“Please, Mom?” Katelyn slid into the chair next to her mom at the table. “I’ve been grounded for almost two weeks. This is the second weekend I’ve been stuck at home.”
Her mom didn’t respond, but looked up from her stack of mail she was reading to give her a careful look. Katelyn had pleaded to go to a movie with Tim earlier in the day, but her mom said no. Katelyn was trying again, but this time asking for Tim to come over to watch a movie.
“You said you wanted to meet him,” Katelyn built her case. “It’s just a movie and technically Romeo & Juliet is homework.” The silence was a good sign, so Katelyn continued. “Tim could help me understand it since he’s already had to read the play,” she paused. “Please, Mom? I’m doing everything right with Gorman. I’m almost done with my late work.”
Katelyn had spent eight days total with that bastard. Every day, they both smiled at each other with disguised burning hatred. But, she played the game and put on a fake voice to accompany her smile. “Here you go, Mr. Gorman,” or “Anything else, Mr. Gorman,” and always “Do I have your permission, Mr. Gorman?”
The pile of work on her desk seemed to grow at first with end of the school year work rather than shrink, but she managed to get it cleared off, finally. Katelyn should be back in classes just in time for the next week’s final exams.
Her mom caved in. Tim knocked on the door within the hour. During introductions, Tim played the polite, kind boy. Her mom raised an eyebrow when Kayla came into the room and went to Tim without hesitation. “Tim! Want to play?”
Tim turned out to be more of a distraction than a help to focusing on the play. He made up jokes and mocked the love-struck characters. Katelyn couldn’t help laughing at his reenactment of Juliet’s death scene. Tim flipped imaginary hair and exaggerated his gestures, clutching his chest and slapping his hands to either side of his face. “What?! The only decent guy I’ve met—well, actually, the only guy I’ve ever met—is dead?” Here Tim put his hand to his forehead in great dramatics. “Bummer. I can’t go on.”
While Katelyn laughed, Tim mocked confusion as he looked around for a prop to use as a weapon. He grabbed one of Kayla’s dolls from the floor, naked except for one boot, and began to strangle himself between the doll’s legs. He feigned strangulation while he dropped to the floor. He sat up, lifting one eyebrow and smirking. “Hey, this isn’t such a bad way to die,” he said and held the split legged doll away from his neck for a moment.
Katelyn blushed. Their sexual exploration had gone farther than the kisses and touching of their first meeting. It was getting more difficult to tell him to stop.
Tim had been coming over after school on the days when Katelyn’s mom worked. He was patient with Kayla, even playful. Brianna threatened to nark, like always, but Katelyn made deals. Brianna took advantage of the situation and started going over to friends’ houses. Tim would leave half an hour before Katelyn’s mom was supposed to come home. Brianna would sometimes show up minutes before her mom, and they’d clear their stories with each other. Surprisingly, it was the most civil Brianna had been to Katelyn in years.
Katelyn’s dad never showed back up. Her mom told them a few days after he disappeared that he had called. He had taken a job in Utah as a foreman for a construction company. Katelyn had answered the phone once last week when he called. He made a big production about the details of the job—framing new residential houses in a subdivision. He wanted her to come out for a few weeks after school let out.
As far as she knew, her parents had patched things up. She’d hear her mom at night, after she came home from work, talking on the phone. From her bedroom, Katelyn had only heard her mom’s voice raise a couple times within the past week. Plus, her mom was in a much better mood.
“It was nice to meet you, Tim,” Katelyn’s mom said after the movie and the last slice of the pizza they ordered was eaten.
Katelyn walked Tim out to the side of the house where no window would let her mom spy on them. Tim kissed her, and they contented themselves with just an embrace rather than the hours they’d spent in the past week in her bedroom holding each other.
Katelyn came back in to find her mom right in the kitchen waiting for her.
“He seems like a nice boy, Katelyn. You really like him, don’t you?”
Katelyn tried not to blush, “Yeah, Mom. I do. I really do.”