When I hit the garage-door opener I discovered that sometime in the last few hours, my parents had come home. Great. All the calming I’d done on the side of the road immediately went away.

I tried to sneak through the kitchen and up to my room, but my mom and dad were both still sitting having after-dinner coffee. “Jeff, you missed dinner,” my mom said. “I texted you.”

Damn.

“Where’ve you been?”

“Just out,” I said, turning from them to hang up my keys.

“You’re wet,” Mom pressed.

“Yeah, I, uh, got caught in the rain.”

They both looked at me for a long time. “It stopped raining two hours ago, Jeff.”

“Yeah, well . . .”

“You’ve been driving around wearing wet clothes for two hours?”

Well, Dad, I wouldn’t exactly say I’ve been wearing them. I said nothing.

He looked at me a second longer. “Your hair’s dry.”

Oh crap. “I gotta go change,” I muttered, and turned toward the stairs.

“Well, it’s your choice,” my mom said cheerfully. “We can have this conversation in wet clothes or in dry. I guess I’d rather be comfortable if I were you, too.” She smiled at me, but she was wearing her Mom face. I looked down, uncertain for just a moment that there weren’t big letters across my chest that said I had sex. But it was just my faded blue T-shirt. “Come back down when you’ve changed,” she said. “I saved some dinner for you.”

Now that I thought about it, I was starving.

I took the stairs two at a time, then hesitated outside my door, wondering if she was in there. I hadn’t actually asked her to leave, but I’d made myself pretty damn clear, hadn’t I? I turned the knob very quietly and poked my head in.

No Kimberlee on my bed. No Kimberlee on the beanbags. I closed the door and searched my room. No Kimberlee in my closet. No Kimberlee in my bathroom.

No Kimberlee.

I went straight for my food as soon as I got back downstairs and tried not to look at anyone as I shoved big bites into my mouth.

They waited a few minutes while I cleared most of my plate.

“So,” my dad started. “Where’ve you been?”

I gulped. “At Sera’s.”

“All afternoon?”

“No, we got into a fight and I left for a little while. But other than that, yeah.”

“So you got wet when you left?”

“Pretty much.”

“And then you sat around Sera’s house in wet clothes for two hours?”

I squirmed. “Kind of.”

My parents shared a long look.

“Or maybe you spent two hours sitting around Sera’s house without your wet clothes on?” Mom said.

“It could have happened that way, too.” I think my voice cracked.

“Jeff, be serious. Are you and Sera having sex?” That question sounded so dire coming from my dad.

“Having might be a bit of an overstatement,” I said to my plate.

“Just today?”

This was so bad. “Um, yeah.”

“Jeff.” Disappointment dripped from my mom’s voice.

That was too much. “What? You say that like you waited.”

“Jeff.” A clear warning from Dad.

“Well, it’s true.” I worked hard to keep my voice sincere, not sarcastic. “I’m not trying to be a smart-ass. You guys did it, too; does it really surprise you?”

“I had hoped you would learn from our mistakes,” my dad said.

“I did. We . . . we were careful.”

“Define careful.”

“We used protection, Dad. Okay?”

“At least that’s something.”

I took a few breaths to calm down. I didn’t want this to be a fight; I wanted them to understand. And if anyone could understand, it would be my parents. “I love her, Dad. I do.” My dad started to speak, but I cut him off. “Maybe I don’t love her the way you loved Mom; maybe it’s just, uh, a crush or whatever you’re going to say. But I love her and you can’t tell me I don’t.”

My dad’s mouth closed.

“I thought about you. I did. Just before . . . well, just before. I didn’t have anything with me, and I was ready to stop. I told her we had to stop, and I would have,” I said, looking up and meeting his eyes again.

“Why didn’t you?”

“She . . . was prepared.”

“Ah, a good Girl Scout.” Mom hid her smile behind her coffee cup and coughed when Dad glared at her.

“That’s not the point, son—”

“It is the point, Dad. You taught me to wait for the right time and the right person, and then to use protection and not leave my life up to chance. That’s what I did. I’m still kind of young, I know. But I’m six months older than you were when you met Mom. And you married her! You’ve been married for over fifteen years. Were you wrong?” I asked.

My dad stared at me for a long time before sliding his gaze over to Mom. “No, Jeff, I wasn’t wrong.” He turned back to me with his mouth set in a hard line. “But condoms are not a hundred percent. If you’re not ready to stand by her and do what it takes, don’t do it again. Promise?”

I worked to suppress a grin. “I promise.”

Thirty-One

I DIDN’T SEE KIMBERLEE AT all the next day. I saw a lot of Sera, but not Kimberlee. Sera still seemed stressed and wouldn’t say why, but after yesterday, I stopped worrying. Whatever was going on, she would make the right choice. I’d learned that trust isn’t always something someone earns; it’s a choice you make. Kimberlee taught me that in her caustic, demented way.