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  “It wasn’t your fault,” I whispered, “it was an accident, and she came to get you because she loved you.”

  I kissed him over his heart and just laid there with him, neither of us said anything again that night; eventually we both fell asleep.

  We didn’t speak about it again, though I knew he held on to the guilt of his mother’s death, as well as everything that happened with Beth and the pregnancy. He felt as though he didn’t, couldn’t protect them like he was supposed to. I wish I could have done something to ease that guilt, only I didn’t know how. There were no magic words that would erase something like that; nothing I could have said or done would have made a difference other than being with him, holding him. His father’s words had done their damage; my goal was to soften the edges of the wound and hope that eventually it would heal.

  I know now that the wounds, guilt, remorse, and self hate did more damage than I initially thought. The old adage ‘sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never harm me’, runs through my mind at times. And I know that words often do more damage than physical harm; they can leave deeper wounds, jagged scars, and such pain in their wake, they’re just not seen on the surface.

  I can laugh at myself now, but at the time the thought of having sex scared the hell out of me. It was one of the few times I really regretted not having personal relationships like other people did at that age. I should have known though that Jeron as always wouldn’t let me flounder.

  I never really thought about sex, ok well that’s not exactly true. I never thought much about having sex, as in imagining my first time. I knew about sex; it was a natural biological function, or that’s what my ninth grade health teacher said. Then again he taught abstinence to a group of teenagers where at least a third had had sex by the age of fifteen. So what exactly did he actually know, or believe when standing in front of us explaining the intricacies of our bodies and how they relate to one another. So while I knew about sex, even thought about it at times in an abstract way, I never imagined myself having sex, until Jeron Price.

  What does that have to do with anything? Well, I was an almost nineteen-year-old virgin who’d just recently gotten her very first kiss from the guy she’d been secretly pining over for a year. Pathetic, I know. Except then I was in a position to have sex, and I was scared.

  If I’d had the cool mom I’d have gone to her; if I was a normal girl with a normal family I’d have that aunt that I trusted, or a girlfriend who’d been there and done that. Except I didn’t have a cool mom, I had an absent mom, and I wasn’t normal. I could have called Beth, but she was going thought her own shit, and I couldn’t talk to my best friend since he was the person I was contemplating having sex with.

  So I did what came naturally to me, I read books. Now once again I was a virgin so I was pretty clueless, only I didn’t think it was normal to orgasm repeatedly your first time. Nor did I think it was typical to have sex the first time, just to roll over and do it again; from everything I had ever heard it hurts, it’s strange and awkward for the girl. So, books seemed to be a bust in the research department. That left me at square one, again.

  My next thought was porn, but I almost immediately discredited that. It was made for young guys who couldn’t get any yet and middle-aged men whose wives stopped putting out. I doubted it could reassure me much, nor did I want to even contemplate truly watching it.

  Eventually I broke down and talked to Jeron, which was awkward to say the least. At first we both fidgeted, looked at walls, floors, anywhere but each other as I asked questions that he answered as best as he could. Only, as we talked this amazing thing happened, we relaxed, we talked openly about my concerns, and he reassured me. We walked away from that conversation stronger than before, and I knew that Jeron was willing to take this as slow as I needed too.

  I guess after our conversation it wasn’t exactly surprising that a few days later we found ourselves at that point. The one where we had to make a decision of do we keep going, or do we walk away once again. We’d been together as more than friends for over a month now, but we’d been a part of each other’s lives for longer. It wasn’t a difficult question for me to answer, so when Jeron’s hand slid under my shirt to find me braless, I didn’t stop him. When his shirt came off and then mine followed, we didn’t second guess.

  When he stood and took my hand and led me to his room, I followed. And when he slid inside my body the first time, I felt that pain that women often do, only it was subdued knowing it was Jeron, and I trusted him. It was one of the scariest, most passionate things to ever happen to me.

  When we were finished, he held me close, kissed my cheeks, forehead, neck and lips, and whispered he loved me for the first time. It was perfection, and while I never intended to wait to have sex with the person I loved, I was glad that was how it happened for me.

  I often wonder if I’d made different decisions, not asked certain questions, if our circumstances today would be different. Except I can’t change the past to find out, and I can’t tell you what the future holds. The only thing I can do is today, and my only goal for today is to breathe.

  Our first fight as a couple was my fault, I fully admit that. When I came home from work on Saturday night¸ it was to find Jeron sitting on the couch in front of the television. I don’t know why this bothered me, but it did. Maybe because I was used to him going out with his friends, and I didn’t want him to think I didn’t trust him.

  “What are you doing home?”

  He looked at me. “Waiting for you; what do you want to do tonight?”

  “Why the sudden home body routine?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, for the last month and a half you haven’t gone out with your friends, you’ve stayed holed up here with me. You don’t have to do that, Jer.”

  “I know I don’t, Trin, have you thought that maybe I want to spend time with you?”

  “But we spend most nights together.” After the first time we had sex, I’d pretty much moved into his room, and we hadn’t spent a night a part since then.

  “And?”

  “And I just thought you’d miss hanging out with your friends; if you want to go out with them you can.”

  “I know that,” he bit out, “I don’t need your permission.”

  “No,” I huffed, “you don’t.”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine.”

  He sat there brooding while I fixed myself some dinner. When I came back in, he stared at me. “Have you thought that maybe I don’t want to be that guy anymore? That I want to be better, for you, that I don’t need to go out and get shitfaced every weekend?”

  “I didn’t ask you to change for me.”

  “Ah!” he yelled, “you don’t fucking listen.”

  “I’d listen if you made sense!” I yelled back.

  “Fuck this,” he growled. He stood up, grabbed his keys from the coffee table and stormed out the door. I stood there blinking like an idiot, until the sound of his truck tires screeching broke me out of my reverie. Only by then it was too late to stop him.

  I stayed on the couch, finally drifting into a fitful sleep waiting for Jeron to come home. When he finally showed up in the wee morning hours, I knew something wasn’t quite right; he flipped the lights on barely acknowledging me. His posture was different, he was nearly vibrating with pent-up energy, his movements were sharp and when he did look at me, his pupils were blown wide. I’d seen him high before, but that was after he came home after hanging out with his buddies, this though, this wasn’t the same.

  Only I brushed that off when he sat down beside me and ran his fingers through my hair. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, burying his face in my neck.

  “No, I shouldn’t have started that, I was just worried you weren’t going out with your friends because of me. I don’t want you to stop doing the things you enjoy because we’re dating.”

  He snorted. “Dating, is that what we’re doing?”

  “
Well, what would you call it?”

  “Hmm, being madly, crazy in love with each other and blocking out the rest of society so we can spend as much time together as possible.”

  I hummed at that description “I guess I can deal with that.” I tried to play if off as aloof, but I think my wide grin gave me away. I loved when he said things like that to me, it reassured me that I wasn’t alone in this, that what I was feeling wasn’t one-sided as I once feared.

  “Come on, beautiful,” he whispered in my ear, “let’s go to bed.”

  I nodded, grabbed the hand he offered and followed him to bed. That night he couldn’t still, he was tossing and turning until he eventually climbed out of bed. I knew he thought I was asleep, but with as much movement as he made it was impossible. I wanted to ask him what was wrong, but every time I opened my mouth to ask I chickened out. I didn’t want to start another fight; I also think a part of me really didn’t want to know. I found him the next morning passed out on the couch, the television still on; he slept most of the day on Sunday.

  I think I let him distract me that night so I didn’t want to ask the questions I should have. Then on the other hand, I think hindsight is twenty-twenty and what I see now isn’t anything that would have caught my attention back then. I didn’t know enough, hadn’t seen enough to look for the signs. People keep saying not to blame myself, but as I look back I think of how dumb I really was. How can I not blame myself when all I had to do was open my eyes?

  I’ve never been one of those people who had a public façade and a private one. At least not to my knowledge, though Jeron did tell me that I was more at ease when I was at home than I ever was out in public. Jeron though, was like two different people. At home he was this sweet, attentive guy; out in public with his crowd he was vastly different. He was always on, talking to people, laughing, the life of the party, and that often left me two steps behind.

  The next Saturday before we headed to work, Jeron asked if I wanted to go to a party with him. One of his friends was having a birthday, and he said he’d like to take me, unless I wanted to just stay home instead. After the fight last week I wasn’t going to turn down this olive branch, and regardless of how nervous I felt, we were going. I was nervous since it wasn’t exactly my scene, but I was willing to try, for him.

  I’d thought I’d seen Jeron’s life; I was very wrong though. We’d had parties at our house, but this made those seem like an intimate dinner party, the house was packed. Jeron held my hand firmly in his; the other hand was waving a lit cigarette around while acknowledging people who called out his name. Most of which I’d never seen before, let alone heard of. It was a bit disconcerting and I was already regretting coming.

  As Jeron pulled me along, girls gave me evil looks that screamed of my death in the most gruesome fashion imaginable. I’d also felt more than one hand land on my ass. Finally after being pushed, shoved, and pulled, we reached our destination; sitting on the couch were Jeron’s normal cohorts. They all greeted me with smiles, while the girls on their laps looked at me as if I was a leper. I could tell it was going to be a very long night with the amount of hostility that came from them.

  Jeron pulled me to his side and wrapped an arm around my waist, keeping me close by. Other than that though, I was ignored while the guys talked about cars. I just rolled my eyes and looked around the crowd. There had to be at least a hundred people jammed into this small house.

  When one of the guys stood up, Jeron tugged me along, pulling me on to his lap. That’s when I noticed the joint that was being passed around the group. I’d known Jeron occasionally got high, I’d just never seen it in person, only the after effects when he came home. So when he took it from his buddies, I wasn’t exactly surprised, but I wasn’t comfortable with it either.

  What did surprise me was when he offered it to me; I just stared at him, my eyes wide. He just grinned and handed it over to the next person. I was relieved when he didn’t try to push the subject, though a part of me wondered if he was disappointed. He pulled me further into his lap, my head lying on his chest.

  “Relax, Trin,” he murmured into my ear after he let out the smoke he’d been holding.

  We sat there quietly, him running his fingers along my hip and up my back as I continued to people watch. I noticed more than one girl’s eyes raking over Jeron, and I was triumphantly jealous by it. He was mine, but I hated other girls looking at him. When the joint, or maybe a new one, I wasn’t sure, came back around Jeron took it once again, and I watched as he inhaled deeply, holding the smoke in and finally releasing it in a giant puff of smoke that surrounded us lazily.

  We stayed like this for a long time, him quietly talking and laughing with his buddies. Random people stopping by to chat with him before moving on and I just relaxed into his hold. That’s when I noticed off in the corner of the room a pipe of some sort being passed between a guy and a girl. I watched curiously as they heated the glass with a lighter then inhaled; it seemed so different than what Jeron and his buddies were doing. I didn’t fully understand what I was watching, and I wanted to ask Jeron about it but he was talking to someone who had drifted towards him.

  Jeron asked what I was looking at finally and I gestured toward the corner. When he saw what was going on, I felt him tense then shrug. He tilted my head back and kissed me slowly, the sweet strange flavor of the pot he’d smoked on his tongue. When he finally released me from the kiss, the couple was gone, and he started rubbing my back again.

  I still wanted to ask questions, so many questions. Except he seemed so relaxed, that I didn’t want to disparage that. He was laughing and joking with his friends, it had been a while since I’d seen him like this. My questions could wait.

  By two in the morning, I was falling asleep despite the music and people talking. Jeron nudged me and I blinked sleepily up at him.

  He ran his fingers down my cheek. “Ready to go home, beautiful?”

  I nodded and let him help me stand; when he was beside me, he told the guys bye and then grabbed my hand, once again pulling me behind him. When we were outside, he jerked to a stop and I ran into his back. I tried to look around him to see why we’d stopped, but he kept blocking me.

  I heard a lot of yelling, most of which I couldn’t understand with the music blaring behind me and people talking on both sides of me. Then Jeron pushed back into me, I grabbed the door trying to stop myself from falling and rammed my side into the doorknob somehow. Then Jeron was gone and his buddies were shoving through the door, pushing me down on the porch, my fingers being stepped on in the process.

  When the last one came out the door, he glanced down and saw me and froze. “Shit, Trinity!” Chad reached down and pulled me up. “You okay?” he asked while looking me over. “Jeron’s going to flip his shit if you’re hurt; they didn’t need to come running out there like that over some tweaker.” That’s when he noticed me cradling my hand against my chest. “Fuck,” he muttered.

  I heard a sound and turned to look but Chad grabbed my arm and brought me back into the house, chanting ice under his breath. “Chad, I’m okay, really.”

  “No no no no, you don’t get it, he’s going to go off the rails if he finds out you were hurt.” Chad pulled me into the kitchen where he pulled out some ice and wrapped it in a towel before taking my hand gently and looking at the damage. He sighed. “You’re going to be bruised.” Then he carefully laid the quickly-made ice pack against my fingers. “Jeron is going to be so fucking pissed,” he muttered under his breath; he eyed me again then shook his head.

  “Trinity!” was bellowed so loudly I jumped; the sound of the screen door slamming was followed by people quickly moving out of the way. Jeron came around the corner of the kitchen, his lip split open and blood trailing down his chin; his cheek was bruised, and one eye was swollen almost closed. I gasped but he didn’t slow down until he was wrapped around me.

  “You alright, beautiful?”

  I took in a shaky breath and nodded against his neck. He
pulled back slightly; his swollen, bloody hands swept my hair from my face. “You sure?”

  “Yea,” I breathed, that’s when he noticed Chad holding the ice pack.

  “Chad?”

  “I found her on the ground,” he rambled quickly, “her hand was stepped on, I brought her in here away from everyone else and put ice on it.”

  Jeron nodded his head once and pulled my hand up for him to inspect; he sucked in a hissed breath. “I’m sorry, Trin,” he murmured and then laid a gentle kiss on my hand. “Let’s go home, sweetheart.”

  I nodded and looked up at him. “No offense, but I don’t want to come to anymore parties.”