I knew you’d lied to me. And I wondered why.”
Evan didn’t say anything. He just stood there. Beth took off her helmet, and he took it out of her hands. She said, “I didn’t think you’d want to know that I . . .” And then wasn’t sure how to go on.
“That you were seeing Evan O’Donnell,” her mother said, and then she looked at Evan. Top to bottom, from his leather jacket to his boots, and Beth curled up with shame for what he must be feeling. “Or maybe,” Michelle said, “he was the one who didn’t want us to know.”
“No,” Evan said. “That wasn’t me.”
She knew he was watching her. Waiting for her to tell them. Her mother was talking again, about trust and breaking it, and the words washed over her, a bitter tide. But what hurt most was her dad. Standing there not saying a word. Disappointed in her.
She knew Evan was waiting, and she tried. “We haven’t done anything wrong,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with dating somebody. I’m not . . . using drugs, or whatever you think, and neither is he.”
“Which would be why,” her father said at last, “he never came to the house to pick you up.”
“No, sir,” Evan said. “It wouldn’t.”
She had to say something. Shehadto. “That was me,” she said. “It was my fault. I was . . .” She swallowed. “I didn’t know what you’d think. Evan didn’t want to do it like this.”
“No,” Evan said. “Your dad’s right. I should have come to get you anyway, no matter what you said.”
“He was . . . we were going to,” Beth said. She wanted to say the part about getting married, but she couldn’t. It was too crazy.
“There’s no ‘going to,’” her dad said. “There’s doing something or not doing it. That’s all. Come on. Let’s go home.”
She thought,I’ll fix it. Later on, I’ll call Evan, and I’ll fix it.
But when she called the next evening, after an endless day at work on the phones, parroting information with the top half of her brain while everything beneath it churned in endless unproductive circles, she didn’t fix it.
She said, “Can I see you?”
“I don’t know,” Evan said, his voice at its most expressionless. She couldn’t see his face. She couldn’t see his body, couldn’t touch him, couldn’tknow.“What do you want from me?”
“Just . . . the same,” she said. “Couldn’t it be the same? But if you came to get me this time, so we could show my parents there’s nothing wrong?”
“What’s the same?” he asked. “Me continuing your sexual education, you having an adventure? Or are we doing anything else here?”
“I love you,” she said. “I do.”
“Funny that you didn’t say so last night, then.”
Her brain tried to deny it, but the cold seeping through her body told her it was true. “I was surprised. I was confused.”
