“This I’ve got to taste.”
“Secret family recipe. You’ll have to marry me to find out.”
“Well, there you go, giving me all the right reasons to tie the knot.”
She and I laughed as we went back to our menus and when the waitress brought our coffee out, we both gave her our food choices and then doctored our coffees in silence.
“So, tell me about your plunge into fatherhood.”
“Well, there are a few angles to come at this from, so let me know if I get sidetracked. When I was 13 I had a math teacher who was just smoking hot. All the boys thought she was beautiful and hell, so did all the girls. She was funny and didn’t talk down to us at all, even cracked jokes occasionally. If one of us, especially one of us boys, was falling behind or needed extra help, she made time for us.” I took a deep breath. “I didn’t know at the time that she was giving other boys the same naked math tutorials she was giving me. I was too in awe of the fact that I was 13 years old and banging every teenage boy's wet dream to care.”
“Leia’s mom was your teacher?”
“Yep,” I nodded. “It actually started right before my thirteenth birthday. What I know now was grooming. We had sex a few months after I turned 13 and it went on until she was arrested.”
“Holy shit,” Sierra whispered. “That fucking bitch seduced a child.”
“Yeah, but like I said - at the time, I thought I was the luckiest guy on the planet. I hated the fact that we had to keep it a secret, but was happy that she could sneak over to my house and spend the night while Dad was away on the rig.”
“That’s just so fucking wrong,” Sierra shuddered. “You hear about pedophiles, but you always picture a man, you know?”
“For a long time, I couldn’t accept that she was a child molester.”
“But she was - you know that right?”
“Yeah,” I said, a little bit embarrassed. “I know that now. But then, she was just this pretty woman who paid attention to me. My mom was dead, my dad was never home, we didn’t have any other family I could depend on... I was the perfect target.”
“Wow.”
“But there were more boys than just me. I digress. She seduced me.”
“Molested you,” Sierra interrupted angrily.
“Okay, molested me. Anyway, it went on for months and I didn’t tell a soul. She was about to divorce her husband and didn’t want to lose custody of her kids.”
“No way!”
“And her daughter was one year ahead of me in school, so when Beverly told me about how upset her daughter would be, I knew just what crying little girl to picture and that made her story all the more real.”
“Her kid was older than you?”
“All three of her kids were older than me and she was not in the middle of a divorce.”
“Oh. My. God.”
“Yeah,” I conceded “If some grown man was telling me this shit was happening to him right now - that the woman he was head over heels for was about to leave her old man, they had to keep everything on the down low until she got settled - I’d laugh in his face and tell him he was a sucker.”
“You were just a kid!”
“I was. Not much older than the girls are now. That brings it home, you know? Takes my understanding of how wrong it was to an entirely different level.”
“I would kill someone.” Sierra looked dumbstruck. “What did your dad do?”
“Okay, we’re getting ahead again. She spent the weekend with me and a few days later, I started feeling bad. Downstairs. You know? By Friday, I was in some pain and while I was in gym class, I hurt so bad that the coach took me to the nurse himself. Thought I had a hernia.” I looked up at the ceiling for a second and then blurted out, “My balls were killing me. Had to go to the emergency room. They called my dad in from the field and we found out I had an STD.”
“Holy shit.”
“So, the nurse at the school realized I wasn’t the only kid who had problems lately. There were eight of us.”
“She had a fucking harem? Of boys? Are you kidding me right now?”
“No.”
“That fucking bitch.”
“So, the nurse puts two and two together and gets eight. Principal had a meeting that next Monday with all the parents because none of us students were talking, you know? Told the parents to put the smack down on all of us and find out who we had each been sleeping with. Dad threatened me with my ever-loving life and I wouldn’t tell him.” The waitress came with our pie and I paused until she walked far enough away so that she couldn’t hear me. “One of the other guys wasn’t as stubborn as me and he spilled. Principal lost his fucking mind. Had to call all the parents back in for a meeting, each one alone, and tell them that there was an investigation pending and that detectives would be in touch soon.”
I glanced up from my slice of pie and saw that Sierra was staring at me wide-eyed, waiting on me to continue.
“So, the cops came to my house and asked me a million questions. By that time, I knew the jig was up and I had to tell the truth. I was honestly pissed that I wasn’t the only one. I felt fucking betrayed, as weird as it sounds.”
“Well, yeah, I can see that. You thought that this was all normal and everything, so you probably did feel betrayed.”
“She got fired, the investigation continued, and then the news that she was pregnant filtered down to all of us. That was a kick in the teeth right there.” I sighed, “But since she had all of us
