“It was a message to say I love you.” She looked at me and there were tears running down her cheeks. I had to look away.
“My parole says no contact. I can’t see you, talk to you, touch you. I’m not supposed to be within a hundred feet of you.”
“You were in me.”
I was skidding on loose gravel, about to wreck my life again. Wreck hers again.
“Wavy, you know I love you—”
“Beth.”
“No. Beth ain’t nobody to me. We can’t do this. I can’t do this. I’m always gonna love you, but they won’t ever let me have contact with you, because of what I did to you.”
For once I was all out of words and that was scary as hell. Wavy nodded. I thought she was ready to say something, but she opened the door and stepped out. I scrambled outta the cab and stopped her before she crossed the street.
“Let me take you home,” I said. It was dangerous, but I thought I could know where she lived and be strong enough not to go see her.
She caught my wrist and turned my arm to where there was blank space on the inside. I’d always planned to get her name tattooed there after we got married. Standing there in the street with traffic going by, she reached into her purse and took out a Magic Marker.
She wrote three numbers on my arm, the first part of a phone number.
“Do you remember that, Wavy? Me writing on your arm when I wrecked the bike?” Stupid thing to ask. After all that time, she’d come there and still wanted me. She remembered everything. Before she could write the rest of the number, I pulled away from her. The marker left a long black stripe down my arm.
“I can’t,” I said. “You know I can’t. My parole says no contact.”
She let go of me and crossed the street. Didn’t even put her marker away, just tossed it on the ground and kept walking. She didn’t stop when I called her name, so I went after her and caught her by the arm.
“No, you cannot walk around down here. It’s not safe. This neighborhood is full of ex-cons and sex offenders. Folks worse than me.”
She jerked her arm away from me, but I grabbed her wrist tight enough she couldn’t get loose. For a full minute, we glared at each other, her trying to pull her arm back and me squeezing it hard enough to feel the bones in her wrist.
“I’m not messing around, Wavy. Now tell me where to take you.”
“The college library,” she said.
It was a fifteen-minute drive over to the university, but we didn’t say a word on the way there. As soon as I came to a stop in the library parking lot, Wavy opened the door and swung her legs out.
“Wait. Wait,” I said.
With one foot on the ground, one foot on the running board, she looked back at me.
“I’m sorry. I love you—”
Wavy slammed the door right in the middle of what I was trying to say. Maybe I hadn’t seen her in seven years, but I still understood her. She might as well have written LIAR on the dash of my truck.
Seeing her walk across the parking lot toward the library’s front doors, I knew it had to be over, but I couldn’t believe that was how it ended. I wanted to take back everything I’d said, more than I wanted anything else. Being with Wavy would mean going back to prison, because her aunt would find out eventually, but I wondered how long we could have together before I got caught. Long enough to make another four years bearable? Or just long enough to mess up her life again?
10
RENEE
I went to the library with the best intentions, but by the time I got there, the rain had stopped and the sun had come out. The sun and half-a-dozen shirtless college guys playing Frisbee in the grass by the library steps. Instead of going inside, I sat outside and read one of my sources for my essay.
That’s what I was doing when Wavy walked up. I let the book on my lap fall closed and lost my place.
“What happened?” I said.
“He finally fucked me.”
Finally. Finally? Wavy the chronic masturbator was a virgin? All along I assumed they’d done it, maybe a lot, before they got caught. I’d been so eager to see it as this beautiful romance, that I was willing to overlook Kellen having sex with little thirteen-year-old Wavy, but there she stood, freshly deflowered and looking devastated. Her eyes were red from crying, and she was holding her left arm across her body like it hurt. Her wrist looked swollen.
“Well, looks like he did a bang-up job of it,” I said to make her laugh, but her face was empty. “Why are you here? Where’s Kellen?”
“Gone. It’s over.” She used the heel of her right hand to wipe her eyes. I wished I could put my arm around her shoulders and make her feel safe. Seeing her that way was awful.