Prologue #2
one his mom pieced together before he was born.
The only real problem? She didn’t much like Dearborn. Hadn’t from the start, and he had no clue why not. The first time he’d
suggested going to Ice Queen and visiting Dearborn there, even an oblivious asshole like him could see Becky’s blatant discomfort.
“How did you and Molly become friends anyway?” she’d asked, her hand stiff in his.
He shrugged. “Year before last, Mr. Miller was a dick. Accused me of cheating. She defended me and got in trouble.”
“Oh.” Becky’s stare burned into the side of his face, until curls of smoke should’ve been rising from his damn beard. “That
was nice of her.”
Dearborn wasn’t nice. But she was kind. He couldn’t explain the difference to himself, and he definitely wasn’t going to try to explain it to his girlfriend.
Who was, in fact, nice.
He liked that about her. Right?
In the end, they went to the movies instead of Ice Queen. And after a few weeks of dating, he rarely saw Dearborn anymore.
They’d been assigned different lunchtimes. No classes together either. Only homeroom. Her rusty Mercury Sable appeared in
the school lot in September, so shared rides were out. And she didn’t seem to actively avoid him, but somehow, even in homeroom,
she was never close to him and always busy.
Not because she was dating too. If his girlfriend was out of his league, Dearborn didn’t even have a league. She wasn’t playing. Didn’t want to play. Was friendly but distant with everyone. If Becky was a quilt, Dearborn
was the moon, and you didn’t cuddle with the fucking moon.
Besides, she was too smart for everyone in their school, including him. If he’d have asked, she’d have said no, and he wouldn’t
have blamed her. But her rejection would have obliterated him. Not worth the risk.
He cared way too damn much about Molly Dearborn. Which meant her sudden aloofness blew. Then Karl’s mom got laid off from
one of her jobs a couple weeks after Thanksgiving. He had to pick up more hours at the bakery, stopped getting enough sleep,
and felt more zombie than human most days. Becky didn’t complain often about how little time they had together, but he wasn’t
stupid. Her unhappiness wasn’t exactly subtle.
But talking about things like that? Didn’t come easy to him.
His parents had been working their asses off ever since he could remember. Sure, Mom and Dad loved him, but they were fucking
exhausted. Didn’t need to hear about his emotions or some stupid shit that didn’t matter in their fleeting, errand-packed time off. And dealing with his younger siblings’
problems was his damn job. Wasn’t theirs to deal with his crap.
No one outside his family wanted to hear about some grumpy bastard’s feelings either. He’d found that out real damn young,
once a few of his dickwad classmates—the Whitley brothers, mostly—made fun of the husky kid who teared up and whined whenever
they chose him last for kickball or square dancing or whatever.
It’d only taken a few shitty gym classes and recesses for him to learn.
He might’ve been big and cranky from birth, but he wasn’t slow.
He’d stopped playing kickball, or any team sport.
Toughened the hell up. Concentrated on helping his family instead of worrying about what random assholes thought.
Instead of showing them he was worried, anyway.
So, yeah. He didn’t know how to deal with emotions. Not his own. Not other people’s.
Exhibit fucking A: When he told Becky he loved her, she didn’t say it back. He had no fucking clue why not, and her silence
stung like hell, but he never said word one about it. Was too goddamn cowardly to ask for an explanation or even tell her
she’d hurt him.
And now, he had no idea how to handle her pissiness about his schedule either. Didn’t know what to say, or how to raise the
subject himself. So he didn’t do or say anything. Let her handle things however she wanted.
She broke up with him, then came back a week later. Broke up with him a second time. Came back two months later. On-again,
off-again, ad fucking nauseam, all senior year.
In March, during one of those awful off-again periods, his homeroom teacher assigned the senior project to everyone. At first,
he didn’t pay much attention. Too busy trying to look at Molly without getting caught.
She was sitting across the room, her head bent over the tattered paperback in her hands.
Shit, he missed her. Had no idea why. Not like they’d been that close, right?
“—pairings for the project,” Mrs. Beanly was saying. “Wade Adams and Adrienne Bronnell. Karl Dean and Molly Dearborn. Serena
Frank and—”
Wait. Had the two of them been assigned together for their senior project?
He whispered to his neighbor, asking for clarification, and Ellen winced and rubbed at her ear before confirming that yes,
he and Molly would be working as a team.
Alphabetization for the damn win!
He sat back in his too-small goddamn chair. Gloried in the first taste of victory he’d experienced in months. And a group project was giving him that taste. Oh, the fucking irony.
Apparently, the senior project was due right before prom in late May. Before then, they’d need to volunteer somewhere for
a set number of hours and create a written and videotaped presentation about their experiences. Which was going to be a huge
pain in the ass, and he probably wouldn’t sleep much for the next two months, but whatever. He was psyched.
He didn’t give a crap what he and Molly did for their project, as long as they did it together.
She was friendly but distant when they talked about the assignment. Exactly like she was with everyone else, but had never
really been with him. It fucking stung. But maybe this stupid project, this mandated time spent together, could change things. Bring them back to what they’d once
been.
At Molly’s suggestion, they wound up volunteering at Historic Harlot’s Bay, and the next month and a half was painful. Borrowing a camcorder from Matthew’s family for the express purpose of getting recorded while he hit a hoop with a stick
in fucking breeches almost killed him. Using other sticks to stir linen shirts and shifts in a boiling-hot copper kettle over a goddamn fire sucked ass too. Every hour he spent
with Dearborn at Historic Harlot’s Bay either subtracted from his paycheck or added to his growing sleep deficit.
But somehow, Dearborn’s company made everything fine.
The itchy, starched stiffness of his linen shirts.
The mocking comments from the junior interpreters as they whipped his butt at Mancala time after fucking time.
The distinct thunks as Dearborn’s aggravatingly accurate pitches smacked his own lawn bowls farther away from the stupid jack.
As the weeks went by, she relaxed in his company. Talked to him. Even touched him.
Every time he complained about some petty shit, she patted his arm in the most patronizing possible way and told him sweetly,
“These cares are but fleeting moments of discomfort. Pray do not get your breeches in a bunch, good sir.” Which was obnoxious,
but also pretty damn funny.
“Why not panties?” he asked her one day as they walked back to their cars.
She shot him a puzzled look. “What?”
“Why not say, ‘Pray do not get your panties in a bunch, good sir?’”
After a moment of thought, she raised her forefinger. “Well, first of all, I doubt the phrase panties in a bunch dates back to the eighteenth century, although I could check the etymology.”
“Jesus Christ.” Such incredible nerdiness. She was a marvel.
Two fingers. “Second of all, I don’t want the junior interpreters repeating that phrase.”
“I’m a bad fucking influence,” he agreed.
Three fingers, which she wiggled in emphasis. “And third of all, colonial people didn’t wear panties or any real undergarments.
My shift would be my underwear, and your shirt would be yours. Don’t you remember our training session?”
He stopped abruptly on the path through the Mayor’s Mansion gardens. “Do you mean those colonial motherfuckers were just free-balling it? All the goddamn time?”
At that, her eyes flicked down to the fall of his breeches for a long, breath-choking moment. When she looked up again, those
rosy cheeks of hers had turned a deeper shade of pink.
She was looking at his crotch and blushing.
Cool-as-a-damn-cucumber Molly fucking Dearborn was blushing. Over him.
So yeah. Everything was great. Those giggling preteens in their floppy-ass bonnets could make fun of him all they liked. He
wasn’t the one who’d be demonstrating how a fucking box iron worked in the broiling sun all summer.
Then, late one sunny Saturday afternoon, he panicked. Realized he was running out of guaranteed time with Molly. It was their
last day of volunteering. The project was due next Friday, they were graduating soon, and Dearborn was going to college in
goddamn Cali. If he wanted to make sure their friendship didn’t die again, he needed to figure out how.
And if he wanted more than friendship from her—and he did, always had—it was time to man up. Now or fucking never. Whether
he was good at relationship shit or not.
He made his move at the end of their final shift.
On their way to the Mayor’s Mansion parking lot, they passed through a long, leafy arbor, where beech trees on either side
had been trained to arch and meet overhead. The setting was kinda romantic, although Karl understood fuck-all about those
sorts of things.
When he snuck a glance over at her, he pictured Molly at prom. With him.
He didn’t give a shit what she wore. If she showed up in the petticoat, buckled shoes, and big straw hat she was wearing right now, fine. Full set of armor? Great. One of her usual flannels and ripped jeans? He’d be fucking thrilled.
Men’s-style clothing looked hot on her. Always had.
He should ask her. He would ask her.
When he abruptly stopped walking, Dearborn—who’d been rummaging through the basket hanging from her forearm—stumbled over