“Serena, for the love of… Don’t make me cuss!” Romy calls.
“—is no joke,” I continue. “Seven hundred and fifty thousand teen girls get pregnant every year. Do you want to be a dad right now?”
“No,” he whispers.
“Don’t let the sex muddle your brain, and don’t think her being on the pill is enough. Even condoms are not completely safe.” Been there, done that.
He pales. “You can get pregnant with condoms?”
“Yes, Liam, I see you’re catching on. Nothing is impossible, and sex is a big responsibility. Think you’re ready for it?”
He sways on his feet.
“Should we discuss venereal disease?”
“No,” he whispers. “Please.”
“I’m going to jump out of this window if you give him the sex talk!” Romy yells.
“No, you won’t!” I call back to her, eyes still on Liam. I clear my throat. “First, and most people don’t realize this, there are more than twenty-five different venereal diseases, and some of those you can get even with a condom. Look it up—it’s true. Some, such as chlamydia and gonorrhea, have no symptoms but can be deadly if left untreated. I won’t go into what happens to the female, but for the male, well, it begins as a disgusting penile discharge and mild pain when urinating that becomes more severe. Then it progresses to epididymitis, an inflammation of the tube-like structure that stores and transports sperm…” I pause. “You look a bit green, Liam. Should I tell you about the rectal issues?”
“No.”
“Problem, sis?” Julian murmurs as he steps up next to me.
“Is there a problem?” I ask Liam.
He sucks in a breath and looks up at Romy, back at me, and then lands on Julian as he licks his lips. He comes back to me, a pleading look in his eyes. “I understand completely, ma’am. I’m so sorry.”
Ma’am. I laugh. “Good. Now, I’d love for you to meet my big brother. He bench-presses two hundred and fifty pounds. How much do you weigh, Liam?”
“One forty.”
“Julian’s a decorated state trooper and a former Navy SEAL. Wanna know what he did in the Navy? Sniper. My brother can kill a man from a thousand yards. He’s very protective of his baby sister. How do you think it makes him feel when a guy climbs out of her window?”
“Pissed off,” Julian mutters.
Liam flinches. “Won’t happen again, I swear. I’ll come see you first, before I see Romy.”
His body is pointed to the street, and I sigh. “You may go,” I say, and he pauses for half a second then takes off in a run down the street toward a bright yellow Chevelle. He cranks it and drives past us very, very slowly.
“Call me!” Romy yells at him.
“Navy SEAL? Damn, I sound good.” Julian chuckles.
“I improvised. I’m pissed at Romy, but catching him coming down the tree—now that was just fortuitous fun.”
“You’re crazy! I hate both of you!” Romy yells before slamming her window shut.
Oh, the bliss of mentoring a teenager. Technically, Nana has guardianship of her, but I’m the one she gravitates to. There’s only seven years between us, so it makes sense. Did I do crazy stuff when I was a teenager? Um, yeah, hello, tattoo and vodka. I used to sneak out of my bedroom on the weekends. I gave my virginity to a bad boy in high school who dropped me afterward. I just want Romy to make better decisions than I did.
Julian throws an arm around me as we walk to the front door. “You mentioned the gun?”
“Told him you took the last guy out.”
He shakes his head. “What are we gonna do with her?”
A long sigh comes from me. “Heaven help me, I’ve tried. You should talk to her…”
He winces. “Serena, nah, don’t make me. I wouldn’t know what to say.”
“Maybe if you sat down with her and told her a guy’s point of view on sex, how they may not feel the same emotional attachments—”
He sucks his teeth. “Look, you’re a girl, she’s a girl…you got it.”
Then why is she always in some kind of trouble? Frustration builds in my stomach. In March of her junior year, while I was in the middle of dealing with the fallout from Vane, she hooked up with a bad crowd at the public school. The administrators caught her and two other girls smoking pot under the football bleachers. Drugs on school grounds are an automatic 180-day expulsion and admittance to an alternative school. I scrambled to find the money and managed to get her accepted at the local private school. Lucky for us, one of the board members is a policeman and worked with my dad, otherwise they wouldn’t have taken her.
An hour later, I’m slicing strawberries while Romy takes the chicken breasts out of the oven. A plate of warm waffles sits on the counter next to a bowl of eggs ready to be scrambled, just waiting for Julian to come in from mowing the yard.
My gaze drifts over the soft blue curtains in the breakfast area, the faded filigree wallpaper, the ancient oak table with a centerpiece of grapes and apples. The house is old and ramshackle, but tidy. Selling our family home was never an option after my parents died.
“How’s school? It’s your senior year, so that has to be exciting,” I ask Romy, offering an olive branch after I talked to her in her room. While she glowered, I sat on her bed and went through my checklist with her about teen sex, how she’s experiencing raging hormones, that sex doesn’t mean love…
Now in the kitchen, she shrugs, a wary expression on her face. Deep purple lipstick colors her mouth and her eyes are heavy with eyeliner. Magenta streaks pop in her hair. That’s new.
“Two weeks in and calculus sucks. I flunked the first test.”
