I nod. “Appreciate it. Thanks.”
“I’ll go find your jumpsuit,” he says, turning for the hall.
∞
Twelve days later, they spit me out into a hot late-July day. Hannah is outside the gates, waiting to pick me up. She’s the only one other than Chris who came to see me in prison. There was no one else I could call.
She pulls me into a hug. “You’re free!” she says in my ear.
“Guess so.”
We climb into her car. “Let me take you out for some real food,” she says as she pulls away from the prison. “Luigi’s? My treat, to celebrate.”
I glance at her as my mouth starts to water. “That sounds really good. Thanks.”
We find an open booth in the back. Once our orders are in, Hannah looks at me. “How bad was it?”
“Prison?” I shrug. “Other than the two guys who wanted a piece of my virgin ass, not too bad.”
Her eyes widen. “Are you serious? Did they try anything?”
“They jumped me in the shower last week. My kickboxing came in handy.”
“So they didn’t…?”
“Naw. The guards were pretty cool. They kept an eye on me after that.” I smile at her. “And then you came to my rescue.”
The waiter drops our drinks and a basket of breadsticks on the table, then moves past.
Hannah grabs a breadstick and dips it in marinara. “Was she worth it?”
I take a deep breath and watch my fingers slowly spin my beer glass on the table. “Yes.”
There’s a long silence. “Do you miss her?”
I laugh under my breath even though there’s nothing remotely funny. “Only when I’m breathing.” My smile dies and I take a long swallow of beer. “She’s about the freest spirit I’ve ever met, but not in a frivolous way. She’s deep, and courageous, and incredibly insightful, and self-aware, and her mind works in ways I can’t even fathom. She’s fascinating.”
“You love her.”
I lift my eyes and nod.
“She sounds awfully mature for a sixteen-year-old.”
“Seventeen…now.”
“Seventeen,” she repeats. “What’s her home situation?”
I shrug. “Don’t really know too much about it. Just that her parents are around, I guess, but still pretty absentee. She and her brother took care of each other growing up.”
“Maybe that’s why she’s so mature,” Hannah says, setting her beer down. “She had to learn responsibility early.”
“Maybe.”
“So, what are you going to do about her?”
I shake my head. “What are my choices? She won’t be eighteen for another year. And…” I bite my lips between my teeth. “I’m not convinced the courts aren’t right. Especially if your theory is true. If her parents have already stolen years off her childhood, who am I to take what’s left?”
Her look goes all incredulous. “But you just admitted to loving her.”
“That doesn’t mean I have the right to be selfish.” I tear off a hunk of breadstick with my teeth. “And at this point it really doesn’t matter. I come within fifty yards of her in the next ten months, I go back to jail for at least three years. Maybe more.”
Our dinners come and the waiter drops them onto our paper placemats.
“So tell her how you feel and ask her to wait,” she says.
I cram a bite of lasagna in my mouth. “For a year?”
“Ten months.”
“Ten more months of her childhood she’ll never get back.” I take another bite, chew, swallow. “When I was seventeen, I was getting drunk at post-football parties, going on awkward dates, shoplifting condoms with my guys, and jacking off to my buddy Joey’s dad’s Playboy magazines. I can’t ask her to sit around and wait for me if it means missing her opportunity to experience those things.”
“You’re afraid she’ll miss awkward dates and Playboy magazines?” she asks, raising her eyebrows.
“Yes. I don’t want to deprive her of awkward dates.”
I scarf down another huge wedge of lasagna and wash it down with the rest of my beer. I catch the waiter’s eye and lift my empty glass. He heads to the bar for another.
She twirls some pasta onto her fork. “I would have given anything to skip seventeen.”
“You can say that now because you’ve already lived through it. If you’d skipped it, you’d always wonder what you missed.”
She looks at me another long minute as she chews. “Maybe,” she concedes after she swallows.
When we’re finished, she waves the waiter down and asks for the check. She scrapes her chair back and turns for the door. “Let’s find a bar and get really fucking shitfaced. You have lost time to make up for.”
We find a club on the next corner that’s loud and packed, and wind our way through the crush of sweaty bodies to the bar. I’m on my fourth…or maybe fifth scotch when a blonde and a redhead come up and ask me to dance.
Hannah gives me a little shove toward them. “Go. This is your coming out party.”
The blonde gives Hannah a look.