Page 40 of The Fundamentals

“You’re not cheating on him.”

No, but I could have been. I understood why Ward was so upset, because although nothing physical or sexual had happened between me and this football player, it could have. I was being unfaithful because I’d been lying to him, too, swearing that I hadn’t been around Bowie when I had. I had been playing with fire, and here was the moment when it was going to scorch me pretty badly.

“Do you think he’s coming back here?” Bowie asked.

I took my hands away from my face but I didn’t have an answer. When Ward got angry, he could do a lot of things. “He doesn’t want to get in trouble with the police,” I said. Not again.

“Will you call them if he shows up?”

“He may just want to talk.” There was always a chance, wasn’t there?

“Lissa, that’s the guy who broke—listen to me, and please don’t say it was an accident. I was there at the wedding and I saw him push you, on purpose. He was angry and he was trying to hurt you.”

I couldn’t look at him as shame filled me, the shame of victimhood. “You must think I’m so stupid,” I said, the words very low. “I understand that he shouldn’t have done it.”

The new door to the house opened. “Look at this,” my dad said appreciatively as he swung it on the hinges a few times. He didn’t seem to notice the melodrama occurring on the steps below him. “It works better than the old one.” He held out his hand to Bowie. “Thank you.”

“I broke it, so it was my responsibility to fix it,” he answered as he stood and they shook. “There’s a lot here that needs to be fixed.”

My dad immediately frowned. “The house isn’t in the best shape. I don’t think my daughter’s little friends should be over here telling me my business.”

Little? “Dad, he’s not doing that.”

“I wasn’t trying to criticize,” Bowie told him. “I’m glad I was able to repair it for you.”

My dad still frowned at him. “I have to leave for work and your truck is blocking me in.”

“I can drive you,” I suggested, and he snapped out his answer to that.

“I’m an adult, Sissy, and I’ll drive myself.”

Bowie moved the truck and my dad left, but I stayed there on the porch step. This day, which had started out so well, so happily, was turning into a bigger catastrophe than I could have imagined, even in the worst case scenarios I’d played out in my mind.

“I’m really sorry about this, Lissa.”

That made me look up at Bowie. “Why are you sorry? No, you shouldn’t be. You’re over here working on your day off and that’s a really nice thing to do. My dad gets touchy because he knows this place is a mess, and I’ve had the issues with Ward for a long time.”

“I didn’t help anything with him.”

What was going to help? I shook my head. “You don’t need to be sorry.”

“I also feel like I can’t leave you here, that you might be in danger.”

“No, I’m good. I’m just fine.” I stood up. “I’ll call him now and we’ll work this out. Ward knows that nothing happened between you and me. I think he really trusts me, deep down in his heart. You know what I’ll do? I’ll go talk to his mom.” I warmed to this idea. “Valerie is great and so is his dad. They have, like, an amazing marriage where they talk to each other about their problems. They have their retirement all planned out so they can do fun things together because they’re friends with each other, too. They’ve always treated me wonderfully.”

“And he’s their son?”

“You only see the bad side of him but that’s not all there is.” I had to depend on that. “There’s more to Ward than…acting up.”

Bowie winced. “Do you hear yourself? He just threatened you.”

“He said I was going to be sorry about this situation, which I already am. I really regret doing things that made him so angry. No!” I said, because Bowie had opened his mouth to argue something that I was pretty sure I wouldn’t want to hear. There was only one answer here, and it was me making up with Ward. Immediately. “I need to make this right. What I was doing with you wasn’t fair and I know how awful it felt when—I have to make this ok, so I’ll go talk to his mom and she can help us through it. I understand what happened at my sister’s wedding reception and I also know that he’s sorry about it. He didn’t mean to hurt me. People can make mistakes.”

“That wasn’t a mistake. That was abuse.”

“People do bad stuff. Like me being here with you when I knew that it was against the rules for my job and would make my boyfriend angry, that was a mistake. Shouldn’t I be forgiven? What would it make me if I couldn’t look past other people’s mistakes, too? I’d be a bitch,” I answered.

“He just called you that.”

---