by Bethany-Kris
“Perfect. Thank you, Ma.”
“That’s all that matters.”
Her mother pushed off the counter, and set her coffee cup into the nearby sink.
“I’m going to head up to bed,” Catherine said.
Her mother followed behind her. “I think I will, too.”
“Are we still doing church in the morning?”
Catrina smirked. “Always, even with a hangover, in your father’s case.”
Catherine shouldn’t have bothered to ask.
Church was a given.
Parties and late nights did not matter.
Not for the very Catholic Marcellos.
Although to be fair, Catherine figured her family was much more Catholic in appearance than in behavior and action. But those were the kinds of things that were not appreciated when they were pointed out.
“Do try not to make a habit of this, though,” her mother said as they climbed the stairs.
“Pardon?”
“Coming home late, Catty.”
Catherine groaned. “Fucking Andino.”
Her mother’s laughter echoed through the quiet, dark house.
“He meant no harm,” Catrina said, grinning widely.
“Lies. Who else heard him use that nickname for me?”
“Well …”
“Well, what, Ma?”
“Everyone.”
Ugh.
Goddamn Cross.
And Andino.
All of them.
Catherine would never shake that nickname now.
She knew it.
“Oh, and Catherine?”
“Yeah, Ma?”
Catrina waved a finger toward the collar of her long-sleeved shirt. “Wear something with a high neck tomorrow, and for a while afterward.”
Catherine’s brow furrowed.
Her mother flicked a wrist, as if to explain her next words away. “Dante might overlook one late night, but certainly not a mark like the one on your collarbone there. Your father is not ready for that reality where you and boys are concerned just yet, reginella.”
Oh.
Catherine’s cheeks heated red, and she failed to come up with an appropriate response.
“You are being safe beyond your birth control shot, right? That shot is good for preventing pregnancy, but not anything else.”
“Yeah, of course I’m safe, Ma,” Catherine said quickly.
Catherine had been on birth control pills from the time she was eleven because of periods that made it damn near impossible to get out of bed for the first three or so days. The pill helped to manage those symptoms for years. Then, after she had turned fifteen, she asked her mother to take her in for a better, more reliable birth control. She wanted it for the very purpose of being birth control, even though she hadn’t started having sex at that point. It was a just in case sort of thing.
“And I’m here,” her mother added, “if you need something, Catherine. Anything.”
“I know, Ma.”
Catherine barely noticed the month of April melting into the month of May.
Suddenly it was there, and she didn’t know how.
She could have blamed her distraction on a lot of things, given the time of the year. End of year functions were starting to be planned for school, and the threat of exams loomed, which meant teachers being even worse than they already were on a regular day.
She could have blamed her distraction on the fact she spent two hours a day with a driving instructor, earning her hours on the off-chance she could take her road test a single month earlier than was usually required.
She could have blamed it on the fact her brother would be moving to Detroit the first week of June so that he could start school in Ann Arbor. Her family was already starting to feel those effects of him being gone, before he actually was.
There were lots of things for her to blame.
None of them were the real cause.
Catherine had mistakenly—or maybe stupidly—assumed that sex, and having sex, would change very little about her life, or her relationship with Cross. She thought it wouldn’t make a difference because she already loved him. They had already been involved in other ways, and it was just sex.
She was dumb.
She didn’t know anything.
Sex did change things.
It changed it a lot.
Her. Him. Them.
It made things intense because that option was there, and then sometimes, more often than not, she wanted it to be there when it couldn’t be.
She found she liked the very unique kind of rush that came with it all, and that made her stupid, because she chased it with Cross even when she knew she shouldn’t. He let her, too, teasing and toying, but never, ever denying.
It made them stupid.
She just hadn’t realized how much.
Catherine came up behind Cross in the hallway, ignoring the fact he was talking to one of his friends at the row of lockers. Her hand skimmed under the back of his shirt, and she felt his muscles jump at her touch. Teasing, she dragged her nails gently against his lower back, making him stiffen, even as he kept talking.
“Just shoot me a text when you get it,” she heard Cross said.
“Got it, man.”
That was that.
The conversation was over, and the other boy was gone.
Catherine grinned when Cross turned around to face her. “You’re wicked, Catty. You know that, right?”
She shrugged, stood on her tiptoes, and kissed his mouth quickly before pulling away. He could tease, sure, but so could she.
Catherine had found that it was a great deal easier for her to tease Cross, than it was for him to tease her. She could work him up, wind him around her pinky, and get him to act just as stupid as she did when she wanted him to.
Maybe he didn’t even realize it.
“That kiss was cheap,” Cross muttered, slamming his locker closed.
Catherine winked. “You know, last classes are optional today since it’s Senior Skip Day.”
“We’re not seniors.”
“Nope, but we do have my Lexus. Which means we can just leave, go wherever, do whatever.”
Cross’s tongue peeked out to wet the corner of his lip as he grinned. “Catty—”
“My house is full of people, in case you didn’t know. Constantly. Michel is leaving, so people keep coming. All the time.”
“So let’s do something this weekend,” he suggested.
“Can’t. Party and dinner on Saturday for my grandmother, and there’s a church thing on Sunday after Mass I have to go to.”
Cross groaned. “Throw me a bone here, Catherine.”
“The Lexus has, like, really tinted windows.”
“Not that kind of bone. I swear, I would drive your car back to drop you off and pick up the Rover, and your dad would know somehow that I fucked his daughter in the back of that car.”
“You should tuck that paranoia back in or get it checked before it spreads.”
Cross rolled his eyes. “I love how you never take anything I tell you seriously when it comes to that man, and his hatred of me.”
She did.
She currently just didn’t care.
“And the school is pretty much empty, so …” Catherine trailed off with a grin, saying, “Let’s just go, hmm.”
“Wicked,” he said under his breath again.
Catherine was already walking away, laughing over her shoulder when Cross jogged to catch up. He caught her wrist in his grasp, spun her into the wall, and kissed her hard, taking away her breath and making her smile grow sinful.
“You’re lucky the hallway is empty,” she said. “No teachers to shout at you for being … well, you.”
“Yes, Catherine. The school is practically empty. I hear you loud and clear. You’re teasing me for a reason. It’s still not going to happen, babe.”
She snuck her hand up under his shirt and let her fingernails drag over his skin again. She found he l
iked that a lot, her nails on his body, leaving marks and digging in when she was breathless and under him.
“Fuck,” Cross muttered.
“So … yeah?”
“You’re gonna kill me.”
“But it’ll be fun.”
The principal’s voice droned on, but all Catherine could hear was her rising embarrassment flooding her blood and rushing in her ears. Still, she caught a few things in between her desire to melt into the chair and disappear forever.
“Hallway cameras caught the beginning of the … incident,” the woman explained.
Catherine used the heels of her palms to rub her eyes.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
“The outside cameras, however, were only placed to see a portion of the car, but it was enough to suspect—”
“Suspecting,” Catherine’s father interjected, “is not proof.”
“Hush,” her mother uttered. “This isn’t a damn courtroom, Dante.”
“No, but we are discussing expelling Catherine right now, Catrina. Expelling her. For a fucking kiss in a hallway, and the sight of two kids climbing into the backseat of a car instead of sitting in the front. That’s it. That’s what we know—what they know. So if we’re going to discuss the expulsion of my daughter from a school I pay a lot of goddamn money for her to attend, there better be something better than them suspecting shit.”
“Mr. Marcello, that language—”
“Fuck off,” Dante barked.
The principal snapped straight in her chair. “I beg your pardon?”
“I didn’t stutter.”
Catherine’s mother put a hand to her husband’s shoulder. “Relax, bello.”
More than ever before, Catherine really wished she could hide away from the rest of the world until her biggest screw up yet went away forever.
She would not be so lucky.
Her mother was calm.
Her father was pissed.
The school was … well, two short steps away from kicking her out for the last month and a half of classes, refusing to allow her to take her final exams when they came up, which would effectively hold her back a grade. A full grade, unless she could somehow manage to make up for every single credit she would lose in the span of two years until she graduated. Which was very unlikely. The incident would go on her record, which would effectively screw her chances at getting into a school of her choice because of the very nature of the issue.
This was bad.
All over, entirely, completely bad.
Catherine hadn’t thought of anything when the school called her into the office on Monday morning, and let her know her parents had been called. She didn’t think it was anything too serious until a shot of her and Cross in the hallway started to play, and there was suddenly not enough space in the office for her to sink away in and die.
“Here’s the thing,” Dante said, his tone reverting back to a calmer state, “you’re not going to do anything all to my daughter about this because you can’t. You can try, but I’m going to make it very hard for you to follow through on anything you attempt. See, write her up for the little hallway thing because fuck us all if two teenagers who’ve been dating for almost six months dare to kiss where someone can see them. But fuck you and your administration if you think for one second I’m going to let you write up anything from outside this building. That video shows nothing, and you will not use an assumption to punish my daughter in such a way that could ruin her education for many years beyond this one.”
“Mr.—”
“Try me,” her father interjected coolly. “And watch how fast I can work.”
Catrina glanced over to Catherine, and nodded toward the office doors. Catherine took her mother’s unspoken demand and ran with it, literally bolting out of her chair and from the office before someone could tell her differently. Cross and his parents happened to be in the outside reception area, likely waiting for their turn in the office. She didn’t stop walking until she was out of the damn school and hidden in the backseat of her father’s SUV.
Catherine wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but eventually her mother slipped into the front passenger seat while her father leaned against the driver’s side. He stayed outside the vehicle for long enough that Catherine was starting to get worried, but he eventually jumped in the driver’s seat. His gaze darted to her in the rearview, and he reached for the ignition, but stopped at the last second.
“Catherine.”
“Yeah?” she asked.
“Do you realize how incredibly stupid—”
She flinched.
Her mother stepped in. “Absolutely not.”
Her father stared at her mother, a silent sort of war waged between the two before he spat out, “It’s not okay, Catrina. Not that it happened, not that is probably has been happening, none of it. It’s not okay.”
“She’s sixteen. This is what teenagers do, Dante. It’s normal for them to experiment and these things happen, even if it is stupid. Telling her not to have sex, or giving her an abstinence-only speech will hurt her in the long run, just like whatever you’re thinking about saying in your head right now would do. Don’t you understand that? This is normal. It’s how they become healthy, sexual—”
“That’s quite enough, Cat.”
“Dante, come on.”
“It’s not normal to be caught having sex in a car, when you’re supposed to be in classes, Catrina.”
“I didn’t say that was okay. I said sex is normal. You’re going to pretend as though you didn’t have sex at her age? And hold up before you do because I’d like to ask if it was even with someone you were in a relationship with because she is. I know exactly how you were as a teenager, so please don’t lie to me. I’ve got the rundown to throw back at you.”
Dante’s jaw tightened before he said, “You knew about her and him, I suspect.”
Catherine’s mother looked away. “Dante, she’s been on birth control for years.”
“What?”
“Not for sex, but for other medical things. But yes, I knew it was a possibility that sex was coming or happening because last year she wanted to change birth control for the sake of having reliable birth control. She came to me because she trusts me. That’s not a bad thing.”
“And you didn’t tell me? You didn’t think to bring it up to me that my daughter is having sex, or wants to have sex, or anything? None of it, Cat?”
Her father’s voice became progressively louder until he was simply shouting.
Catherine’s guilt and embarrassment compounded harder in her chest. She didn’t like the way her father’s gaze skipped over her in the mirror, like he was disappointed, as though he didn’t know what to think of the girl he was seeing at all.
She was supposed to be the good one.
She made good choices.
She did good things.
“You’re freaking out because of sex, Dante,” Catrina murmured. “That’s it.”
“No, that is not it.”
“It’s a big part of it, bello. Tell me differently.”
“You should have told me.”
“Why, so you could lock her in her room, until you felt she was old enough to handle sex?”
Dante blew out a hard breath. “It’s more than that—it’s this whole situation! I don’t know what in the hell has gotten into my daughter. I don’t know the kind of shit she’s been pulling when I’m not looking, or why. And I don’t know her, Cat. I thought I knew my daughter, and what she was doing, but apparently, I don’t know anything at all. Thank you for that, really.”
“Dante—”
“Just be quiet, please.”
That was all her father said.
Her mother kept quiet.
Catherine couldn’t look her father in the eyes when he stared at her in the rearview. His disappointment radiated throughout the vehicle, and she felt oh, so small under the weight.
This was not who she wanted to be.
Not at al
l.
Cross made eye contact with Dante Marcello over his step-father’s shoulder, and he knew then that it was bad. He assumed it was probably bad when Catherine bolted out of the principal’s office without so much as a look at him, but he didn’t really know until now.
“I want that conversation,” Dante told Calisto, “and you make sure he’s there.”
“As long—”
“As long as nothing, Calisto.”
Dante left the reception area with his wife right behind him, and the principal called the Donati family into the office at the same time.
Cross wished he could be surprised at the security camera footage the school caught of him and Catherine the Friday before, but he really wasn’t. And if the idiots thought they were the first kids to fuck on school property, he had news for them.
Still, Cross kept quiet. He let the principal rant. Something told him that his father, and his very quiet mother, were not interested in hearing him say anything.
Thirty long minutes passed before Cross heard the principal say, “Clearly we don’t have enough proof, but our suspicions are enough to warrant this meeting, and some kind of action.”
“Like what, exactly?” Calisto asked.
“Cross is banned from having any vehicles on school property for the rest of the school year, and Catherine as well, although we understand he was the one driving her car. Obviously we can’t stop the relationship between Cross and Catherine; that’s not for us to do. However, we can make a demand about what they do while on our property. We’re going to ask that the two keep a distance from one another during school hours—”
“What the fuck?”
Cross’s first time speaking up at the meeting probably shouldn’t have been that.
All eyes turned on him.
He didn’t give a crap about his car being allowed at school or not. Catherine, though? That was his giant red line, and he wasn’t letting anybody push him to it.
“That’s bullshit,” Cross said. “Because you’ve got some shitty video of us joking around in a hallway and—”
“You are very aware it was more than just that,” the principal interjected firmly, “even if I don’t have the full show, Cross.”
“No vehicles, and keep a distance,” Calisto said, giving his step-son a look that screamed for him to shut up. “Anything else?”