Free Blue Rose (A Flowering Novel) by Sarah Daltry Page B

and made a comment about my dad fucking me. It wasn’t even about the trial, but Jack lost it. He slammed the kid’s head into our table, and they needed three teachers to pull him off. There was blood everywhere and he was suspended for it. The guidance department got involved and actually got him a tutor during the suspension and made the principal remove it from his record, in case it would interfere with Jack’s college plans. But that was the only time I ever saw him go after someone else. He apologized to me for weeks. But I was so fucked up that I just thought it was kind of sweet.
    Watching your dad kill your mom, even if she was a junkie, isn’t something people get over, but Jack has always been the kind of guy who turn s it on himself. He still does and I watch him crying at her grave now, because he still blames himself somehow. He really believes he was a bad kid. That if he was less worthless that she wouldn’t have been on drugs, that his family would still be intact. All he’s ever wanted was a family; all I ever wanted was not to have one.
    “You ready?” he says when he’s done and we walk back to the car.
    “Jack, I’m staying with you tonight,” I tell him.
    He shakes his head. “No. I need to be alone. I need to be good enough for her.”
    I kiss him. It’s stupid, because he loves her, and there is nothing good that can come from this, but I don’t know how else to love someone, how else to be there for someone. He leans into the kiss, his hands sliding down my arms, moving into my shirt and up my back. His tongue swirls against mine, and even though the car is freezing, the windows fog up. He groans and I lean back, wanting more, wanting him to be with me one more time, but as I go for his zipper, he moves back into his seat.
    “I can’t,” he says. “I love her.”
    “But you’re not together,” I remind him.
    “I know. But I want her to know that I love her, that she was enough for me, that I didn’t fuck it up as soon as I got the chance.”
    I nod and pull my shirt down . I can still feel his hands on my skin, and I hate that I’m so physically desperate for him. We drive back to the dorm and he holds me in a spooning position as we fall asleep, but his hands stay around my waist and he doesn’t let me kiss him again.
    “I love you,” I tell him, but he’s already asleep. And it’s already way too late.
     

     
    14
     
    For all my guilt and confusion about sex, the first time with Jack was something magical. There was no way I wasn’t going to fall permanently in love with him after that night.
    The trial had just concluded and Jack wasn’t happy. His father was being put away, but he was staying close, at Jack’s grandmother’s request, and she was appealing for a chance at future rehabilitation rather than incarceration without parole. She was meeting with the lawyers and Jack asked me to come over after school.
    We had never talked about sex. For all the stories about us, we’d still only kissed. It was spring and Jerry had been gone for some time. I still cringed whenever anyone else touched me, but I had started to feel something again with Jack. Only Jack. Even Dave would send me into a panic attack with a hug. But Jack made me feel like my past was only a nightmare.
    We were ta king sex ed in gym that spring, and everyone made jokes about me in class. I worried about what they said in Jack’s class, but he never told me and I never asked. Still, all the talk about sex made me think about my own experiences with it, but I was starting to feel those stirrings again. I wondered what was wrong with me, how I could want that after what I’d been through. I wondered if maybe I really was an animal, with no self-control, some kind of immoral slut who couldn’t stop her urges. The thing is, other girls talked about guys all the time. I heard their conversations. I listened to their stories, and they were having sex, or at least they said they were. And they were