Hayley and I met at Bernie’s one Saturday morning when I was home from college on Christmas break. It was a snowy day in January, and she and I were both in line to buy coffee. Hayley complimented me on my wool hat, we started talking, and we haven’t stopped since.
I smile and head over to take a seat next to her on the couch. When I show her what I made in class before quickly putting it back in the cardboard box, she doesn’t say anything at first.
She just stares at me. I stare back at her.
“You sculpted his junk?” Hayley sounds incredulous.
“What the hell is the big deal?” I lean back against the couch cushions and curl my legs under me. “Up until now, my imagination has been the only thing I had.”
“But now?” She raises a perfectly-manicured eyebrow, the one part of her she fusses over.
I bite my lip. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“He’s here. For you.” She points to the box next to me. “You don’t need to make up fantasies anymore.”
“It’s so surreal I don’t really believe it yet. That he’s going to stay.”
Hayley studies my face. “So you two have been pining away for each other all these years, and you don’t even know what his dick feels like? Olivia, you better find out.”
I break into an anxious laugh. “Let’s shift this conversation to something less…sex-focused.”
We chat about her day at work for a bit, until the topic returns to Jenson.
“It’s surreal that he’s here,” I admit. “I guess I never imagined he would move back.”
“Do you think he’s going to…” Hayley lowers her voice to a whisper, “ever look for his biological father?”
“I don’t know. There are things about it that…” I cut off. “That nobody knows.”
Cindy always tells everyone that Jenson was the result of a drunken one night stand with a man she never caught the name of, a man she slept with right after she and Dee broke up the first time they were together. But then Jenson found his original birth certificate hidden in the back of her closet. And instead of “unknown” in the father box, this one said Donald Waverly.
We figured out pretty quickly why his mom had covered up the truth. Donald Waverly was Dee’s good friend, along with my dad’s, and when Jenson confronted her about the birth certificate, Cindy admitted that she slept with Donald rightbeforeshe and Dee broke up. They were all young and Dee and Cindy had been fighting a lot, and Cindy said it was a moment of weakness that brought her a precious gift—her only child.
She always wanted Dee back, though, and once they reconnected and then married, she vowed to never share the truth.
So Dee still doesn’t know that Cindy cheated on him with his friend. Donald and his parents moved out of town shortly after he was with Cindy. He was unaware he had conceived a child, and Donald didn’t keep in touch with anyone in Liberty Falls. For almost two years before he left for college, I helped Jenson investigate, but we were never able to track Donald down. It was like he’d disappeared into thin air.
“Maybe someday.” I shrug at Hayley. “All of it will be sorted out.”
