I thought about it for a few minutes. "No, I don't. I thought about it, though. A lot of people told me I was crazy to stay. But any one of us would have stayed, wouldn't we? We're family. That's the highest priority for me. And as everyone keeps saying, there's nothing stopping me from going to college later, is there?"
Ray shook his head. "Nope."
I went to bed that night with a strange feeling in my heart. Pride at playing my own part in supporting my family combined with the nagging worry that maybe those people who had told me to leave had, in some ways anyway, been right. My alarm clock was set for six-thirty the next morning. I wondered what my friends' alarm clocks were set for, in their college dorms. Would they go to classes the next day? Hang out with each other in grassy quads, surrounded by ivy-covered stone buildings and talking about philosophy and poetry instead of bills and grocery lists? Would they come home in the evening only to get dressed up again, to go to one of the endless parties that TV and movies had told me college was about? Were they meeting new people, new and interesting men from different places, with different ideas? I rolled over and faced the wall. Envy wasn't going to get me anywhere. The grass is always greener. I had a family - a loving, functional, super-tight family. A lot of those college kids couldn't say the same.
After work the next day I had to stop off at the pharmacy to pick up some cough medicine for Rosa, who had picked up a bit of a cold. It was summer and the pharmacy - the only one in Little Falls - never had got around to installing air conditioning, so it was very warm inside. I could feel sweat starting to trickle down my back underneath my white work blouse. I needed a shower. Work mostly consisted of sitting in front of a computer and answering phone calls but somehow, at the end of every day, I always felt unpleasantly sticky.
I was rooting through my purse for my phone so I could call Alisha and tell her I was going to be a few minutes late when I heard a male voice speak, right in front of me.
"Tasha."
I knew it was him before I even looked up - that surprisingly deep voice was hard to miss. I didn't run away, either. The heat in the pharmacy and the monotony of answering phone calls all afternoon had combined to put me in a kind of torpor.
"Kaden."
He was wearing a Reinhardt High t-shirt and the gray sweatpants they always wore for training sessions. And he still looked so, so damn good. I turned my eyes away, angry at my own body for reacting the way it was.
"I didn't kiss Kelsey Richards," he blurted, obviously aware that I wasn't going to give him the time to do anything else. "I didn't know it was her. She grabbed me from behind and I thought it was you. When I realized it wasn't - and that was within seconds - I stopped. I was pissed at her. Steve Carlson almost got into a fight with me because he thought I was being an asshole about it. I shouldn't have gotten so drunk, I know that. That was my fault. But-"
"Hold on," I said slowly, holding my hand up as my brain tried to absorb what Kaden had just said. "Hold on, Kaden."
He stopped talking abruptly and just looked at me. I took a step away from him and pressed my fingertips against my forehead, confused. Was he bullshitting? None of my anger had dissipated - seeing Kaden so suddenly had just brought it all back up to the surface, where it bubbled away as hot as ever. But...what if he was telling the truth? He couldn't be, could he?
"What?" I said, mainly as a stalling tactic. "What, Kaden? I saw you. I saw you. Lena saw you. And why would you think Kelsey was me when I was in the gym with-"
"What did you see?" Kaden broke in before I could finish.
"You!" I told him, my voice rising slightly. "I saw you grabbing her ass! I saw you kissing her!"
"I know, Tasha. But, I mean, what else did you see? Where was she when I grabbed her?"
I closed my eyes. What he was saying, if he was telling the truth (and as far as I was concerned that was a pretty big 'if'), did make sense.
"She came up behind you and started hugging on you," I said, speaking slowly because there was a maelstrom going on in my mind. "Then you reached down and grabbed her ass and-"
"I reached down behind me, right?"
"Yes, you reached down behind you. Then you turned around and started to kiss her."
"Right," Kaden said, matter-of-factly. "I turned around and kissed her. And do you know what happened then? I had my eyes closed. I was fucking wasted. But I tasted cigarettes and then I realized it wasn't you and I stopped. I didn't want to go on, either, Tasha. It wasn't like I was so turned on that I had to force myself to stop. I was completely grossed out. I got pissed at Kelsey and that's when Steve started acting like a dick and I left."