There was no judgment in her voice. No disgust. “You know about that?”
“His car’s at our place more often than not. Your bedroom door’s always closed, and you guys are awfully quiet in there.”
Cody’s cheeks began to burn. “That doesn’t mean—”
“Of course it does.” She chuckled. “When it comes to kids, silence is way more suspicious than noise. Apparently that’s true of teenagers too. And the fact that you’re suddenly washing your sheets every weekend is hard to miss.”
He waited, expecting accusations or a lecture, or maybe to be told how much of a pervert he was, but his mom was silent. “That’s it?” he finally asked. “You don’t want to yell at me, or tell me I’m a sick pervert, or that I’ll get AIDS, or that—”
“Would you prefer that?”
“No, but—”
“I’ve met plenty of truck drivers like you over the years to know it ain’t all bad.” She took another drag of her cigarette before tossing the butt out the window. “At least you won’t knock up some girl and be stuck here like the rest of us. I wish you were normal sometimes, but only because it’d be easier on you. In my experience, most men are pigs. They’ll fuck with you and leave you broken and never look back. Kind of like that boy a few years ago.” She shrugged. “But I guess there’s plenty of men who’d say that about women, so it don’t much matter what I think.”
He didn’t even care that she’d essentially called him abnormal. “You knew about Dusty?”
She turned toward him, her eyebrows up, as if to say, Do we really need to go over this again?
He thought about Nate, and about how hard they’d tried to hide their secret, even though they’d failed. “You told Mr. Bradford about Nate and me?”
“Not quite, but I imagine he’ll figure it out soon enough.”
Cody’s headache was quickly escalating. He leaned back in the seat and tested the abrasion above his eyes. It stung like hell. “But what if he—”
“How Nate’s dad handles it isn’t my problem. I know that sounds harsh, Cody, but that boy isn’t my concern. You are. If his dad tries to get the rest of the police department involved, it’ll cause as much trouble for Nate as it does for you. And I’ve met Billy Jones’s uncle before.” Her voice was thick with contempt as she said his name. “I won’t let some self-righteous hick who got his badge out of a Cracker Jack box try to lay this at your feet just because you’re different. As far as I’m concerned, whatever’s been happening in your bedroom isn’t anybody’s concern but your own. God knows the cops in this town ain’t never done us any favors.”
He closed his eyes, too stunned to speak, both by his mom’s easy acceptance and her fierce protectiveness.
They were silent the rest of the drive. Once home, his mom took a bag of frozen peas out of the freezer and tossed them his way. “Knew I bought these for a reason. Put that on your eye.”
He sank into one of their kitchen chairs and followed orders. It felt wonderful. He should shower and change out of his bloody clothes, but all he wanted to do was sleep.
“You hungry? I can make you dinner, long as you don’t mind generic SpaghettiOs or tuna casserole.”
“Tuna casserole sounds great.”
“You got it.” He had his eyes closed, but he tracked her footsteps across the kitchen to where he sat. “It isn’t fair, is it?”
He could think of plenty of unfair things, but it was hard to say which one she meant. “What isn’t?”
Her hand settled on his head, stroking his hair. It was something she hadn’t done in ages. He’d forgotten how good it felt. “You’ve been so happy these last few months—happier than I’ve seen you since you were a boy—but nothing good can live in this town. It all gets stomped to dust in the end.”
She kissed him on the head and walked away, and Cody sat there, his face stuck in a bag of frozen peas, thinking how he’d never appreciated his mom as much as he did right then.
Nate had been to the emergency room before. Granted, that had been in Texas, but he’d needed stitches once as a kid after falling off his bike and splitting his chin open, and he’d broken his arm in seventh grade, and needed stitches again in tenth grade after his cousin’s dog bit him. He thought he knew what to expect. But this time, something was different.
“Don’t you worry,” the first nurse told him after taking his blood pressure and his temperature. “We’re calling your dad right now.” She handed him a hospital gown. “I’ll go out. You undress and put that on, and lie down on the bed there. Then we’ll get you cleaned up while we wait for the doctor.”