“Walk away, Lamer,” Presley says around a shit-eating grin.
“Fuck you,” Michael snarls and goes back to his team as Mr. Jefferson continues to talk about the past year and the new year and blah blah.
Meanwhile Carter takes my weight when I lean back against him and wave at Alice in the crowd who then decides to yell, “WOO! THAT’S MY HO! OO, OO, OO!”
Her mom clips her around the head.
I laugh and Carter kisses my cheek sending happy tingles through my body.
Jefferson finishes and the hall starts to clear out. At last.
Stanley makes his way over with a gift bag in his hand. Lane tentatively follows and Presley scoops up his sister and starts tickling her sides.
“You’re all sweaty,” Paisley cries, clearly disgusted.
I laugh but my smile fades when Stanley stops in front of me, eyes glowing with pride.
“You were amazing,” he compliments while smiling softly. “Better than I was as a teen.”
“Definitely,” Jefferson calls, having heard him. “The three of them will be the reason we get another ridiculously large trophy in our cabinets.”
“Definitely.” They share an excited grin.
“I’m being summoned.” He shakes Stanley’s hand, pats Carter on the shoulder, and then walks away to speak to other parents.
Stanley hands me the gift bag but Carter takes it on my behalf when I don’t even raise a finger to take it. I don’t want anything from him, at the same time, I really want to see what’s inside.
“Can we go?” I ask him when Stanley opens his mouth to talk.
“Scandal,” Stanley pleads, “just ten minutes. That’s all I want.”
Carter gives me a little shove in his direction and I just know he’s not going to let me leave until I’ve spoken to him.
“Two minutes,” I grumble. “We’re going to a party.”
“Two minutes,” he agrees and follows me out of the side exit that leads directly to the school yard.
We stop far away from the doors and the prying ears of people wanting to eavesdrop. People in this school love to eavesdrop.
I find it hard to look at him. He’s somehow become symbolic, representing my abandonment issues, my painful past, and all of the things bad in between.
“You were amazing. You are going to go further than I ever did.” He guides me to the common benches, where students sit around a statue during break. I sit on one end of the bench to rest my tired legs and he sits in the other.
“You quit for the military.”
“There was no money in dance back then, not like there is today. I needed something that got me a pension.”
I nod and chew on my lip. An awkward silence lapses, so I hurry the conversation along and ask him what I really want to know. “When did you have an affair with Mom?”
He blows out a breath and gazes ahead with a sad look in his eyes. “I didn’t have an affair with your mom.”
“One-night stand?”
“No… she… umm…” His cheeks go red. “I paid her. She needed money for drugs, I needed…” He clears his throat and looks away.
I guess I appreciate his honesty, though it doesn’t surprise me that my deadbeat mother would sell herself for drugs.
“You had Lane.”
“Do you remember how I told you that I wasn’t a good person whenever I got back from deployment?”
I nod.
“I really wasn’t a good person. Not to Lane, not to your mother, not to anyone.”
I almost want to laugh but there’s nothing funny about this. “So my mother was a prostitute, you were an adulterer, and Lane was the good little wife expected to take care of your unwanted bastard when you went off to the military every few months?”
It’s starting to make more sense to me now. I almost feel bad for Lane. Almost.
She still should have stepped up. If she chose to forgive Stanley she should have also forgiven the child his mistake created. Though I suppose that’s easy to say in hindsight.
“She told me she was pregnant when she found out, and we both agreed for her to go out of state and get an abortion.”
“But she didn’t.”
“She used the money I sent to buy more drugs. But apparently she got clean from about four months onwards and you were born small but healthy. Or so I’ve been told.”
I scowl at the thought my own mother could do that to me, even if she did quit, she didn’t quit right away. “What a bitch.”
“She wasn’t a good person. Lane and I didn’t know about you until you were four or five and your mother came knocking for money. I think she was clean for a while after you were born but…” He shakes his head solemnly. “I paid child support. I even saw you a couple of times but I didn’t know how to act around you.”
“So why didn’t you save me when she tried to leave me with you?”