Penny didn’t see Tommy again until September but that day alone was good enough to keep her for the rest of the summer.
Penny played out worst case scenarios in her mind: he kisses another girl, he likes another girl, he never comes back to school, but no matter what would come she knew she could never go back. Things were never the same with her family again. Nothing was ever the same again.
In the fall they picked up their after school reading reunions where they had left off.
Penny’s mother caught on and tried to put a stop to it. Her mother told him to leave, the next day he came back and she asked him to leave, the next day he came back and she sat out in the backyard all the while. By the fourth known rendezvous her mother sat in the backyard, listened, and fell in love with the innocent reading sessions. She still didn’t approve but she didn’t fight it. She warned Penny but she let it continue. Her father and sister were still in the dark.
The snow came and the reading stopped and it was difficult for them both.
The snow melted and the reading resumed but summer soon came and they were separated again.
She waited for him on his birthday but he didn’t come for her.
They had autumn but things were changing. In school, when he was even there, Tommy was with his brothers and his friends. They were rough and they were tough and even the teachers seemed to be afraid of them. The jocks still ran the school in the conventional sense but even they feared Tommy and his brothers.
They sat in Rick’s fancy red car at lunch and smoked, that was if they stayed for the day. Most of the time, they retreated to his car and left. Every girl in school swooned over Vincent, Rick’s sidekick, but he wasn’t interested in any of them. He loved being loved and he thought if he were unattainable he would be even more desirable.
Rick hated school. Rick had a girlfriend. She was gaudy and opinionated and once Penny saw him hit her in the hallway during class when no one else was around.
Sometimes Penny overheard girls talking about Tommy and she gritted her teeth and tried to block it out. She saw him less now because he didn’t walk her home anymore.
After the winter he would walk her home on occasion. They would talk and she would laugh and when she reached her house it broke her heart because she didn’t know when she would see him again.
She wasn’t as confident that he still cared for her. He hadn’t kissed her since his fifteenth birthday and she was afraid he never would again. She cried herself to sleep on nights he walked her home, on nights he didn’t, on warm nights that seemed to summon summer... But some nights she just thought of him and smiled.
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