Chapter 1

Haley’s turn:

I didn’t get married on my sixteenth birthday.

I was already married. Bill knows it. Mom and Mister Steve know it.

“I’m glad, baby,” Mom said. “I wish I had your sense when I was your age.”

“Mom,” I said, “we talked about this before. People are not identical. You had your life. I have mine.”

“Yeah, baby, but I could’ve done better, y’know...”

“Mom, look at things right now. You’n’ Mister Steve have a GOOD marriage. You have a kid together. He loves YOU...”

“Warts ‘n’ all,” Mom said.

“He loves YOU. You love him. Little Steve’s in kindergarten and he’s a good kid, right?”

“Right.”

“So let’s not look back at stuff.”

Mom KNEW. Back when I was fourteen, she sort of knew that my Bill was more to me than the friendly guy next door who taught me chess and tutored me for school and paid me for helping him paint and do yard work and stuff.

She caught Bill in the yard one day and basically told him that she liked the way I was with him in my life and she didn’t want to change that in any way.

“She told me that she didn’t care if we were screwing each other silly,” Bill told me of the conversation.

That was the first night that Mom cut me loose to spend the night with Bill at his house.

She got me before I went over there and gave me the speech. “Haley, I kinda suspect that you ‘n’ Bill are more than just ‘friends’, baby.”

“Mooommmm,” I whined.

“I don’t want you to admit anything. You, you’re a good kid, and I think a lot of it is what you and Bill have together.”

“Mom,” I told her, “he’s good to me. Like Mister Steve is to you.”

“Baby, you’re fourteen ... boys your own age...”

“Would NOT treat me like Bill treats me.”

She looked at me, at first like she was going to yell, but then her face got all soft and motherly. “Not ‘Mister Bill’?”

I shook my head. “Nope. Best friend. Just ‘Bill’.”

“And you feel safe around him, don’t you?”

“Safest I’ve felt since you had to hold me and rock me to sleep when I got sick.”

“Not some stupid sex thing, baby?”

“No, not a stupid sex thing. That guy in the house next door treats me GOOD. He’s the one who helps me in school. He gives me as much of the world as we can get together.”

“You think you love ‘im, don’t you?” Mom asked me.

I didn’t verbalize. I just nodded my head.

“I was never in love when I was your age,” Mom admitted. “I ... I guess I was easy, Haley. It was fun and I had a lot of friends who’d take me places and...”

“I didn’t have to love Bill. Or do things. Well, maybe if you count the love between friends. But I absolutely DO love him.”

“And he loves you? He’s said it?”

I nodded again.

“You know how dangerous this all could be?”

“Yes, Mom. Bill told me. The people at school, too. But I love him and he loves me.”

“If he so much as touches you, you hold his life in your hands, precious,” Mom told me.

“I know. He told me that, too.”

“But you want to be with him.”

“I do.”

“You know, baby, I’m not stupid. I don’t care if y’all are fuckin’ each other silly, as long as it’s good for BOTH of you. I don’t want YOU hurt. And you could very well hurt him, aside from putting him in jail for years.”

“Mom, we never fucked.” I was being truthful. When Bill and I did it, it wasn’t ‘fucking’. I understand it to be magical and spiritual and wonderful and ‘fucking’ just doesn’t say that for me.

Mom smirked. “You know what I mean, girl. And if you got the chance to spend the night with him...”

“I would.”

“What about his daughter?”

“She doesn’t know. When the three of us go away for the weekend, she and I act like sisters. That’s all.”

“And you need to keep it that way.”

“Mom, I want to marry him.”

“When you’re sixteen, baby. If you’re still in love with him and he’s still in love with you, I’ll sign the papers.”

I jumped over and hugged her. “Thanks, Mom.”

“Now, if you showed up tonight with your school clothes for tomorrow, he’d be okay with that?”

“If you told him what you told me...”

“You don’t move in with him, baby. You LIVE here. When my sister comes over, you LIVE here. When his daughter comes over, you LIVE here. Okay?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I suppose that you need to go, huh?”

“I don’t want to act anxious.”

“Yeah, right, kiddo.”

I put my school clothes into the backpack I’d used as luggage on the overnight trips I’d taken with Bill and Deena and the ones where it was just Bill and me, and I headed for the front door.

“Where ya goin’, Haley?” Steve asked me.

“She’s gonna stay the night next door, Hon,” Mom told him.

“That thing we talked about?” he asked Mom. Mom nodded.

A minute later I walked in on Bill. He looked surprised.

“Clothes?”

“I’m spending the night.”

“Your mom knows?”

“She knows. I think Steve sort of knows.” I know he’s nervous, now, so... “What about dinner?”

“Let’s go find something before you have me committing a felony,” he laughed.

Out the door and into the car, then up the road we went.

“She was kinda blunt with me, Bill,” I said.

“She was blunt with me, too, sweetie,” he replied.

“It’s true, though.”

“Yeah.”

“The whole thing she told me. I really AM a good girl. I really AM a better student. And it’s YOUR fault.”

“No it’s not. I can’t make you smart and I can’t make you moral.”

“Yes you can. You did – the morality thing. You turn out to be the answer to this little girl’s temptations, baby. And you helped me get started on the school stuff. And I terribly forever love you.”

“I love you right back,” Bill said, squeezing my fingers.

That was the first night of MANY nights that I spent with my Bill in his house.

Yes, I know we’d gone off for a couple of weekends together. I told Mom that we were picking up his daughter to go with us. At the time, I thought I was being very clever and that she bought into the story. Now I’m not so sure. But here I was spending the first night in the very same bed where only a few months ago I had given him my virginity. We’ve worn that bed out, playing, exploring, learning each other, and now simply making love in a whole range of wonderful ways.

And that night, there was no “It’s eight o’clock. I need to go home, baby.” We showered, made love, went to sleep together, me backed up against him, his arms around me.

That’s why I say I didn’t get married when I turned sixteen. We were already married.

And that’s the way it was. If Mom’s sister and her family came over, I made an appearance. Sometimes, if they stayed late I’d even shower and change into my pajamas, just to keep up appearances. When they left, though, I could hardly wait until they turned the corner at the end of the street.

When it was Deena’s weekend with her dad, a couple of times we played ‘slumber party’, she and I staying up late watching movies with her dad.

Except ‘her dad’ was MY Bill. I’d manage to sneak a kiss before bedtime, and if we woke up before he did, we’d invade his bed. She’s his daughter. She’s there for the hugs from her daddy. I’m his mate. I could sneak a grope.

If I were like a lot of kids my age, things would have changed in the next almost two years. We’d’ve flared into a white-hot lust thing, then when I got bored, I’d’ve moved on.

I’m not like that. Two years added to the two I already had, when I started loving Bill before we started a physical relationship.

And I started my junior year in high school, and then I turned sixteen.

And on my sixteenth birthday, I got an engagement ring.

“You showed it to me, Bill. I never thought that you’d give it to me.” It’s his mom’s. I thought it was beautiful, but I never gave a thought to...

“Happy birthday, baby,” he’d told me in front of Mom and Steve and little Stevie. I squealed and kissed him.

We will actually be legally married this Saturday. This state has a three-day waiting period. Mom went with me and Bill to get a marriage license. There’s a three-day waiting period. The lady who issued the license dropped a bombshell on us.

“Just turned sixteen?”

“Yes, ma’am. Birth certificate right here,” I said. “Mom’s gonna sign for me.”

“You know, you could’ve married sooner if you’d’ve gotten a judge to issue an order.”

“We didn’t know that,” I said.

“Too late now,” Mom added. “She held off this long...”

I don’t know what I held off on. Bill and I have been solidly mated for two years, almost. But I didn’t say that, not in public.

Mom gave up a copy of my birth certificate and an affidavit stating that I had no known father to sign with her. Mom signed. Bill forked over the payment, and Bingo! It’s gonna happen. My dream’s coming true.

I wore my ring to school the next day because I absolutely LOVE it. My Bill gave it to me. We plan on putting it back up for safekeeping after we’re legally married. I want a gold band like Mister Steve gave Mom. But Tuesday morning I went to school with Bill’s ring on my finger.

I had no plans of announcing my change in status. First, for two years my relationship with my soon to be ‘official’ husband has been a felony offense for him. Second, I’m NOT normal when it comes to high school girls. I am completely monogamous. I am sane. I know girls who do two or three guys a week, sometimes in the same night. I do Bill.

I listen to the conversations and I don’t think any of them have ever had sex so completely overwhelming that they pass out and awaken with a lover gently caressing and kissing their faces. I haven’t heard ONE of them describe a dreamy afternoon in bed on a rainy day loving and teasing each other through several climaxes. I just don’t think any of them has it as good as me. I don’t get into those conversations, but I do listen.

I wasn’t going to say anything...

I didn’t make it through homeroom at the beginning of the day. Sharika’s a black girl who sits next to me for the fifteen minutes of homeroom. She eyed the ring.

“Girl, you wearin’ that ring on the wrong hand...”

“Huh?”

“You s’posed to wear it on your right hand. On the left hand, that mean you engaged.”

“It’s on the correct hand, Sharika.”

“Whaa-aat?!? You ENGAGED?”

Sharika’s voice carries. She wouldn’t know subtle if it bit her on the butt, anyway, but she got excited.

“I’m engaged.”

“You pregnant?”

“Not EVEN!” I blurted. “What kind of dumbass doesn’t know about birth control these days? Not to mention diseases...”