Page 109 of Wingwoman
“I’ll hold you to that,” he said. He thought for a moment, darkness clouding his eyes. "I slept with my high school English teacher."
I went silent. Was he serious? “After high school... I hope?"
Josh looked over at me, his body rolling with every slow step of his horse, like the two movements were one. "What do you think?"
I cringed. Wow, that was... wow. "I'm sorry," I said.
He shrugged. "Don't be. It was consensual."
Was it? Could that kind of relationship ever truly be consensual? "Were you at least eighteen?"
He nodded. "It was right after my senior prom. Literally right after. She was one of the teacher chaperones that night. And I was only two weeks away from graduating. All grades had pretty much been turned in. It wasn't traumatic... for me."
But I noticed his words were tinged with regret.
"If you say so."
"I do."
The corners of his mouth turned down and his eyes grew distant. "Unfortunately, we got caught."
"By who?"
"My ex-girlfriend at the time."
“Jenn?” I asked. It was the first name I’d spoken her name aloud to him and based on the twitch of his eyebrow, I don’t think he loved that I knew her name.
“How do you know that name?” he asked.
“You sang about a girl named Jenn in your first album. That song Scars and another one I think, you mentioned her by name.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize you had listened to my music.”
“Of course I did. I’m nothing if not thorough.”
He cleared his throat, then shook his head. “Well, anyway, Jenn and I didn’t start dating until the summer after we graduated high school. The ex who caught me, we had broken up a few weeks before prom because she got asked by the captain of the football team and I think she was hoping to win prom queen with him.”
I cringed. “None of this story is good,” I said.
"That was a lifetime ago," he added with a shrug.
I tried to force a smile, but it came out crooked and off-center like a first-grader's finger painting.
Instead of keeping up the ruse, I turned my face away from his, staring down at where my hands gripped the reins.
"You're missing the view," he said.
I glanced up, catching the beautiful Texas plains stretched out in front of us. Patches of green and yellow grass, jagged lines of red shale, and the occasional drift of fog through a bend in the creek winding through the trees to my left.
Above us, the blue skies faded into the white of the clouds and the wind blew in gentle waves, lifting the stray hairs off the back of my neck and bringing with it the scent of grass and dust, sharp and wild.
Below me, the clop of Echo's and Snapple's hooves against bare earth was a drumbeat, keeping the rhythm to the rest of nature's symphony. Birds sang in the distance. The whistle of the breeze rustled through the leaves. Some sort of bug clicked with a rattling call and a frog croaked its tune.
I looked back at Josh to find his grin turned on me.
"You're trotting."
"What?"
