Chapter 30
Thirty
Donnie had come over the next morning to start preparing for the following week’s lesson but immediately asked if I wouldn’t mind going to the park.
“Are you crazy? It’s freezing out there.”
“I know, I just can’t stay in here. I need to walk around.”
I looked at him closer. He didn’t look good. Despite just walking in from the cold, he had a slight sheen of sweat on his forehead and upper lip. “Are you okay?”
“Maybe not to the park, then. We could go walk around the track at school.”
“Donnie, they don’t let people use the track during school hours.”
“Oh yeah. Of course.” He looked around as if worried that someone was about to sneak up on him. “Anywhere. You pick.”
“The park’s fine. Let me just get a coat. I’ll get you one too. Jed has an extra one.”
“No, I’m fine.”
“You have a T-shirt on, and the trees are covered in ice. You’re not even wearing a jacket.”
“Fine. Fine.”
He didn’t say anything on the short drive to the park. I had never seen him like this. His handsome face was always smooth and uncreased with worry. The only wrinkles he was beginning to show in the slightest were laugh lines around his mouth and eyes.
When he parked by the rock wall, he started getting out of the truck before he had the keys all the way out of the ignition. He caught his finger in the keychain as the key didn’t pull all the way out. “Fuck!”
“Whoa! Donnie! Now I know something’s for sure wrong. You never cuss.” Not even as a teenager had Donnie used bad language. In fact, I had never heard any of the Durkes utter a foul word.
Donnie’s face flushed, seemingly embarrassed by his slip. “Sorry.” He managed to get the keys out, and he shut the door. His cursing seemed to have shocked him into slowing down, and he looked at me guiltily as he walked toward me. “Come on.”
“I don’t care if you cuss. I was just teasing.”
“I know.” He walked through the park’s gate. I had to rush but splayed my arms out for better balance, worried about slipping on the ice.
Unconcerned by the slickness, Donnie made it to the bandstand before he turned around and waited for me to catch up. The sight of me running daintily on the ice made him laugh in spite of himself. “Just when I thought you couldn’t get gayer!”
“Shut up. You’re the one dragging me out in weather too cold for penguins.”
“It’ll just give you an excuse to have tea with Maudra and gossip when you get back.”
I stuck my tongue out at him. “Glad to know whatever is going on isn’t serious enough to make you not be a smartass.”
I instantly regretted my words as his smile fell and his brow creased again. “Come on. Let’s go to the playground.”
I looked at him in exasperation.
“Come on,” he repeated.
By the time we made it up the steep hill to the playground, I’d fallen twice and my jeans were wet. “There is no one else in the world I would do this for.”
I was expecting a smart retort, but he just looked at me. “I know. Thank you.”
“All right. Out with it. What’s going on? You’ve got me completely freaked out.”
“I don’t want you to think less of me, Brooklyn. There will be enough of that. I can’t stand it if I let you down too.”
His words caused my blood pressure to elevate, and I looked at him warily. “Did you kill someone?”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “Get serious.”
“What? You’re freaking me out here. What am I supposed to think?”
He sat on one of the swings without wiping the snow off.
After using my coat sleeve to clear it off, I sat on the one next to him.
“Donnie, whatever it is, even if you did kill someone, actually, there’s nothing you can say that will change how I see you.
You’re the best person I’ve ever met. Tied with Jed, even. ”
He wouldn’t meet my eyes and stared down into his folded hands in his lap.
“You can tell me. You know nearly everything about me.” I reached out and put my hand on his back.
He took a deep breath, and I saw a tear make its way down his cheek. “Mandy’s pregnant.”
Silence. I stared at him, waiting for the punch line. Waiting for him to turn to me and laugh and tell me the real problem. His eyes never left the ground.
“Oh.” I wasn’t expecting that. I searched for something to say, and of course chose wrong. “Is it yours?”
“Of course it’s mine! What’s wrong with you!” He only looked at me a second before returning to his folded hands.
“Sorry.” I returned my hand to his back. I hadn’t noticed taking it away.
After a couple of minutes, Donnie spoke again.
“It was only once, really. At least with Mandy. I’d had sex with a couple other girlfriends before, but she was a virgin.
I didn’t want to this time. I wanted to do it right.
I’d asked God to forgive me for the other ones, and I’d promised I wouldn’t slip again, especially with someone as wonderful as Mandy.
” He looked at me desperately. “I’m going to marry her, Brooke.
I know that. She knows that. That was a given from our first date. ” More tears fell down his face.
I think it might have been easier if he had told me he had killed someone.
I had always seen Donnie as perfect. Not just the perfect guy, the perfect friend, the perfect cousin, but the perfect Christian.
Although gorgeous, he had always remained asexual in my mind.
The thought of him not only having sex with Mandy but having sex with more than one person was akin to finding out your grandfather wears nylon stockings under his dress pants.
“How’s Mandy?”
He gave a sad laugh. “She’s completely fine with it. She’s excited, even. She doesn’t feel like it’s wrong. She’s only upset because I am.” He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “To her, we’re already married. The ceremony is a formality.”
“Does Pastor Bron know?”
“No. I can’t even think about telling him.”
“How far along is she? Are you sure that she’s pregnant?”
“Yeah, she’s nearly a couple months. When she told me last night, I ran to the store and made her take several more pregnancy tests.
They all said the same thing.” His eyes were bloodshot and weary as they pleaded with me.
“What am I going to do, Brooke? With the youth group? They won’t let me keep teaching them!
And when we tell people we’re getting married, everyone will say we’re doing it ’cause she’s knocked up!
They won’t believe the real reason.” His tears flowed harder. “And Mom! Mom will be devastated!”
I hadn’t thought of Sue. He was right; she would be. “You know you’re… there’s nothing you could do that would make her not love you.”
“I know that! That almost makes it worse. I’ve let her down.”
We sat there in silence for a while. After several minutes, Donnie started to swing slightly. I looked at him like he was crazy when he started to laugh.
“What?” I shook my head at him. “What are you laughing at?”
He was laughing so hard now he could barely talk.
“Us!” He caught his breath. “What a pair we are. The perfect boys. Brooklyn Morrison and Dionysus Durke. Every mother wanted her sons to be us and their daughters to marry us, and now here we are. In our thirties. One of us a fag. The other a fornicator.” His laughter was bordering on hysterical.
“And leaders of the youth group, no less!”
Without realizing it, I found my own laughter matching his. Before too long, we both had tears running down our faces and were doubled over.
“Feel better?” I asked him as we finally began to breathe again.
He looked at me. For a moment, I saw the adorable little boy he had always been sitting in the swing grinning at me. “Yeah. I do, actually. What do you think we should do?”
“What do you mean? What can you do?”
“Should we elope and then tell everybody?”
“Is that what you want?”
“I don’t really care, but Mandy wants a real wedding. Nothing too big, but the white dress and cake, all that stuff.”
“You’d have to do that soon or wait till after the baby comes, or she’ll be one fat bride in a wedding dress.”
He laughed again and rolled his eyes at me. “You really are a girl. That’s exactly what Mandy said.”
I again stuck my tongue out at him, solidifying the transition back to childhood. “Either way, I think you should wait before you tell anyone. The youth group has enough to deal with right now with me being involved. Let it settle down before we give them two targets to shoot at.”
“That reminds me.” He blew his nose on a handkerchief from his back pocket. “Tyler wanted us to stop by his office today. He wanted me to bring you by this morning, but I couldn’t face him. I told him I’d bring you in after lunch.”
I looked at him sharply. “What’s wrong?”
“I didn’t say anything was wrong. He just wants to talk to us about something.”