“I want to, but...” The tears I’m fighting bubble up and spill over. “I’m sorry.” I swipe at them, but they won’t stop falling.
Mick sets down the box and brackets my face with his hands. “But what?”
“It seems so sudden. It’s happening right after Victor found out. I know how much you love and admire Papa T. I don’t want you to do this because you feel pressured to gain his approval. You’ll come to hate me for it.”
“Dee, baby,” he says, his gaze unwavering. “I could never hate you for any reason. I love you. I have since I was fourteen and didn’t even know what love is. From the day we met and you looked at me with those big, beautiful eyes, that was it for me. You had my heart right from that moment.
“But you were the daughter of the man I revered. He expected me to look out for you as a brother should. But I didn’t feel brotherly toward you. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about what it would be like to kiss you or put my hands all over you,” he says, almost shamefacedly. “I tried to be your friend. But it was hell. Even when I started dating, those girls were just substitutes. It’s always been you, Dee.
“Throughout all my shit at home, the Torreses gave me a safe place to come to, but you saved me.”
“Oh, Mick.”
“It’s true, baby. I survived the worst of my father because of you. And it was that afternoon when you bandaged my cheek and I confessed my secret that I stopped fighting myself. I had to kiss you. And then kissing you wasn’t enough. I should have told Papa T before it went any further. But I was afraid to tell him until now.”
“What’s changed?” I ask, needing to understand his motivation.
“That’s easy, Dee. I thought telling Papa T was my biggest fear, but it wasn’t. My absolute biggest fear, more than anything else…” He pauses. I know he means his father. “It’s living without you.
“I’m not proposing because Victor found out. Or because I think it’s the only way I can earn Papa T’s approval. I hope I’ll have his blessing, but even if I don’t, I’ll still want to be with you. I love you more than anything, Dee. You’re my life. My future. Come to New York. I promise to always be there for you, baby. I’ll make you happy. Please say yes.”
My tears trickle over his hands, and my heart is pounding with so much love for Mick I could burst. He’s strong and kind. Protective and devoted. Perfect and scarred. He has that touch of vulnerability that makes me want to take care of him.
Shoving all my niggling fears and self-doubts aside, I throw my arms around his neck, raining kisses all over his face. “Yes, Mick. To everything. I promise to always be there for you and to make you happy, too.”
I know I’ll never forget the look of pure, undiluted joy in his eyes as he slips the ring on my finger or that strong sense of permanence I feel for the first time ever.
I’m his. And he’s mine.
With the ring glittering in the moonlight, we walk, kicking up the sand and sharing in the delight of planning our future. Tomorrow I’ll inquire about a late admission to NYU. I tell Mick I don’t mind waiting a semester if I have to, but he won’t hear of it. We agree that until all the school details are ironed out, we’ll delay informing Mama and Papa T if Victor will keep our secret a little longer. Mick says he wants everything to be perfect. To leave the Torreses with no question that he loves me and will take good care of me.
We talk about getting married after graduation, of Mick’s dream to become an author and me a child attorney. About building a house near the lake when we can afford it and the children we’ll have someday.
We make love again, this time slow and sweet, on a blanket under the stars.
It’s the single best night of my entire life.
MY HAPPINESS IS SHORT-LIVED. Like the life of fireflies. After they hatch, their light shines bright for only a few weeks before it goes out. That’s me.
Three weeks after Mick’s proposal, I wake up feeling queasy and my breasts feel a little tender. I noticed that the other evening when Mick touched them, but thought it was a sign of my period. Then it hits me that I’m late again. My periods tend to fluctuate but I don’t recall ever missing two months in a row.
Since the first time we made love and didn’t use protection, we haven’t been all that careful. I’m not the impulsive type, except when it comes to Mick. I’ve been afraid the Pill would make me gain more weight. Sometimes he’s used a condom, but neither of us likes the barrier between our bodies. Sometimes he’s pulled out in time. But mostly we’ve played sexual roulette.
Breaths coming in big, shaky gulps, I sit up in bed and swing my feet to the floor. With Mama T being a nurse at the local hospital, I can’t chance going there or to the pharmacy in town. So I get dressed and drive to the next county to buy a pregnancy kit from the drugstore. When no one’s home, I pee on the stick and while waiting the few minutes that feels like an eternity, I nervously eat. I check. The stick is blue.
I throw up and bawl my eyes out. My foster parents still don’t know about our engagement. The ring sits locked in my side table drawer, awaiting my acceptance to NYU, when Mick will officially ask Papa T for my hand. He’s so serious about doing it right.
But now our secret will seem worse to my foster parents. More deceptive. More disappointing. And God only knows how violently Malcolm Peters will react to his son getting trapped by an accidental pregnancy, as he had.
Mick would do the right thing and marry me now. Of that, I’m certain. Then what? Raise a baby while in college? Struggle to study and work part-time to make ends meet? Or worse, give up his dreams to stay here, working a two-bit job he hates and resenting me more and more each day?
I promised to make him happy. Having a baby at eighteen isn’t going to make him happy.
THREE DAYS PASS AND I’M avoiding Mick. Exams are over, so I don’t have to worry about running into him at school. But when he’s not working at the garage or hardware store or practicing basketball drills to keep up the pretense of going to NC State, he’s here.
Faking illness, I stay locked in my room, looking at my ring, eating from my secret stash, and crying. The notes Mick slips under my door only make me weep harder. The first few were so sweet, telling me how much he misses me. As always, they’re laced with sexual innuendo, but my pulse is no longer racing. I feel so low, it’s hardly beating.
But it’s his last note that wrenches my heart.
