“Hey! No fair!” Dawson yelped, outmaneuvered. They wrestled for control of the remote, Sloan squealing and laughing, him tickling her mercilessly.
“Mine, mine, mine!” Dodging his hands, laughing, she fought to keep the remote.
“Mine!” he countered, rolling her backward on the sofa and pinning her hands above her head. He pried the remote from her fingers, flipped it back to the movie.
“Excuse me!” Franklin’s voice from the basement stairs sobered them both, made them sit upright and twist their clothing back into place.
Dawson went hot, then angry. How long had Franklin been watching them? “So are we making too much noise? Neighbors complain?” Sloan scooted to the far end of the sofa.
Franklin came over, shot Dawson a warning look about his attitude. Realizing that his dad was wearing his winter coat, Dawson slouched. “Hospital called and EMTs just brought a family of four into triage. Pretty bad wreck with a semi. I need to check out the two kids, and if a surgeon’s called in, I’ll stay and keep an eye on them.”
The scenario was familiar to Dawson: Hospital calls. Dad leaves. An accident with injuries. He ditched his hostile mood. “Okay.”
Franklin wrapped the new plaid scarf Dawson had bought him for Christmas around his neck and tucked the ends into his coat. “You two be okay here alone?”
“Sure.” Dawson saw that his dad was in a hurry to leave. He glanced at Sloan and she nodded, wide-eyed.
“There’s a deli tray upstairs. Help yourselves. And, Daw, when you drive Sloan home tonight, be careful. Lot of drunk loonies out on the roads.” Franklin turned, but halfway up the stairs, stooped and said, “Hey, you two…Happy New Year. Sorry we can’t celebrate it together.”
Sloan returned his sentiment. Dawson mumbled his. When the kitchen door shut, every creak and whisper of the house was magnified. A scream from the horror movie made them both jump, then burst out laughing. Sloan politely reached for the remote. “I’m really over this movie.”
“Me too.” He gave over the remote and she surfed the channels, until she settled on one featuring the bands she most liked. During a commercial break, he said, “Time to raid the deli tray.”
Sloan followed him upstairs. Dawson dragged the tray from the fridge heaped with deli meat, cheeses, sliced veggies, and dip. “Yikes! Who was your dad expecting? The whole neighborhood?”
Dawson grabbed condiments and a bag of deli buns and set all beside the tray. “What? There’s barely enough to share.”
She rolled her eyes. “Maybe I can take home a doggie bag.” She said it in jest, but it was in part a request. LaDonna was out for an all-nighter, and Sloan had no idea when she’d drag herself home the next day. As usual, there wasn’t much to eat at the trailer.
Oblivious, Dawson slathered mustard on the top half of a bun. Sloan bumped him hard with her hip, making him drop the bun facedown on the countertop. “Hey!”
“Butterfingers,” she chided, grabbing her plate and a bag of chips and hurrying down into the basement.
He found her curled up on the sofa, munching her sandwich. He gave her a wicked grin and wiggled a soda can. “You forgot your drink. I brought it, but there’ll be a price for handing it over.”
She gave him a smug look. “I have a drink.” She fished under the sofa and lifted up a bottle of champagne. “Unlike you, I’m willing to share for free.”
“Whoa, girl. Where’d you get that?”
“State secret.” She’d lifted it from a convenience store days before when the clerk was busy and not watching, but she wasn’t about to tell him that.
Dawson took the bottle, wrapped in black foil and stamped with gold letters. He’d had beer and wine at parties with his friend Tad, but he’d never tasted champagne. Once Franklin had allowed him a sip of bourbon that had burned his mouth and made his eyes water. “Firewater,” Franklin had joked. “I’d rather you try it with me than at some party.” Dawson never confessed he’d already tried it at age thirteen at Tad’s house. Now he gave Sloan a conspiratorial grin. “You like this stuff?”
“Never had it before. Thought we should drink some together. For New Year’s Eve.” She wanted to taste the stuff and had hoped Dawson’s dad wouldn’t mind if they all sipped it together to welcome the New Year. But now Franklin was gone.
“I’ll get some glasses.”
“Hurry. The ball drops in fifteen.”
He returned with glasses and set them on the coffee table. “When did you sneak it inside?”
“When you weren’t looking, silly.”
He worked the cork up, and when it popped out, the liquid erupted into a cascade that gushed down the bottle’s sides and onto the floor. They laughed while Sloan sopped up the overflow with an afghan from the sofa.
Dawson poured two glasses full of the golden liquid that roiled with tiny bubbles. He gulped it. She tasted it. He scrunched his face. “I think you’re supposed to sip it,” Sloan said.
They each drank a second glass full. “Taste grows on you,” Dawson said.
“Makes me want to giggle,” Sloan said, giggling.
He poured them each another glass as the TV started playing “Auld Lang Syne.”
“Uh-oh, here it comes! Watch.” She pointed at the screen as an enormous crystal ball began its descent from a lofty tower and the crowds in Times Square hundreds of miles away from Windemere shouted out a countdown from ten to one. When the ball came to rest, and the brilliantly lit number of the New Year flashed on the screen, and confetti blanketed the TV people, Sloan set down her empty glass, set aside Dawson’s glass, and dove into his arms. Her head was spinning, and when his hot and hungry mouth met hers, she made up her mind as to how she wanted to complete their celebration.
Sloan pushed up his sweatshirt. His dark eyes bore into her blue ones. “What…?”
She tugged off her sweater and bra. His gaze roamed her body with a look more intoxicating than the champagne. “You make me happy, Dawson.” She lifted his hand, pressed a kiss into the palm, placed it against her breast, and watched goose bumps rise across his bare skin.
He couldn’t stop staring at her. She was so beautiful….His head swam and heat spread through his body, hot fingers of need. “You make me happy too. I—I love you, Sloan.” He’d never said that to a girl, but it was true. He loved her.
She threw back her head, smiled, and looked back down at him. “So then let’s be happier together.” She kissed him, lowering her body onto his. Skin pressed against skin. Breath mingled with breath.
On the wall, the TV announcer told the viewing audience good night and Happy New Year. Dawson fumbled to find the remote, and when he did, the screen went dark and the room went quiet, bathed only in the colors of Christmas past.
CHAPTER 12
“You have a true affinity for this place, don’t you?”
Lani was busy gathering vials of blood specimen results in the lab for delivery to various departments. She smiled at Cassie’s question. “I’m a medical junkie. I’ve wanted to be a nurse for years, so it never seems like work to me. I love it here.”
In the three months Lani had been a volunteer, she had learned every nook and cranny of the hospital, from the ER to the surgery rooms, from the chemo center to the newborn nursery and pediatrics, along with the floors of patient rooms and central staff centers on each floor. The ICU, radiology, imaging, labs, the gift shop, and staffing rooms where she had her own locker were as familiar to her as the rooms in the house she’d grown up in.
“Years?” Cassie, a third-year student and Lani’s friend at the hospital, offered a wry smile. “What are you…all of seventeen?”
“I’m an old soul, trapped in a teen’s body. I know what I want. How ’bout you? Why are you here?”
“I took care of my mama for years before she died. I knew I could do this…take care of sick people. All I needed was the classroom credits and I could have a career. What’s your story?”
“I caught the nursing bug the summer my cous
in died. She had cancer and spent days in bed, too sick to get up. I liked making her comfortable.” Even now, the memory of that thirteenth summer brought tears to her eyes. “Before she…left us, she told me how much it had meant to her to have me around when most girls my age were off having fun.”
“Well, you’re good at it,” Cassie added quickly. “Plus the floor nurses really like you—some of them are real crabs too. Some even ask for you to work with them. A huge compliment, you know.”
“My secret is chocolate. I bring in bags of it and stuff it in the nursing station drawers. A person can make a ton of friends with free chocolate.”
Lani grinned and Cassie laughed. “I’ve wondered how the stuff keeps magically appearing. Keep up the good work.”
Lani picked up her lab deliveries and hurried out the door. She couldn’t wait until May and graduation so she could spend even more time in the hospital. She had cut back on her hours at Bellmeade but had promised Ciana she’d teach a riding class in the coming summer. At school, her senior class was counting down the final days too. Many had already signed letters of intent to different colleges. Kathy would go to University of Florida: “And par-ty!” she’d said with a whoop. Three football players had signed with University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Others had plans to join the military, go to community colleges and tech schools, but Paulie had won the college lottery with a full ride to MIT in Boston. “Genius trumps us all,” Lani told Kathy.
“Nerd. How about Dawson? Heard where he might be going?”
Kathy took pleasure in needling Lani about her crush, which she’d been unable to hide from Kathy’s X-ray vision. Lani shrugged it off. “Doesn’t matter. I’m sure it won’t be MTSU.”
“Wonder what Sloan will do? They’re always hanging on each other. Bet you couldn’t slide a butter knife between them.”
“No idea.” Lani didn’t want to talk about either Dawson or Sloan, although Kathy’s observation was true.
“Maybe she’ll follow him to college.”
Refusing to rise to Kathy’s bait but seething inside, Lani smiled sweetly. “Maybe she will. Whatever. I just hope he’ll be happy wherever he goes, even if Sloan tags along.”
Kathy offered a derisive snort, signaling she didn’t believe Lani’s sentiment for one second.
Lani kept walking.
Sloan took the test three times and failed it three times. She stood in the cramped bathroom of the trailer, staring at the stick and its plus sign. Yes, it silently announced, you are pregnant. Her knees went weak as the irrefutable truth slammed into her. Her menstrual period, gone missing for ten weeks, wasn’t going to show up in March. She gagged and retched into the toilet. Dry heaves now. Because she was pregnant, or because she was scared? Both reasons were interlocked and inseparable.
All the time she’d been with Jarred, she’d taken the pill, but once they fell apart, she forgot about taking it. Why bother? The side effects of the anti-pregnancy drug were annoying. The pill made her breasts sore. Not to mention the bloating! But once she and Dawson had started having sex, she’d gone right back on it. She hadn’t missed a dose. Now her breasts throbbed, she was throwing up, and the pregnancy tests were all positive.
She braced her palms against the wall over the toilet, fighting the urge to heave again. Her knees trembled. Her head ached.
LaDonna pounded on the flimsy door. “Hey, hurry up in there! I got an appointment. What’s taking you so long?”
Fear seized Sloan by the throat. How would her mother take the news? She shuddered just thinking about it. “Hold up! I’m getting in the shower…running late.”
“Well, move your ass!”
Sloan turned on the water, hoping to drown out LaDonna, and realized she’d never make the school bus. She felt awful. “I think I have some kind of stomach flu. Don’t think I’ll make it to school today,” she called from under the stream of hot water.
“Then get out of the shower and go to bed. I’m in a hurry!”
Sloan pulled herself out of the stream, did a haphazard dry-off, and wrapped the towel around her. She opened the door, and the steam rushed out.
LaDonna stood glaring. “You look like crap. Don’t give me no flu.”
Not contagious, Ma. Sloan stepped around her and crossed to her tiny bedroom, barely big enough to contain the pulled down wall bed, dropped facedown onto her rumpled sheets. She thought of the school gossip, of all the hateful things the kids would say about her. They’d talked about her before, but singing in the band had allowed much of the talk to roll off her. Now she had nothing. Fear and nausea clawed through her insides. She moaned. She didn’t want to be pregnant…didn’t want to be a mother. She wanted this growth out of her, wanted it gone. Sobs welled up. She struggled to swallow them down, lost the fight, and smothered her face into the bedding, shoulders heaving uncontrollably.
She sent Dawson a text about being sick, and he called her at lunchtime. “How you doing?”
“Still hanging over my toilet,” she told him. Morning sickness was all-day sickness for her.
“Want me to come by after school, check on you?”
“No.” The single word was terse, said without invitation for discussion.
She told him the same thing when he called after school, that night, and the next morning.
Rebuffed, he couldn’t figure out why she was acting this way. How sick was she? “You need a doctor? My dad—”
“No! I’ll be fine.”
“I’ll ditch classes, bring you one of those chocolate shakes you like,” he offered at lunchtime on the third afternoon.
She didn’t want him to come because she didn’t want to face him. She couldn’t even think of how to tell him. He’d most likely dump her anyway. “You don’t have to keep tabs on me, Dawson. I don’t need you hanging all over me, you know. I’m sick. I’ll get well.”
Her words hurt. Something had happened to make her shut him out. Maybe her mother…LaDonna was unpredictable. No telling what she’d done to Sloan. “Um…okay…call me if—” He heard her click off, and not wanting to look stupid standing in the hall, he said, “Bye,” to dead air. He shoved the cell into his backpack and went to class, where he sat brooding through the lecture.
Maybe he’d done or said something that had ticked her off. But no matter how hard he searched his memory, he couldn’t figure out what. Now she’d all but blown him off. What the hell! He got mad. If that’s the way she wants it…Maybe they needed a break from each other. He didn’t like the idea, but her moodiness was wearing thin with him. Two could play the same game. He decided to give her space. Lots of it.
CHAPTER 13
Sloan spent four days nursing her “stomach flu,” while crying, confused, miserable, and afraid. There were clinics where she could go to terminate her pregnancy, and she visited several sites online that explained the procedure and what to expect, recovery times, and legalities. Since she was in an early stage of pregnancy, the process seemed simple and quick. No muss, no fuss. Yet she was terrified of the whole idea. Terrified also of having a baby. She felt caught in a spider’s web of indecision, stuck and immobilized, torn between two choices and not wanting to participate in either.
Her mother kept insisting Sloan get up and go to school. Sloan told her, “On Monday. Flu can take about a week to get over, you know.”
LaDonna eyed her. “You sure that’s all that’s wrong with you?”
Sloan trembled, holding LaDonna’s prying eyes. “I told you I have the flu. I’m getting better. That’s it.”
But as soon as LaDonna left, Sloan threw up.
Dawson spent five tortured days worrying about Sloan, not calling or texting, revisiting her curt replies in his head simply to keep him angry and away from her. He wasn’t going to beg for her company! When she was still AWOL on Saturday, he gave up and drove to the trailer park. LaDonna’s car was gone. A relief. He parked, walked up, and knocked on the door.
Sloan had seen him drive up, knew she had to tell him. He
r torturous week had led her to the place of realizing it was his problem too. She’d need his help getting to the clinic to end what had happened to her. She went to the door and opened it, and at the sight of him looking worried and so tall and strong, she launched herself into his arms and broke down crying. He caught her, staggered, pushed them both back inside the trailer. “Baby! What’s wrong? Did your mother—”
“I’m pregnant, Dawson! And I don’t know what to do.”
The words rolled over him like an avalanche, flattening him, squeezing the breath from his lungs. Sloan clung to him, crying out of control. He held her close, shaking like a leaf in a windstorm, finally pulling away, guiding them both to the couch because he wasn’t sure his legs could support him any longer. The table was piled with used tissue, evidence of tears long wept. “Are you…I mean—”
“I’m sure.” Her voice was hoarse with tears.
He said, “But we were careful.” He had used protection, and she’d said she was on the pill. He had joked, “Double insurance.” So very, very careful. Except once. New Year’s Eve. Months before. One time. Only once. Their first time. Feeling sick, he closed his eyes. The night had been magical. Lying in each other’s arms, feeling her skin on his, their bodies limp with completion, satisfaction. Loving her in every way. Back to now. “What…” He stopped, started again. “Have you told your mother?”
“No.” Sloan’s face had a greenish tinge.
“When will you—”
“Not till I have to.” What was happening to Sloan was exactly what had happened to LaDonna as a teenager. Once when her mother had been drunk, she’d blubbered out a story of how the man called her “stupid” for getting knocked up and walked away. Sloan cringed, thinking of LaDonna’s coming scorn.
“What do you want to do? If you want to get married…” He threw out the first thing that popped into his head.
“No. No way. I don’t want to be married. I want to be a singer!” The words were determined and fierce. “Maybe I can get rid of it. At some clinic. Maybe your dad can…you know…help.” She broke down again.