Chapter 3

I read my part of Robert Frost's Home Burial and waited for Brad to come in with his lines. When he didn't say anything, I looked up from my copy of the poem and saw tears in his eyes. Dropping my stapled pages to the floor, I went to him and wrapped my arms around him. I didn't know what was wrong, but I didn't ask questions. I just held him.

It had been two weeks since Valentine's Day and we were rehearsing for the speech competition coming up in a couple of weeks. His parents and the twins had gone to visit his mother's sister Angela and her family for the weekend. They lived on a farm a couple of hours away and the kids were excited about seeing the cows and the horses.

I had come to Brad's house that Saturday morning and we had eaten breakfast and had gone over some Geometry that I was having problems with. We then started rehearsal. We had gone through several stanzas before he had not taken up his cue.

His arms came around me and we stood there holding each other for several minutes before he said, "When the twins were a couple of years old, we had a brother who died at the age of six months. He just went to sleep one night and didn't wake up. Want to see pictures of him?"

"I'd love to."

We spent an hour looking through the family photos during the time Garrett had been alive. He could have passed for one of the twins. When Brad put the book on the coffee table, it was time for lunch. We fixed chili dogs and while we ate we discussed our families going all the way back to our Great-greats. Besides her twin brother his mother had five sisters. His father had three brothers. His grandparents had come from big families and he had more relatives than he could keep up with. My parents each had an older sister. And I told him about my various relatives of whom there were plenty, too.

We had been sitting at the kitchen table for a couple of hours when the phone rang. While he talked with the twins, I cleaned up the kitchen. We then got back to the poem. We were going through it for the second time, when he mumbled something under his breath and took me in his arms for a kiss that made me momentarily forget my name. Not that I cared anything about my name. All I was concerned with was sizing up his mouth with my tongue.

Our soft moans and sighs filling the room, our tongues caressing each other, we stood there for what felt like a hundred years in each others arms until he looked into my eyes and whispered, "May I undress you?"

After Mama had discussed sex with me on the night of my thirteenth birthday, I had decided that I would not let just any boy or man see my body. I wanted it to be something special for the someone I was willing to spend the rest of my life with. Dale and Paul had never reached that point in my heart. Brad, on the other hand, had been there since Valentine's Day; maybe even before. Even if things didn't work out between us, I knew I would not regret anything that we shared together.