Rhiannon
“What were you doing with Sterling?” Mama asked. Her voice held judgment mixed with fear, and her eyes blazed. Her gaze trailed up my body and my disheveled clothes. I tugged at my shorts. My hair was filled with tangles and leaves from being with Sterling, from kissing him, from him running his hands through my locks and me clasping for his skin under his shirt.
“Nothing,” I said and brushed past her toward the hall that led to my room.
“Nothing?” Mama said. “Well, that nothing can ruin your life. Have you slept with him then? Were you having sex?”
“No!” I said. I turned back to her. Mama had no right to the private parts of my life. Since Papa had left she smothered us like a bear protecting her cubs. There was no room to breathe, no room to be, she was constantly hovering around me and Maeve. Asking and interrogating and expecting and needing, Mama’s constant needing made me tired. She needed someone, anyone, to fill the hole in her life that Papa had left.
“He’s not the right boy for you. He’s too old and he’s much too experienced.”
“Experienced? Mama, what does that mean?”
“He’s like his father,” Mama said. “And now, to be honest, his mother as well.” She shook her head. “I always excused Joanne’s behavior. She’s been my best friend since I was your age.” Mama closed her eyes and shook her head as though she couldn’t bear the facts that lay before her—the knowledge that her best friend and her husband were having an affair.
“Have they heard anything from the doctor?” Mama asked. Who else could she ask? She wasn’t speaking with Joanne and she wouldn’t ask Papa.
“Tomorrow,” I said.
“I don’t want you involved with Sterling,” she said. “I’m certain your father feels the same.”
“Papa? Really, does it matter what Papa thinks? As though he has the moral high ground? Mama, he’s left us for another woman. Another woman who is your best friend—”
“Enough,” Mama said. She took three steps toward me. Three heavy footfalls with a menacing look that ravaged her face. Mama had never frightened me, but in this moment my rage slipped from me and was replaced by fear. Her anger burned with a deep ferocity.
“You’re not to speak of it. Not to me, not to Maeve, not to Amanda or Sterling. Do you understand?”
I nodded slowly. Forbidden. My parents had not forbidden anything before this. Now I was forbidden from Sterling and forbidden from speaking about Papa’s deceit. My throat tightened. Hot tears that pushed into the backs of my eyes suddenly flooded and my lips trembled. How had this happened to me? To us? And why was Mama so mean? So very cruel. “I love Sterling.” The words jolted out of my lips as I fought to regain my breath. Tears streamed down my cheeks. “I love him.”
“You are fifteen. You’re too young to love anyone. You have a physical desire for Sterling, but that desire is not love. You won’t know love until you are much older, and as for Sterling Legend? I doubt he has the ability to ever know love at all.”
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