“No,” I whisper, ashamed. “I kind of…gave it up.”
Liam is quiet. “Gave what up?” he asks. I know he knows.
“It, my v-card.” My face feels like someone set fire to it.
“Oh,” Liam finally says.
Oh? Is that all he is going to say? Oh? “Yeah,” I say, twiddling my fingers together. “Then the break up happened. Not but a few weeks later.”
Silence.
“What a hot dog?” Liam sets up, quickly, looking anywhere but at my face.
“Um…sure,” I say.
Liam jumps up, all too quickly, walking toward a hot dog stand on the pier behind us. I sink into the blanket. Jeez, Liam can be so weird sometimes. I’m sure he is just as uncomfortable talking about that as I am.
I try to relax but all I’m seeing are pictures of Hayden and me. His touch, his lips, all of him. I shake my head. I shouldn’t have told Liam that. He jumped up like I set fire to his pants.
“Here ya go, one dog for the lady.” Liam sits down, handing me a hot dog.
We sit in silence for a few minutes eating. “Your dad seemed upset today.”
I scoff. “Yeah, right.” I pick a piece of the napkin holding my hot dog off, throwing it to the ground. “He doesn’t care about us. He is an abandoner.”
Liam is staring at me when I glance up. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”
I nod. “Sure, I do. He is just leaving me,” I whisper. “Like I’m nothing. He doesn’t care anymore.”
“At least he told you bye,” Liam whispers.
My heart thumps an extra beat. Like Liam’s mom done him. “Um…I’m sorry. I didn’t even think about that.”
Liam bumps his shoulder into mine. “It’s okay; it was a long time ago. I barely remember it.”
“It still hurts,” I say. I mean it as a question but I already know the answer.
“It does.”
“Have you…have you tried to contact her?”
“Don’t know how,” he takes a bite of hot dog, “don’t know her address, where she went, her cell phone or anything. I don’t even really know if she is alive.”
“You know her name, right?”
“Yeah, Mary Beth.”
“Last name?”
“Well, it was Erickson, but I’m not sure if her and my dad are even officially divorced or not. I guess they would have to if Dad married the Barbie Clone. He never talks about her. He never told me why she left or where he thought she might have gone.”
“You asked him anything about her?” I take the last bite of my hot dog.
He shakes his head. “Nope, I did when I was younger. He ignored me. Now, he is never home and bitch queen is always there. So, I just stopped asking.”
“She is kind of a bitch,” I say. “Just saying.”
“Talking dirty today,” Liam says, smiling.
“I cuss sometimes.”
“Sometimes?”
“I said shit that one time.”
Liam throws his head back and laughs. “When you can count on your fingers how many times you’ve cussed, you cannot say you cuss.”
I laugh. “I’m not as good as you think.”
“How do you know I think you’re good?”
“You wouldn’t have agreed to this. You know being with me will give you a break with your teachers. Someone like you just doesn’t date someone like me.”
Liam makes a small sound in his throat that I don’t know what it means. “That’s not true…” he stops. I am hanging on his words. I want to shake them out of him. But his lips are shut tight.
“What is true?” I ask.
He closes his eyes, shaking his head. “Nothing.”
Agh! I look out over the ocean. I can’t look at him. What was he going to say? I change the subject. “I think we should try and find your Mom.”
Liam is too quiet. I look over at him. He is staring at me. His grey eyes so…beautiful. “No,” he says, shaking his head back and forth.
“No? Why not?”
“I don’t want to,” he says, trying to stand up. I grab his arm, pulling him back down. He stiffens at my touch.
“I know it’s scary, but just think about it. We might find something. We might find her. That would be great right?”
“Yeah, but what if she doesn’t want to see me?” he whispers.
That’s the reason. He is scared. “Look at you,” I say; poking a finger at his chest, “you’re awesome. There is no way she would not want to see you.”
He smirks, bringing a dimple up on his cheek. “I am pretty awesome, aren’t I?”
“Don’t push it.”