Chapter 1

It started out to be a good dream. I was fifteen, a junior in High School because I'd skipped two grades in elementary school. Two years younger than other juniors, and still, I was big enough to be on the football team. At 5'10", 180 lbs, I was the backup tight end. We didn't have a state championship team, but we were pretty good. And with my green eyes and sandy hair, I was doing okay with the girls. They accepted me as a junior, not even asking about my age. I was accepted, too, among the smart kids in the school, which was in a suburb of Tallahassee, Florida. Christopher J. Hollis that's me. Almost a Junior, but with a different middle name, I didn't have to be a 'JR.'

Life was good. Recently, I'd scored with a very beautiful girl, Elizabeth Calhoun. She and I had relieved each other of our virginities during the Christmas break. She was three years older than me, at eighteen, but we were in the same class. Not in the same classes, you understand, because I was taking advanced everything – computer science, math, physics, even English and history – while she was taking the regular version. But that was okay. She wasn't regular in the looks department, for sure. She was 5'7", blonde and curvy. I didn't need to measure her chest – she was just bigger and bouncier than even the cheerleaders, which was superfine with me. I guess I like 'em on the big, bouncy side.

I had wondered how we had sex both as virgins, but it didn't hurt for her. I mean, everybody knew that, for girls, it had to hurt the first time.

"No, Chris. Please don't be upset about that," she explained when I raised the issue. We were still in bed at the local Motel 6 when I asked. No blood on the sheets either. "You know my father owns a horse breeding ranch." Her mother wasn't in the picture any more; nobody ever talked about why. "I've been riding since I was old enough to walk. My hymen disappeared somewhere along the way."

I accepted her explanation. It took me nearly eleven years to discover that was a lie.

Well, we were already going steady when we did the deed. We renewed our mutual fuckability at least every Saturday night, mostly in the hay loft in her father's barn. I didn't have enough money to splurge on a motel and my parental units were always home. So Hello, Hay Loft! We were an item in school, something she and her girlfriends always tittered about when they got together. I never could figure out for sure what was so funny, but later on, I got a big clue. We never had to worry about birth control, since she was on the pill.

Long about Spring Break, my dream life turned into a nightmare. Liz told me she was pregnant. Nothing was perfect, she had said. That included the pill. We were just the unlucky — of 1%.

I was stunned. She was unhappy. But she clung on my arm and just took the position that we were going to have to tell our parents, and what would we do then?

Her father was first. "Yea-uh," he said. "I figgered it was gonna come to that. Sportin' around in the hay loft all the time will do that. You know, science has figgered out what causes babies, right?"

He knew? Then he dropped me into the shit.

He turned to his daughter. "You sure this feller is the father?"

Liz glared at him. "Yes, daddy! It's only been Chris. Ever!"

"Uh-huh," he said, looking dubious.

"Daddy! I was only necking up there with David and those others. Chris is the only one I've done it with. You know how science is: you can't get pregnant from only necking."

David? Others? This was all news to me. I looked at her. She latched onto my hand and squeezed.

She looked at me. "We'll talk later, okay sweetie?" she said quietly.

"Uh-huh," said daddy again. He was a laconic sort. "Welcome to the family, Chris." We never had a conversation again about his insinuations.

Married? Oh? This had already been decided? Since when? I mean, I didn't want to leave Liz in the lurch and I intended to do the right thing. But I hadn't even considered marriage. Not that I was opposed to marrying and having lots of babies with Liz. It would have been nice to be consulted first though.

I guess my consent had been given seven inches at a time, over and over, on Saturday nights. If you're old enough to screw, you're old enough to live with the consequences. This was a consequence, all right.

Liz beamed at me with her adorable smile when her daddy accepted me as an honorary Calhoun.

She later explained to me that she'd indeed been in the hay loft with four others over the past eighteen months. But that they never, ever had sex up there. That was the last we ever talked about it, for years and years.

My parents were somewhat less than thrilled. They knew that I'd been going steady with Liz, of course. I was an only child and they kept up with what I was doing, especially since they had such high hopes. Exceptional child, skipped grades, college scholarship, good athlete, etc.

"I guess we'll get married in the summer, mom," I explained the plans. "She's supposed to have the baby in August."

"Yup," said Liz. "I won't bother with my senior year. I – I mean we – can just move into the little cabin on the ranch, while Chrissy..." I could see my father flinch at the nickname " ... finishes school. And then we'll learn the ranch operation, 'til daddy passes. Then we'll run it."

We will? I saw the look of surprise on my parents' faces, too. That was the last straw, at least on this go-round. Liz had been bossy throughout, ever since we started fucking. I guess that somehow, me fucking her also meant her bossing me. Somehow.

"No, Liz. It won't be that way," I said. I hated to be the one to pop her fantasy balloon, but... "I'm going to college. I'm going to study computer science. I have no interest and no skill in animal husbandry. If we get married, I'll go to school near home. We'll live in an apartment, somewhere close to campus."

"But Chrissy..."

"You know how I don't like that nickname. It's Chris or Christopher."

She was annoyed. First the plan, then the 'If' when referring to the marriage plans, now the nickname. "Okay! Chris. What do you mean 'If we get married'? You're responsible for this bump I'm gonna be carrying for several months."

My parents were just watching from across the kitchen table, where this confrontation was taking place.

"I should have said 'If this marriage is going to last, ' I guess. I'll marry you so the baby will have a last name. But if you plan on my living out the rest of my life breeding horses, we'll be divorced within a couple of years."

That shut her up. But not for long.

"Well if we go live in an apartment near some campus, while I raise the baby, what are we going to do for money?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "We'll have to figure out something. We can do it. Lots of other people have kids and live on practically nothing while they go to school."

"No. I won't live in poverty, when there's a perfectly good alternative," she sounded adamant. Frankly, I didn't blame her.

"How about this," said my father. He was a mediator who worked for the Federal Courts. Leave it to him to find a middle ground. "You get married, assuming that you both want to. You live in the cabin on your father's ranch. Chris goes to FSU in Tallahassee and commutes to the cabin. It's only thirty or forty miles. We'll give you our Honda for a wedding present. You can put off the decision about how to run the ranch and/or have a career until he graduates."