 
## JOHNNY

## A NEW-ADULT NOVEL

## BOOK I

BY RACHEL DUNNING

**Genres**  
Coming of Age

New Adult Romance

Mature Young Adult Romance

Copyright © 2014 Rachel Dunning.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Book Cover Design, Copyright 2014 Rachel Dunning

First Edition.

Smashwords Edition.

ISBN: 9781311061607

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

### Also by Rachel Dunning:

Finding North, #1 Naïve Mistakes Series

East Rising, #2 Naïve Mistakes Series

West-End Boys, #3 Naïve Mistakes Series

Deep South, #4 Naïve Mistakes Series

Red-Hot Blues, Standalone Novel

Like You, #1 Perfectly Flawed Series

Know Me, #1 Truthful Lies

Find Me, #2 Truthful Lies

Need Me, #3 Truthful Lies

Christmas Comfort, #1 Hot Holidays Series

Easter Sundae, #2 Hot Holidays Series

Girl-Nerds Like it Harder, #1 Girl-Nerd Series

Girl Nerds Like it Faster, #2 Girl-Nerd Series

Girl-Nerds Like it Deeper, #3 Girl-Nerd Series

Girl-Nerds Like it Longer, #4 Girl-Nerd Series

**For news of upcoming releases, visit:**  
http://racheldunningauthor.blogspot.com

**Or connect with me on Facebook:  
** http://bit.ly/RachelDunning

**TABLE OF CONTENTS**

A little Warning

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

EPILOGUE

POSTSCRIPT

# A little warning

## -1-

If you're not yet seventeen years old, please put this book away now and wait till you're older. (Or until your parents tell you it's cool to read it!)

Good. That's all I had to say.

Oh, you're still here?

That's what I was hoping.

Let's get on with the tale...

## -2-

I mention this only because other people have mentioned it.

The character telling this story is young. Young people are more effusive than us old-timers. Consequently, there is a healthy amount of exclamation marks in her story.

I think you'll survive it...

# PROLOGUE

## -1-

Life can change. So quickly, so suddenly. One day you're driving down the freeway, your face lit up by yellow sodium lamps, music blaring through the radio, and you're singing, and the guy next to you is singing, and he turns to look at you, just for a second, a moment, that final smile lasting forever in your mind afterwards—

And then you're upside down, and there are screams and moans, a shattered windshield, spinning wheels, the _glug-glug-glug_ of falling gas, and the man you love is next you.

And he's not moving.

## -2-

My life has not been a shooting star. I wasn't famous, I didn't do anything important, I wasn't "the chosen one" in any way at all. If anything, I was a little unpopular growing up. My life was that of a regular kid growing up in the suburbs. I had few friends, simply because I was never very gregarious, but mostly because I met Johnny at such a young age. Maybe I knew, even then, that he was the only friend I would ever need. No one had taught me about putting all your eggs in one basket, and I wouldn't have listened to them either.

## -3-

I loved you, I lost you.

I hugged you, I dropped you.

I touched you, I scoffed you.

I held you.

And you held me in return.

I kissed you, I pushed you away.

I stroked your skin, I held you at bay.

I touched your ear, I said "Don't stay."

I felt you.

And you made me burn.

You held me, I ignored you.

You loved me, I implored you

to leave me alone because the pain was too much,

the fear was such

that I had no one I could trust...

...but you.

You kissed my breast, caressed my chest.

You filled my soul.

You were my pot of gold.

You were my earth, my heaven, my stars.

But now they're yours.

# CHAPTER ONE

## ~ The boy next door ~  
-1-

My name is Catherine Ramsey. Most people call me Cathy. Patricio Abreu, Johnny's father, always called me either _Catty_ or _Cattehreen_ , but that was because of his accent.

Johnny, however, always called me Cat.

I loved it when he called me that.

I have blue eyes like my mother's, and her straw colored hair. My hair's not my greatest asset. It's neither flat nor curly, nor does it glow or shine. It's more of a dirty blonde, and most times I just tie it back and hope it doesn't get in the way.

I met Johnny when I was six. He didn't speak a word of English. He and his parents had just moved to the U.S. from Portugal, moved to Long Island. They were well-off. His father was in the shipping business, and they took the house across the road from us.

My own dad was your typical All-American middle-class male. He liked his American Beer and his American Cars and his American Football. He liked picket fences and streets that you waved across and said hello to the neighbors from, and he liked the occasional barbecue to show off his new grillmaster and maybe spin a few jokes, but that was it, buddy. He liked our gated suburban community, thumb-print required to enter it.

It was deep winter, two weeks away from Christmas. Snow had blanketed our little suburban "hood" and dad and I were on our way, spades in hand (and, for him, a bottle of Heineken in the other), to build our traditional snowman in the front lawn.

It was then that the boisterous frivolity of _something_ across the street caught my eye—and ears.

There was a child there, about my age, black curly hair, jumping, screaming, speaking in a very strange language that, to my inexperienced ears, actually sounded a little like Russian to me back then. The boy was elated, picking up handfuls of snow and throwing them inexpertly around, then up in the air and letting the snow shower down on him.

Behind and to the left of him was a portly man with a bald head, extremely thick mustache and a very round belly. He had his arm around a very short woman. This woman also had a _very_ round belly, and her hand was on that belly, rubbing it. She was pregnant, leaning back, and smiling joyfully.

And then she waved at us. Even from across the street I caught the glint of raw elation in her eyes—a new world, a new life, a spark of happiness and joy that I'd never seen in any of the eyes of my American neighbors.

The portly man beckoned us over, beckoned us to _cross that sacred street_ , and come and say hello or maybe play in the snow with the psychotic boy who was _still_ jumping around madly in it! By now the boy's knees were down on it, his pants no doubt soaking wet, and he was screaming like a frenzied dog up at the sky!

I thought it was cute.

My dad's hand was on my shoulder and I felt his grip stiffen. Had it not been for that, I would have run across the street and jumped on the snow as well with this kid and explained to him that, _Hey, it's just snow!_

Already I felt my lips tug into a smile.

My dad waved back, ignored the call to come over, and hollered politely, "Nice to meet you."

I looked up at dad's face and he had that smile on that he used whenever the postman came and dropped off a package and dad had to sign for it, and then when the postman started asking a question or two, dad would get this same smile and say, "Thank you for coming by," at the same time closing the door as he said it, so that the "coming by" was usually said while the door was clicking shut.

It was daddy's "I'm being polite" smile. Daddy's "Don't get too close" smile. His "stay on your side of the fence, please, and we'll all be happy" smile.

Jack Ramsey was not one for small-talk, nor one for too much neighborly love.

"Can we go across, daddy?" I begged.

"No, sweetie. Best not," he mumbled at me, still waving, still smiling, smiling, nodding, smiling. Waving. "Nice to meet ya! Yes, nice ta meetcha!"

It crossed my little mind that we hadn't actually _met_ them yet...

The mustache-man grinned like a young Santa Claus (and I remember thinking he could indeed even _be_ Santa, except his mustache was brown and not white, and he needed a beard, but the rest of him looked pretty much like the real deal).

The pregnant lady laughed at her son. The portly man shook his head, said something to her, and then did something that made my father's hand _clutch_ at my shoulder and _pull_ me possessively toward him!

With a large, welcoming smile, the portly man did the unthinkable.

He crossed the street.

## -2-

The portly man introduced himself as Patricio Abreu. His smile glowed with warmth and reddened his cheeks. His wife, Iliana Abreu, looked like a timid lady, but her smile was welcoming. She constantly stayed by her husband's side.

Mom and dad were close, but not this close. I think I even asked him this later, why mom was never under his arm during one of our barbecues like Mrs. Iliana was with Mr. Patricio. You know how kids are, saying the damndest things.

Patricio had only a light accent. In later years I would recognize the accent as almost slightly British, an influence from the many years of practice he put into learning English; but the unmistakable Latin twang was interspersed into it. He seemed to sing a little when he spoke. "We're looking forward to our life in America. It has always been our dream," he said. "Friendly neighbors, good opportunities for our children." He rubbed his wife's belly. "We would love it if you could come over for dinner tonight. I won't take no for an answer. Come over, please. It would be our honor to host you. My wife is an incredible cook."

She blushed, said nothing else.

Her hair was a gorgeous fall of locks and ringlets of brown lusciousness. I remember being almost mesmerized by the beauty of that thick, rich hair.

Johnny would grow up to have hair like that one day, never as long, but the same elegant, luxuriant mane of dark curls. And one day I would run my hand through those curls over and over, in the most intimate of moments.

One day. But not today.

Little did I know. Little did anyone know. (Except maybe dad. I think dads have a natural distrust for anything male when they have daughters, no matter how young!)

My father was not a bad person. Maybe it's just the curse of living in the USA. Now that I've experienced Europe, I can say that the people there are more open—open to a _fault_ if I'm completely honest. My dad just took his time to welcome someone into his inner circle.

He was uncomfortable. "Oh, no, not tonight, we have plans. Maybe another night. Sure, sure, another night. Oh, but not Tuesday. No, Wednesday is no good either. Let's put a pin on it."

"Mr. Ramsey, I insist! You obviously have not tasted my wife's cooking!"

I started to wriggle against my dad's grip, looking around Mr. Abreu's large legs which were in my way, to look at the kid now going ballistic. He was even putting some snow in his mouth, downright _eating_ the stuff!

I figured he needed some help on the fundamentals of this stuff. I eased off from my dad's side while he and Mr. Abreu haggled for a date for dinner. Patricio Abreu was truly insistent, and dad clearly distracted by it. I know this because, when I looked up at him and asked, "Dad, can I go over across the street?" he mumbled, "Uhm, yeah, uhm, sure..." but his mind was not really into it. I slid out from under his grip, and then I committed the second sin of the day. I crossed the street as well.

I crossed the street to meet the boy who would one day come to rule my world.

On that day, he was shy, not wanting to talk to me (a _far_ cry from what he would become!)

His elation died slightly when I arrived on his turf, and he looked over across the street at his parents forlornly. "They're OK," I said. "They're talking to my dad. My dad is cool. Your dad is also cool. Is that a girl or a boy your mom is giving birth to? Do you know how to build a snowman? Come, I'll show you. What's your name? My name is Catherine."

He was suddenly still, suddenly aware of being in unfamiliar surroundings, a new home, white everywhere, cold. He held a mound of snow in his hand. It just lingered there, waiting.

For a moment, even at the age of six, I was stunned by the haunting look of his eyes—a light green that looked like an ocean, contrasted with the black-black night of his hair and the light gold of his skin; skin which looked like it had been born under the sun. _Interesting_ , I thought.

And then the thought went away.

It would be only in my teenage years that I'd come to ponder those eyes again. And a lot more than that, too.

His mom Iliana hollered across the street in this funny language and gestured for him to play with me. Soon the boy seemed calmer and looked in my direction.

"Come, let's build a snowman," I told the boy.

The boy didn't know what I was saying, so I started gathering snow and soon he joined me. We had barely started when my dad bellowed from across the street, "Cathy, let's go inside. Come on, honey."

"But dad, we're building a snowman! Only it's on this side of the street, not _that_ side!"

"I know, sweetie, I just have a lot of things to do."

"But what about the snowman?"

He paused, swallowed, waited. He took a sip of beer. "OK, fine, but, uhm, bring the little boy over here and we can build it on this side." He looked at Patricio. Patricio's face glowed with satisfaction. "If, uhm, that's OK, with, uhm, the boy's parents?"

"Oh, of course it's OK!" Patricio exclaimed.

We crossed the street. _Again_.

Three times and counting that street had been crossed this morning.

I couldn't remember when anyone had crossed it even once.

## -3-

The boy's name was _João_ , the last part of it being a nasal-sounding dipthong that neither my father nor I could pronounce easily. And every time we said "Jew- _wow_ " as if we'd stubbed our toe, Johnny's dad laughed and finally said, "Well, it's actually 'John' in English, or, as we always call him _Joãzinho_ , the diminutive of the name, I suppose it would be the equivalent of 'Johnny.'"

And so that's how _Joãozinho_ thereafter became known as _Johnny_ to all his American friends. You could say that my dad and I technically named him, because we were unable to pronounce his name.

It was not long before Johnny and I were crossing that street every day, and then even more often than that, several times a day. He became my best friend, closer than any girl friends I had at school, and the only friend on the street that I actually enjoyed spending time with. In all fairness, the street had little competition: One snob that I avoided at all costs, and then a boy with braces and thick glasses who spent most of his time reading tomes that were probably written in the eighteen hundreds or something. I wonder if dad didn't pick this place on purpose after seeing that there would be _zero_ threat to his daughter's maidenhood when the time would come.

But that's just a theory.

As for the Ramsey family as a body, we started crossing that street a few times a month for dinner.

My mom and Iliana became fast friends after that first dinner. I was sure that I'd gone to heaven that same night, or that I was having an early Christmas. Scents of butter and garlic and onion filled their home so fully that my mouth had watered the moment I'd walked in the door.

Johnny had some toy cars and he and I played with them on the ground while everyone else spoke over wine in the living room. I paid little attention to their conversation. I also paid little attention to the cars, but after Johnny said " _vroom vroom_ " a few times, I got into it.

The next time we had dinner there, I brought my dolls. Johnny didn't get into the dolls. After a while he accepted that he would go " _vroom vroom_ " while I would cradle and sing to my baby.

Months later, after my father first ragged Patricio about his "posh accent," I knew he had accepted Patricio into his circle of friendship. Pat and Dad never grew quite as close as mom and Iliana, but they grew close enough that Pat always came over when the Giants were playing, and dad always went over when _Benfica_ were playing—Pat's Portuguese soccer team. Dad continued to hate soccer, but he liked the _Sagres_ beer which Patricio kept a healthy stock off. According to Patricio, he didn't like American Football _or_ American beer, but he could live with a few Heinekens, so dad always made sure he was stocked up when game night approached.

Because Johnny didn't speak English, I started learning bits of Portuguese, and he started learning bits of English. Soon I was spending entire afternoons at his place, and the Abreus would say small phrases to me in their language.

I picked it up quickly.

And Johnny picked up English quickly.

Of course, after Johnny's new little sister was born ("Daniela"), she was the ultimate "doll" for me, and I would additionally be at their house just to rock her to sleep or to change her diapers and do all those motherly things that little girls like to do with newborn babes.

By the time I was eleven, a day without Johnny was like a day without sunshine or air or trees or anything else that's normal and expected and usual in your day-to-day life. A day without him just wasn't... _complete_. We were friends. Best friends. Inseparable.

Dad liked Johnny very much by the time we both turned eleven.

That is, until he kissed me.

## -4-

It's pretty funny when I think back to it. And dad's face was a study in human terror. I was on the front lawn, watering the grass, the hosepipe in my hand spraying absently while I thought about a necklace I'd seen with all the letters of my name on it _and wouldn't it be cool to wear it now?_

Johnny was sitting on the front steps of our porch, chin in hand, sulking, wanting me to finish because he'd just gotten a new bicycle and he wanted to go riding with me and I was wasting his time now! I'll never forget the sulking look plastered on his face, the twist of his lips. He was going almost blue with suppressed fury, which is saying something considering the natural tan of his skin.

After half an hour of this, he'd had enough. He got up, started storming across the lawn toward the street, but just before he got to the sidewalk, he made an abrupt about-turn as if he were in the military, stomped over to me, barely bending his knees as he walked like those old Nazi guys...and out of nowhere...plastered his wet lips on my right cheek!

I was stunned.

I was shocked.

"Ewwwww!"

I was so out of it that the hosepipe I was holding was suddenly aimed at him while I wiped furiously at my cheek! I almost cried.

"Ew, Johnny, that's disgusting!"

"Hey, stop wetting me!" By now he was drenched.

"Daddy, daddy, Johnny kissed me! GROSS!" I dropped the hosepipe and it sprayed wildly around like a dying snake. My dad had stormed out the house now, probably thinking I'd hurt myself or something. I rushed over to him on the porch, wiping my face so hard that I felt the abrasion of it!

Dad's face went pale. He stood there staring at me, PBR can in hand, mouth agape. I think he even had to hold himself up on the porch railing. By now, Johnny was strutting off across the street, shouting petulantly, "I'll just go cycling alone then!" I think I even heard him mutter, " _Girls!_ "

I remember complaining about how I was gonna get boy-germs and would this mean I'd start playing with cars now and was it contagious?

Five years later, after I turned sixteen, it was all I could do to hope for the feel of those lips on my skin once again. Or on my lips, or wondering about the flavor of his tongue.

By the time I was sixteen, the haunting appeal of Johnny's green eyes had found its way into my dreams, my nightmares, my thoughts, and my diary.

But by then, Johnny had his finger in another pie.

Her name was Nicole.

# CHAPTER TWO

## ~ Reputation ~  
-1-

It was really my fault that Johnny started dating Nicole.

Nicole Ferman was a redhead bombshell with large enough tits to make a man's (or a boy's) eyes goggle. She wasn't a D cup, but she was larger than me. She also had somewhat of a "reputation," if you catch my drift.

It was Vivian, the closest thing I had to a best friend in the female department, who'd first caught wind of said reputation. Vivian had been chatting to the only other two girls I ever spoke to at school (Lee-Anne, Nancy), and Nicole Ferman had walked past, swinging her straight red hair as if its scent would spread pheromonal pollen into the nostrils of all virile boys in the hallway. Nicole had then strategically let slip that she'd, uhm, "tasted it."

At our age, that was just gross.

Johnny and I _had_ tried the dating thing for all of three months the year before (just a little before the time Vivian had come to know of Nicole's culinary desires). We'd even made it official, given it the proclaimed name of "Boyfriend and Girlfriend," as if giving it a name would somehow institutionalize the thing and push it beyond all the awkwardness and discomfort of learning to deal with one's hormones.

The plain simplicity is that Johnny "developed" a lot faster than I did, and when I did finally catch up to him physically, he was getting his cookies from someone else.

The year before had played out like this:

At fifteen I started having the first signs of womanhood. I'd gotten my blood already a year and a bit before that, but very little else had changed with me physically. Yes, as I've hinted, I was a late bloomer, and that blooming took all of several years to finally complete.

People like Nicole didn't bloom, they mushroomed. One day to the next.

I went through the pimply phase and the self-conscious phase and the nervous phase. My and Johnny's friendship had suffered slightly as a result of it. I became difficult to talk to when he'd be around. I hid in my room, but Johnny always came by and threw stones at my window and just _bugged the hell out of me_ to let him in! And when I didn't, he'd climb the trellis and then bang at the window with his fists until I opened! "What the _eff_ are you doing here?" (I still said _eff_ and _effing_ in those days, thinking, probably, that to utter a simple "fuck" might send me over that dire cliff of adulthood that I was subconsciously shunning.) "I might be getting dressed!"

"So?" he'd say. "I've seen you naked before."

Yeah, but I didn't have boobs then.

Johnny's own body had also changed. He was firm and strong and filled with the athletic energy of youth. He was sinewy, and he never missed a chance to take his shirt off when working in the lawn. His pecks had filled out, his arms bulged. His green eyes had changed to include a depth and surety that tightened my chest whenever I was near him. There were days when I'd look at him from the kitchen while he mowed the lawn of his house, just staring, looking, watching, wondering...

Once, my mom caught me, and that's what finally got the ball rolling. I was washing dishes. Or, more appropriately, _not_ washing dishes. My hands had paused, the water was running, and I was gawping out at Johnny's muscles gleaming under the sun. I wasn't even thinking anything lewd! I was thinking of stupid things—us holding hands, walking under the trees in one of those kitschy Hallmark-style scenes where the sun shines down gold and the girl smiles under soft light while the boy holds her head to his shoulder—

"Have you told him yet?"

My heart went into overdrive!

I spun!

There was my mom!

Dishes clattered and clanged and water splattered and fell everywhere! "Mom! I— What— I—"

My heart was an army of horses, galloping, _charging_!

Does she know?

She had a smirk on her face that made me believe she knew, she _so_ knew—and that mortified me!

Her dark golden hair was tied up in a ponytail. She was leaning on the kitchen counter. Even though she was wearing a tee and some jeans, Alice Ramsey carried a beauty about her that I always admired. And that I wished I would one day grow into. Mom wasn't a supermodel, but she was elegant, and lovely.

"Have you _told_ him yet?" she repeated with a grin.

I felt my cheeks flush. The whir of the lawnmower across the street flowed into the house. I could still see Johnny from the corner of my eye and, indeed, _kept_ looking at him. To look at him—

"You should tell him."

"Mom! I— I— It's not like that!" My cheeks were cooking! I'd broken out into a sweat!

"OK, well, I'm just saying...you should at least... _talk_ to him about it."

There was an eerie silence, except for the lawnmower. It felt like forever, but in reality was probably not more than a few seconds. I swallowed and picked up my courage. "B—but I'm..." And then the word came to my lips, a word I hadn't yet realized, and with it came an onslaught of tears and emo shit that I hadn't yet experienced but which was bound to happen the moment I confessed to someone that I, completely, and utterly, _loved_ the boy next door.

The word was this: "... _scared_."

And then I wept.

I wept like someone had died, like the world had ended. The truth of it, the _idiotic, childish, immature_ truth of it all was that this was my first love and I was, simply, _scared_ that Johnny didn't feel the same about me! That he'd stand on my fragile heart and go off with some other girl or, heck, maybe even... _sleep_ with someone! Yikes! That would be disastrous! _And he's too young to do that anyway, but if I told him that then he'd think I'm only saying it because I like him and I don't want him to know I like him but I really do—_

Whoa! I was a wreck. A total wreck.

Mom held me. I sobbed onto her shirt and soon there was snot and spittle and tears all over it and it was wet and soaking and I was shivering, and weeping, weeping, weeping.

"I (sob, sob, sob) think I (sob, sob, sob) _love_ him, mom!"

People can be so melodramatic at fifteen.

She held my head, rubbed it, and said, "I know you do, honey. He's a good boy to love. So, why don't you tell him? I mean, not...in so many words...you know how boys are. But, uhm, maybe start with, uhm, just asking him if, y'know, he'd be _interested_ in, well, a date?"

The room stopped spinning. My mom's hand stopped caressing my matted hair as she let the concept sink in.

Ask him...on a date? In other words, not put my heart on my sleeve but simply, well, play it cool, and, uhm, see where it goes?

Mom was a genius. An absolute genius! Why hadn't I thought of that before!

Still shocked at the simplicity of it, I mumbled into her shirt, "Aren't, er, _guys_ supposed to be the ones asking girls out on dates?"

I felt her shrug. I moved away from her. Her face was calm, relaxed. A few small lines of age had formed around her lips over the years, not unsightly. "Well," she said nonchalantly, looking out the window at Johnny riding the lawnmower like a NASCAR racing car, "times have changed." She looked back down at me. "So, when will you do it?"

In my hormonal state, I got the sudden idea that "it" meant something...else, and it took me a second to catch my wits. "You mean...ask him out?"

"Yeah?"

I shrugged. A weight the size of earth was gone from my chest. I felt I could breathe, I felt...

I looked out the window. Yeah, I could do this. It's me and Johnny. We've known each other for years! I could just go over there and, y'know, tap him on the shoulder and say, _Hey, Johnny, so, uhm, you wanna be my boyfriend or something? No strings. Huh? Wanna do that? Huh? I mean, not that I'm wanting to be your girlfriend or anything, but, y'know, you're a guy and I'm a girl and— So? Will you answer me? Will you?_

I said to mom, "I'll ask him now!"

Luckily she grabbed my elbow before I could run out the door and make a fool of myself! "Maybe you should...clean up your eyes a little bit. And, well..." She pointed to my nose. Some snot was falling from it.

"Right," I said.

Like I said, my mom was smart in this area.

In fact, I suspect she spoke to Iliana that afternoon, who in turn spoke to Johnny or at least _hinted_ as much to him. But that was never proved.

I waited for him to come to my room that night while I planned my attack for the next day. He often came over at night and climbed in the window.

I opened the sash before he got up to the top of the trellis and he looked up at me, surprised.

I chewed gum, and leaned coolly on my elbows out my window. I was wearing a baggy t-shirt, but I'd pulled my hair back and dabbed on a bit of lip-gloss.

Johnny stopped and stared up at me. "Cath—Catherine."

I couldn't remember the last time he'd used my full name. The utterance of it stopped my heart.

When it resumed beating, I said, "You sound surprised."

"Well, you always make me bang on the window for thirty minutes, so yeah, I'm a little surprised."

He looked utterly beautiful. How could a boy be so perfect, I thought. The moonlight on his black hair, and the glow of his eyes as they beamed up at me, made my heart tremor.

"I, uhm, wanted to ask you something," he said. "Something, uhm, important." Johnny had never completely lost his Portuguese accent. And even though it was tiny, some words were occasionally "overpronounced," some under.

It did nothing to help me forget him in the romantic sense.

My heart fluttered at his request to ask me something "important." It floored me, I confess. I started to sweat and feel nervous. Hormones, hormones, hormones! Why did God or whoever made us, decide to make us go through all this shit!

"Y—yeah?" I said, my voice quivering.

"Yeah, uhm..." He leaned back on the trellis. If he fell, he wouldn't die, but he'd hurt himself pretty good.

"Don't lean back, Johnny. You know I hate that."

He grinned his confident grin.

He leaned back some more.

"Hey, I said don't do that!"

He was playing with me, leaning back and forth and back and forth—

I snatched at his head when he came close and _held_ him so he couldn't go back any more!

The heat that radiated from him made me tremble.

And then he dropped the bomb on me. Just like that, no warning.

All mirth in him suddenly disappeared, replaced by something I didn't recognize, something I had never seen or felt in anyone but which, in Johnny's eyes, felt normal and natural and... _intense._

We were kids, but the intensity of what he would become as an adult was already inside him. The intensity that I would hunger for in later years, reared its head for the first time with Johnny hanging on the trellis to my window.

"Go out with me," he said. "Not as a pal but..." He bit his bottom lip. "...as, like, on a _date_."

My hand released his head. He was still looking at me, still boring his eyes into me, waiting, waiting.

My heart danced, my head spun, my tongue went so freaking dry that I felt I needed a gallon of water just to moisten it!

He still waited, confident, staring.

I _tried_ to stay cool, _tried_ to remain calm, but my lips tugged and pulled up and before I knew it I was smiling and... _Oh, God, my cheeks are going red, I know it._

I looked away, giggled like some stupid little girl. "You asshole," I said, looking at the floor, not being able to look at him anymore!

"Is that a yes?"

There was a warmth that filled me like a hot pot of chicken soup, every part of me, inside me, every muscle. I turned, sat on the floor, put my back against the wall.

Love, that's what this feeling is. Real love. Real, true, and honest love. And it's warm and kind and caring and happy.

In a moment, Johnny was next to me, sitting with his back to the wall as well. I had no idea what to do! _Should we kiss now? Touch? Hold hands?_

We sat there, looking at my bedroom door, the bed in between us and it.

My mind was whirling, daydreaming, thinking of that Hallmark scene again! (I had no control of these daydreams; they just occurred!) And then he sealed the deal. He did it, the perfect move, like he'd known instinctively what to do by some special male part of the brain or whatever. It must have been several minutes before it happened, but it was perfect.

Perfect.

His arm went around my neck, his hand to my shoulder, and he pulled me toward him. I rested my head on his shoulder. After an age, my neck hurt like hell. I think he was also uncomfortable—either his arm or maybe even his ass because we stayed like that for easily an hour.

Like I said, it was perfect.

Finally, he said, "So, the date. What should we do? Go to a movie?"

"Sure."

Before he left, he moved in to touch his lips to mine. I instinctively moved away, then realized I wasn't eleven and so I moved into him. But by then he'd started moving away because he was unsure if I wanted to kiss! Left, right, trying to meet the lips, palms sweating, stomach buzzing!

He gave a frustrated sigh and then _fired_ his lips onto my cheek!

They became wet, just as they'd been four years before. And I felt the light breeze from the window making that side of my face a little cool.

This time, I didn't wipe it off.

## -2-

Our "relationship" didn't last long.

Johnny was kind, gentle, patient. But I simply wasn't ready. For three months we fought. He'd wanted to kiss me and touch me in places I didn't want to be touched in... _yet_. I liked kissing him on the lips, liked being held by him, but it seemed he wanted so much more!

I was a prude. Because he'd wanted to touch my breasts mainly. Nothing else. But I wasn't ready for that.

As I've mentioned, girls like the redhead Nicole had "mushroomed" into their sexual prime, my progress was more like a slithering snail.

My hormones just weren't ready for it.

As much as I hated to admit it (and I _did_ hate to admit it!), Johnny and Nicole were more suited to each other back then, if only from a developmental perspective.

It was the age of experimentation, of getting to know our bodies.

I wasn't there yet, and the whole subject repulsed me.

It didn't mean I didn't love Johnny. I did. I loved him endlessly already then.

Which only made things worse and more confusing.

At the apex of our "relationship," three months later, Johnny came over and said to my mom that he needed "to talk to Cat urgently. And _in private_." He spoke firmly, and I could hear him at the door all the way from my room upstairs (Johnny rarely came in through the window during the day—too risky). Even long before we'd "officialized" the "Boyfriend and Girlfriend" thing, my dad had made it clear that we weren't to be alone in my room under any circumstances! (Actually, I think that rule came into play on that day when I was eleven and I cried because Johnny had kissed me.)

That Johnny visited me at night was not something my parents knew about.

Today, however, my mom made an exception. I'm sure she knew damn well what was going to happen. She let Johnny talk to me "in private" in my room. "For a few minutes only, Johnny," she said. "Mr. Ramsey will be home soon and you know how he doesn't like that."

In my room, in reference to my discomfort with the physical side of our relationship, he said, "We're Boyfriend and Girlfriend. That's what Boyfriends and Girlfriends _do_!"

"I know, I know, I just... I don't know why I don't want to do it! It seems... _weird_ and... Can't we just, you know, hold hands and hug or, I don't know, Johnny!"

"Cat, you know I love you, I've always loved you." (I wasn't ignorant of the way he was using "love" in this sense. We'd loved each for years... _as friends_.) "But...this isn't working. And I'm scared to lose you. I don't want to ever lose you, Cat. I don't. You're the best friend I've ever had. I want you to be my best friend forever. I want us to tell each other everything. And this is tearing us apart. It's destroying us, don't you see?"

My eyes filled with water. He'd hit it on the nail. And I did see, and I was so happy that he'd said it, because I didn't want to lose him either! I strode over to him and wrapped my arms around his neck and held him! "I love you, Johnny." Tears poured down like a fountain. I pulled my head back, gave him a peck on the cheek, and even stuck my tongue in his mouth rapidly like a lizard! "Now that's all you're ever getting from me!"

Little did I know...

He laughed.

When he left, my stomach clenched up tight and there was a...tingle...of some sort...

I'd never felt it before, not like this.

I ignored it. And even though there would be a nagging feeling of sadness in my mind later on, I knew this was for the best.

Johnny and I returned to my state of awkwardness around him, my state of both wanting and not wanting him, and the sheer uncertainty of it all; and Johnny returned to being the cool and ever smooth Casanova that he was evidently destined to be.

I saw the girls gravitate to him at school over the months, saw how Nicole Ferman in particular fluttered her eyes and made sure to graze her hand over his chest in the hallways. Even my "best" friend Vivian started having eyes for him. And, geeky though she was, she did try and flirt with him once or twice. I simply rolled my eyes.

Johnny took it all in his stride. He glowed from the attention, but never forgot me. He'd come by and stand by my locker, making sure I was OK and I'd tell him he should go over and talk to his girlfriends before they fell over their tongues. He'd say shit like, "You're the only real girl for me," mocking me, and then I'd punch him, and he really _would_ go over to his "girlfriends" for a bit.

And then disaster struck.

It was four months after I'd turned sixteen, two weeks before Christmas, and almost exactly five years since I'd first met that little boy across the street who would grow up to become the dark and tall man that I would forever regret letting slip through my fingers. And it was also six months since Johnny and I had officially decreed our state of "Boyfriend and Girlfriend" as both unlawful and foolish.

The disaster was this: I "mushroomed."

One day to the next, as if it had been sitting latently in me all these years, just waiting for the worst possible moment to come out—my boobs popped out, my hips widened...

...and volcanic, lustful desire erupted inside me.

It was unbearable.

The thoughts, the images, the ideas, the sudden wants—all this was simply unbearable. I felt like an alien had taken over my body!

And then all doubt was gone from my mind.

I wanted him.

I more than wanted him.

The desire for him made my tongue dry.

I wanted Johnny in all the ways a girl could ever want a boy. All the terrible, sinful ways.

And I knew I would never want anyone else.

He and Nicole had been dating for a month.

## -3-

I've kept a diary since I was twelve. I have several of them, each with a tiny little lock that can't be opened unless you have the code (or unless you tug a little harder than on a shoelace—but people get the point when they see it).

It's a typical diary with things written in different colors and hieroglyphics based off what I was thinking at the time, random thoughts, ideas.

And poems. Lots of poems. Poems until the cows come home. Poems filling pages, odyssey poems, epic poems, poems of grief, poems of love, poems of hate.

And poems of Johnny. _So_ many poems of Johnny.

How could I not see this coming?

I wrote.

I saw you, and yet I didn't.

I heard you, but didn't listen.

I felt you, but never touched.

And now you're gone. I miss you so much.

I loved you, but didn't see it.

You called me, I didn't hear it.

You kissed me, I wiped you away.

Won't you kiss me again on a blustery day?

You were there, across the street.

I went to you so often, on my little patter feet.

We smiled, we played, we laughed, we laid

our heads under the sun, hoping for dreams, looking for fun.

But I was blind to what was in front of me,

couldn't believe such goodness would come to me.

And so you ran.

You found her.

You kissed her and wound her

around your olive finger

where she'll probably forever linger,

because your curse

is the verse

of poetry...

...in any girl's mind and dreams.

But especially in this one's.

Your magic,

so tragic.

Gone.

## -4-

Poetry helped me think. Poetry helped me breathe. Poetry stopped me from moping around because I knew I could lose myself in a rhyme and then take a deep sigh and forget what had just happened.

It got me through.

I didn't cry when I wrote the "Ode to Johnny" (or whatever you could call it!)

If I hadn't written it, I would have cried.

I would have cried for days.

# CHAPTER THREE

## ~ Problems ~  
-1-

It was no secret that my parents were having problems, but it was only after my "mushroom" that I really started seeing them. What is it with puberty that it rips apart every shred of belief you've ever had in anything magical?

My parents had fought mildly over the years, no more than any other suburban middle-class family, I guess. But it was only now, now that I'd started feeling the tensions and tightnesses of adulthood, that I became acutely aware of certain details about the two of them, details which made me deeply uncomfortable.

My dad was drinking a lot. I'd never noticed it before because he'd never taken it to boiling point, had never taken it to the stage of fumbling and stumbling around the house and making a fool of himself. But the haze of beer from his breath, the glazed smile and the "elsewhere" taint to his eyes as we sat at the dinner table had reached the stage where it was impossible _not_ to notice anymore. When had it begun? When I was fifteen? Fourteen? Younger? Sitting there at the dinner table, at sixteen, the only thought I came up with was that it had "always been this way." Indeed, it really had been. I'd often seen him with a beer in his hand growing up. And? All the dads in the movies also had beers in their hands, that didn't make them alcoholics, did it?

I noticed the faint look of despair in my mom's blue eyes as she sat at dinner, sometimes dressed up, and yet the dinner was over and done with within a matter of minutes, mostly us sitting in silence. And then we'd clean up. The only sounds to comfort us during and after this reverential "family meal" was the clatter and scraping of cutlery and plates.

I felt the sorrow on my mother like a thick blanket of nettled fleece.

I asked her once in the kitchen, "Mom, is everything OK?"

"Of course," she assured me.

But it wasn't. My folks were unhappy, I could feel it, I could sense it.

Mom started staying out late some nights "with her friends" and when she'd get home my parents would fight and I'd go to my room and text Johnny and we'd talk as soon as he was free.

Johnny had become my natural go-to person whenever things got heated. Vivian had a nice suburban life a few miles from where we lived. Our home-lives looked the same from the outside, but mine was starting to eat itself up from the inside. She was cool when it came to talking about dresses and guys and movies and books... But that's where it ended. Once I'd hinted _vaguely_ at my sadness at not being with Johnny anymore and she'd said, "Oh, honey, you'll find someone else!" and then she pulled out the latest issue of _Us Weekly_ and asked my opinion of the dresses.

Viv was a good chick. She just wasn't BFF material.

Johnny, on the other hand, had found me red-eyed at school one day after a particularly heated parental argument in the morning. Whereas I'd gotten away with telling everyone I was coming down with a cold, Johnny didn't buy it. He pulled me aside at recess, ignoring the catcalls from girls vying for his attention, ignoring even Nicole Ferman's comment of, "Oh, baby, come on! I thought we were gonna have some fun now!"

He took me behind the gym and said, "Now! Tell me now what's happening!"

"Nothing," I lied. "I just have—"

He put his hands on either side of my head and pinned me to the brick wall. His eyes narrowed. I couldn't face those eyes. They were the only eyes that could see right through me. "Bullshit," he growled. "I've known you all my life. And I know what you look like when you've been crying. Now tell me what's happening. Did some guy feel you up? Did Nicole start shit again." Nicole had not hidden her jealousy of my and Johnny's friendship since they'd started dating, pushing for him to spend less time with me. Johnny never paid any heed to it. "Tell me."

And so I told him.

"How long?" he asked me at the end.

"A...few months. It's..." My chin quivered. "It's... _scary_...sometimes. They're really... _loud_."

"Violent?"

I shook my head. _Not yet_ , I thought, and I didn't know where the thought came from.

Johnny pulled me toward him, held me firmly. I wept into his chest, grateful that I had an anchor.

Nicole Ferman "caught" us a few minutes later. "What the _fuck_?" she howled.

Johnny was quick to respond. "Oh, knock it off, Nicole! She's my best friend!"

"What the fuck is—"

"I SAID KNOCK IT OFF!"

"I better go," I whispered.

Nicole looked like a flaming witch with her fists clenched at her side.

Since that day, Johnny checked in with me daily on how things were going at home.

Things weren't going any better.

Things were going downright shitty.

## -2-

A typical nighttime phone conversation:

"Your folks fighting again?" Johnny asked me on the phone.

"Yeah," I mumbled.

"Wanna come cover?"

"I...can't. It's late. Besides, I'm a little worried about my mom."

"Would your dad do anything?"

"No! But...just in case."

This is what they officially call "Denial."

It wasn't long before I couldn't take it anymore and I was rebelling at the dinner table, refusing to sit in this facade of family unity when it was apparent that there was some great rift that sat between us like the proverbial elephant that no one dared mention!

Dad's own late nights became almost commonplace, and the few times we _did_ sit down and eat at the table, World War II would start all over again.

I became catty, true to my name. And soon, naturally, I became the scapegoat to my parents' frustrated tensions. Instead of sitting in silence, I now sat grudgingly, until my father would pipe up, inebriated, and tell me I should "smile more" or "have more respect" or "dress less...revealingly."

The more painful rebukes were always accompanied by a slight slur.

Dad was a different man.

And when he'd downed a few beers or a few Scotches, he became a _completely_ different man.

I realized here that even though dad had carried a beer around a lot when I was growing up, this was different. Something _had_ changed, and it wasn't only me.

_Dad_ had changed.

I didn't like this other man.

He wasn't my father.

One night, after a particularly late night of revelry on my father's part, I heard an argument so loud coming from my parents' bedroom that I went out into the hallway to listen.

Muffled cries soon became piercingly sharp as my mother slammed open the bedroom door and completed her sentence. "...is _unbelievable_! And how many were there! Two, three?"

The fight progressed down the stairs to the living room, then the kitchen. I didn't have to move around to hear much of it, they were loud enough. I stayed at the top of the stairs, out of sight. I heard most of the words. They seemed to have forgotten that there was someone else in the house.

I texted Johnny. _What you doin?_

But I didn't read his answer.

My phone fell onto the carpeted steps after I heard the _slap_ , and the howl of a woman who'd just been hit!

My heart raced!

I sat paralyzed for a second, sure I would hear more, sure that the house would be torn apart with violence soon! I was too afraid to budge, too afraid to even pick up the phone that was only a foot away from me!

But all I got in return was silence.

And then, "You _fucking_ bastard! How _dare_ you strike me! How _dare_ you!"

More silence.

I heard a mumble.

"...sorry, Alice..." was all I could make out. "...so sorry...I...I'll get help."

The muffled sounds of weeping.

"...so sorry ... so sorry, honey. I love you."

A soft wail, like that of a wounded animal.

I picked up the phone and read Johnny's answer. _With Nicole. What's up?_

I didn't reply.

## -3-

For a few days after that, we were all extra careful to not get on each other's toes. Dad made an effort to not raise his voice. We actually even had dinner together three nights in a row.

The dinners at the Abreus had not been happening for a long time. It seems my parents were circling the wagons, and pushing those skeletons as far back into the closet as they would go.

But the skeletons were bulging out.

The facade only lasted a week.

From my parents' bedroom, I heard a shriek, and then a crash, and then my mother wailing. I ran to just outside the door and listened, afraid, thinking I might need to rush in like some hero to protect my mom. And to protect my dad from himself as well! This was all just a big misunderstanding, surely! We'd spent sixteen years together as a happy family and now things were a little off kilter but we could get back on track.

Those had been my thoughts at the time.

It felt like my world was crashing, like everything in my life was falling apart like thousands of splinters of wood from timber breaking in a woodchip machine.

My dad's voice _growled_ with rage as he spoke softly and deadly to my mother inside the room. And then he used language fit only for a prostitute, and he said things that made me feel bad for my mom, and angry at him for being so cruel to her.

There was a crash, a faint moan, some stumbling. "Fuck you!" from her and "You bitch!" from him. Then more muffled cries, the sounds of fighting. He grunted angrily.

And then I heard what was... _maybe?_...the unmistakable sounds of people...having sex?

My stomach tightened.

More mumbling as they seemed to struggle. _Were they fighting? Or were they...?_

"Goddamnit!" my mother yelled. "Goddamnit, you bastard!" The bed _slammed_ against the wall.

A picture formed in my mind—a horrible, detestable picture—of what might be happening in there!

I only hesitated for a moment, and then my hand was on that doorknob—

"Oh, God, yes, Jack. Oh, _yes!_ " My mother's cries were an orgasmic roar. My hand lifted off the knob, a mind of its own. "Oh, God, Jack, I hate you— _oh, yes_! You fucking asshole!"

Confused, a little stunned, I stepped away. Turned. And I left.

I tried desperately to put the picture out of my mind. And I wasn't sure if I was repulsed at having caught my parents in the act.

Or if I was confused as to how this particular act had started out tonight; confused about how it had started out so... _violently_?

# CHAPTER FOUR

## ~ Cheating ~  
-1-

Johnny and I were lying on a thermal blanket, staring up at gargantuan spruces and pines that stretched upwards forever, touching heaven itself. We were on a hill, "Our Hill," in a set of woods only a mile out from where we stayed. As kids, we used to cycle here all the time when we'd wanted privacy. Today was one of those days.

Our spot was secluded, hidden behind a few outcroppings, off the beaten path.

"So how's it going with ' _Nicohhhhle_?'" I made the Nicole come out as an extended sing-song sound of several syllables which screamed of derision and of the fact that I hated her. Just hated her!

Johnny looked at me for what felt like years. _Do those eyes dig so far into Nicole's soul when you look at her?_ I wondered. _Or...when you lie on top of her, when you touch her?_ I forced myself to keep an indifferent face, looking up at the canopy hiding the sky.

" _Nicohhhhle_?"

I tried not to smile, but my lips betrayed me.

"Yeah, Nicohhhhle!"

He laughed, and even his laugh had changed. His voice had grown deeper. Hearing it made my body ache.

"Fine." He turned his head and looked back up at the sky.

"Just fine?"

A pause. "Yeah, it's... _fine_." He sounded a little irritated. I was afraid to ask why, in case it was because I was asking about her and I shouldn't.

"You guys done it already?"

He cleared his throat.

I dreaded his answer, and felt the blood pool at my legs. Thank goodness I was lying down.

The time that passed until he answered felt like a chasm of years.

"Maybe," he said, emotionless. "What's it to you?"

"C'mon, it's cool. You can tell me." _No, you can't._

"I'm not gonna talk to you about my and Nicole's sex life."

_Sex life! Oh, God!_ I cleared my throat. "So you _have_ done it."

"No comment! Why is this so important to you? She's just a girl."

"Just...humor me."

"No."

"C'mon, Johnny! Tell me!"

"No, I won't tell you. I wanna change the subject now."

"Have you at least...y'know...?" I couldn't finish the sentence.

"What—fingered her?"

"GOD! Johnny!" I slapped his chest on a reflex! "At least make it _sound_ more romantic!"

His laughter echoed in the trees and sent a bird cawing in response. "This is _precisely_ why I won't tell you about what she and I have done. Because you're such a prude about this stuff!"

But I'm changing. It's all new to me...but...

"Fine." It wasn't fine, but what was I supposed to do?

Leaves rustled. Wind blew.

"Have you ever...walked in on...your parents?" I ventured, changing the subject.

"No, have you?" He was incredibly cool about the topic.

I didn't respond. My mind went to the other night, to the shriek, the crash, the wailing. _The violence..._

Johnny noticed. He got up on one elbow, and like a whisper of the wind, he said, "Hey, you OK? What's up?"

He laid his hand on mine, and it was like pressing an _On_ button to a faucet. My chin trembled, my eyes watered.

Johnny lifted me off my back. He held me until my tears had wet his collar completely. He rocked me back and forth and stroked my hair. He rubbed my back and said, "Shhh, shhh. It's OK, Cat. It's OK. I'm here."

My arms squeezed his torso like a closing wrench. And I thought to myself, _And have you done this with Nicole as well?_

The thought perturbed me more than if he'd had sex with her.

## -2-

I knew deep down that spending time with Johnny in those woods was probably the equivalent of having him cheat on Nicole. But I didn't care. I never stopped him from hanging out with her, and he and I mostly hung out after school when he wasn't playing soccer, or a bit on the weekends when he wasn't out with his dad at the docks. Sometimes we'd bring his sister Daniela along and she collected pine cones or tried to identify different types of mushrooms and tell us which ones were poisonous or not.

There was a small brook from where Johnny and I were sitting today, about thirty feet away. Daniela sat on a rock throwing stones into the water.

Spring was on its way, and even though there were still splotches of snow that hadn't melted under the trees, small sprigs of tiny white and yellow flowers had started to sprout in the parts where the sun managed to break through the thick canopy.

"How's it going at home?" Johnny asked me. It had been a few weeks since that night with my parents.

"It's...OK...at the moment."

Johnny clenched his teeth. He'd become colder toward my father since we started talking about this stuff.

"Johnny, I don't want you to hate my dad. He's just...he's just going through stuff, I guess." The lie felt cold on my lips.

Johnny cleared his throat. "Danny, don't lean in so far!" Daniela leaned away, but stayed on her rock. Then, to me, he said, "I don't hate your dad, but I have to admit that that's only because he's _your_ dad. A man who hits a woman...well..."

I picked a twig up from the ground, threw it aimlessly.

"He needs help," Johnny said. "If you let me—"

"No!" I stared at him in fear. We'd had this conversation many times before. "Please, Johnny—"

"Relax." He put his hand up to calm me down. "DANNY, NOT SO CLOSE!"

"Relax," he repeated. "I haven't told my dad anything like you asked me to. But do you think he doesn't know something's up? Your folks never come by anymore, Cat. Do you think my dad hasn't noticed? He hasn't come by your place himself because he thinks whatever it is will settle itself out. But from what you tell me..."

He didn't need to finish.

But I didn't want to believe it either.

I didn't want to believe that we'd hit a Point of No Return, and that things would never again be as they were before without intervention.

Walking back home, Danny holding her brother's hand and swinging his arm as she walked, she said, "Are you guys boyfriend and girlfriend?" The question was posed so innocently that it disarmed me completely.

Johnny, however, looked irate. He'd been looking irate all day, like something was on his mind, a deep frown furrowing his brow.

He said nothing.

"Well, are you?" She looked up at her brother, then at me.

Johnny ignored her.

My eyes flicked back and forth from him to her. "Uhm, no, no, we're not, Danny. We're...just friends."

"Michelle says you're boyfriend and girlfriend. She says she can tell. Why aren't you guys boyfriend and girlfriend?"

Johnny said nothing.

"Well..." I stammered, struggling for an answer, "because...we're...such good friends and—"

"Danny, stop asking stupid questions! We just aren't, OK!" It was the first time I'd heard Johnny raise his voice to his sister.

She let go of his hand rudely. "Fine! I was just _axking_!" She held mine more firmly, and snuggled up to my leg as we walked.

A moment later, she smiled at me, all forgotten for her.

But Johnny and I said not a word more to each other until we got home.

He barely even said goodbye to me.

## -3-

In some vague way I could accept that sex had resolved whatever problem my parents had been faced with that night, but the whole context of that night repulsed me.

I hadn't seen Johnny for a little over a week, ever since that fiasco with Daniela, and his answers to my texts had been slow in coming—sometimes taking even hours!

I missed him now, and the ache was deep and burning. It had been over four months since he and Nicole had started dating. _And what base do people get to after four months? Could they be sleeping together? At_ sixteen!?

The thought horrified me, not so much because they were sixteen (you don't consider these things when you're so young), but because somewhere deep inside me I had just "always known" (or at least _hoped_ ) that the first time I'd have sex, it would be with Johnny.

And his first time, would be with me...

Could it be that he hasn't come by because they finally did the deed? And was it romantic, as it probably guaranteed would be with Johnny Abreu? He probably even laid out flowers for her, I bet. Maybe even a bed with rose-petals on it...

I felt caustic food at my throat.

I texted him, tried to make it light and cool like the friends we were supposed to be. _Hey, do I smell or what?_

His answer was instantaneous today. _No, you don't. Things just hectic on this side_

Uhuh?

Uhuh

He "sounded" down. _Tell me_ , I wrote.

I can't

Since when can't you tell me stuff? We're sposed 2 b BFFs, remember?

Yeah, I remember

His laconic answers weren't doing much for my self-esteem. In fact, they were downright slaughtering it. The thought of Nicole making similar sounds to what my mother had made the other night was equally as repulsive to me, and yet maybe that's what was happening right now. Maybe she was with him this very moment and he was texting me with her in his arms!

I decided to stop texting him.

It felt like my head was full of cotton. I even felt my throat getting sore. I had no girlfriends at school that I could talk to like I did with Johnny, and no one to talk to _about_ him, or about my crap at home.

Nothing.

I was alone, in the fullest sense of the word.

Completely, and utterly alone.

Until Johnny was at my window.

## -4-

I jumped off my bed! "What the hell are you doing here!" I half-whispered, half-shouted. (I had graduated from "eff" to "hell" at sixteen-and-a-half.)

Johnny grinned. His grin was so deadly gorgeous that—what with the contrast between his black curly hair and his perfect white teeth, and then the glow of his moonlit eyes—I felt that sudden tightening of all my muscles and a pulling of my skin.

"I came to visit you."

"How did you get up here?" My dad had long-since removed the trellis that Johnny had once climbed up so eagerly.

"Drainpipe."

"Christ, Johnny, get in here! You'll break your neck!"

I moved over to help him in and every touch of his sinewy forearm, plus the scent of _whatever-the-hell_ he was wearing, made the pores of my skin start dancing, and sent my stomach up into my lungs. The reaction scared me. It was dizzying, like a feral drug that takes over your mind and senses.

"You OK?" Johnny asked as he got inside. He was taller than me now, which is saying something, because I was a good five-seven already by that age.

"Yeah, uhm, I'm fine. What the hell are you doing here?" I whispered. He had a naughty smirk on his face. I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks, so I turned to hide them from him. Luckily my room was dark. I'd turned off the light after sending him my last text. But the moon was up high, and its fullness made Johnny's skin glow like something out of a fairytale.

"I wanted to see you."

"Oh." My heart fluttered, and I struggled to swallow.

The next thing he said stopped all time for me.

Because it wasn't _what_ was said, but _how_.

He said my name.

"Cat."

His voice was throaty. And yet it wasn't the words that clobbered me like a gauntlet, it was the _idea_ that came to me on a carrier wave of virgin lust that I knew we were both experiencing.

I was barely able to answer him, my back still turned, my hands now shaking. "Y—yes?"

I didn't so much hear him move, as _felt_ him nearer to me, even before any perceptible heat from his body warmed my back.

And then his hands were on my shoulders. And I knew. I _knew_.

"Why now?" I said. "Why now? What about Nicole—"

"Over."

We stood there, in tableau, waiting, his hands clasped firmly around my shoulders. Not moving.

I felt the tips of his fingers tremor so slightly. He was as nervous as I was.

"I see. How long?"

"Tonight."

I was _angry_ at his response! He broke up with that... _urgh!_...and then came over to my place instantly afterwards! Or did she break up with him?

The venom of my emotions tinted my tone. "And now you come to my bedroom, expecting..."

"I don't expect anything, Cat."

There it was again, my name, like a whisper in a tornado. _Cat, Cat, Cat._ If only he knew how much that name disarmed me when said by him.

"And if I'd known there'd be any hope between us, I would have ended it ages ago with her. But you never..."

_I never gave you a chance_ , I knew.

It would be a theme between me and him that would one day cut deep, _so_ deep.

"I know," I said. "Why now?"

"I couldn't wait for you to give me a chance anymore. I... _like_...you. I always have. I had to take a risk. And I'm a one-girl guy. So it was either Nicole or you. I took a risk."

"It won't be the same, Johnny. I'm... _different_ now. We're not kids anymore. I..." _I have feelings for you_ , I didn't say. _I...am blindly and lustily completely bonkers for you_. I didn't say that either!

"I know you are. And I don't... I don't need... _that_...with you, Cat." _Oh, God, whispering my name like that!_ "I...I can wait."

I moved my hands to his, covered them. And I took a step back so that my back touched his chest. When my butt touched him... _there_...I stiffened.

This is all so new. Oh, God, I have no idea what I'm doing!

But I knew I loved him. I'd loved him for the better part of a year. And I'd loved him as a friend for over a decade.

My hands tightened over his.

When he slid them out from my grasp, eased them down my sides and around to my belly, then up, _just_ to below where I'd get uncomfortable; and when his lips and tongue touched my right earlobe, softly, gently, with the sound of _pit-smack-pit_...

...I was his.

## -5-

We kissed in bed, easy tongues touching and caressing, learning of each other, testing, feeling, stroking, joining, understanding.

Sometimes I'd think of... _that girl!_...and I'd stiffen, and Johnny would sense it and move away, giving me time to get used to it, to his hands, his lips. And then, after a few minutes, I'd sigh, and remember that _that girl_ wasn't here! But I was, under him, my hand on his chest, breathing him in, the lightest scent of male sweat and cologne, his aftershave. (Johnny started shaving early.) And then my lips would blindly seek his again, my eyes closed.

He held me by the shoulders with his left hand, while his right slid and explored. But he never went too far. He stroked my hips, sometimes just the edge of my butt, and lightly covered my thigh. Eventually, I actively sought his hand on my butt. I wanted it there, and maybe, maybe, one day...

But not now. Now he's just kissing me, letting me feel the burst of blood to my breasts, the throb below, a throb which will go away on its own, but which of itself is like a drug, keeping me high in the clouds, no problems, nothing, no fights, no arguments.

All will be well.

I was, of course, drunk with teenage love.

"You've become a pro," I said after an hour or so.

His cheeks blushed, and I felt again that sudden pang of jealousy for this... _Nicole_! So I dropped it.

I pecked him on the lips, and then I made him hold me.

# CHAPTER FIVE

## ~ The Docks ~  
-1-

Dad was not happy. But then again, dad was not happy about much of anything these days.

It wasn't easy to hide my new romance with Johnny. What teenage girl can ever hide this kind of stuff? We think we're so good at it, and yet, it's written all over our faces and our daydreaming eyes.

I didn't come out and tell him, of course. Johnny and I hid it from both my parents initially, the first few days. It's as if we had both sensed dad's upcoming disagreement with it, and yet had no reason to believe this was the case!

But we were right.

Mom was the first one to ask me. She was wiping some dishes in the kitchen and I went in to get some juice. Just before I stepped out, she said, "Cathy, when were you planning on telling your father and me about you and Johnny?"

The juice bottle stopped at my lips, and there was nothing I could say.

They sat us down that night at the dinner table. But there was no dinner. Only me, Johnny, my mom, my dad, and his beer.

And the ticking grandfather clock.

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

The table creaked, my seat creaked, the clock ticked.

And finally my dad, at the head of the table, spoke.

"There will be _no sex_ until she is eighteen, Johnny."

"Oh, Mr. Ramsey—"

My dad put up a finger. "Let me finish. _No_ sex. There will be no drinking, no drugs, _nothing_. If her grades slip, the relationship is over. You won't see each other, talk to each other, _nothing_! You understand me?"

Dad was pointing at Johnny's eyes, his finger aimed at him like a smoking gun.

Johnny nodded.

"And none of that other stuff as well. You know what I'm referring to, right?" Dad's eyes stayed glued to Johnny's. For a moment Johnny looked away, just a brief moment, then his eyes met dad's again. _Is there more being said here than I know about?_

"Y—yes, sir."

We would break the no sex rule a year later. And my grades would be slipping for much longer than that.

But by then, the rules had changed. Everything had changed.

It had nothing to do with Johnny. The grades would have slipped anyway.

But dad never saw it that way.

Dad wasn't seeing much of anything in those final days.

But that would only be a year from now.

## -2-

Pat (I had since started calling Johnny's dad "Pat") went over to the docks twice a week or so. There are four "container terminals" in the Port of New York and New Jersey. A Container Terminal is a dock where they load those big-ass containers with all your made-in-China TVs and stuff in them; and New York / New Jersey has four of them. There are also Cruise Harbors, but those don't handle containers.

Pat ran the planning and executive side of the business all from home, but he had guys who dealt with on-the-ground logistics and head-bashing at the actual docks, one for each terminal (Red Hook in Brooklyn, Howland Hook Marine Terminal in Staten Island, and two more in Jersey). He had one main guy (I guess you could call him the VP?) who ran all these other guys under him. The VP stayed in Red Hook, but traveled to all four docks _every_ day.

"He is single," Pat told me as he drove me and Johnny down to Red Hook today. "So he can afford to spend his days driving around a traffic-congested city. Me, I like to spend time with my family. Besides, I pay him well to do it."

Johnny was in the back seat. I was up front. It was Saturday, and it was the first time I would get a first-hand look at how Johnny spent some of his weekends. His dad had been grooving him into the business ever since Johnny was thirteen.

Pat was a millionaire several times over, self-made.

"Why did you move to Long Island, Mr. Abreu—"

"Pat, _Catty_." He smiled warmly at me, his bushy mustache looking exactly like it did when I'd first laid eyes on him ten years earlier.

" _Pat_ —why Long Island? Why not...the city or...heck... _Jersey_? Then you'd be able to go to these places without such a long commute."

He chuckled, and the whole car seemed to quiver along with his belly. "And not see my family? And spend hours every day looking at Bills of Lading and verifying freight and making sure a hundred men do their jobs? No, I am in charge of _one_ person, he is in charge of _four_ , and each of those four is in charge of anything between five and twenty other men. Those others—we are talking ship captains now—are in charge of the men below them, and so it goes. If something goes wrong, I blame only _one_ guy. If something goes wrong below him, he only has to look at one of four men."

"What my dad's trying to tell you, Cat, is that he doesn't 'micro-manage.'" Johnny sounded bored. He'd obviously heard this all before.

Pat chuckled that Santa chuckle of his. "I suppose you could call it that. But it is only good business sense. Now, as to your question about Long Island, two reasons: Low crime rate. I wanted my family to be safe. And, secondly, I chose there _because_ it takes me an hour to get to the first dock! And one-and-a-half to get to the next one! I wanted it to be _difficult_ for me to go on-the-ground. Anything can go wrong on a ship, loading, unloading, things missing, lots of confusion, lots of noise. It's easy to..." He looked in the rearview mirror at Johnny.

"... _micro-manage_ ," Johnny reminded him.

"Yes, it's easy to do that. But men need to be given responsibilities. And they need to feel they control some sphere, and that that sphere is _theirs_. This brings pride in them, and makes them better workers. If I were there all the time, telling them how to do their jobs, telling them how it could be done more smoothly, they would never _own_ their jobs. They would be simply 'employees.' I want every man under me to be almost a 'mini-manager.' Even the longshoremen. I want them to feel proud of what they do, and I want them to know I respect their decisions. At the end of the day, I just want to know that the ship got in on time, and that the goods were all there and accounted for and undamaged. If ten fights broke out in the meantime, it's not my business—and it doesn't _affect_ business."

At the end of his explanation, I said, "Wow."

"My dad is very philosophical about this stuff, Cat."

I blinked a few times. This was pretty deep shit.

At the docks, the _Santa Maria_ freighter ship had just come in. Burly men with faded tattoos and hairy arms walked around with newsboy caps and cigarettes in their mouths. It reminded me of some of those old photos of shiploads of immigrants landing in New York. I noticed the glint of both respect and fear as some of the men's eyes landed on Pat. It was as if each man was suddenly galvanized into action at the big boss's approach.

A container was coming in on a huge crane and men were shouting as it got positioned. All were dark-skinned—either from sunburn or from heredity.

Shouts filled the air, along with sounds of moaning cranes and metal skidding across concrete as each container was pushed into place.

A guy in a light-blue dress shirt and with thick black hair, carrying a clipboard, came over to Pat. He had on no newsboy cap, but a smoke dangled from his lips like all the others. He must have been in his thirties, well-built, professional. He and Pat shook hands and started talking fast Portuguese. The guy looked stressed. Pat was all business now, his eyes flicking from the clipboard to the men unloading goods.

I struggled to understand the Portuguese. I could speak quite a bit of it by now, all those years at the Abreus' place had given me a bit more than a pidgin understanding of it. But this guy with the clipboard I couldn't fathom even in the slightest.

Johnny stood next to me, his arm around my shoulders. Warm ocean wind flicked at my hair while the slightly unpleasant stench of stale fish accosted my nose. Welcome to Red Hook.

When Pat and who I assumed was his VP were done, Pat turned to face me and Johnny. He put his arm around the man in the dress shirt and brought him closer.

" _Claudio_ ," Pat said, " _esta é a namorada do meu filho, a Cattehreen._ " Pat spoke slowly, so I could understand. He introduced me to this "Claudio" as Johnny's girlfriend, and then told him my name (" _Cattehreen_ ").

The only thing is, Portuguese has no actual word for "girlfriend." And the only other possible words are "friend"...or "lover."

Nobody in Portugal ever says "friend."

" _Prazer_ ," Claudio said. _A pleasure_. And he kissed me on both cheeks.

He then shook Johnny's hand, and started speaking in that fast manner that I didn't understand. What I did understand was when Claudio slapped Johnny on the back of the head, and then Johnny laughed and quickly pulled away! Claudio grabbed Johnny's shirt and I thought Claudio was gonna hit him with his clipboard! For a second, my heart stuck in my throat and I wondered how Pat could let him do this, until Johnny spun around, and kicked Claudio on the calf and then _sprinted away_! Claudio bent down with a grimace of pain and grabbed his calf. " _Ai, foda-se!_ "

I knew what _that_ word meant!

Claudio limped to Pat who watched Johnny running away. Two other men started to chase him now, and Johnny ducked and weaved and—

"They're teaching him how to fight," Pat said to me. "They think being in America makes him soft."

After a few seconds (and a few hits on Johnny's torso!), Claudio piped up and shouted out at the men, "Hey, get back to work!"

One guy smacked Johnny on the head when he wasn't looking and then ran, laughing. Johnny turned to run after him but Pat called him. " _João, chega! Vem cá!_ " _Johnny, enough! Come here!_

Johnny's face was red, his chest heaving deeply, his hair ruffled.

He put his arm around me again. "So this is what you learn here on Saturdays? I thought you were learning to run a multi-national shipping business so you could buy me a fancy car when we get older."

"He is," Pat said. "And part of it is learning how to kick people's _ass_!"

It was the first time I'd heard Pat "swear."

He smiled at me. Pat made me feel like an equal.

## -3-

Pat sat at a table in the sun with Claudio while they went over some papers. A few of the men had moved away from the unloading area and brought over a soccer ball to a section of grass near the docks. Johnny started playing with them. I'd played plenty of soccer with Johnny before, and knew a few things. But suddenly I felt like everyone here was a clone of Cristiano Ronaldo! I never kept the ball for even a second! And trying to steal it away was futile.

Finally, I just sat down on the grass and watched. They played for an hour, and by the end of it, sweat poured down in rivulets from Johnny's temples.

But it didn't end there. When they were done, sitting on the grass, Johnny trying to catch his breath, two men jumped Johnny and started hitting him in the chest!

I bit my nail, and wondered if they were really playing...

Johnny grunted and groaned and shouted.

" _Foda-se_! _Cabrão!_ " (That was Johnny cursing colorfully.)

Eventually he got out from under them and hurried away, shirt untucked, stumbling. He had a drop of blood on his lip and anger flashed in his eyes.

I was nervous.

Meekly, I said, "Johnny, you OK?" He was about thirty feet from me, so I don't think he heard me.

" _Chega_!" Johnny cried. _Enough!_

One of the men who'd been fighting him stood up straight. The grin on his face disappeared. The two others jumped in Johnny's direction but the first one held them back. " _No, wait, enough_ ," the first man said in Portuguese. "Johnny, come here." Being around them all day had attuned my ear to the language and the accents. I was understanding everyone more clearly now.

Johnny hobbled over, angry, chest heaving. He held his stomach and limped, a small amount of blood falling from his nose as well.

The first man put his hand on Johnny's neck, brought Johnny's forehead to his own. Johnny was much taller than all of them.

He was tense, but listening. I couldn't hear what they were saying. One of the other two men lit up a cigarette, looked down at the docks.

I saw Johnny nodding, then again. Then nodding one more time. The first man's grip tightened, and then he gave Johnny a light slap on the cheek, one of those manly slaps that I guess equates to a hug amongst girls.

Johnny stepped back. The first man gestured something at the other two guys and they left. I heard only bits and pieces of what the first man was saying to Johnny now. He and Johnny started sparring.

" _... you see my right arm going this way ... duck ... but you're doing this ... try it ... no ... again ... look, the things you need to do ... right ..._ foda-se, _that hurt! ... good, Johnny ... now again ... good man ... if you keep doing that I'll ... no, the groin, the groin!_ "

I left the boys to their games and pulled out a book to read, comforted by their sounds.

The next thing I knew, the book I'd been reading was being pulled off my face and I was wiping bleary eyes. Johnny's flushed and sweating face was staring down at me. The light was low, and the edges of his black hair were golden red with diffused light from the setting sun.

When he kissed me, I tasted salt. His hands were wet, his forehead was wet. His lips were wet.

"Johnny, you stink!"

But he didn't. He didn't stink at all. He smelled better than ever. He smelled like work, like strength. _Male_.

Desire thrilled through me.

I knew I wouldn't sleep with him when I was sixteen (although my birthday was only three months away). But I doubted I could wait until eighteen.

Doubted it very much.

Johnny's tongue found mine, caressed it deeply, and the doubt turned to an unshakeable certainty.

## -4-

Pat bought beers and a few bottles of wine for the crew, and we all went inside the ship to drink them. Johnny and I drank root beer. The crew made fun of him for that, but I wasn't sure if my parents would be OK with me drinking beer so Johnny forewent his own to make me feel comfortable.

Pat also didn't drink. He had only soda because he was driving. No one made fun of him, though!

We were in the ship's dining room. It was a sterile place with only a few round tables and white walls. I expected something from an old pirate ship, but it actually looked more like the cafeteria at school, only with better chairs.

The men downed Heinekens and red wine and sang and spoke so quickly that I didn't understand most of what was being said. The more they drank, the louder they became. Some of them addressed sentences and phrases to me, but these phrases mostly went over my head.

Johnny had his arm around my shoulder, and I was leaning back on him, still feeling tired from the slightly too much sun from having fallen asleep outside earlier.

About an hour or so later, Pat stood up. My eyes were closing, even though it was only nine PM. Pat shook _every_ man's hand, and the smiles he received (showing more than a few missing teeth) gave me the idea that, for many of these sailors, this was probably the zenith of happiness for them, the highest point of accomplishment—a job well done. Many of them were single, I was sure. Certainly none of them were wealthy. They shook my hand effusively, and "congratulated" Johnny on "catching" me.

Johnny tried to act cool, but soon his cheeks were red.

One of the men actually _hugged_ Pat, slapped him on the shoulder, and then rubbed his eye. " _Obrigado, chefe. Obrigado._ " _Thank you, boss. Thank you._

" _De nada, amigo_. _Bom trabalho._ " _It's nothing, friend. Good job._

On the way to the car, the May wind was the only sound we heard.

Pat's dad said, "And then, after you learn to kick their ass, you'd better learn to appreciate them. The lessons are backwards, actually. Because appreciation is far more important than discipline. _Far_ more important. A man who knows you truly appreciate him never needs discipline."

And here I thought Johnny had only been playing soccer and learning to fight all day.

It seems he did get his business lesson after all.

## -5-

"The answer is _No_."

"Dad, c'mon!"

"No!" Dad wrung his hands angrily in the dining room.

"But it makes no sense! His parents will be there and we'll be in separate rooms—"

"Oh, goddamnit, this boy is all you think about!" Dad got up and went to the kitchen. Mom sat quietly, saying nothing. He came back with a beer and downed half of it with a single swig.

I felt a sudden anxiety.

Still standing, he smacked his lips and looked at me. "Cathy, you're not going to Portugal for the summer, and that's _final_! If you'd like, we can maybe.. _maybe_...plan a _family_ vacation to Europe when you're older. But you won't go alone. You're only sixteen, damnit!"

"Almost seventeen!"

And then it happened.

The change.

It was so sudden that I only realized afterwards that it had occurred, when my heart was racing like a Formula One engine and my bottom lip was trembling like a leaf in a hurricane.

Dad had _thwacked_ the table with his flat hand. Beer spilled out from the open Heineken bottle. "DON'T YOU DARE RAISE YOUR VOICE TO ME, YOUNG LADY! I AM STILL YOUR FATHER!"

He guzzled the rest of the beer down and cursed as he left the room.

My bladder felt weak. I could feel the looseness of my legs.

And then came the tears. My mom came closer to me, hugged me. I cried onto her dress while she stroked my hair. "I hate him. I HATE HIM!"

"Shhh, baby. Shhh. He's just...under a lot of stress at the moment."

"Stress? _Stress!_ He's fucking _drinking_ all the time and he's angry and he's—"

A thick hand curled around my sweater and _yanked_!

It ripped me from my mother's arms!

When I turned, I saw the hand, large and menacing, swinging up, open palm—

And it's coming down. Oh, God, it's coming down—

THWACK!

My jaw went numb.

My neck split open with pain.

I didn't realize my father's hand had struck me until I hit the ground, my cheek swelling already, and I felt a stinging burn so hot on my face that it seemed I'd just been run over by a truck.

And then I was hovering again! Floating in the middle of the air!

Two hands had grabbed me and _lifted_ me from the ground—

The next few moments are a blur. But I remember swinging across the room and hitting the wall, untethered, flung there by monstrously powerful arms.

My hip slammed into the sideboard. My shoulder _cracked_ against the wall. Particles of plaster floated down like snow. And I floated down with them.

The room spun.

The flavor of copper seeped into my mouth from where I'd bit my tongue.

My eyes rolled back.

The last thing I remember was my mom screaming, "LEAVE HER ALONE! LEAVE HER—"

And then all went white.

# CHAPTER SIX

## ~ Separation ~  
-1-

Dad moved out the next day, and made plans to get himself sober. Not AA, because he didn't like the religious stuff, but some type of support group or therapy or something.

My parents were now officially "separated."

Johnny came over the morning dad was leaving. And it wasn't pretty. My mom told him that I was upstairs in my room and that I didn't want to see him. Johnny, of course, just climbed up the drainpipe. I'd planned for that, and I had the sash down, and my drapes drawn.

I looked like a freak. My cheek had swollen to the size of a melon, and part of my eye was going blue. My hip ached, and I couldn't move my shoulder too well.

I didn't want Johnny to see me like this. I didn't want him to know.

The _crack_ of my father's sudden hand against my face kept replaying itself in my mind. _Crack! Crack! Crack!_ And then me falling to the ground...

And the feel of the carpet under my elbows as I'd hit it.

Crack!

" _LEAVE HER ALONE! LEAVE HER—"_

Johnny knocked on the window. Dad didn't know Johnny could climb up here so he had to be quiet. "Cat, open up, damn it! Open up!"

"Johnny, go away. I just need...to be by myself."

"Cat, what have I done? I'm sorry. If I did something..."

His statement stung deep.

Johnny couldn't know about this. He couldn't. He and dad would get in a fight and...and dad would win. Big, bulky dad who'd played high school football and lifted weights. Wide-shouldered dad.

He'd crush Johnny.

"Cat, open the _fucking_ window!" He banged on it again and again and it was so loud I started panicking that my parents might hear!

From behind the drapes, I said, "Johnny, please, I'll call you. I'll—"

"What is it, Cat? Is it your parents again? Did your dad hit your mother?"

"Johnny, _PLEASE_!"

He went silent. Maybe he could hear my sobs right now.

After a while, he said, defeated, "OK." A pause. "OK, fine, I'll go. I'll... Cat?"

"What?" I croaked.

" _Eu amo-te_. Don't forget that, baby. _Eu amo-te_!"

The floor came up to crash against my knees. My sobs were so loud that I'm sure even downstairs they could be heard. My hands covered my face.

And I whispered, "I love you, too."

## -2-

Just as Johnny came to the front of the house, dad was outside with his suitcases. He caught sight of Johnny sneaking away.

"Johnny?" my dad said.

Johnny looked at the bags, looked at my dad, and suddenly all was clear. Well, not that I'd been hit, but that something very bad had happened last night. Something bad enough to send my dad packing.

"Johnny...what are you—"

I had moved over to a dormer window facing the front lawn and was watching from above.

"Mr. Ramsey, it's not what you think."

"Not what I _think_?"

"Jack, calm down." My mom put her hands on dad's broad shoulders.

He shrugged them off viciously. "What _am_ I to think, young man!"

"I—I was just—I..."

"Have you been sneaking into my daughter's room?" Dad started stalking closer! His fists cocked! "Have you been—"

" _JOÃO!_ "

Dad turned his head.

Johnny turned his head.

Mom turned her head.

All three were looking across the street at Pat Abreu, whose voice had boomed loud enough to send the rafters shaking. He looked big, he looked large, and he looked _supremely_ protective of his son. " _VEM CÁ, JOÃO!_ " He pointed to his right.

Pat had lost any hints of looking like Santa in his features. If he had been Santa before, he was Zeus now. Even from across the street I could see his chest heaving. And his right hand trembling with rage.

"You keep your son away from my daughter!" dad bellowed. "You keep him away!"

Pat said nothing.

"Keep him the fuck away, old man! Or I swear I'll put a fist in his face—"

"DON'T YOU DARE THREATEN MY FAMILY! DON'T. YOU. DARE!"

"Jack," my mother said. "Jack, calm down, honey. Calm down."

"OR WHAT, PAT?"

Patricio just stood there, waiting...

"OR WHAT? I ASKED YOU A QUESTION!"

Mom pleaded plaintively, "Jack, you're making a scene."

" _João? Para quê que esperas? VEM CÁ!_ " _Johnny, what are you waiting for? COME HERE!_

Johnny strolled past my dad, slowly, almost begging to provoke him. And, just like a typical _macho male_ , he kept staring my father down while he did it. Then he stopped, toe-to-toe with him. He was about to say something when Pat roared, "JOHNNY, GET YOURSELF OVER HERE BEFORE I TAN YOUR DAMN HIDE!"

Dad and Johnny's eyes stayed locked while Johnny crossed the street, Johnny always looking, always staring.

Dad pointed a finger across the street. "Don't come back, little boy! Don't come back or your father won't be the only one—"

"JACK!" Pat's voice sent lightning over the street.

A few rubberneckers had walked outside by now. Mrs. Simmons with rollers in her hair. Little Suzie with her mom and a guy who had probably spent the night there.

I was mortified.

Pat looked briefly at the others.

He looked at my father once more, his lips moving as if he wanted to say something. The silence could be felt like a cracking tree.

"Pat," my dad said, his tone calmer now. "I'm sorry, but this changes things between us. Not when my kid's involved."

I wanted to shout out, _You bastard! How dare you act as though you're protecting me!_ But I was too ashamed of the way I looked.

I was too afraid to—believe it or not—embarrass my father anymore than he had already embarrassed himself.

"If you say so, Jack." Pat kept standing there.

Mom patted my dad's shoulders, then turned him around. She waved at Patricio when my dad wasn't looking. Pat nodded in acknowledgement. If I had to pinpoint an emotion in his face, I'd say it was disappointment.

Pat closed his eyes, bowed his head, turned around.

Johnny stayed for a second. His eyes lifted up to look into the dormer window. He cocked his head, wondering. And I slid down to hide from him.

I was back in my room by the time my dad was knocking at my door. "Cathy," he said, "please open up." His voice was contrite, soft. He tried the doorknob.

"NO!"

He didn't try again.

With a croaking, hoarse voice, he said, "Cath—Cathy, I just want you to know that...that...I'm... _sorry_. I'm _so_ sorry. I'm gonna get help. I'm gonna take classes or something. I'm gonna get this...under control. I _love_ you, sweetie. I was out of line. I was _completely_ out of line. It's gone too far, honey. I realize I have a problem. I realize it now. If any good can come of this... Well, there is no good from this. I... I love you with all my heart and I was out of line and I..." I heard him sob. I actually heard my father break down and _sob_ with manly tears. "I...love you, baby. We're gonna fix this. I promise you. _I'm_ gonna fix this. I'm sorry." A pause. "I'm... _so_ sorry."

My pillow was drenched as I lay face down on it.

And then I heard him walking away, the _pat-pat-klunk_ of his boots on the wooden flooring.

_I'm sorry. I'm gonna fix this_.

And when would I see him again?

And wasn't he the same man who held my hand and told me all would be OK when Melissa Stravport threw mud on my dress?

I ran to the door and opened it!

My dad turned.

His light brown eyes were red, his face pale and gaunt. He looked old, so very old.

And then he took in the appearance of my own face. He gasped! "Oh, God, look at what I did to you."

He wept.

I wept.

He stretched his arms out to me, and we wept on each other.

"I'm gonna get help, baby. I'm gonna... I promise you. I swear it."

"OK, daddy. OK."

"I love you, you know that? I really, really love you!" He stroked my hair desperately, clutching at it eventually as if it were gonna fly away.

"Yeah, I know." My voice was hoarse and dead.

He put me at arm's length. "Cathy, I can't let you go to Portugal alone—"

"It's OK, dad. It's—"

"Just let me finish. I just... _can't_. But maybe next year...we'll go together. What do you say?"

_And will Johnny go with us?_ I didn't ask. "Yeah, uhm, sure. Sure."

He kissed me once on the head. But he forgot that my cheek was bruised because his thumb pressed into it too hard as he did it.

I hid my grimace, but the pain went all the way to my toes.

The bruises would heal, I told myself.

The bruises, yes.

## -3-

But it was only a matter of time before Johnny found out. When I skipped school (mom had arranged it), Johnny couldn't be kept away from our house. Mom tried to keep him from coming up but he kept knocking on the front-door and insisting. Because Johnny is who he is, he never enforced his entrance into the house, although he physically could have. But he accepted my mother's _No_ each time.

It was Pat who finally got through to her.

He came over. I listened from above the steps.

"Your familial issues are no secret to us, Alice. You have nothing to be ashamed of. We have known for a very long time that Jack...has not been at... _his best,_ shall we say, for some time now. What is it—a year? Two?"

Mom didn't answer immediately. Then, faintly: "About that long, Pat. Would you like to come in?"

"Sure."

I had expected Johnny to be with him, but he wasn't.

When the door closed, Pat stood there silently. He looked up at me and a quick flash of shock passed his face when he saw my bruises, but he hid it well. "Johnny would love to see you, _Catty._ If...your mom...allows it...that is."

Mom looked up at me. "Let me and Patricio talk first, OK, sweetie?"

I nodded.

They went to the sitting room. I was far away so I couldn't hear it all, but I heard enough.

"... an affair ... recreational ... we were just kids ... started drinking ... in his forties! ... enough, just enough!" She wept at this point. "... was the last straw ... a divorce ... so sorry, Pat ... so ashamed ..." More weeping.

I went to my room and texted Johnny. _I luv u, babe. I'll c you soon, OK? Plz b patient._

Maybe I can help

Plz b patient, J.

When?

Soon, I promise.

After Pat left, mom asked me if I wanted to see Johnny. That was the euphemistic way of letting me know, _Are you willing for your boyfriend to know what happened in this house?_

I decided that I was.

Pat would talk to Johnny first so he wouldn't get hot-headed when he saw me.

But it didn't help.

Johnny had been apprised of everything by the time I let him see me.

And when he did...he flipped.

## -4-

"I'll kill him. Ill fuckin kill him!"

"Johnny, please don't talk like that."

He raised a hand to the glow of my eye and cheek. "The _fucking_ bastard. Boy, is he lucky he's not here!"

"Johnny, please, leave it! I just want to... _move on_! I can't...I can't deal with all this _hate_ and people _fighting_ and _violence_! Please, if you love me—"

"I do love you!"

"—then _let it go_!"

I fell onto my bed. The only reason I didn't cry is because my tear ducts were empty.

"I won't go to Portugal for the summer," he said. "I'll stay. I'll... I don't know."

"It was just this one time, Johnny. He's never hit me before—"

"But he's hit your mother."

"He's getting help."

"I'm not going. I can't...I can't leave you alone here."

"He's not here, Johnny."

"I don't care!"

"Johnny, baby, please." I sat up, stretched out my hand to him. "Please go, please have a good time."

He took my hand and sat next to me. I felt the hate seething off him like hot fire.

I pressed my lips against his, trying to cool him down. I rubbed my hand against his leg.

And I could feel his rage ease.

I pecked him once on the lips, rubbed his cheeks with my palms. "I'm so glad you're here. Now, will you let this go?"

He looked me deep in the eyes. His own eyes, so light and bright usually, seemed almost black with hate—and they were narrowed to sharp slits. "I'll let it go, Cat. Just this once. _Once_!" He held up a finger. "But if he _ever_ lays a fucking hand on you again—I'll fucking kill him."

I turned my head and faced my door.

I couldn't get him off this kick, I couldn't.

I could only hope— _pray!_ —that it wouldn't happen again.

But prayers are not always answered.

# CHAPTER SEVEN

## ~ Touch ~  
-1-

The night before Johnny left for Portugal, I let him touch me more than he'd ever done before.

We'd been dating for some months already (second time around), but that had nothing to do with it, because I'd known Johnny my whole life. What it had to do with, was the same reason I would let him make love to me the following year.

I needed him.

And I'd come to need him more than I needed my family.

Johnny _was_ my family.

He snuck into my room late at night, and was kissing me on my bed. It wasn't the first time he'd done that, or the first time we'd made out in secret. But it was the first time I grabbed his hand, moved it down over my stomach. And then lower.

He lifted it off my pants, shocked. "Cat." His eyes were white with uncertainty. "I don't... I mean, I'd _love_ to but... You don't need—"

"I do. I really do."

I touched his cheek, kissed his lips. When his hand didn't move below, I moved it for him. When it caressed me over my jeans, I gave out a low moan, and felt the warmth seep out of me.

I lay back, my eyes half closing.

I undid the snap of my jeans. As my zipper went down, Johnny licked his lips. "You're sure," he said.

I kept pulling my zip down. " _So_ sure."

The zip was at the bottom.

I waited, lying there, watching him. He did nothing. "Johnny," I prompted, "I'm starting to feel...a little self-conscious."

"I don't want this to ruin anything between us, Cat. I pushed you away once before, and I don't want to do it again."

"You're talking too much."

"I need to talk. I need to. I can't lose you."

"Shh," I whispered.

"I need to talk," he said softly. "You don't need to do this for me. If I have to choose between kissing your lips and getting a cheap feel of your breasts over your shirt only, but _keeping_ you; or _this_...and then losing you...well, there's simply no choice, Cat."

"I'm not doing this for you, Johnny. I want this. _Eu amo-te_." I never said it quite like he did, but his eyes flashed with humility when I uttered the words.

He smiled softly, closed his eyes. He looked down to between my legs, where pink underwear now lay behind the upturned flaps of my jeans.

I grabbed his hand, intertwined my fingers in his. And then I laid those fingers gently over my underwear.

He leaned toward my face, kept his fingers above the cotton, and pressed. My eyes fluttered back, his lips touched mine. He kept his eyes open, staring at me, never unlocking his gaze from mine. His touch was soft and easy, electrifying. My legs writhed. A scream formed inside my chest but I held it back. I kicked my head back, swallowed heaving breaths, wondered if my mother heard the earthy moan.

Johnny kissed my neck, my chin, my ear.

And just when it hit me, just when that freight train rocked through me and I saw stars and my body burst into a million pieces of glitter, he whispered in my ear, " _Eu amo-te, meu amor, minha vida, minha alma._ "

And then he put his other hand behind my neck, squeezed me to him while I shattered, and I growled like thunder into his shoulder.

Johnny left the next day. I've never cried so much and so painfully as during that summer.

It hurt worse than anything I'd ever experienced before in my life.

While he was gone, his words played over and over in my mind, the words he'd uttered while I'd shattered into bits under his hand.

I love you, my love, my life, my soul.

## -2-

Mom thought I didn't notice the late nights, the dressing up, the make-up. I knew she was seeing someone.

We didn't talk about it, we didn't mention it. It just _was_. I guess I was "an adult" now, seventeen (in over ten years Johnny still hadn't spent a single birthday with me, my birthday being in August when he was always in Portugal with his family!)

My parents had their own lives now, it appeared: My dad, out in Manhattan, living in a furnished apartment and going for group therapy or counseling or getting his meds or _whatever_ the fuck he was doing! And my mom now, "hooking up," while I sat at home watching _SNL_ or some soppy Hallmark movie.

Mostly I read.

Mostly I wrote in my diary.

## -3-

I miss your touch, I miss our talks.

I miss your lust, I miss our walks.

I miss your lips, your gentle kiss.

I miss your hands as they round my hips.

I miss your eyes, your ears, your head.

I miss the way you held me in bed.

I miss your smile, your laugh, your cry.

I weep when I think of our goodbye.

I miss your strength, your cool, your power.

I miss the texts you wrote me each hour.

Have fun, my love, my life, my soul.

Without you, I'm only part whole.

Dream of me, I'll dream of you.

Let's meet in those dreams, just us two.

You'll be a prince or a knight or a king.

I'll be your princess and we'll do our thing.

Or just be yourself, yes, that's better.

Just you and me, together.

Forever.

# CHAPTER EIGHT

## ~ Jealousy ~  
-1-

Things were looking better with my dad. He was getting some counseling. I didn't go and see him on weekends because, well, I just wasn't ready for that. And, besides, what the hell was I gonna do alone in the city when all my friends were in Long Island?

He had come over himself a few times though. We hugged and said hello and then had lunch. When the weather was still warm we even had a "family" barbecue. He spoke about work and mom told him about what needed to be done in the house and it was all very... _civil_.

He was trying, I could see. And I gave him that much.

The weird thing about it was that he and I never really used to hang out much before anyway. He was just always... _there_. And if I needed a "dad thing" then I could go to him. Now, with him appearing so "officially," I sort of felt awkward trying to find something to talk about. So mostly I just hung out in my room and went downstairs whenever my parents called me.

But he and mom talked, and I think that was the first step for him before he could really open up to me.

They seemed happier. They looked like they were getting along better. They were getting along because they were now talking as friends and not as a married couple. But that's the first step to any relationship, I guess.

I was under no illusions. They never kissed when they saw each other. And they always kept a minimum of a few feet distance between them.

One day, deep into the fall with dry leaves rustling over the ground, dad and I sat on the porch drinking a root beer. The air was peaceful and cool.

And then dad broached the subject. He nodded up at Johnny's place. "You and him..." he said. "Are you still...?" He took a loud sip of his drink.

Lead settled over my head. I looked at my _Skechers_ and said, "Yeah." I said it so softly that I wasn't sure if he'd heard it. "What don't you like about him, dad?"

He took another sip. His eyes closed into slits. "Just keep your options open, sweetie. You're young. He's your first real boyfriend." He put his hand on my knee. "OK?"

I said nothing.

His hand stayed there for a little while longer, to the point where it was awkward because neither of us was sure if it should stay or not stay or if the question should be answered...

He patted my knee. "Well, I better be off." He started to get up.

"Dad?" He stopped, sat back down. "Why did you do it? I mean, the drinking—what drove you to it? Weren't you happy?"

His face tensed up. "Honestly, Cathy, I don't know. I don't fucking know." That he said the F word in my presence let me know that this was a Big Person Talk and he was being totally honest. "Work got to me. There were bills to pay. Sometimes I'd have a beer, sometimes two. Then one day I lost an account, multi-million. Allen got upset." Allen was the big boss at dad's work. "He gave me a warning. I'd just bought a new car. So that night I had a few whiskeys. They made me feel good, you know? They made me feel..." He hit his chest like King Kong "...like The Man. And, well, I wanted to feel that every night. So some nights I'd drink even when only the small things got to me. I wanted to feel like The Man all the time, you know?" He sighed. "And then there were other things as well, things that, if you weren't my daughter, I'd tell you more comfortably."

"Did you cheat on mom?" I asked, not believing until after I asked it that I'd actually done it.

His eyes flicked over to me. He took a sip of the root beer and made a face like it wasn't quite satisfying. "They just never hit the spot, these things." He smacked his lips. "You're all grown up now, aren't you?" I looked away. I wanted an answer to my question, but I wasn't going to push it. After a moment of silence, dad said, "I did. I did."

It felt like a dagger had been pushed through my heart.

"Did she cheat on you?"

"Why don't you ask her that, honey? It's not my place to answer for her."

"So she did."

He sighed. "Don't tell her you got that from me. Things are...fragile...with us right now."

"I won't. Is that what you wouldn't have told me because I'm your daughter?"

He laughed nervously. "You should become an interrogator! Uhm, that, yes...and other things. The point is, I drank because it made me feel good. And soon I started to think that was the _only_ way I could feel good. And then I went past a boundary of some sort and I...well...I couldn't stop. And then I just... _drank_. I drank because...that's what I did. It screwed me up, Cathy. I almost lost my job. I almost lost _you_. I haven't lost you, have I?"

I dug my nails into my shins, my chin on my knee. I shook my head.

Dad put his arm around me and pulled me closer. Then he knuckled my head. "Ouch, damnit! I'm not _five_ , dad!"

"I know you're not. Sometimes I wish you were, but you're not." He stood up, flicked his head in Johnny's house's direction. Johnny was at the docks today. "How serious is it?"

I dug my hands into my jeans, looked away.

"Tell me, just so I know."

With all possible intensity of feeling, I looked my dad dead in the eyes, and I said, "I love him."

Dad's face didn't change. He looked over at Johnny's place, stared at it for a beat too long, then looked over at me. "OK." No smile, no frown, just deadpan.

He kissed me on the forehead.

"Dad, why don't you like him?"

I stood, and he held me by the shoulders at arm's length, sighed. "Maybe you should ask _him_ , honey." That sent an anvil down my stomach. "I just want what's best for you."

I wanted to tell him that Johnny was best for me, that he was a good guy, that he loved me and cared for me. But I figured that would stress him out, and I didn't want him stressed out. I didn't want him drinking again.

He walked up the steps and hollered into the doorway. "Alice, I'm outta here!"

Mom came out, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. There was no mirth in her gaze, no smile, no warmth. "OK, Jack. Thanks for coming by."

Dad stood there for a beat, then said, "OK, then, do it again some time."

"Sure, you're always welcome here."

It was there— _that_ statement: _You're always welcome here_ , and the way it was said—which nailed it home for me. That, and the fact that straight after the statement...they _shook hands_.

It was over between my parents. Honestly and truly over.

And that made me sad. That made me really sad.

## -2-

If a girl "blossoms," what does a guy do? Well, whatever it is, Johnny did that in Junior year. And then some. I think even the teachers took notice.

His body firmed up, filled out. He grew even taller and almost hit six foot! His muscles became bigger, more swollen.

He became a man.

Sometimes he'd skip shaving for a few days and his stubble would scratch me when I kissed him.

It's interesting, though, when you've been with someone for so long, and when you've known him before he's hit his male version of a "blossom"—you don't really notice that stuff. But I couldn't help notice that everyone _else_ had noticed!

"Does this mean I'm the cool chick because I'm dating the coolest guy?" I asked him once.

"I'm not the coolest guy. Mark Ryleigh is the coolest guy."

Mark Ryleigh. High school quarterback, and Nicole Ferman's main squeeze since she and Johnny had, well, "split up." (I put that in quotes because, noting how deeply in love Johnny and I were, how much we shared together, how we were always there for each other, made me realize that she and he had never had anything even close to that!)

Johnny and Mark Ryleigh were as different as day and black death. Johnny was dark and tall, lean and muscular. Mark was beefy, stocky, laughed very loudly, and made sure everyone knew when he was in the room. Johnny was silent, aware of his surroundings but preferring to sit in the shadows watching. When Johnny entered a party, heads turned, whispers began, people greeted him. There was a calmness and serenity about him, a serenity he got from Pat, I'm sure.

When Mark entered a room, boys grunted and _hoot-hoot-hooted_ and just went ape-shit. In all fairness, a fair amount of girls also went ape-shit, usually those with an IQ of about seven.

Mark Ryleigh was your typical All-American Jock.

Johnny was Zorro.

Mark didn't like Johnny. Popularity was important to Mark. And it was meaningless to Johnny.

Which is probably why Johnny got something better than mere popularity. By Junior year, Johnny had earned the irrevocable title of just—plain— _cool_.

Mark hated him for it. Because Johnny never tried. And Mark tried too hard.

There'd never been any threats made, and Johnny was usually civil to the guy but there was an unbearable electricity as the two passed each other in the hallways each day. It made me uncomfortable.

I also suspected Nicole was part of the reason for it, that she was feeding things to Mark to keep the feud going.

It took a lot to set Johnny off, but when he did get set off, he was a blizzard of pinpointed rage.

When my dad got set off there were bodies everywhere, and his anger flayed out like vomit landing where it shouldn't, leaving traces everywhere. (It hurts me to say things like this about my father, but I was facing the facts now finally; the magic was gone.)

News of my "home situation" had not hit the school yet. Not the kids, at least. But the teachers knew. And they knew it because my grades had slipped. The only class I was doing well in was English Lit, and that's because Fiction was keeping me alive, both creating it with my poetry, or burying myself in it when reading.

I tried to concentrate, I did, but my thoughts kept going onto "more important things" in life, things that seemed to matter so much more to me now than the coefficient of seven or whatever the heck you learn in Junior year—I can't even remember any of it. My mind was on things like: "How can I be happy?" and "How can I avoid the mistakes my parents made?"

Somehow, I was pretty sure learning calculus wasn't going to help me with any of that.

Because I'd known Johnny my whole life, and because my initial attraction to him had nothing to do with his looks, I completely missed noticing Nicole Ferman's seething, hateful, vengeful jealousy of me and him.

I missed it like a bullet to the head.

I also missed it because in all my school years I never really got in "deep" with any of the other girls. So I missed plenty of school gossip. Johnny had always been my companion. When he and Nicole had first "dated," I got in tighter with a few friends (Nancy, Lee-Anne, Vivian; yeah, that's it) but that was mostly chit-chat at lunches, and even then I didn't talk much.

I was a bookworm. And most of my time at school during lunches was spent reading _Twilight_ or Cassandra Clare novels or, in later years, stuff that appealed to...that mushroomed part of me.

In Junior year, I was just trying to get by. Life was rough-going, and I thought I was doing OK, all things considered.

And then Nicole and Mark Ryleigh upped it a notch.

## -3-

No one would have dreamed of throwing a Winter Recess party except Jess van der Haven.

Whatever Nicole had in the looks department, Jess had in the Wild Girl department. She threw about seven parties a year up in her mansion in Nassau.

Although Johnny and I lived in pretty generous homes, Jess's place was a palace.

Her parents were rarely there. And she had more money than she knew what to do with.

Whereas I was trying to hide my problems at home, Jess made her problems the very thing that made her cool.

It was December twentieth, Saturday.

And it was _cold_.

Johnny and I pulled up to the gargantuan entrance in his red Mustang GT. He and his dad had spent months fixing it up after Pat had bought it for a steal for five hundred bucks! The car's engine had been a wreck, but six months later they'd completely souped it up and now it purred like a roadhog on steroids.

I saw the looks Johnny got as we arrived. He was in a warm gray sweater and jeans. I was in jeans and a faux fur coat.

It might have been the middle of winter, and the last weekend before Christmas, but Jess had the place _packed_.

Music screamed from the three floor mansion. Guys were out throwing snowballs or sliding on snow.

Inside, the temperature instantly went up by about thirty degrees. The place was full, body heat and gas heaters warming it up. I was amazed at how many girls showed up in mini-skirts. I got cold just looking at them.

I saw Jess out the corner of my eye, sitting back on a couch with a beer in her hand and a guy climbing over her. "Hey, Johnny! Have a good time, baby!" she hollered.

Johnny smiled at her, then squeezed my hand.

More girls greeted him as we made our way to the punch bowl. A drinking game was going on in the corner; a guy was making out with a girl by the wall, his hand sliding up the inside of her leg. She smiled at Johnny when he walked past.

"Drink?" Johnny asked me.

I shrugged. "Why not?"

He sniffed it. "It's spiked."

"Of course it is." Mom had told me it's OK if I drank, so long as I didn't overdo it and stayed with Johnny all night. (As if I would do anything else.) The irony is that Johnny was allowed to drink as much as he wanted to, yet never did. He often had wine on weekends with his dinner at home, half a glass. It's a Portuguese thing. But never at parties. And like his dad, he never touched the stuff before driving. Not a drop.

I took the punch and nursed it. Samantha Jaspin came up to Johnny and asked him if he wanted to dance, then looked at me and said, "If it's cool with you, honey!"

Johnny declined. "Not tonight, Sammy. We're not staying long." Johnny had a reputation for giving any girl the time of day, at least one dance. He especially had a reputation for giving homely girls a dance or two, just to up their confidence—although he denied it whenever I called him on it!

"Oh, baby, please!" She grabbed his arm, started tugging it, ever looking at me and wondering if I would make a scene.

"Sorry, Sam, some other night."

"Oh, Johnny, you never say no!" She pouted her lips.

Johnny closed his eyes. "I know. Tonight is different. It's not you. I promise."

"Oh, Johnny, you're such a flirt."

By now I just wanted to kick her.

He extracted his hand from hers and we stood there awkwardly for a second. "OK, fine!" She strutted off, wiggling her ass voluptuously, completely unaware that Johnny wasn't even looking at her.

"You OK?" I asked him.

"Sure."

I saw his eyes staring fixedly at one point.

I turned my head.

And there was Mark Ryleigh.

Nicole leaned against a wall next to him, sucking an olive from a Martini, pushing it in and out of her mouth, putting her tongue out lusciously over it. She had a smug grin on her face. She also wore a mini-skirt, black, a _short_ mini skirt, no tights. _I bet she also doesn't have any panties on for easy access._ Her already generous boobs were pushed up, and she was staring straight at me and Johnny.

Sucking on her olive.

And smiling.

Mark scowled. Three of his football cronies were behind him, each in football jackets—Dustin ("Dust" as everyone called him), Roderick ("Hotrod"), and Just Vick.

Nicole slithered her arm around Mark's shoulder and pulled him into her. Her tongue looked like a lizard as it devoured his. I was instantly disgusted. Mark put his hand on her butt and pulled her mini-skirt a little up so that her perfect bun was clearly visible (and she was either wearing a thong or...like I said...nothing).

Then Mark sent his gaze back to Johnny, and the staredown continued.

Butterflies slammed inside my stomach. I looked away and sipped my drink.

"Why are they looking at you like that?" I asked.

"Probably because I told Nicole where to stick it after she spread those rumors about you." Picking on anything to ruin my reputation, Nicole had started spreading rumors about how often I was "spreading my legs" for Johnny, and that's why my grades were so low. According to her, not only was I not a virgin, but Johnny and I were doing it three times a day—twice of which was _during_ school hours!

So far I'd ignored her.

"You did what?" I spouted.

"I pulled her aside and told her she should go _fuck herself_. That she had no right to spread false rumors about you."

I shook my head. "Johnny... _damnit._ "

He said nothing.

I put my drink down beside him, wrapped my hands around his neck and said, "Baby, that was very gallant, but also very...freaking... _stupid_! Mark has the entire football team on his side. You know that's what she wanted you to do, don't you? With girls it's normally best to simply... _let it slide_. These things usually go away."

His eyes went hot with anger. "I'll decide what's stupid and what's not, Cat." Even when he was angry, the way he said "Cat" still made my legs wobbly. "You fight your battles your way, and I'll fight mine my way. Nicole is my battle as much as it is yours."

"Are they still looking at us." My back was turned to them.

Johnny looked up. "Yeah."

" _Damn it_ ," I whispered.

"Come, let's dance."

We danced for a half hour. Some girls came by and danced with us, the closest they could get to dancing "with Johnny" tonight. But the slow-dances were all mine. Johnny had stopped granting those to anyone (except girls who needed a confidence boost) since he and I had started dating.

Quite a few guys came by and said hi to him as well. A lot of the dudes at school called him Ronaldo as a joke. He pulled a few guys over as they said hello and whispered something in their ears. Many of them looked up at Mark and his crew after Johnny spoke to them. Then Johnny would gesture for them to calm down (or something, not sure what the gesture meant exactly).

It all made me very nervous.

We kept dancing.

When it got too hot, we went outside and had a few drinks. Johnny had a Beck's Blue, non-alcoholic, imported from Germany. (Jess always brought in the good stuff.) I had stopped at the single glass of punch and was now on hot chocolate provided by Jess's famous in-house vending machine.

We were standing, chilling, some guys smoking, looking at the blanket of snow which had fallen...when Mark walked out and shouldered Johnny so hard that he almost fell.

"Hey, what the hell, Mark!" I cried out.

Four guys suddenly came to Johnny's defense and stood tall in front of him. "Fuck off, Ryleigh!" one shouted. But almost instantly, Dust and Hotrod and Just Vick were there, chests out! "Got a problem, punks!"

Three more dudes on Johnny's side came over. One of them pushed Mark and then Mark pushed him back! Two guys started wrestling—

"Knock it off!" Johnny bellowed.

Nobody moved.

"Punk," someone half-whispered.

"Asshole."

A small crowd had formed. Everyone was observing Johnny staring at Mark. Mark grinned. "Got something to say to me, _dago_?"

Johnny stared him down. Feet shuffled on the snow. Mist billowed from my lips.

Johnny turned his back to Mark, brought his non-alcoholic beer to his lips, and said to our group, "What were we saying?"

This was clearly a sign for people to just chill and ignore the prick! The guys who'd been with us slowly moved away from Mark and his gang and moved back into the small circle we'd formed, shooting the shit again.

"Hey, _dago_ , I'm talkin to you!"

Johnny sipped his beer. But I could see he was distracted.

"Do you want me to spread my legs and give you the scent of fish before you pay attention to me?" Johnny's eyes sparked with hate.

He turned.

"What did you say?"

"Baby," I whispered, "ignore him."

"You heard me, _dago_!" Mark said. "I was wonderin if the smell of _fish_ between my legs would be more interesting to you."

Johnny's grip on the bottle tightened.

It wasn't lost on me that Mark was insulting _me_ , actually.

"Mark, why don't you just _fuck off_!" I cried, sick of the childish games.

Mark said something, but I didn't catch it.

And then the air changed suddenly, and people's eyes shifted.

Like a shadow, two more guys had appeared in the background, guys I recognized, guys with a dangerous fighting rep in the school.

Eduardo Sanchez was a guy known for his bad temper, as well as his complete inability to stop hitting someone when he got started. He stood about thirty feet behind Mark.

And KC "The Hammer" Brown was a three-hundred-pound black dude who never said much, but who liked cracking his knuckles in the school hallways. It was rumored he could "hook you up with anything you want," but I had little faith in High School rumors if Nicole was anything to go by.

KC stood about forty feet behind Mark, and about twenty left of Eduardo. KC cracked his knuckles.

I'd never spoken to any of these guys.

Johnny looked at KC in the back. KC's expression didn't change. Neither did Johnny's. Everyone else was also stunned by the arrival of the two newcomers!

And this caused Mark to finally turn and notice them.

When he turned his face back to us, it was slightly pale. "This ain't over, _fisherman_ ," he said to Johnny.

As Mark was walking away, Johnny called out with a determined voice, "Ryleigh."

Mark turned, trying to be cool, although I noted his eyes shifting to Eduardo and KC, just to make sure they hadn't moved.

Johnny lifted a finger, aimed it slowly at Mark. "Say what you will to me. But that was the last insult you make against my girlfriend."

Johnny left it at that.

Mark looked at KC, Eduardo. Then he spat on the ground.

He turned and left, not a word.

A few seconds later, KC and Eduardo disappeared as well.

I started sipping my drink quickly, burning my tongue by mistake. I just wanted to go home now. I'd had enough "partying" for the night.

After a few minutes, Johnny noticed my silence. He turned to me and asked quietly, "You OK?"

"I just wanna go now."

"Why, because of that punk?"

"Yeah. I'm worried."

"There's nothing to be worried about, Cat."

"Well, I _am_!"

Johnny stiffened, looked around. Nicole was out back making audible squeaking noises while she laughed. When she saw Johnny looking, she licked her lips.

"OK," Johnny said. "We can go if it makes you feel better."

"It does."

"Fine." But the way he said it showed me it wasn't fine.

He said goodbye to the guys. They all complained that it was so early and they were just getting started and...

"Sorry, guys, I told my folks I'd be home early," he lied.

"Damn, Ronaldo!"

Johnny laughed.

More girls made eyes at him as we made our way through the crowd. More guys shook his hand and said goodbye. More people made out in the corners. (And quite a few _really_ needed to get a room!)

Jess made groaning sounds from behind the same couch, her one leg dangling up visibly (and nakedly) over the back of it. _God, maybe it's time we leave anyway!_

I was never much into the wild side of parties.

"I didn't know you knew KC and Eduardo," I said as we made it to the foyer.

"I know a lot of people."

"How?"

But Johnny never managed to answer that question.

Because when he opened the front door...

...Mark was there.

Grinning.

And then Mark tried to suckerpunch him.

Only... he missed. Johnny had slipped right.

And Mark's fist hit me instead.

## -4-

It was World War III.

My eyes were a crimson filter. My nose and eyes ached and tears blurred my vision. _I've been hit. Oh, my God, I've been hit._

I looked at my hands and they were scarlet. The taste of copper filled my lips. Someone came to me. "Cathy, you OK? Jesus Christ, Cathy, what happened?"

_That's what I'd like to know_.

I was still delirious when I heard Mark pleading outside.

"Please, no more, please, _please_!" Mark was crying from the ground. "Please—"

Thwack! Thwack! Crunch!

I was still reeling, Mark's punch had just glanced across my nose because Johnny had pulled me aside. I didn't get a chance to know what was happening until now: Mark on the ground, and Johnny... _killing him_!

_Oh, God_.

A trail of splattered blood marked a path from the door, down the steps, and onto the white lawn. Johnny straddled the body on the ground and just let _rip_.

He said nothing. Only rage poured from him.

His fists were a whirlwind of fury!

Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

I staggered out over the steps, my hand to my own bleeding nose, almost slipping.

Mark looked like a pulp of dead mass.

Johnny's left hand held Mark down by the neck while red rage flew from his right fist. _Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!_

"Johnny, stop it! STOP IT! YOU'LL KILL HIM!" I yelled.

Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

I jumped on Johnny and _yanked_ him from Mark, his final fist hitting thin air.

I almost retched when I looked back and saw the body. "Oh, God. Oh, my God! Oh, GOD!"

Mark looked dead.

## -5-

"You fucking _animal_! You fucking _crazy_ animal!" Nicole's shriek was like the sound of bombs being fired through the sky.

Eduardo Sanchez, KC "The Hammer" Brown, and several of the guys Johnny had whispered to earlier had formed a cordon and were holding Mark's cronies back. "Dust" and HotRod were on the ground, groaning and writhing, holding their faces. "Just Vick" stood back, palms up defensively so as to say, _It's cool, I'm not gonna start nuthin!_ _Just watchin the show!_

And there were others, some in football jackets, each unwilling to go through Eduardo or KC or any of the other guys that were clearly on Johnny's side. Their role had evidently been to let Johnny settle this one-on-one if it came to it.

"CALL AN AMBULANCE! CALL NINE-ONE-ONE! SOMEONE CALL A FUCKIN AMBULANCE!" Nicole fell to Mark's side. He looked like roadkill. Her legs landed on the spray of blood. She turned to Johnny. "You _fucking_ murderer! You _fucking stupid idiot_!"

Murderer.

My hand started to shake.

And then I heard Mark moaning. _Oh, God. Thank God he's alive._

The moan was agonizing to hear.

It was then that I noticed the dark smudge around his crotch. Even Mark deserved some dignity. I was about to tell people to back off and get back to the party when I realized I probably looked like Stephen King's _Carrie_. But it didn't matter anymore anyway. The phones were already out, photos had already been taken, videos had no doubt been made. And the thing was probably already going viral.

I turned to Johnny. His eyes were wide with shock when he saw me, and I had to hold him back when he flinched in Mark's direction again! "You fucking _bastard_! _Filho da puta!_ "

"Babe, I'm OK! I don't even think it's broken!"

"Let me see." He grabbed the tip of my nose and moved it to the side.

"OW, GODDAMNIT!"

"Sorry, just...try to be quiet." He did it again.

When I described the pain to him, he said, "No, it's not broken, it seems—just bleeding a lot. But your eyes will probably go blue."

"Great, just before Christmas."

Johnny took his sweater off, then his shirt underneath. "Here, use this to wipe your hands." He started to shiver.

"Johnny, this is a _Polo_!"

"Just use it!"

I wiped my hands and put the shirt up to my nose to stop the bleeding.

"He just grazed me. You managed to pull me away just in time."

Nicole shuddered with grief, holding Mark up. Mark's body was mostly limp.

I saw that Johnny's hand was swelling. "Your hand." I reached out for it and he grimaced when I touched it. "It'll be fine. Just needs some ice." He put his sweater back on gingerly. Then he kneeled and stuck his fist in the snow. Although he hid it, the twitch of his eyes showed me that the pain was excruciating.

"Johnny, you need to promise me you'll _never_ do something like that again. _Ever_!"

Johnny said nothing.

"Johnny?"

"I can't promise that, Cat. If he'd hit me, I would have turned a blind eye, or maybe just swung at him once. But he didn't, he hit you." He looked me over. "He hit you bad. He could have broken your nose."

I suddenly remembered Johnny's threat to me about my father. _But if he_ ever _lays a fucking hand on you again—I'll fucking kill him._

I looked over at Mark.

He was making gurgling sounds while he breathed.

# CHAPTER NINE

## ~ Clouds ~  
-1-

It was Christmas Eve, only a few days after the fiasco at Jess van der Haven's house. Dad came over to have dinner with us and the Abreus. Ever since I was six, the year we met them, we'd always had Christmas Eve dinner together at their place. In truth, Christmas Eve _was_ Christmas in their books, and we'd always wait until midnight to open up gifts.

We might have skimped on dinners at their place since my parents started having "issues," but we'd managed to never miss a Christmas.

When dad arrived at our place...he'd been drinking.

"Hey, honey! What's up!" Dad gave mom a hug.

"Jack, is that... _wine_ on your breath?"

"Yeah, yeah, just a little. No biggie."

She shook her head. "Jack, you promised!"

"Come on, Alice, I'm not drunk. I'm _fine_! Don't worry about it!"

"Goddamnit, Jack, if you embarrass us tonight, as God is my witness..."

"I won't embarrass you, OK?" He had the slightest of slurs.

"Come here, baby. Give your dad a hug." I walked over to my dad, hugged him. He did smell like booze, and that didn't make me happy.

"So, let's go on over to our Latin friends and show them just how _goddamn_ happy we all are!" He put his hand low on my back, and one on my mom's butt.

"Goddamnit," she said.

## -2-

Pat was happy to see his old friend. They hugged and that set the tone for the night.

Johnny greeted my dad politely but stiffly. When dad offered his right hand, Johnny gave him the left. He hadn't broken any bones, but his hand was swollen and blue.

Dad shook it, but when Johnny wanted to let it go, dad held him tight and yanked Johnny to him forcefully.

There was a moment of bated breath amongst all of us. Dad was suddenly serious, staring Johnny in the eyes.

He looked at me, and I looked away. I looked like trailer trash today, complete with dark blue rims under each eye and a swollen nose.

Dad looked at Johnny again, then nodded proudly.

"Thank you," he said. "You did good. You did _real_ good."

We were all speechless.

## -3-

The night started off well. Iliana had prepared small shrimps in salt water and we were snacking on them as appetizers. Dad and Pat watched sports on TV. Daniela played XBox loudly in a nearby room.

We had cod fish mixed with cabbage and cream for dinner (it tastes better than it sounds!), and then pork made on a spit. For dessert we ate toast soaked in sweet syrup ( _rabanadas)_ and a puff pastry called _sonhos_ ("dreams") which also came dunked in thick syrup. Sweet Rice ( _arroz doce_ ), _Bolo dos Reis_ ("King's Cake") which was a big doughnut shaped cake with caramelized fruit on it.

By the end of it, I felt like I'd gained five pounds in only a few hours.

Dad stuck to red wine, and if he weren't an alcoholic, one could say that he didn't drink a lot. In fact, he seemed more sober by the end of the night than when he'd arrived.

He wasn't angry. He was mellow. He looked happy.

We sat in the family room with the fire crackling, sipping on Portuguese _Dão_ dry red wine. Even I had half a glass, but I didn't like it too much, so then I stuck with soda. But Johnny had two or three. I snuggled up under his arm.

Midnight came and we opened our gifts. Daniela was the most excited of us all. She got an iPod Touch.

At the end of the night, I didn't kiss Johnny goodbye in front of my dad, that would have been too far, but I wanted to. I wanted to do more than that with him tonight. I wanted him to sneak into my room later and I wanted him to hold me.

I wanted him to touch me.

On our way home, dad stumbled a bit to his car. He had his arm around mom and they looked like a regular ole married couple.

It stung a little for me to see that.

"Jack, don't drive home. You've had too much to drink."

"Oh, Alice, I'll be fine. What did I have, half a bottle? That's nothing compared to what I used to do!"

"Jack, _no_ , please, spend the night. You can...use the guest room."

Dad turned, wrapped his arms around mom and considered it for a second. He was a little tipsy, I could see. But the rage and madness that had been in him before, was not there.

Could it be? _Could_ he go back to having a drink or two and not falling into the violent personality changes it had brought about in him in the past?

After a while, he hiccupped, and then said, "OK, I'll stay."

"Should we all watch a movie together?" mom asked, looking at me.

It was the happiest moment I'd had with my family in over a year.

## -4-

We watched a movie, Disney, very cute. My dad held my mother around the shoulder and I rested on his chest. When the movie was done, I came up to bed, my mind racing, wondering if things would change, if everything could be like it were again.

And then I heard them. Not fighting, but having sex. Having sex _loudly_.

It didn't feel like family. It felt like two horny adults who were getting it on after a night of drunken revelry.

I mean, I get it. They were adults, and I was old enough to be pretty cool about it. But something about it felt...wrong.

And what about mom's boyfriend that she was hiding from me?

Mom was giggling, and dad was... Well, I blocked my ears.

When they were done (it went on for an hour!) I texted Johnny. He was at my place in five minutes.

I'd wanted him to touch me earlier.

But now I didn't want that at all.

## -5-

"If you have something to say to me, Jack, be man enough and say it."

Christmas Day. Dad was in Pat's study. I had gone to the bathroom and heard them talking on my way back to the family room.

"I have nothing to say, Pat. I've just been busy."

"And drinking."

My dad said nothing.

"It's good that you had it under control yesterday, Jack. But I see you starting early on it today. It's barely noon."

"It's none of your business."

"It _is_ my business. You and I are friends. I care about you. I care about your family. I care about your daughter."

"We're acquaintances, Pat. We've watched football together, shared a few beers, but I think you're looking into this friendship a little too deeply."

Silence for a second. "Perhaps you and I have different definitions of friendship. If you needed something, I would be here for you. Perhaps I was wrong to think the same of you."

"Cultural differences, Pat. We're neighbors, don't go making any more of it than it is."

"Wow. Cultural differences indeed! Your insolence wouldn't be tolerated even in the most barbaric of countries!"

"I—I'm sorry, Pat. I didn't mean it like that. I..."

"Then how _did_ you mean it?"

"It's just... It's _our_ business. And I don't want you involved in it, OK? We'll get through it. Alice and I are working things out."

"It _is_ my business, friend. You live on my street. I am raising a family on this street. Your business is as much mine as the guy next door's."

"Well, I don't see it that way."

"Then don't. But we _are_ friends. I accept that you had a few wineglasses last night, Jack. I don't believe in this abstinence forever nonsense myself. If a man can control his liquor, he's not an alcoholic. But you're drinking _whiskey_ this morning!"

"It's Christmas Day, isn't it?" Even I could hear dad's sarcasm. "Oh, Pat, what do you want from me?"

"I don't want anything from you. I am merely pointing out that I believe you have a problem. And that I'm here to help you if you need it, in whatever way you wish."

"I'm getting help."

"Maybe you need _better_ help."

"OK, if I need _better_ help, I'll come to you." The statement was blasé.

A beat of silence. Then, more seriously, "Fine." Pause. "Look, Jack... There's another reason I asked to talk to you privately. It's about this business with what happened at that party."

"I'm really grateful for what Johnny did. That Ryleigh boy got what was coming to him in my opinion."

"I agree. But I need to ask you something."

"Shoot."

"Are you pressing charges against that Ryleigh boy? For what he did to _Catty_."

"That was the plan. Why?"

"Well, as you know, Johnny...went a little crazy on the boy. It's grounds for assault, because he took it too far. If he'd hit him once or twice, he could have pleaded self-defense—on _Catty's_ behalf. But he didn't."

"I see."

"Their family has offered us a deal. If...this boy Mark isn't charged for the swing against... _Catty_. Well, they'll drop the charges against Johnny."

Silence. "It really depends on Cathy, doesn't it? I'll have to ask her what she thinks. Why didn't you ask her directly?"

"Because you are her father. It would not have been right of me to do so. I don't care how drunk you are, that's still your role." I felt the double-meaning in that.

"I appreciate it." I heard a chair moving. "You're a good man, Pat. I... If... Well, you know I haven't always liked that Johnny has been dating my daughter. But if he's anything like you, well, maybe he's not so bad for her after all."

Pat chuckled that rumbling Santa chuckle of his. "You can be a real _cabrão_ sometimes, Jack! You know that?" He laughed even louder.

"Hey, I don't speak _Portageeze_ , but I know that's worse than an asshole!"

"Much worse!"

## -6-

In the late afternoon, Johnny and I went for a walk in the woods. The sun was going down early, and it had been cloudy as well today, so there was really low light when we got to Our Hill.

Daniela was too busy with her new iPod and five hundred other gifts to be interested in coming with us.

That was fine by me, because I wanted to be alone with him.

Sections of the creek were frozen, just on the sides. We threw down our thermal blanket and sat down. There were no words to be said.

I looked him deep in the eyes. "Thank you," I said.

"For what?"

"You know what."

"They're pressing charges against me, can you believe it?"

"I won't let them. I overheard your dad talking to mine and..." I told him. And I told him I would skip pressing charges if it got him off the hook. "I think what you gave him was justice enough."

"I took it too far."

"You did. And maybe we can work on that." I pecked him on the lips, and he inhaled deeply as I kissed him. His hands tugged at my sweater, his bruised hand shaking.

"I hope you heal soon, Cat. Because every time I see this..." He touched the blueness under my eyes. "I... I... I just want to...do it again!"

"I know." I tried to make my voice gentle. "I know. But it's over. He didn't hurt us."

Johnny clenched his jaw.

"It's over, sweetie. It's OK now." I pushed him back, my hands still on his cheek. I could feel him shivering, and I knew it wasn't the cold. It was his anger.

I pressed my tongue into his mouth and felt his warmth. We kissed like that for several minutes before I straddled him. I had a lot of clothes on, boots, thick socks. When I pressed down against him below, when I felt his desire, none of it mattered.

The world disappeared.

The wind disappeared.

And then there was only us, that concentration of sweet pleasure below as I ground and eased myself over him.

He put his hands on my thighs and rubbed them. I undid my ponytail and let my hair fall on his face, black mixed with dark gold.

"Mmmm," he said.

" _Eu amo-te_ ," I told him, pressing down hard.

He bit his bottom lip. His eyes fluttered. His left hand tightened against my thigh. His right, still bruised, tightened only slightly.

I moved down with my head and joined my tongue to his while I pressed and rubbed and felt him push up against me.

My legs squeezed. Our breaths echoed back at us.

I started to moan, a wailing moan of need.

I kept my voice low, but as it built up, as his hands eased up my sides and caressed my cheeks; as my legs became tauter and my screams built up to boiling point, the moan became a constant murmur.

I bit my lip to try hold it in.

I ground violently. A stone pressed against my left knee. Johnny pushed me back and forth with his hands and tugged and pulled—

"Oh, God," he said, his eyes open, his mouth open, his pelvis suddenly raised _up_ against me.

"Oh, _yes_ ," I echoed.

And then we were in the clouds.

# CHAPTER TEN

## ~ Relapse ~  
-1-

But what goes up, must come down...

When I opened the door to my house, I heard the yelling.

They were in their bedroom.

"... drunk again ... always the same ... how embarrassing ... damn it."

"... I love you ... this is bullshit! ... WOMAN, ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND!"

I decided to go to my room and hum with my fingers in my ears. Maybe it would stop in a minute or two, maybe ten.

Johnny's name came up a few times. Then mine. The word "drunk" came up more than any other. I was pretty sure I heard the word "drugs" once or twice.

I don't wanna know. I just—don't—want—to know!

A door slammed!

"GET OUT! GET OUT, YOU TWO-TIMING DRUNK!"

They were screaming right into the hallway now. They obviously didn't know I was here.

"ME!? I'M THE TWO-TIMER? HOW MANY TIMES DID YOU BRING YOUR FUCKIN CABANA BOY HERE WHILE I WAS SOBERING UP IN THE CITY?"

"Sobering up? You call this sobering _up_?" I tightened my arms around my stomach, and I rocked harder back and forth, humming. I was suddenly cold, so I pulled the bedspread around my shoulders. "You're worse off than you were before. We had our experimentation days, Jack. But now...now... You can't start that shit again in your goddamn forties!"

"I HAVE IT—UNDER— _CONTROL_!"

Slap!

Silence.

I rocked. I hummed.

More silence.

"You—goddamn— _bastard!_ GET OUT!"

And then he lost it. He lost it...completely.

"AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGH!" _Thump, thump, thump, thump!_

My mother shrieked—a shrill, piercing scream mixed with the sound of tears.

By the time I bolted out my bedroom door, all I saw was a monster in a torn dress shirt, dragging a woman down the stairs by her hair.

I _howled_. "STOP IT! STOP IT, GODDAMNIT! BOTH OF YOU JUST _STOP IT!_ " I was crying, tears streaming. "LET HER GO, DADDY! LET HER GO!"

I ran to my room and texted Johnny. Between rheumy vision and shaking hands, I managed to get out only one word.

HELP

A war raged downstairs. By the time I had typed in those four letters, furniture had splintered, glass had smashed, and the sound of _slap-slap-slap_ had left my stomach feeling like water.

I _bolted_ out of my room and to the stairs! I raced with all my might, arms pumping, legs storming like a blizzard one after the other, eyes blurry, chest thumping—

And then my foot caught behind my ankle.

I saw the stairs from an ungainly angle, hovered over them for just an instant; and for an instant I actually believed I would be fine, or that maybe I could even fly.

_It's not so bad, not so bad, I'll land softly_.

And then the steps taught me otherwise.

## -2-

My cheek hit the corner of one.

I rolled and tumbled and crashed down the flight. My neck popped, and for a delirious second I thought I had snapped it.

I tumbled, over and over. The world spun around me like a washing machine. I saw blood in a splotch. For a moment I thought we were at the party at Jess's place, and that the blood was Mark's. But then I tumbled again. I heard the _crack_ of my pinky finger snapping, and also felt it.

My eyes filled with water.

Food came up to my throat.

Pain hammered me, starting at my hand, focusing at my elbow, and then throbbing everywhere else.

The sounds from the living room never stopped, adding chorus to my rock n roll song of agony:

Slap! Slap! Slap!

"STOP IT, YOU MONSTER! STOP IT!"

All the while I tumbled: _thump, thump, thump._

And then all was relatively still.

Slap! Slap! Slap!

"Oh, God, Cathy! Cathy!" _Slap!_ Glass crashed. "Jack, it's Cathy!" _Slap. "FOR FUCK'S SAKE, ARE YOU MAD! YOUR DAUGHTER (_ grunt) _FELL DOWN THE STAIRS!_ "

CRASH!

It took me a moment to realize the world had stopped tumbling, but now it was waving, rolling as if I were on a boat. I felt that food at my throat again...

Where am I? Where—

And then, out of nowhere, another voice, just outside the front door. "Cat?"

Johnny.

Johnny, help me, help me, Johnny.

The words wouldn't come out.

"Cat?"

Johnny, I'm—I think I fell—I think...

"CAT, OPEN THE DOOR!"

My eyes closed.

Pain, such terrible pain on my finger.

My finger?

I looked at it, and the twisted angle of it brought the pain rushing up to me all at once. The rush of agony flowered like a bloom inside me and brought tears and vomit out all at the same time.

My throat burned.

My hand throbbed.

_BANG BANG BANG!_ "OPEN THE DAMN DOOR!"

And then, "Jack, it's me—Pat. Jack, open up, buddy!"

"I'M NOT YOUR _FUGGIN_ BUDDY, DAMNIT!" Dad was slurring.

Oh, God, someone help me. Someone.

I faded...

...then I snapped to again.

I turned to look into the living room.

That's when I saw her. _And that same color. That awful, terrible color I've been seeing so much of lately_.

Mom was in a red dress.

And her face was also red.

And so was the wall.

I held my food down this time.

The man in the living room— _Is it my father? No, it can't be. It can't be my dad_ —came strutting toward me.

All I saw were his boots; his big, brown, heavy boots. One step, then another, as if one more step would bring it against my head.

Distances were funny.

The world was still woozy.

Johnny?

Dad.

Mom?

_Oh, God, I feel awful. I feel_ so _ill..._

My father: "Go home, little boy!" He sounded like a man gone mad. "Daddy will take care of this." _Daddy will tague gare-of-iszh_.

The room swayed. Dad had a broken glass in his hand, stumbling toward me.

The floor tilted.

My mom faded in and out of sight behind him. Red dress, stockings torn, legs sprawled, cowed.

It all moved so slow. So _damn_ slow...

" _Daddy will tague_ - _gare-of-this_."

_BANG BANG BANG._ "Open up, Jack! Let's talk this through."

Pat. Pat. Pat and Johnny.

Pitter-Pat, Pitter-Patter Pat.

" _Daddy will tague_ - _gare-of-this_."

And then dad reached the door.

And he opened it.

## -3-

"Oh, if it isn't da fuggin gazanova who wantsh to shtick 'is fuckin _cock_ inside my daughter's virgin pussy! You are a virzhin, are you not, baby? Or 'as zhat boat already sailed?"

The scene was something from nightmares.

At any moment I expected dad to be pounced on, for him to go sprawling and for more blood to be spilled; more violence! I just wanted it to stop. No more screaming, no more shouting.

And yet Johnny was now at the door.

My dad was twice Johnny's size in width. But I knew what Johnny was capable of.

This couldn't go that route. It couldn't. Not with my father.

Mark Ryleigh and Nicole Ferman were one thing, but this was something else entirely!

_Johnny, keep cool, baby. For the love of God, keep—fucking—_ cool _!_

Johnny stepped inside in slow motion. He put a hand on my father's chest to hold him at bay, moved further into the foyer and took a survey of me, my mom.

Pat walked in behind him, large and looming, also taking in the scene.

"She fell, Johnny," my mom said. "He didn't hit her. He didn't hit her!" Even mom was afraid of Johnny's potential reaction.

"Why if-id-isn't da fuggin hero of da fuggin day! Come to save da fuggin damsels in fuggin distress!" My dad lifted the shattered whiskey glass to his lips to take a sip! Pat grabbed it from his hand and threw it out on the porch where it _plinked_ and _klinked_ and then rolled to a stop.

"Come, Jack," Pat said. "Let's take a walk before you cut yourself."

"A... _walk_?" Dad stepped back. He stumbled, and then he started to fall. He was going to land on me!

Both Pat _and_ Johnny grabbed him!

"Let's take a walk, Jack," Pat repeated.

"I'm not takin a fuggin walk! I'm not!" He stumbled back again!

And then he crumpled onto his knees. "So, tough guy. Whatjoogonna _do_!" he mumbled.

"Cat? Here, take my hand. Can you move?" Johnny extended his hand around my father.

"You juz wait-a-minute there, fella! Who the _fuck_ do you think you are comin in here and... Hey, I'm talkin to you!"

"Cat, the hand, take it. You'll sleep at our place tonight."

"WHO THE FUCK!" My dad pushed Johnny weakly.

Johnny put his finger up to warn my father. Pat looked at his son ferociously, put his own finger up. _"Não! Nada disso!"_ _No, none of that! "_ There's been enough violence here. Go to _Catty_ , call an ambulance for her or, if she's not too bad, help her to the car and take her to an emergency room! Same for Alice. Alice, you OK?"

Mom wept, didn't answer.

"Alice!" Pat repeated. "You fine?"

Through tears, she said, "Just a little bruised, Pat." Then she said something I didn't quite catch.

Johnny took a wide berth around my father. Dad kept taunting him, on his knees, shirt untucked.

He looked pathetic, and a deep, rending pity ran through me for him. I stumbled onto my feet, forgetting that I'd broken my little finger and screaming in agony when I mistakenly used it to lift myself.

This was my family, the only family I had. The whole scene was something from a Jerry Springer show. And I lost a little bit of my dignity that night.

My dad, on the other hand, had lost all of his.

Johnny took me to the emergency room.

I don't know who cleaned up the puke.

# CHAPTER ELEVEN

## ~ Safe ~  
-1-

Pat drove dad to his apartment in the city and spent the night there with him, Christmas Night.

I went over to the Abreus after mom and I visited the hospital and got our wounds tended to. I had a mild concussion, and they splinted my finger. Mom had a ton of bruises, a small cut on the back of her head whose profuse bleeding had made it seem worse than it was.

Iliana would stay with mom at our place. Mom was too embarrassed to show her wounds to little Daniela.

This was serious now. There was no more doubting it in my mind—I was officially in an "abusive family." It made me feel like trailer trash to hear the words in my mind. It made me want to sink into a black hole and never come out.

Most of all, however, it brought home the reality that I needed to be there for my mom. And that I needed to stop thinking it was OK for my dad to drink casually, because he obviously couldn't control it. He only got violent when he was drunk.

Daniela went to her XBox and put on some dancing game I'd never heard of. She asked if I wanted to play and Johnny got upset with her abruptly, telling her I had things on my mind.

"No, it's cool, I'll play with you."

She explained the game and I got up and danced in front of the screen. "What happened to your finger?" she asked me.

"Uhm." I looked at it. "I fell down the stairs."

She stared at me blankly for a second, not believing. And then a smile tugged at her lips. "You did not!"

"I did, I swear it. I was... _walking_...and, uhm, I fell."

She grinned widely to reveal a small gap in her teeth. "That's _stoopid_!" She started laughing.

I couldn't help laughing as well.

We laughed so much it actually made me forget about how horrible it had all been.

Then, "Did your mom fall down the stairs as well?"

Lead sunk in my chest. I looked at Johnny, then at Daniela. It's amazing how much a ten year old actually _sees_. "Uhm, no, no, she, uhm, just isn't feeling well."

I could tell she didn't fully buy it.

But like all good little girls, she decided to respectfully drop it.

I was grateful.

## -2-

A few days later...

"And here I thought your dad was finally liking me." Johnny's statement came out of nowhere. We were lying in the dark of his room, staring up at the ceiling. His right hand was on my thigh, my neck on his left arm. His window was slightly open, and the winter air blew in cool and crisp.

"He does like you."

"No, he doesn't."

"He was just drunk, Johnny. Forget what he said. He's grateful for you helping me at that party." But even then I remembered all the hints my dad had dropped over the years.

"He was probably mad that I took you to that party in the first place. Maybe that's why he got mad at your mom."

"He got mad because... _because he's..._ going through shit!" I wanted to say because he was an asshole. But I just couldn't. He was still my dad. And he'd done a lot more good in his life than bad.

Johnny cleared his throat. He moved his arm from under my head and sat up, rubbed his eyes.

"Hey." My voice was a whisper. "You OK?"

I sat up behind him and rubbed his back over his gray shirt.

"He caught me once, when I was sixteen, before you and I started dating."

"Hmmm?" My hand stopped rubbing, and the wind from the window was suddenly too cold.

"With Nicole. Nicole...Ferman. In..." He stopped.

"In what?" My hand was on my lap now, and I caught myself looking over at the glow of lights from my own house across the street. _Do I really need to know this?_

"In...the yard...behind the house. We were..."

Silence. I cleared my throat, and it was the sound of a rusty pipe.

"We were... _making out_. And my hand was...down there. She was groaning— _loudly_. And she was...well, it was all a little _crass_ , let's put it that way. And then she gasped suddenly, like she'd seen an axe murder, and she went stiff and pulled away from me. My heart stopped, and I turned to see your father, a six pack in his hands. 'Maybe you two should take this inside, don't you think?' he said.

"'Y—yes, Mr. Ramsey,' I said.

"And then he left us.

"He'd come by to watch a game with my dad. He'd heard some noises in the back and had come to inspect it. Nicole and I...Nicole and I were hiding there because from inside you can't hear noises from the yard so good when the TV is loud. I never thought of anyone coming by the house _outside_ at that time of night.

"Nicole must have been pretty loud for your dad to have heard."

I said nothing. The image of Nicole's groans and Johnny's fingers touching her impressed itself into my mind like a scene from _American Horror Story_.

"Cat, you listening?"

I looked up from the thread on the quilt I'd been playing with, looked at Johnny. I felt the lack of blood in my cheeks.

I had no reason to be jealous, but I felt the sting of it in my heart anyway.

I forced a smile. "Yeah, sure, I'm here."

"He never told my dad. I don't think my dad would have cared, but he would have been embarrassed because his friend had found us. I would have embarrassed my family. And I was grateful to...your father...for never telling him.

"But I'm sure he thinks I'm just trying to get into your pants. I'm sure he thinks I'm just some horny teenager looking to get laid."

_Get into your pants_ —I had that sudden flash of Nicole's body again, and the idea was nauseating.

"Or maybe he thinks I don't know how to treat a girl right. And he'd be right—back then. But I learned from that. It was then that I started thinking that maybe Nicole wasn't right for me, because I didn't respect her. And I don't think she respected me, either. It was all about getting it on. And I realized, afterwards, mortified as I was, that I would never take, say, someone like you outside in the dark. With you, well...

"Anyway, but he obviously doesn't see that. He sees a horny kid, who he caught with his hand down a girl's pants out in the back yard. And now _you're_ my girl.

"I see where he's coming from, is all I'm saying. If I were your dad, I'd hate me as well"

"Right," I said, "I see your point." There was a gust of wind and it howled through the eaves. "And... _are_ you? Just trying to get into my pants, that is."

Johnny's touch sliding inside me was something I often dreamed about when thinking of him. He was always gentle, parting his two fingers, then easily pressing inwards with one of them, just a tip to madden me. He never went too deep because it made me uncomfortable, but the orgasm on my part was always sharp and riveting.

And when I came, I always held him while my body convulsed and shuddered out of control. In those moments, with me under his hand, I felt always exposed, as if naked under a storm, or jumping off a plane and letting someone _else_ open your chute for you.

He'd press down, and keep twirling, letting me fall off that cliff with no worry.

Until it was over, and I'd be gliding to the ground, chute wide open and thermals warming my skin, and I would inhale deeply the scent of his cologne or his aftershave. And hold him afterwards for a few minutes.

And I would know that he loved me.

"I've already gotten into your pants," he said, no mockery in his tone.

"Not completely."

"Do you really need to ask me that, Cat?"

"No, I'm sorry." I rubbed his back with my left hand, the one with the broken finger.

"You know we've been dating almost a year now," I prompted.

"Yeah, and?"

_And I think it's time we took the next step._ "I'm just saying."

I put my hand around his neck, pulled him down onto the bed with me.

And I let his hand get into my pants.

## -3-

A light breeze blew into the room. My body was rested and relaxed from what Johnny had just done with me. A slight smile formed on my lips, and the euphoria of spent passion clouded my mind so that I felt like nothing was wrong anywhere.

A soft yellow glow filtered out from our kitchen across the street. Mom would be coming over soon. The bruises on her face had healed somewhat, and those that were left could be covered up to a degree with make-up. Besides, Daniela was wise to the scene now anyway. She was a good kid. We were going to have dinner at the Abreus tonight. Just like old times.

Johnny held me. I'd come to feel relaxed at feeling him stir below when he got turned on. I'd come to feel relaxed about a lot of things with Johnny.

_Safe_ is more the word.

In this post-orgasmic state, my mind drifted, my thoughts wandered to thinking of the sun, an ocean, the beach...

"Tell me about Portugal, Johnny."

"Portugal?" His voice was so manly by now.

"Yeah, Portugal. Tell me about it. Tell me about the people, the weather, the clothes. Everything. Tell me."

"Well, it depends where you go. Lisbon is an old city, people sing _fado_ on the street—the music of melancholy and sadness, of broken hearts and unrequited love.

"The streets are cobblestoned. Men sit at cafés and drink coffees and smoke cigarettes and read newspapers, sometimes all day."

"And 'coffees' are really espressos," I added, remembering some of his tales from years before.

"You learn quick.

"The sun shines almost all year in the south. It's almost always warm there, more like _hot_.

"Lisbon is a sprawl of ancient houses climbing over hilly ground and winding in and out of alleyways and shady corners. Fish is always fresh, lobster and crab and prawns and _dourada_ are the meals of the day. Garlic bread, olives, red wine, and great, stinking cheeses!"

I laughed, grabbed his arm tight to my chest and inhaled deeply.

"Tell me about the beach."

"Which one?"

"Any one!"

"Well, the Algarve is too touristic. But then there's _Cascais_ , the French Riviera of Portugal with multi-million-Euro houses facing a dream view of a west-facing ocean. Balconies with late sunshine, and the bleeding glow of a red ocean sunset. There's the _Estoril_ _Casino_ only two or three miles away, where the rich throw their money away and glamour rules the day, men in thousand dollar tuxedos, women in fine, glittering eveningwear, expensive jewelry, exquisite hairdos—"

"Hey! Enough about the women!"

Johnny caressed my hair, kissed me on the cheek. He whispered in my ear, "There's the tourist village in _Cascais_ , fine stores and cobble-street alleys, nooks under rocks facing the crashing waves where two people could hide...and kiss...and _touch_." He kissed my ear. My stomach tightened.

Behind me, he stirred, and it pleased me that he did.

"Fine restaurants, small fishing boats, and plenty of sangria. That's Portugal, Cat."

The light from our kitchen went off outside. Mom was on her way over. I turned to face Johnny. His oceanic eyes were bright with wanderlust. "I want to go there. I want to get to know it."

His eyes broke into an unspoken sorrow. "We've offered. Your parents said no."

No, my father said no.

I looked down, nestled my forehead against his chest. "It sucks being young."

He said nothing.

# CHAPTER TWELVE

## ~ "I'm ready" ~  
-1-

My dad went into rehab. It seems he wasn't only dousing the fires with booze but playing with a particular powder so common to high-level executives in the state of New York.

Again, I wondered how long _that_ had been going on without me noticing. Had I ever seen him sniff excessively? Had I ever seen powder on his nose?

None of it mattered anyway. And all of it was bluntly real, and all of it happening to me.

Mom didn't talk to me much during winter recess. She hit a major depression from what I could see. Often I'd find her sleeping on the couch, a glass of something alcoholic sitting on the table while the TV murmured on. One night she was so drunk that I almost had to carry her to bed.

"You know we love you, don't you, baby?" The words were a jumble.

"Yeah, I know, mom."

"We would never do anything _doo_ _hurtchoo_."

"Yeah, sure."

She kept talking when she hit the bed, her eyes bloodshot. Her hands looked old and wrinkly.

Each day, Iliana would come by and sit with mom. When she was here, mom was cool. But the second she left, mom started boozing—just like dad had done. I remembered what my dad said to me on the porch about his whiskeys. _They made me feel good, you know?_

When school started again, Iliana noticed my unspoken concern—she promised she'd look out for mom every day when I was gone, and that I didn't need to worry about her while I was at school.

A ten ton load lifted off me.

School was a blur when it started again. Of course, I still had a splint on my finger, and Viv and Nance asked me about it immediately. They were all bubbly about Christmas and how great it had been.

I told them I fell down the stairs on Christmas day, and they laughed much like Daniela had laughed when I'd told her.

But Daniela's laugh was contagious. And although Viv and Nancy's laugh wasn't meant with any spite, I just couldn't laugh with them.

My heart hurt.

And my mind hurt.

When Nicole got wind of the story— _somehow_ —the whole school suddenly knew. And the story took on various hues and embellishments as it traveled from person to person.

I didn't care about being the talk of the school.

I _did_ care about being reminded every day about something that was hurtful to me.

My dad was a drug-addict, violent, abusive. My loving, beautiful dad who taught me how to ride a bicycle and who held me when I was five after I'd fallen and grazed my knee. _That_ dad.

And my mom was depressed, boozing herself now to help her fall asleep. She looked damn-near suicidal.

That people found this a subject to gossip about only made me want to go into the girls' bathroom and lock myself in there until the tears were dry.

I was a social outcast. My family's secrets had spread and grown wings. If I hadn't been gregarious to start with, I was a complete recluse now.

Johnny kept me sane.

Johnny kept me alive.

Johnny got me through.

## -2-

Mom and dad had both dabbled with a bit of coke in college. "That and a few other things," she told me.

We were sitting in the TV room, the lights dimmed. She wasn't drunk, but she had a stiff drink on the side table that she kept nursing.

I listened.

I had come home _pissed_ that day, and I wanted to know. I wanted to know _all_ of it.

So I asked her. Maybe knowing it would help me deal with it.

Listening to what was unraveling, I started doubting my theory.

"We did it all through college, babe. Not loads of it, but enough for it to be 'unhealthy.' And then we graduated, the 'negative influences' went away, dad got a job, I got a job, and we kind of...just 'forgot' about it all. We were 'grown ups' now." She made the air quotes, then took a sip of her drink and wrinkled her nose.

"When I got pregnant, your dad was earning good money already, and we decided I'd stay home and take care of you.

"Maybe he was under a lot of pressure, hon.

"Well, in closing big deals, he'd go to parties. You know how these high society parties go. Sometimes he'd do a line." She waited, not believing she was telling me this. "Anyway...he didn't stay hooked, but his craving for coke led him to the booze. And instead of coke, he drank.

"This was all fine until the last two years or so. He lost a deal, a big deal. He'd just bought a car, we were tight in general from some overindulgences, and the pressure got to him.

"I think, also, well..." She looked away.

"What, mom?"

"I think...he also wasn't ready to deal with...you growing up. I think it stunned him. He wasn't ready for it. It was too much change. You were a woman suddenly.

"He and I had had our share of problems when you were growing up. But you always kept us together. No matter what went wrong, we always kept it together for your sake because we wanted to make sure you had a good family growing up.

"Well, when the 'evidence was in' that you weren't a little girl anymore—Johnny, I mean—the facade came crashing. It wouldn't be long before you were independent. You wouldn't need us—"

"I _do_ need you!"

"I know you do, sweetie. I'm not talking about _rationality_ here. I'm talking about what happened. The mind is a funny thing. When it sees threats...well...it becomes irrational.

"Our _own_ problems came to the forefront. We realized...we realized... _oh, God_...we realized we no longer...'did it' for each other, if you know what I mean. We were done for. We'd been done for for a long time, in all honesty. We should have faced it earlier. We should have gotten counseling or something, _earlier_. But by then it was too late.

"We started..." She shook her head, reached for the drink and then decided against it. "We started...seeing other people. I mean, we were actually separated long before your dad moved out, honey. That we slept in the same room meant nothing. We had made a tacit agreement that it was over, and that when you moved off to college, we'd go our separate ways. I'm sorry to tell you this, but it was simply all a big... _fucking_...lie!" Her words were laced with bitterness. And I realized she was telling herself it was a lie as much as me.

"Dad said he...cheated on you. But you knew?"

She looked up at me with hollow eyes. "He...did. He cheated on me. But I also cheated on him, sweetie. I'm ashamed to say it, but you asked, and I think it's time we gave you the truth. I won't go into the details, but the first affairs on both our parts were secretive. Later on, once we'd faced the fact that we were headed for a possible... _divorce_...one day, well, then we just simply accepted that we would be seeing other people.

"We agreed, openly, that we'd never bring that other person home. We didn't want to confuse you.

"Fat good it did. I think we confused you more by holding onto the facade.

"We imploded. Everything imploded. You can't be sleeping with someone else and still sharing a bed with your spouse. Consensual or not, it destroyed us. It was a cancer that ate us up from inside. We felt guilty, we felt guilty about _all_ of it. We felt guilty about how we'd failed you as parents, and we felt guilty to each other. That's when your dad's boozing got out of control. And that's when he started doing the lines on his own—not only a random one every six months or so.

"I'm as much to blame as he is, honey."

She sobbed desperately. She looked at her liquor glass for a second, then up at me. "Could you get me some water? And..." She grabbed the glass and gave it to me. "And pour this out. I think I've had enough."

I held my mom on the couch after that, and she fell asleep in my arms.

The next morning, mom was already up when I got out of bed. She'd made pancakes and set them in front of me. I couldn't remember the last time she'd cooked me breakfast. It had been cereal for so many years.

She sipped a coffee while I ate.

When I was done, she kissed me on the forehead, then held me. I felt her trembling as she did it.

"Thank you," she said to me.

We didn't let go of each other for a while.

## -3-

My dad wasn't allowed visitors for the first six weeks. "Vicious withdrawal symptoms," my mom told me.

That worked for me, because I didn't want to see him either.

I didn't hate him. I still loved him. But I didn't want to see him.

If someone had told me I must, I would have. If my mom had piped up one Saturday and said, "Honey, we're going over to see pops," I would have.

But until anyone said that, there was nothing in me pushing me to take the initiative.

The great chasm and gulf that I'd felt around me after my mom had told me about their history and how they'd grown apart, was the great abyss in the relationship between me and my father.

No more magic...

I so wanted to build a snowman with him again.

But the snow had melted.

My mind was adrift, especially at school. I think having a supportive family like the Abreus around helped me cope with things and stopped me from slitting my wrists or jumping off a mountain, but it didn't help me keep focused on schoolwork.

At night I would dream, ugly dreams that left me shivering when I woke up and made me blink three times before I turned on the light. Other times, I'd wake up screaming, dreaming of blood or of falling out of a plane, or of my foot sticking behind my ankle and me plummeting over the Grand Canyon. And underneath it all, down on the ground waiting for me, was my father, smiling, or angry, but always with his arms open, and a fanged grin that made me want to release my bladder.

The blood of that night, the rage in his eyes, had triggered something in me, and I was subconsciously afraid of him. No matter how much I loved him, I had come to see him also as a man, an everyday man. Not only as my dad.

And that scared me the most.

The shocks since I fell down those stairs left me unable to focus on anything. Whereas mom seemed to be doing better, especially with all the help Iliana was providing for her, I was retreating into a cave.

Only Johnny could penetrate it.

I'd lost touch with Viv, Lee, all the girls.

My grades hit rock bottom (except for English Lit—again).

As the days and weeks trudged on by, a need formed inside me, a hunger, a primordial calling toward survival.

I needed Johnny.

I needed Johnny like I needed air.

I needed a month in the sun or on the beach. I needed a trip down to Florida. I needed a roadtrip across Route 66. I _didn't_ need to understand that " _A quantity may be substituted for its equal in any expression_ " or that " _The measure of an exterior angle of a triangle is equal to the sum of the measures of the two non-adjacent interior angles_ " or that " _distance traveled divided by time is not a constant value_."

I needed to know about _life_.

Because my life was falling apart.

Johnny became life to me.

## -4-

He'd since gained a reputation at school, a reputation he didn't like. Guys flocked to him after the fight at Jess's party. He was the new Alpha Male, I guess.

He hated it.

But nobody ever screwed with him again. Guys knew now that he could fight and they also knew that people liked him and supported him just because of the person he was, so lots of guys in school "had his back." Eduardo and KC were, according to Johnny, just guys he'd never disrespected and so they'd helped him.

I imagine he had their back as well. All I know is he was somehow "connected." And he became connected because he always granted people the importance they deserved. "Uncool" kids were cool around him. He gave them the time of day.

You make a lot of friends that way.

But girls are different.

And Nicole was different.

Not only had her plan backfired, the "cool" guy that she had been dating—Mark—was now nothing more than a Woman Beater. She'd lost even _that_.

She didn't take it lightly.

If there was anyone who made it her sole goal and purpose in life to never let me forget just how _fucked up_ my life at home was, it was Nicole.

How she had the dirt she had was something I couldn't figure out.

But she had it. And she spread it.

And she made my life a misery.

"How's daddy dearest, still hustling?"

"Did daddy push you off the stairs, sweetie-pie?"

"There's an opening at Homefront Trailer Park. You guys moving in?"

I finally flipped.

She'd wanted me to lose it.

And I did.

It was a full-on catfight with nails and hair-pulling and chick punches and everything!

It went instantly viral on the internet.

I'd love to tell you that I won, but simply by me participating in it, I had already lost.

If I'd ever thought things couldn't get any worse, they just had.

## -5-

I started avoiding all common areas as much as I could.

I even felt a sense of empathy for my dad with his statement of "just wanting to feel good" and using booze to soothe his nerves.

I felt the same suddenly.

Johnny and I started avoiding the canteen, preferring to snuggle against a tree while I read a romance and he looked over some of the accounts for his dad's shipping company. He was really getting into that now, behaving like an "adult" and learning the executive and accounting side of the business.

I could almost sense Vivian and the girls' relief when I chose not to sit with them during recess anymore. I was _persona non grata_. They wouldn't turn me away, but I didn't want to make them uncomfortable by my presence.

I was depressed.

I was alone.

And, perhaps subconsciously, perhaps fully aware, I yearned suddenly more than ever for Johnny, for his touch, for the comfort of his breath on my skin.

Under this veil of sadness, after the night the suburban veneer of my perfect American life chipped and peeled, another spark was set aflame in me. An unexpected, uncalled-for, out-of-nowhere burning.

To say I was "horny as hell" would cheapen it. Because what I was feeling wasn't cheap. It wasn't cheap at all.

It was desperate.

It was human.

And it was beautiful.

It was a need as fundamental as that for food, water, and sleep.

What I was feeling was as urgent to me as the need to breathe.

It was an urge toward raw, atavistic survival.

Sitting under a tree at school, the sky gray and the branches still bare, I rubbed a finger down Johnny's chest, above his cashmere sweater. And I said, "I'm ready."

# CHAPTER THIRTEEN

## ~ Johnny and Cat ~  
-1-

If I'd made love to Johnny in any other time of my life, it would not have been this sweet. The need in me was a thirsty supplication for water, and his answer was maddening.

I shed tears the day he took my virginity.

I melted into an oblivion of joy when I discovered I'd also taken his.

## -2-

It was near Valentine's Day, six months before my eighteenth birthday. We took a hotel a few miles out; Johnny had a "friend" who got us in without having to show ID. We would only be using it for the afternoon even though we paid for the night. Johnny paid for it.

Easy music played over ceiling speakers as Johnny opened the door to the plush and cozy room. As I entered it, cool, nervous sweat broke out over my legs.

"I'm nervous," I said to him suddenly.

"Then we'll just sit here and watch TV." He pulled me close to him, ran his fingertips through my hair, just above my ears. When my pelvis touched his, my nervousness transmuted into a vague, inarticulate want; an urgency I couldn't express; an incoherent madness that responded only to the blind parting of my lips as my tongue sought his.

It wasn't long before the nervousness sublimated completely into a screaming, unspoken lust—just a delirious, covetous, craving _hunger_. For this man, this man I loved, who cared for me, who protected me, who was so good and kind and yet also so strong and powerful.

My want for him dizzied me.

Johnny's lips trickled gently down my neck, his hands down my sides. He pushed against me below and I could feel he was already ready.

My lips found his neck, and without thought, my tongue danced over it. His hands grabbed clumps of my dress and tugged it upwards.

_I want you. I want you. I want you. I want you_.

But I also wanted it to last. I wanted to hold myself back, wanted to fight this building pressure, a pressure so forceful that I was sure the lightest of winds against me would explode my body and make the very walls of this room crackle with fire.

And then Johnny had me on the couch. I kicked my shoes off and felt myself spreading while he kneeled below me. He yanked me by my legs toward him and drove his hands up my back. My legs were around him, and every now and then his chest touched me _there_ and I'd sizzle and wriggle to try and get him to touch me more.

He stood. "Not here," he said. He extended a hand to me and lifted me, walked me to the bed. There were red rose-petals all over it.

And then he had my dress off.

I was suddenly acutely self-aware. Still lusting, but wishing the lights were lower.

He took his sweater and shirt off, cupped the back of my head in his palm, and lost himself kissing me.

He moved over to a drawer, took a small towel out, and laid it on the bed. Then he eased me back, and I lay down on the bedspread, above red rose petals, the towel perfectly positioned under my butt.

He got on top of me. Clothed, he rubbed me below, making me yearn and burn hot.

The need in me was almost painful.

He took off my leggings.

He kissed my breasts, lingering, dancing around the light pink discs. Then down to my belly button.

When he moved even lower, he took a deep, hungry breath.

And then he made me moan.

## -3-

His tongue slid under the seam of my panties—"Oh, God"—while his fingers pulled them downward.

As the panties moved down, so did his lips.

I felt the wetness of him as he licked the trimmed hairs of my mound, down, down, down—

"Oh, dear _God_!

—and then he was inside me.

My back arched as Johnny lapped me gently, finally stinging me madly at my core.

I shivered violently. And _hissssssed_ with heat.

He did it again, just toying around, inside, then penetrating _deep_.

His hands went to my thighs and I lifted them. He pressed his open mouth harder against me until the warmth from his tongue and breath were too much to bear.

I rubbed.

I rocked.

I _ground_ myself against him.

"Oh, God. Oh, dear God. Oh, baby, I'm gonna...I'm gonna...I'm gonna—"

But I didn't.

When Johnny moved his lips away, my entire body trembled.

I wanted him, wanted him _so_ badly.

He kissed me on my lips, and I licked the sweetness off of his. My hand found his jeans and boxers, and he helped me get them off.

I grasped his manhood and _held_. Hotness radiated onto my palm, and then I pulled down, up. "Oh, Cat, stop."

"Don't call me _Cat_ if you want me to stop."

"But I always call you Cat."

"My point exactly."

I pulled down again, held him.

"Baby, please, you need to stop that!" He grinned, and I felt his shaft tremble.

He got up on his knees and grabbed a condom. He looked so beautiful. The area below the seam of his pants was a little lighter than the rest of him. I got suddenly jealous at how well he tanned, compared to my sun-sensitive skin. I took in all of him, the tight muscles at his waist, the defined line below it, the dark bush of curls around his shaft.

All nervousness of being naked around him disappeared. Right now, all I _wanted_ was to be naked with him. I wanted to be naked with him all the time.

He slid the condom on, and I widened instinctively. There was a moment of sudden tension when I thought he would simply _thrust_ into me.

But he didn't.

Johnny caressed my hair. The tip of his shaft pushed gently inside the folds below, and the feeling made my mind scream.

I widened more.

Johnny waited, kissing me, until I was ready.

And then I was.

My body relaxed.

Maybe I gave off some sign with my face, I don't know. But he pushed a little deeper into me.

"This might hurt," he said.

" _Might?_ "

"Yeah, might, I've, uhm, never done it...with a..."

"With a virgin? You're making me self conscious."

"Well, I heard...that it might hurt. Don't laugh at me but I, uhm, researched it."

I laughed at him. However, the laughter made my stomach move, which inadvertently pushed him into me a little further.

And the laughter stopped immediately.

"OK," I said. "Just go slow."

He did.

If it hurt, I don't remember it.

All I remember is the slow motion of him filling me.

All I remember is every muscle in my body surrendering to him.

All I remember...is when he was inside me.

And then forgetting all about pain...and rushing to help him finish.

I started moaning. "Oh, _dear_ _sweet_ _God_."

It was during my first orgasm that I felt a tinge of pain, a quick sharp _twang_ that was over quick.

He was deep, so deep, and I don't mean that in a tawdry way. It's just the way it was. The more we continued, the deeper he went.

When I burst, I rocked him vigorously. My body imploded and electric pleasure coursed through me.

Later, I would discover that Johnny had actually come the moment he'd entered me. He'd kept his expression cool. And I hadn't noticed.

But when I came a second time, so did he. And then I did notice.

Johnny's expression was exquisite.

## -4-

We made love a total of six times before we left the hotel room. And by that I mean, I climaxed six times, and so did Johnny. (No, seven.)

It's incredible what men are capable at that young and ripe age!

The fourth and fifth times lasted an _inordinately_ long time, and Johnny, although it was still pleasureful, had stopped being _quite_ as careful as in the first few times. Number six seemed to go on forever.

I was a little sensitive after that.

It would be a few days before Johnny would confess to me that he'd "done other stuff with other girls, but never sex."

When he told me, I put my hand on his leg, and I said, "Johnny, I _so_ love you."

## -5-

As a "celebration" of our union, Johnny had his entire right arm inked up with a river flowing toward a tree. His dad was cool with it. Patricio Abreu had some tats himself, old sailor-style ones—a faded anchor on his right forearm, some writing on his left shoulder.

"If I told you what it meant you'd think it's corny," Johnny told me.

"I won't. I promise."

He looked at the fresh tat, the edges of each line still rimmed red. "It's love." He looked up at me to see if I was laughing.

I wasn't.

"The river is love. The tree is us. The river flows to the tree. The tree grows." He said nothing else.

I didn't laugh.

I did the opposite.

# CHAPTER FOURTEEN

## ~ Love ~  
-1-

Your touch, our heat.

The lust, the beat

of our hearts in rhythm

as your hand

finds the land

of my pleasure.

You stroke, we meet.

I arch, and my feet

rise high

as your demand

seeks the warmth

of my treasure.

You roar, we soar.

I heave, you call

out my name

as your eyes

hunt my skin

at your leisure.

We stop. We breathe.

We touch. We leave

the worries behind us

as our minds

pray and hope...

...this is forever.

# CHAPTER FIFTEEN

## ~ Reparation ~  
-1-

Mom started working for Johnny's dad as a senior accountant. She hadn't done any accounting in years, but it's what she was good at. When Pat offered her the job, she told him that we didn't need charity. And he said, "Offering a skilled person a job is not charity, it's logic."

"The wage you're paying me is for someone with twenty years' experience. I haven't done any accounting since Cathy was born."

"And who manages the bills for the home? Who does the grocery shopping? Who's been putting money away for Cathy's college? Is that all not accounting? You have _more_ than twenty years' experience, and you have a college degree. What else could I want? Most importantly, I _trust_ you. I'd rather have trust than experience, Alice."

Mom blushed, then she took the job.

It meant we could keep the house.

Dad had been keeping up the mortgage payments since he'd moved out, but it was starting to get weird because, well, it was pretty obvious that they were gonna get a divorce one of these days. (I didn't understand why they hadn't yet. Divorces are supposed to be quick in America.) And now dad was paying for two places. Both he and mom didn't want to take me out of the school I was in, or disrupt my life any further by having us move out of where we were, but she wanted to stop being so dependent on him.

The position at Pat's place was the solution.

Three months into it, she took over the house payments completely.

She was happier, remarkably happier. She'd also stopped "sneaking out" for secret dates. Or, if she did, she'd gotten much better at it.

One day I told her, "Mom, y'know, if you wanna go out on dates, I'm cool with it. I know you were seeing someone when dad first moved out."

She went red—uncomfortably red. "I'm sorry you found out."

"Mom, please, I'm a grown-up!"

"Still, that was foolish of me."

"OK, fine, you're sorry. Now, forget the past. But right _now_ —if you wanna date someone, go ahead. Just, well, I don't wanna know who he is. But...I want you to be happy, is all."

"I am happy." She reached over the kitchen table and grabbed my hand.

"Mom, you're so soppy."

She smiled.

I hadn't seen dad since he got out of rehab. He called me and we chit-chatted and he told me what he was up to. He said that we should probably get some counseling to move past things, to try and bring us together again as a family. I wasn't so keen on that. I felt that the way to move on was simply to _move on_. Did I need to go to therapy with him because of his own problems?

After the call, I realized that what _I_ needed was to somehow come to trust him again. I needed to feel safe around him. I wanted to do that, but I didn't want to sit on someone's couch and have her tell me what's going on in my head when she hasn't spent the last seventeen years in my home. There's just something fundamentally wrong about that process.

I slept on it.

Dad called more often, and the more he called, the more that trust grew in me again.

He asked me about Johnny, and at first I was hesitant, but soon I started telling him little things about him. I avoided subjects that I thought might set him off. I knew dad had a button on Johnny not planning on going to college, instead planning to go straight into his father's business and be apprenticed to take over it someday. So I stayed away from that. Sex _never_ came up, and thankfully dad had the brains not to ask me about it! (Which probably meant he knew we were doing it.)

He never asked me if I would see him (dad), or if I wanted to go watch a movie with him or go ice skating or something. In some way I understood that it was _my_ step to take, that he was waiting for me bring it up first.

I wasn't ready for it.

I missed him. I missed having a father around.

But I also saw how well mom was doing. And the two facts conflicted in my mind.

I wasn't ready. And I didn't know when I would be ready.

A crappy situation, yes. But it was what it was.

And then in late May, he hit me with it: He called and said, "How would you like to go to Portugal for the summer?"

"I'm sorry—what?"

"Your mother would go with you. I'm still not keen on you going alone. But she and I have discussed it and...well... _if_ you're interested—"

"Of course I'm interested!"

"Good, then it's settled. We've gone over it with the Abreus. They're cool. Your mom will go with you. You will _not_ share a room with Johnny!"

"Dad, I'm not stupid!"

"I know you're not, kiddo."

"Wow. I'm... Wow, just... _wow_!"

Dad said nothing.

"Dad?"

"Yeah, honey."

"Should we meet up at Bryant Park for a coffee or something?"

He hesitated a second before answering. "That would be nice, baby." I think I heard him choke up.

I felt bad that it had taken me so long to ask him.

I felt good that I was going to see him again.

Some things just take time.

## -2-

The world disappeared during that summer.

The city of Cascais in South Portugal is heaven, simply heaven.

Johnny's parents owned a vacation apartment there, ocean-facing, and I'd go to sleep with the whispers of the sea crashing against the rocks a hundred yards away. They rented a second apartment for themselves on the same block. At night, mom and I would eat olives on the balcony and talk about nothing but _girl_ stuff! It was the first time my mom became a girlfriend of mine.

On other nights, I'd take a walk with Johnny to some of the local tiki bars or just sit on the beach and talk. Of course, we did more than that. Johnny knew all the spots we could hide and kiss with the rumble of water echoing in our ears. I didn't ask him how he knew these things, but he did.

After two weeks of sunbathing and forgetting all my problems, I casually said to mom, "I wish dad were here."

"You do?"

"Sorry, I didn't mean—"

"No, just answer me. _Do_ you?"

It took me a second to answer, because she seemed serious. "I—yeah, I mean, sure."

She pulled out her phone, and she called him.

Dad had dinner with us that evening.

He'd been staying in the center of Lisbon, ready to join us if I brought it up. He didn't want to impose, didn't want to "ruin my vacation."

I sat next to him that night. He looked good, real good.

At one point, dad and I went outside to talk. Red light spilled out from a tiki bar across the street. The air was hot and muggy, even at ten PM.

"You're my dad," I told him, the warm ocean wind singing in my ears. "How could you ruin my vacation?"

"I _wasn't_ your dad. Not for a while. What I did—the right to be a father does not come only because you provided the seed to someone's birth. I didn't realize that. It's a title that's _earned_. And I lost that title the day I struck you. I lost the title of husband the day I struck your mother. It wasn't my place to impose on your vacation. I have to make good for what I did. And when I've made good, I hope to have earned that title of 'dad' again for you. I needed to fix things with you, princess. I'm still fixing them. I'll be fixing them for the rest of my life. "

"You _are_ my dad. You'll never stop being that."

He swallowed hard. "OK," he said. He turned me so we were facing the ocean, put his arm around me and squeezed. "OK."

## -3-

Dad continued to stay in the center of Lisbon, which is about an hour away from Cascais. He was serious about taking it a step at a time and "earning back his title" and so refused to stay in Cascais when I suggested it.

But we spent plenty of time together, and sometimes he and I would take a walk on the beach promenade, leaning out over the railings that face the ocean.

He told me that he didn't want me to get the wrong idea. Chances were that he and mom wouldn't get back together. They'd delayed the divorce for so long to see if there was any hope. But they simply hadn't worked out. And they hadn't worked out because of their own errors, but the one thing they both agreed on, was that it was important I know that they both loved me, and that they were there for me.

I must confess, the deep conversations I was having with both my parents made me feel much closer to them than when they'd been together. So maybe they were onto something here. Because I felt closer to them than ever before.

We toured Lisbon, actual Lisbon! We ate _pasteis de nata_ at Belém and walked the cobblestoned hills of the center of town.

For my birthday in August, the very first birthday Johnny and I would spend together, we went to a _tasca_ , which is pretty much a hole in the wall in some dingy part of town where all they offer to eat are _petiscos_ (snacks), a limited selection of red wine, and about three different types of beer.

And then, at eleven PM, when the place is crowded with both young and old, no seating space left, and men are lighting up cigarettes in the back—the singing begins.

_Fado_ , the music of melancholy, of love, of sadness, of fate and what it does to you; the music of the poor, the lost loves, the lonely, the passionate, the romantic, the hungry, the tired. The music of Portugal, sung by opera-esque voices that tumble and roll down the dirty streets, bringing hope. And tears.

Dad held mom.

Johnny held me.

Pat wiped a tear from his eye.

And people sang, open-mic style—girls, men, women, round and small, large and gangly, teens and adults, rocking the rafters and walls with voices so powerful that they seemed to transport you to another heaven.

A man played _guitarradas_ on the traditional twelve-string guitar, his fingers smoking while a cigarette dangled from his lips and his flat cap peaked over the crags of his aged skin. People cheered. A poet got up and recited a poem and the house roared with praise at the end. (I didn't understand the poem, but I felt it.)

Out of respect for my dad, none of us drank, until dad put up a fuss and said it was fine. He'd changed, he said. So then we did drink: red wine, always red wine, but not enough to get drunk. No one in the entire _tasca_ was drunk, it seemed.

There were pictures of famous singers on the walls, people who'd started their careers at this little restaurant.

It was four AM before we left for home.

We caught the train, and we sang in there as well.

## -4-

Dad stayed in touch when we got back home to the states. He'd come by sometimes to fix something in the house but wouldn't stay long. He and Pat started watching sports together again.

Dad was sober. Completely sober.

His skin looked good, his eyes looked bright.

A week before Christmas, he told me he was seeing someone, and he wanted to know how I felt about that. I was a little taken aback. It felt, for a second, like something would _end_ , like what we had now—whatever it was—would end if he started dating. But dad spotted my concern and assured me nothing would change, we'd still be a family. He just wanted me to know because, well, "You're an adult now, Catherine."

We had the happiest Christmas I can remember. It was at the Abreus' house. While I was there, I couldn't help recalling the nightmare of the year before. A lot had changed. A lot.

A tree sparkled with Christmas lights inside, Daniela shouted wildly when she unwrapped a new smartphone, and then spent the rest of the night playing with it, giving live commentary to everyone about what apps she was downloading. Mom got me a beautiful silver chain. I got Johnny a scrapbook of photos I'd been putting together of me and him since we were kids. It took me _months_ to make it!

"And me?" I asked him. "What did you get _me_?"

He said nothing, played it cool.

At the end of the night, no gifts left to unwrap, I was still without Johnny's gift. _Or_ my dad's, I realized. But I let it slide. Dad had been through a lot, and having him here, sober and happy, was cool enough for me.

"So, folks, I think I better head on home," dad said, getting up.

He looked at me in a way that made me know something was up. Johnny got up as well, and he was grinning.

I played along.

"Come on, Cathy." My dad held his hand out. "Help your old man out."

Johnny stood back, hiding a smirk.

"What are you guys up to?" I said. My heart raced with excitement. Johnny took a sip of wine.

When I opened the door and saw the car standing outside in the snow with a huge red ribbon on it, I went _absolutely_...ballistic.

## -5-

I screamed, actually _screamed_. I jumped up and down on the snow, howled, covered my mouth and just... _gawped_.

Some lights went on in the street, and a little girl came out with a teddy, running toward my car. "Look, look, daddy! Santa already came!" she yelled.

I think a lot of parents were gonna be pretty pissed off at how early they'd have to unwrap gifts this year!

The whole family was outside the door, looking at me. Daniela, almost _twelve_ now, was outside the passenger window, looking in. "Wow. Wicked!" she said. "Can I also have one?" She looked at her dad with eyes so innocent they could melt lead.

I ran to my dad and almost knocked him over when I jumped on him to hug him. "Cat—Cathy! You're not... _six_ anymore!"

I got off him and slapped his chest. "Hey, are you saying I'm fat!"

I turned to Johnny. "You knew about this, didn't you?"

Dad, from behind me: "He helped me build it."

Build it?

Johnny, on cue, pulled out a set of keys with a heart keyring on it.

The keys dangled in the air, waiting for me to grab them.

"You guys... _built_...this?"

"It took us a while." Dad looked at Pat.

Pat nodded. "Hey, your dad's a cheapskate, what can I say? We got it for nothing, and then put it together ourselves, all three of us."

I hugged Johnny on impulse, and also kissed him passionately on impulse. I mean— _passionately_!

"OK, OK, honey! I'm still your father, don't forget that!" dad said.

I was instantly embarrassed.

I went to the car, a red, glistening, monster-looking first generation _Camaro_ with two white stripes down the middle. It was a real _boy's_ car to be honest.

But it was also my car.

_Wicked!_ as Johnny's sister had said.

"We wanted to airbrush a cat on the side of the door," Johnny said. "My idea. But your dad figured you wouldn't like that."

"My dad was right!"

I started it up, and went nuts inside when I heard the roar of the engine.

I completely lost my mind when I put on the radio.

It was a _real_ boy's car!

The entire chassis rocked with the beat.

"OK, babe," my dad said, "they're gonna call the cops if you don't put that down."

I didn't care.

I put it louder.

## -6-

In the end, it wasn't the booze or the drugs or some unpaid addiction debt that would finally kill my father.

It was that car.

The semi-truck came out of nowhere.

# CHAPTER SIXTEEN

## ~ Change ~  
-1-

I was back on track in my senior year.

Nicole was still a bitch, so nothing much had changed there. Mark Ryleigh had disappeared. I think the fact that he'd hit a girl so badly had played roughly on his parents' popularity at the country club. They'd even moved out of the 'burbs. Nicole was quiet about it all. Her bitchiness, however, had lowered to a kind of silent resentment for me and everything I did. But she didn't dare come out and take punches at me. Mark's lack of popularity had rubbed off on her as well.

She was dating some other guy now—big, buff, but smart enough to not cause shit with Johnny.

It was only when stuff at home had started cooling off that I really noticed how it had been affecting my schoolwork before. I'd hated to use it as an excuse, preferring to say that I was simply not interested in math or physics. But when things chilled out at home, my grades improved.

I was also more effusive, hanging out with Viv and Lee and even other girls. I even spent time with them on weekends and, God forbid, actually _hung out at the mall_!

In my final year of school, when my parents had officially recognized me as an _adult_ , I was finally becoming a normal _teenager_. Go figure.

And then it all changed.

It all changed out of nowhere.

It all came crashing down.

And dad died.

## -2-

It was midwinter recess. Dad and I had decided to spend some alone-time out of state. My mom had initially been worried, what with his history and all, but I told her that if people can't be forgiven, how can they ever hope to change?

I understood her concern, but dad was different now. He really was. I could feel it. It's bullshit that people can't change. They can, and when they do, you need to give them a second chance.

The plan was to do the New England Road Trip Route, Boston up to Freeport, to check out some of the quaint towns, look at the Eastern Seaboard, talk, be father and daughter, like the old days.

We made it as far as Connecticut.

## -3-

Life can change. So quickly, so suddenly. One day you're driving down the freeway, your face lit up by yellow sodium lamps, music blaring through the radio, and you're singing, and the guy next to you is singing, and he turns to look at you, just for a second, a moment, that final smile lasting forever in your mind afterwards—

And then you're upside down, and there are screams and moans, a shattered windshield, spinning wheels, the _glug-glug-glug_ of falling gas, and the man you love is next you.

And he's not moving.

## -4-

I looked up ( _down?_ ) at dad, my seatbelt holding me in mid-air, legs dangling.

And I knew.

I knew.

Rivers of red streamed down his face. His left eye was closed, the other one... _Oh, God!_

His mouth hung open, his arms limp by his side.

Screams filled the cab. My screams.

I was stuck, fighting with the seatbelt which wouldn't come loose. Struggling. Pulling. _Howling!_

"DADDY, NO, DADDY! NO, DADDY. SAY SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING!"

A hand grabbed mine. _"Miss, calm down, calm down!_ "

"My father, you have to help my father! Help my father!"

"Ma'am, I'm gonna try get you out."

"HELP HIM! HELP HIM!"

"Ma'am, we have to get you out, gas is pouring from the—"

"GET MY GODDAMN FATHER OUT THIS CAR!"

I kicked. I threw a tantrum. I hit the ceiling with my fists.

But I knew.

## -5-

Dad had died instantly; a shard of torn metal deep in his right eye and into his brain.

I escaped with a limp, hard bruises, whiplash, a concussion.

The driver of the semi had been drunk.

He survived.

Not a scratch.

Not a— _goddamn_ — _fucking_ —scratch.

# CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

## ~ Alone ~  
-1-

You can't describe the sorrow a person goes through with something like that. You just can't.

It was pain, it was actual _pain_ that I felt for days, weeks. Longer. And after the pain, came the deadness, the feeling of nothingness, of wood, of death in your mind, your cells; the idea that there is nothing worth living for, breathing for, fighting for, striving for.

After school one day, Nicole Ferman approached me while I was at my locker. It was late, the hallway empty. Johnny was waiting for me outside.

I closed my locker, and Nicole's face was there. I was so dulled by life that I hadn't even seen her. I was so trampled by life that I couldn't even hate her.

But there was no need to.

I waited, not looking at her, not really looking at anything. If she had something to say, she should say it.

She didn't say anything.

She stretched a red fingernailed hand onto my shoulder, and pulled me toward her. And she hugged me tightly.

Her skin was so warm, her grip so gentle, that I wept on her shoulder for ten minutes or more. The gasps were deathly in the echoing hallway. A teacher stepped out, I noticed vaguely, and then stepped back inside his classroom.

Nicole kept on holding me, her body warm against mine. I felt her shudder as well, weeping with me. I didn't understand it, but I didn't need to. It felt right.

I heard footsteps behind me, perhaps Johnny's, and then the footsteps receded. I wept, and wept, and wept, and wept.

I wept for another ten minutes easily.

"Wanna get a drink?" she asked me when I was finally done.

I nodded.

We went to Starbucks.

## -2-

"I, uhm, I'm sorry—"

I put my hand up to her to stop her. Now wasn't the time. And it wasn't important anyway. None of it was important. It had all changed. Everything had changed.

"My mom," Nicole continued. "She passed when I was...five. My dad, well, he never took it too well. He, uhm, did some things..." She looked away, her eyes glazing with incipient grief. She stopped herself. "Well, he wasn't very 'father-like' if you know what I mean. I...I'm... I live with my godparents. My father was imprisoned when I was twelve. They're good to me, my godparents, they make good money. They... _provide_...for me. I guess that's all one could ask for."

She turned her gaze back to mine. The deep auburn of her eyes looked almost red. The color shone in harmony to her red hair and the small freckles she had on her milky skin.

She extended her hand over mine.

"Once a month or so they have these parties... They're...well, a few people come over, and they give me a bunch of cash and tell me I should go out and 'have fun' and sleep over at a friend's house if I want to. One night I didn't want to. I just wanted to be home, sleep. I was fourteen then. So I took the cash, went out, then snuck back in the house. When I got there, my godmother was screwing some guy in my bedroom. It was a full-on orgy or a swinging party or something. She didn't see me. No one saw me. It was...well...

"I guess what I'm trying to say is...I was lashing out at you, y'know. I was accusing you of being white trash when..." She gestured at herself, tried to smile but only managed to water up her eyes and shiver. "Well, here I am! Welcome to the apotheosis of American White Trash!"

She coughed.

I squeezed her hand. "Like I said, you don't need to apologize."

"No, actually I do. I really do!" She ran a tired hand through her hair. "My dad... I visit him. Despite what he did to me...I visit him. Not often, but I do. And he tells me sorry and that he'll never do any of it again, and I don't believe him, not really. But with him behind that Plexiglass I can allow myself to believe him because so long as he's there he _won't_ do that shit again.

"So I pretend to believe him.

"But you know what? If he...died. Well...I wouldn't be able to handle that. I just wouldn't. The prick's still my dad. And he _is_ a prick! But...I love him, I guess. Despite all his shit, I still love that..." She bit her lip, fought the torrent down. "Despite all his crap...I still love that... _motherfucker_!

"What I did to you, it was beyond cruel. You were an outlet. All I can say is I took no pleasure from it, if it's any consolation. I _wanted_ to take pleasure from it, but I didn't. No matter the things I said, none of them made me feel any better about my own... _situation_. Don't you love that word— _situation_? And when I heard about...the accident... Well, I just figured enough was enough. I'm not trying to say I can be a shoulder for you to cry on. All I'm trying to say is... _I understand_. And... Well, that's all, really. I do understand. And I'm sorry, and I understand. I understand more than you can imagine. And, again, even though you told me not to—but I really am so very, _very, VERY_ , _fucking_ sorry to you, Cat, for all the hurt I caused..."

She couldn't finish.

She wept quietly, and the tears were oddly comforting to me. Grief was all I could bear at the moment. I couldn't bear any other emotion. I couldn't bear love, I couldn't bear support, I couldn't bear smiling, "being strong," "moving on."

I couldn't bear any of these things.

I needed someone to weep with. Someone to hurt with.

I needed someone, for the first time in my life, who was not like Johnny.

The first signs of trouble had started for me and him on that very night.

It wasn't him, it was me—the classic line. And yet, in this case, it was true.

I couldn't love, and I couldn't be loved.

Johnny is a positive-thinking guy, a go-getter, a get-up-after-falling, life-won't-get-you-down kind of guy.

I could only weep.

Nicole Ferman and I might end up sharing some type of bond because of this, I thought. That would also be tough on me and Johnny. But everything was tough on us right now. I needed something to get me through. And for the first time in my life, Johnny wasn't it. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how many times he held me and told me it would be OK, the pain never went away.

But this... _this_ conversation with a girl I'd always hated, and who had always hated me (or so I thought)... This sharing of a common grief—this was helping.

For the first time since I'd started dating him, Johnny took second place. I couldn't do anything to change it.

I was just trying to survive.

I was just trying to get through each day.

I was just trying to get through each day without killing myself.

Literally.

Nicole gave me something to hold on to when I was just about ready to let go.

Maybe I did the same for her.

## -3-

"Next time your godparents have a 'party,'" I said, "come over to my place. We'll put on soppy romances and chew popcorn and chips and other carbs."

"What about your other girlfriends?"

My other girlfriends had given me a hug at school and then felt uncomfortable at my grief. I could sense they'd wanted to talk about guys and movies and music, but that they'd kept quiet in some sort of show of solidarity or support for my situation. They weren't bad people, they just hadn't suffered enough yet and so couldn't appreciate what it's like.

"Viv and I have never watched a soppy romance together," I said.

Nicole understood.

She looked beautiful when she wept, I realized. All the bullshit disappeared and the real person came out. The facade disappeared.

Her beauty was increased by the fact that she had a very slightly skew nose, the flaw in the diamond which nevertheless adds to its allure.

I liked her skew nose. I liked her eyes.

I realized I liked Nicole.

She seemed sincere, honest, human right now.

She also seemed vulnerable.

She seemed exactly like I felt.

## -4-

"So, how did you get all that dirt on me over the years?" I asked her.

"Gossip."

"Yeah, but from where?"

"My godmother knows some people on your street. They share country clubs or men or vibrators—I don't know. Anyway, she never passes up an opportunity to tell me anything and everything about the lives of every person on that street. I might be a bitch—but my godmother is the devil incarnate."

"That sounds like something out of a bad fairytale."

"Yeah, a modernized version that plays on HBO."

Yip, I was gonna like this chick.

## -5-

Johnny also reminded me too much of my father. He reminded me of how they'd built that deathly _Camaro_ together, of the first day we met when my dad had been ready to build that snowman with me on the other side of the street.

When I saw Johnny, I saw my dad telling us _"No sex!_ " in the dining room. I saw him sitting with us at the _tasca_ , pretending he knew how to sing _fado_ , chewing on a piece of _chouriço_ sausage from an earthen plate.

When I saw Johnny, I saw me and dad sitting on the porch drinking root beer, talking about Johnny; I saw dad watching soccer at Pat's place. Worst of all, I saw my dad dangling from his seatbelt on the I-95.

And I heard the screams.

I couldn't be around Johnny. And I'd hardly been around him for two months.

The first month he'd been accepting of it. He'd left me alone with my thoughts because he figured that's what I'd needed to get me through.

The second month, it grew awkward. I avoided him, and I started hanging out with Nicole a lot after school. When she was at my place, he understandably didn't come over.

When Johnny _did_ come over, we hardly kissed. I couldn't bring myself to do it. A great chasm had been gorged in the space between us, and I didn't know how to bridge the gap. Johnny had done nothing wrong. I had done nothing wrong.

But I was lost, swimming, unable to bring myself to shore.

And then we couldn't pretend anymore.

He came over.

"We need to talk," he said.

I was on my bed, knees pulled up to my chest and my arms around my legs. College applications bestrewed my bed. Nicole and I had been looking over them all afternoon, trying to figure out a college we could go to together.

The anger which radiated from him didn't make me feel any better. I couldn't deal with anger lately. I couldn't deal with anything heavy.

"Do you love me," he said. Not a question.

"Of course I do." My voice sounded dead. I knew, logically, that I loved him. But I'd stopped feeling love for anything for over two months.

He stayed silent for a second. "I don't know what to do about this, Cat. I..." He ran a hand through his hair. "You're... I _know_ you've gone through something rough, and...maybe you're afraid to get close to someone or something, but I need to know where we stand, I need...I need to know we're OK."

_So do I_.

When I didn't answer, he continued. "And now..." He gestured to the bed. "This thing with _Nicole_ of all people! What's up with you? I don't get it. It's like you're this whole other person now and I don't even know you!"

He sat on my bed. "Do you need more time? Is that it? I'll give you time. I'll give you all the time you need. But...I just need to know that it won't be for nothing. I need to know that in a month, six months, a _year_ , you won't break up with me, Cat. I _need_ to know that!"

I forced myself to answer. "I...I'm just taking it a day at a time, Johnny." It was the truth.

"Do you love me? At least answer me that. Do you?"

"I do." In some part of my mind, I did.

Silence.

"Good," he said. "Good."

He moved to hold my hand.

But as soon as he touched me, two things happened: I heard the moan of bending metal and the smash of glass; and I flinched.

Johnny of course only noticed the flinch.

I didn't try and explain it to him. My explanations had started to sound like lame excuses a long time since.

"I don't get it," he whispered. "I just don't get it."

I stood, crossed my arms, leaned against the window and looked out. That my eyes were wet was nothing new. They were often wet these days. "It's not you," I said lamely. "I just..." I closed my eyes.

Images came rushing back, just as they always did when Johnny was around. The blood, the red, the howls, the sirens.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. They'll go away. Just breathe...

I heard Johnny stand. I wanted to turn and stop him, I wanted to give him the assurance he needed—but I just couldn't speak!

I heard him take a step toward the door. By now all my glands under my jaw were singing.

He was going...

I can't let him go. I can't...

But I did.

He shut the door.

And I was alone.

# CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

## ~ Hidden ~  
-1-

Another month rolled by, another month of limbo.

I waited for Johnny at Our Hill.

The grief had partially subsided for me, but not completely. There were moments when it struck hard, but at least the spans of sanity in between were now longer. And in those spans, I could think.

And I had thought enough to know that Johnny and I _must_ try again—if he would still have me.

I saw him approaching from some distance away.

He was in brown ankle-high boots, suede, tight jeans. His shirt bulged from his muscles.

He sat down next to me, looked ahead. "You look different," I said to him.

"You've seen me every day."

No, I haven't.

"How you doing?" I asked.

"I'm fine."

Wind brushed across my hair. "I—I'm sorry," I said. "I know I put you through a lot."

His jaw worked up and down. It seemed to take a lot of strength for him to say the next thing. "You have...nothing...to be sorry about."

I shook my head, disappointed. "Don't forgive me, Jay. Don't make excuses for me. I pushed you away—"

"You went through the unspeakable."

"Yeah."

"Is it...getting better?" he asked, hopeful.

I looked down at the brush-covered hill, the stream below. "Yeah, I...I think it is. I get sad sometimes. Like now, I'm sad that you asked. But the tears are less. I have more control over them."

"Good. Good."

He played with some twigs, threw one away. "So, what now?"

I swallowed hard, preparing myself for the next question. "You...seeing anyone?"

The look he gave me cut deep. He was incensed.

"OK," I said, not needing him to answer.

"Why would I?"

I shrugged. "We grew apart, further apart than I thought we ever could. Everything changed, Jay. Everything. It's like I was a little girl, and now... I grew up. The magic died. And what you and I had...it was magic."

He put his hand on my knee. The touch distracted me.

"Are you?" he asked.

"Am I what?"

"Seeing someone."

I almost choked, but I guess he had a right to ask. "No, of course not!"

He shrugged. "It wasn't so obvious. You found a college yet?"

I shook my head. "We've applied to a few. The whole prospect of studying doesn't do it for me right now. I feel...like I need air. Like I need a break. But dad would have wanted me to go to college."

"What do _you_ want?"

_To be happy._ "A break. I just want...a _break_ from all of this." His hand tightened on my knee, and the thrill of it went right through me.

I grabbed it.

"So, Nicole. Wow. How's that working out for you?"

I understood his sarcasm, so I tried to be patient. "I think she also grew up. We both did. Turns out we...have a lot in common."

"OK?"

"I'm serious. She's a good chick. She... Well, it doesn't matter. _You_ don't have to be friends with her."

"But I do. If you and I are dating... _Are_ we dating?"

"I'm sorry I pushed you away so much."

"So am I. I wish you had let me be there for you. Isn't that what couples do for each other?"

I didn't answer.

His hand was warm, so warm.

I'd missed his grip, I realized.

And then two things happened suddenly at once:

I squeezed his hand harder.

And at the same time, his lips— _out of nowhere!_ —collided mercilessly against mine.

The kiss was bruising.

I hadn't expected this.

But now that he was on me, my desire for him was undeniable.

It was a breath of fresh air.

And then the lust filled me like a waterfall.

Caution went to the wind.

My mind cleared.

And I lost myself in him.

## -2-

In that moment, there was no thinking.

All I knew is that I ached, actually ached, for him. My throat hurt and was dry, my breathing rapid, my hands clammy.

My body shivered as his hands hunted my skin.

I didn't want to be made love to or held or warmed. I was beyond the veneer of banking, business, movies, TV, music, internet, all of it. This was primal, this was raw.

I took my tank off, threw it on the ground.

Johnny's eyes lusted over the swell of my breasts. He looked around nervously, but we both knew this spot was private.

I fought with his shirt, his belt buckle.

His hand grappled with my bra.

And our lips fought, struggled, slammed desperately.

"I'm sorry, Cat. I know you wanted to talk but..."

The sound of my name turned me to jelly.

"Don't talk," I begged. "Please, don't talk."

_Already I'm forgetting. Already the drug is going to my mind. Already I'm thinking only of him and me, and not of anything else_.

I grabbed his shoulders and lifted, bringing us to our feet. Warm wind swept across my exposed breasts. Johnny's eyes lingered on them. Mine lingered on the masterpiece inked on his right arm.

I stepped back, pulling him to me, and stopped against the rough bark of a tree.

The ache was mad in me, bursting.

We looked at each other for a long moment, all the world stopping, our chests heaving.

It was as if we were letting go of the last vestiges of civilized thought, of rational understanding.

I didn't want rational. I didn't want civilized.

"I want you," I said.

And then he took me.

I fought his zipper and got it open. My hand felt his hardness and I groaned.

He ripped my own zipper apart and stuck his hand down my center.

My moan traveled a mile.

I spread my legs, feeling his fingers dance and play, and then—

" _Oh, God"_

—out of nowhere, he _thrust_ into me.

"Oh, yes, Johnny. Oh, fuck...fuck...oh, God."

He plied me and I rocked over his hand, hearing my sounds of wetness as his bicep bulged and burst.

I pushed him back abruptly. Turned.

And I bent over.

_I want reality. Hard, simple reality. People fuck. And people live. And people_ die! _Beyond that, I can't think of anything else right now. I can't think of happiness, or love, or joy, or peace or any of these abstract things. I can only think of this._

Maybe tomorrow...

Maybe tomorrow, I'll think of love.

"I don't have a condom, Cat."

Routine had kept me on the pill. Pure, robotic routine. Like going to school or sleeping or breathing.

I was sick of routine.

I didn't answer him. I just shimmied my butt back and maneuvered my jeans down to just above my knees.

And I waited.

His fingers curled inside the seam of my red underwear.

And he pulled down.

## -3-

His right hand caressed the cheek of my butt. He slid it lower, and spread me with his fingers.

The sound I made was something between a moan and a whimper.

In my mind, I fought the pictures. They kept slamming their way into my vision—the red, the smash, the crash—

"Johnny, fuck me, baby. Don't make me wait. _Please_ don't make me wait!"

I looked at the bark of the tree, pressed roughly against it with my palms as I lowered my back and exposed myself to the man I...

What? _Love? Want? Need?_

Need. That was it. And there was nothing else.

It was no time to be moralistic.

Johnny's hands curled around my upper thighs, pulled me back.

His own jeans dropped abruptly. Then his shorts.

And then—

My insanity and wild desire had spread to him. The rabid want had poisoned his own mind as well so that he was thinking now like I was thinking—raw and unholy; just lustful want.

He _pulled_ me from the tree so that my back touched his chest!

His hands kneaded my breasts while his tongue tried to reach mine.

His manhood teased me from behind.

The moan I made came out as a plea.

He kept kissing me, rubbing against me as his hands had their way with my skin.

But I couldn't wait.

I bent again, and braced myself with my hands against the tree for the second time.

There was no warning.

He parted my lips, grabbed himself...and then he was in.

My call was low, demanding. My mind empty.

There was no time, now world.

There was nothing.

Nothing at all.

Except Johnny.

Inside me.

Pumping.

His need was furious, evinced by how deep he thrust, how low he groaned.

As he approached climax, he sped up. The _slapping_ of his pelvis against my butt was the tempo of a savage rain dance. I went taut as a halyard, every muscle. I was ready to burst, ready to cry into flames and come crashing down.

"Wait," I begged.

He kept going, caught in the rush.

"Wait, baby, wait," I hushed.

He slowed, just slightly, but I felt him quiver inside me. "Oh, God, Cat, I'm so close... I... I love you, Cat. I've never stopped loving you!"

Our voices were whispers. "I love you, too, baby. I love you too!" And in that moment, I did. "Just..." He started to pull out, no doubt misunderstanding me. "No, no!" I held him inside me. "That's not what I mean. Stay in me. Just...wait. I want it to last, baby. I need this. I...I've needed you, Johnny. For so long. I just didn't... I was..." He rocked into me, slowly, and I forgot my words. They were replaced by moans and hums and a wordless murmur. I felt my lips move but nothing came out.

With my right hand, I found myself and rubbed.

"Oh, God," I said, close now. "Oh..."

I rubbed harder.

Johnny felt me tighten, and thrust even deeper.

"Oh, God. Oh, God. _Oh, God!_ " I rubbed furiously, madly, just trying to get it ready to—

And then it was there.

Johnny felt it as well.

"Oh, dear God!"

And we detonated.

## -4-

Our relationship became predominantly sexual. We hung out again, we went to movies, we listened to music, sure.

But we mainly had sex.

We had a lot of sex.

And when we had nothing to talk about, we had more sex.

Neither of us wanted to admit that there was maybe something wrong with this. Not with the sex as such, but with the fact that it seemed to be the only thing we had left between us.

The chasm which life had wrought had not yet been crossed, merely hidden.

Until one of us took a step over that non-existent bridge.

And the fall was catastrophic.

# CHAPTER NINETEEN

## ~ Goodbye ~  
-1-

As I slowly, _slowly_ , pulled out of my own funk, I began to notice my mother's one. I wish I could say I'd been there for her initially, but I hadn't been. Thankfully, Iliana was.

Almost five months had gone by since my father's death. School was over. I graduated with mediocre grades, but I had some good reference letters from teachers for when I was ready to apply for college.

I was gonna wait a year. Mom was cool with that.

Mom seemed to have ended the relationship with her mystery man some time ago. Probably around the same time that Johnny and I had started to drift.

I could understand it. Sometimes you're too far into yourself to think of love.

Five months, summertime. Johnny was on his way to Portugal in a week.

I wish I could tell you that the passion got us through. But it didn't.

In the end, it was our friendship that got us through.

It was our deep, loving friendship that allowed us to be there at least physically for each other.

We both knew it. Neither of us wanted to confess to it.

Until it was time for him to leave.

Johnny came by, a glower on his face.

"Where do we stand, Cat? Just be honest with me. _Where?_ " It was dejá vu. But I owed him more this time.

I looked up at him from my bed, played with my cuticles, and then I forced the words out. "You're the best friend I've ever had, Johnny. And I love you with all my heart..."

"Just not _that way_ ," he finished.

"It's not...quite like that, babe. It's... I just... I don't know what happened. You and I _fuck_ , and it seems that's all we do. Don't you feel the same?"

His eyes told me he did.

"No magic?" he said.

The words sent a sudden sharp pain through my heart. _No magic. Right._

I nodded.

"It's like we're fifteen again," he said. "Only now _you're_ the one running off with Nicole Ferman." Nicole and I had planned a road trip with my mom for the summer. Just us three girls.

His statement brought a tear to my eye. What was I supposed to say? The magic _was_ gone.

The sex was beautiful, amazing, incredible, _cosmic_ —but it was all we had.

And there was nothing else to it.

He took a long sudden stride to my bed, pressed his hands against my cheeks, bent down and kissed me on the forehead. "I hate you, you know that?" he said softly. "I _so_ hate you. But I also love you. I'll _always_ love you. Just tell me this—is there a future in this? A _romantic_ future?"

I knew the answer. But I couldn't say it. "It's been five months, Johnny," I hinted.

He pulled me up off the bed and lifted my chin so I was looking up at him. "So the answer is...?"

I waited a second, lost in the passion of his eyes. There was torture in those eyes. I couldn't torture them anymore.

They were eyes I loved, just "not that way." Not right now.

And I didn't know why.

My vision blurred as the answer to his question came to me, blindingly clear.

I shook my head.

He said nothing, but I noticed his eyes also watered.

We hugged, and we shuddered together as the realization of the truth of it coursed through us.

Five months. And now there was no more denying it.

"I couldn't have made it through this without you," I told him eventually.

"So I was a good lay?"

I laughed, still crying. "Yeah, you were."

"You don't wanna try?" he asked. "I mean...I'll wait. I promise you, I'll wait longer. Maybe something changes."

I pulled back. Again, his eyes—agony this time. This had to end. It had to. I couldn't do this to him. I couldn't. I didn't know where my life was going, but romance had no part in it. Not now. _Ever?_ I didn't know. I just didn't know.

I needed to find myself. I needed to get lost on the road and forget everything.

I needed to _disappear_ , and to find happiness in _me_ again. Maybe then I could find happiness in someone else.

I couldn't make him wait a year, five years, _ten_ years and then let him down.

"Tell you what," I said, rubbing the tattoo on his arm. "I won't date anyone else until you do. But if you find someone where there is 'magic,' just..." My bottom lip trembled madly. "Just... _go for it_...OK?" I couldn't see him my eyes were so wet. "Don't wait for me, Johnny."

"I will."

"No! Don't! It's been five months, baby! I've... Five months. And I still can't promise you—"

"I'll wait."

"But you don't _have_ to, OK? Please. If you meet someone—"

"I won't."

I shook my head, buried it in his chest. "But if you do..."

The incomplete statement lingered in the air.

Johnny found someone in Portugal.

He never came back.

# EPILOGUE

## ~ Childhood ~  
-1-

At eighteen, I discovered that I had a loving mother, a new best friend, and that I could survive the worst.

At eighteen, I was on the road to discovering myself.

Nicole and mom and I took our road trip that summer—and it stretched out into almost an entire year. We spent a total of eight months on the road, Thelma and Louise style, only it was three of us, not two.

Mom carried the six-shot that had once belonged to dad. It made me nervous that she was carrying a gun, but it made me feel safer when we had to stop at a motel in the middle of nowhere.

The time was wild. We did Route 66; the Blue Ridge Parkway from Virginia to North Carolina; Going-to-the-Sun Road in Montana; "The Kanc" in New Hampshire during the fall, red trees lining the road for twenty-six miles; Highway 12; Pacific Coast in Cali—we did it _all_.

Mom was given time off by Pat, as much time as she needed. Dad left us some money behind as well, quite a bit actually, and mom told me that "he would want us to enjoy ourselves."

Nicole, of course, didn't have any trouble getting cash from her godparents. It was sad to realize that some people were willing to give money away so freely when love is really what is needed. Nicole never said as much, but I knew it hurt her.

It's cool. I had her back, and she had mine.

It just goes to show that what happens in High School rarely has any bearing on how your life will turn out.

Nicole had a new family now. And she and I grew closer in a way I would never have imagined possible. She became my sister in a way.

Johnny and I hardly texted while he was away.

It hurt too much to text him, and I didn't want to confuse him or even myself. Our friendship was more important than anything else. I needed to get a rein on my emotions, and just go through the grief or sadness incumbent upon "losing him." I knew we'd still be friends when he got back from his summer vacation, so why confuse it all with romance?

Besides, there's that old adage about letting a bird go and seeing if it comes back to you...

I wanted to see if he really was mine.

I had no idea yet that he wouldn't come back.

It was on the road that I came to realize he wasn't returning. Summer was on its way out, our road trip was coming to an end, and I texted Johnny's U.S. number just to say hi. He never texted back. After I texted a few more times and finally called, I asked mom to check if the Abreus were back yet.

They were.

And then Pat told her.

"Johnny's not coming back, Alice. He...he met someone there. He'll be staying there for a while."

Mom hesitated to tell me.

When she finally did, it felt like a hammer to my stomach.

I didn't cry, because I'd cried all I had left to cry in the last year. But the understanding that it was truly and finally over between me and him was a little harder for me to deal with than I'd expected.

Nicole got me through.

Mom got me through.

And we survived.

What had initially been planned as a three month road trip, became what would turn out to be the road trip of our lives. We stayed on the road until we had nowhere left to go.

And we just let the wind sing through our hair and the radio blast off under the sun or snow, depending on the season or part of the country.

By the time we got back to New York, my mother's eyes had regained their brightness, her blonde hair its luster, her skin its youthful warmth.

But when we got outside the door to our suburban home, eight months after leaving it all behind; when we arrived at what was supposed to be "home;" when we saw... _the house_ —the house my father had lived in, the house we'd both suffered in so much—a change came over us both.

A ton of bricks fell on us.

We were buried in it again, as if no time had gone by, buried in the pain and the suffering of it all. Instantly.

_Too much history_ , I thought, looking up at the foreboding home.

I saw it in her eyes, and I felt it in my stomach.

The house just felt... _wrong_.

We'd spent almost a year forgetting everything, starting a new life, only to come back here and have it hit us in the head like a sledgehammer.

We didn't stay home that night. Neither of us could bear it.

We drove out to the city and booked a hotel. Nicole was with us.

A week later, we rented an apartment in Brooklyn.

And mom put the house up for sale.

It was the final nail in the coffin of my childhood.

# POSTSCRIPT

## ~ Explosion ~  
-1-

I dream of you at night.

I dream you're holding me tight.

I dream of your eyes so bright.

I dream of us making things right.

I dream of our pasts in the day.

I dream of you going away.

I dream of me begging you to stay.

I dream of repairing the fray.

I dream of losing my fears.

I dream of forgetting the tears.

I dream of turning back the years.

But the years won't turn back. They're stubborn.

And so the dream becomes a nightmare.

A world of blood and pain I don't wish to share.

I see your eyes, your smile, your hair.

I see the pain you had to bear.

I see the moment it all came to an end.

The moment that truck came round the bend.

I hear the screams, the shattered glass, the rend.

I feel the loss of my greatest friend.

And then the agony took over my life.

The smallest breath was too much strife.

My eyes were open, but I saw him not.

His love was ripe, and I let it rot.

I made my bed. I know it.

I'll reap my harvest, because I sowed it.

But I'd give the world to take it all back.

To repeal the words which formed my attack.

A lover said, "I'll wait for you."

I should have said, "Yes, do."

## -2-

"Hey, what's up?" Johnny's voice was soft over the crackling phone line.

"Hey! How you doin'?" I tried to feign joy. The stab of hearing his voice again after so long was maddening.

"I'm OK." He sounded down, hoarse. "I...miss you."

"Johnny..." The words were almost a plea. "Don't do this."

Silence.

"Jay, c'mon," I continued, "let's...be cool about this. It's been... _forever_ —we've survived so far. How's, uhm, what's her name?"

"Marina."

I swallowed hard at hearing her name. "Yeah—how's... _Marina_?" I wasn't really interested.

"I don't know." An interminable silence. "We broke up."

Tiago, lying naked next to me, roused. He put his hand on my bare leg. "Cathy, who's that, baby?"

My world exploded.

# BOOK TWO

## -1-

I know, I know. You probably got to that ending and went, "AAAAAAARGH! I HATE YOU, RACHEL DUNNING!!!!"

OK, I hear you, I hear you. Let me explain:

I do best with quick, fast tales, hard-paced, minimal sub-plot, to-the-point, and down-the-line speeding-bullet storytelling.

My most popular novels have been the shorter ones. (I don't know why this is, but it is.)

There is much more to tell in what is the tale of Catherine Ramsey. But this story was done. It really was. It ended at the epilogue. It doesn't necessarily mean that she and Johnny are done, but a major chapter has closed in her life, the chapter of her moving from a child to an adult.

I felt it was a good point to let things rest for now. Because the tale of Cat Ramsey is not only a love story, it is also a Coming of Age story.

The postscript, well, I threw that in to set the scene for Book Two!

Is Johnny right for her? Is there someone better out there? The questions you're asking yourself now are the questions she's wondering about as well. And you, like her, will just have to wait and see!

I _can_ promise you that Book Two will be released before February, 2015. Probably sooner than that. ( **UPDATE:** Book Two will be available before Christmas, 2014. It is called _Losing Johnny._ )

Right now I am only planning two books in this series. Maybe... _maybe_...there will be a third. I'm not yet certain of that. But—whether two or three books—the story will absolutely have all open strings tied up by the end of the final book. ( **UPDATE:** There will be three books in the series.)

For news of Book Two's release, you can sign up to my newsletter here:  http://racheldunningauthor.blogspot.com. I promise you, I don't spam. I really don't. Usually it's no more than one or two mails a month.

Or you can follow my FB Page here: <http://bit.ly/RachelDunning>

Please feel free to email me personally any time. My email address is rachel.dunning.author@gmail.com

Thanks so much for reading this tale. If you enjoyed it, I'd really appreciate it if you took a few minutes and gave it a review wherever you purchased it from.

Don't forget to sign up for that newsletter!

Love,

R

## -2-

### Also by Rachel Dunning:

Finding North, #1 Naïve Mistakes Series

East Rising, #2 Naïve Mistakes Series

West-End Boys, #3 Naïve Mistakes Series

Deep South, #4 Naïve Mistakes Series

Red-Hot Blues, Standalone Novel

Like You, #1 Perfectly Flawed Series

Know Me, #1 Truthful Lies

Find Me, #2 Truthful Lies

Need Me, #3 Truthful Lies

Christmas Comfort, #1 Hot Holidays Series

Easter Sundae, #2 Hot Holidays Series

Girl-Nerds Like it Harder, #1 Girl-Nerd Series

Girl Nerds Like it Faster, #2 Girl-Nerd Series

Girl-Nerds Like it Deeper, #3 Girl-Nerd Series

Girl-Nerds Like it Longer, #4 Girl-Nerd Series

**For news of upcoming releases, visit:**  
http://racheldunningauthor.blogspot.com

**Or connect with me on Facebook:  
**<http://bit.ly/RachelDunning>

