Her gaze softens and sharpens all at the same time. “Why haven’t you seen him?”
I flick a bug from my ear and linger there to scratch. “I’ve been away.”
“I know you well enough to know that if you could have avoided being away, you would have. You’d do anything for that boy. I can see it on your face.”
“I’ve never loved anything the way that I love him.” Sometimes, I feel like I’m split open on the inside, just because I love him so hard.
“Explain to me why you haven’t seen him, then,” she prompts. She waits patiently.
“I can’t. I can’t explain it. I don’t know.” I don’t have a good reason for not seeing him since I got out of jail. Except for the fact that I didn’t want to stain him with my sins. I wanted him to stay an innocent little boy a little while longer. I didn’t want him tainted by my brand of bullshit. But now that I’ve seen him, now that I’ve held him in my arms, I could no more stay away than I could cut off one of my own limbs. “I just wasn’t able.”
“But you’re able now.”
I nod. “I’m able now.” I grin at her. “He loved your ugly cake.”
The cake is reduced to nothing more than some crumbs left on the plate now. I scrape what’s left onto the ground so that Wilbur can eat it.
“My cake was not ugly.” She pretends to look offended.
I hold up one finger. “I beg to differ.”
She sniffs. “We’ll just have to agree to disagree.”
“You’re going to the game with me on Saturday,” I announce.
She raises her eyebrows at me and grins. “Oh, I am, am I?”
“Yep. I might need a buffer.”
Her brow furrows. “A buffer from what?”
“A lot of people in town hate my guts.” I draw in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “With good reason.”
“You want to tell me more about that yet?”
I grin at her. “I like that you like me. I’d like for it to stay that way a little longer.”
“So you’ve said. Am I going to have to stop liking you to find out?”
I clutch my heart. “Please don’t.”
“Will you ever explain it to me?”
I nod. “I think I’ll have to. I’m just not ready to do it yet.”
“Okay,” she says.
“Okay?”
She shrugs. “I figure you’ll tell me when you want me to know.”
“And you trust me, without even knowing about my past?”
She stares into my eyes. “Without question.”
“Abigail, I was head-over-heels for you when I was thirteen, and I’m going to go ahead and warn you that I’m probably going to do it all over again, if you spend very much time with me,” I say. I don’t beat around the bush. I just come right with it. Ever since that night in the rain, I’ve thought about her at random times, wondering what she’s doing. I can’t get her off my mind.
“Is it a thirteen-year-old kind of love?” she asks.