even a little?'
'I miss fucking you,' I said flatly. 'The rest of it? Not so
'I miss fucking you,' I said flatly. 'The rest of it? Not so much.'
Austin grinned and spread his fingers. 'It's a start, right? I'l cal you.'
'I won't answer.'
'I'l cal again.'
I pointed at the door, and he went. I waited until it closed
behind him before I gave in to the urge to sigh. What is it
about bad boys that make them so, so good?
I've known him since kindergarten. Austin. In my
elementary-school class photos, more times than not, his
freckled face is beaming from the row behind me. In one,
we stand beside each other, our grins showing the same
missing teeth.
In high school, we had nothing in common. Austin was a
jock. I was a gothpunk girl with multiple piercings and a
tattoo of a dragonfly on my back. We shared colege-level
classes and the same lunch period. I knew who he was
because of his prowess on the footbal field. If he knew me
it was maybe because I was one of the girls every boy
it was maybe because I was one of the girls every boy
knew, or maybe just because we'd been in the same
school since we were five. We didn't say hi when we
passed in the hals, but he was never mean to me the way
some of the boys could be. Austin never caled me names
or made crude invitations.
In the fal of our senior year, Austin went down under a
pile of boys pumped up with testosterone and fury. We
won the homecoming game, but instead of riding in Chrissy
Fisher's dad's 1966 Impala convertible, Austin took a red-
lights-flashing ambulance to the Hershey Medical Center.
He recovered, nothing miraculous about it. His body,
bones broken and skin torn, healed. Nobody ever said
he'd never play footbal again. Austin simply never did.
Nor basketbal, either, and in the spring, not basebal. By
then his chances of going to anything other than community
colege had vanished along with the scholarship offers, but
if he ever cared he wasn't getting a ful ride to Penn State,
he never said so to me.
And by then, he would have. By the time our senior year
ended, Austin told me everything.
We were an odd couple, but nobody shunned us for it. I
We were an odd couple, but nobody shunned us for it. I
didn't hear whispers in the hals. No jealous cheerleaders
tried to pul out my dyed-black hair, and no slick rich
jocks tried to convince him he was better off without me.
We didn't go to the prom, but only because we decided to
stay home and watch soft porn and fuck, instead.
When I told my mom we were going to get married, she
