Page 54 of The Cadence
The current girlfriend was an issue, though, and that situation led to the question I needed to pose to him. Did he plan on staying with her? I hadn’t wanted to badmouth anyone, but it was obvious to me that Carlee was only interested in the status that dating someone like Will gave her. She didn’t know the real man, not like I did! We’d spent all those hours at my grandma’s dining room table and slowly, gradually, he’d opened up about the pressure put on him by his coaches and teammates. They all acted like the success of the football program rested on his shoulders (as far as I had been able to tell, they were correct about that). He’d mentioned problems with his parents (I knewabout some of those—everyone had known about the Bodines). He’d shown me his list of goals and he’d been almost shy as he’d done it, as if I was going to laugh. But I was nothing but impressed by everything about him.
“Ok,” I had repeated on that day next to our high school football stadium. I had taken a breath, ready to let loose with all the things that I had prepared and rehearsed so often as I lay in my bed at my grandma’s house. I had prepared his answers, too. At first, he would be surprised but then he would smile because this was what he’d been hoping for all along, maybe without even knowing it! I knew what he would say but I had to do my part first, so I had cleared my throat and licked my lips. I’d opened my mouth again.
Nothing came out.
“What is it?” he’d prompted.
“Uh…” I’d tried to swallow but my throat was so dry that I coughed, and Will had moved closer to pat me on the back.
“What’s wrong, Calla? What are you trying to tell me?”
It didn’t come out right at all.
“I love you,” I’d cried, just as dramatic as any of the women in the romance books I’d recently started to read. “I love you so much! I’ll do anything for us to be together, forever!”
Another thing that had changed about him since high school was that now, he was so much better at hiding his emotions. But on that day seven years ago, his grey eyes had gotten huge and his jaw had dropped, leaving his mouth hanging open. He was theperfect portrait of shock—horrified shock. He didn’t seem to be able to speak.
Horror washed over me, too. “I take it back,” I’d said loudly, as if I could erase those words from his hearing. “I take it back. Never mind!”
His awful silence had lasted for much too long, but Will finally found his footing and responded. “Uh, Calla…I think you’re a sweet girl. I like you a lot, a real lot,” he’d said, and my heart had lifted in anticipation. It suddenly seemed like my dreams were about to come true! He was in love with me too, and he would wait for me to graduate and then we’d get married and I would spend the rest of my life in a state of bliss because I was with William Franklin Bodine. It was going to be perfect.
“I like you a lot, but you know that I have a girlfriend,” he’d continued. “I’ve been with her for two years.”
Of course I knew about Carlee, the girl who’d gone on to star in the reality TV show,Love Beneath the Waves. I knew who she was and suddenly, I hated her. I managed to ask, “Are you really going to stay together when you go to college?”
“We haven’t decided yet. But even if Carlee and I weren’t together, I think you’re too young for me,” he’d stated.
“No, I’m tall!” I had reminded him. I was plenty mature! “Is it actually because I’m so skinny? I’ll gain weight and my breasts will get bigger,” I’d promised, and he’d blushed.
“I’m not going to talk about your—the issue isn’t how skinny you are. Calla, wait,” he’d called. I had already begun my retreat and I didn’t stop it. I kept going, appalled at what I’d just done.It would have gone so much better if I had stuck to my script, I mentally moaned. He would have listened to me! He would have been swayed by my logical reasoning about why we needed to be together, forever.
But what had I done instead? I’d ruined it by leading with the fact that I loved him. I had been bursting with that emotion for months and now it was out: the truth was exposed and so was I. I might as well have been stark naked on the stage with the high school principal and all the graduates! And what would I do now? It felt like I’d loved him for my whole life, and if I had to be without him?
Well, I was never going to be happy again, ever, not for one, single moment. I’d walked to the bus stop and sat in the slanting shade of a scruffy street tree. I didn’t want to cry in public but there was no bathroom stall for me to hide in. I had tried to look at the time on my phone so I could guess how long I’d have to wait for the bus, but my eyes were too full of tears to see clearly. I couldn’t really see the car that pulled up and stopped at the curb, even though it was right in front of me.
“Hello, Calla.” Will had gotten out of the driver’s side and walked over to my bench. He sat down next to me.
“Hi.” By mistake, I’d blinked, and one tear did roll down my cheek. When I turned so that he wouldn’t see, a few more spilled out, too.
“I’m sorry,” he’d told me. “I’m sorry that it won’t work out like you wanted.”
“It’s not your fault that you don’t feel the same way.”
“It’s not about feelings,” he’d answered. “It’s just not right for us to be so far apart in age and everything else. I’ve done a lot more than you have in life, so it’s like our experience separates us, too.”
“You don’t know!” I’d shot back. Then I’d told him things that I hadn’t wanted anyone to hear. I had said that I’d taken care of myself for years—years! I had plenty of adult experience. I explained how I’d lived basically on my own and I wasn’t exactly the dumb little girl he thought I was. I told him about my mother’s boyfriend, too, and how he got drunk and then didn’t care which person he was groping.
“Are you saying that some old man groped you?” Will had demanded.
“He sure tried! He was strong but he was slow after he had all the beer in him,” I’d answered. “What I’m saying is that I already have sex experience, too!”
“That’s assault, not sex,” he had protested. “We should call the police!”
There was no point in doing that, I’d said angrily, because Clifford and my mother had been killed when she’d run her car off the road during a storm, the same night that a tree had fallen on our house. Then I kept going. I talked about how I had dealt with emergencies, like how I’d extinguished a fire that had almost gotten out of control when I’d been trying to heat the house and get warm, and how I’d also dealt with rats and opossums and giant leaks in the roof.
“I’m just as good as an adult!” I’d sworn.
Like before, he had seemed to be in shock. “All that happened to you?”
