Chapter 2: Back at home
By the time we had gotten back to her mother's house Paige was asleep. I wasn't sure if I was relieved or disappointed. The idea of taking her to bed was on my mind all the way. We would have the house to our selves for the next two days, so we could have gotten away with it. After what we had already done in the car, it wouldn't have mattered.
Crazy kid kept telling me she wanted us to run away together and get married. "It must be legal somewhere," she said. "Don't you wanna?"
"Sure I do!" I said. I kept telling her the things she wanted to hear. She might not remember any of this tomorrow. That would be best.
After she nodded off, I kept thinking of the things she'd said. "Are you gonna take me home and fuck me, or what?" "Let's run away together." " We could get married and live together forever." "We could sleep together, and make sweet, sweet love every night."
I looked over at Paige and saw her beautiful, young face appear and disappear as the street lamps flashed past her car window. She looked more and more like her mother with each passing glimpse.
I thought back to when I first met Sarah. We were in high school. She was a senior and I was a sophomore. I had admired her from afar since I had first laid eyes upon her. When I first saw her I didn't realize she was a senior, being that she was so small and looked so young. Had I known she was a senior I would probably never have approached her, thinking I would have never had a chance with an "older woman".
I remembered that day in the library when I saw her reading "The Old Man and the Sea". I sat down beside her and said, "So, you like Hemingway?"
"This is the first thing of his I've read," she replied. "Required reading."
I remembered suggesting "A Farewell to Arms." We talked and laughed, till we got kicked out of the library and I fell in love. I remembered her tiny little voice and her cute little giggle. I asked her out to a movie, and she accepted. I think it was "The Good-Bye Girl", she picked the movie. We went out two more times before I introduced her to Carl. That fateful night I got Sarah into the back seat of Carl's Mustang. I got into her pants and it was over in a flash. That was all she wrote. Carl was older. It was his Mustang. They seemed more suited for one another, and soon they were dating.
My feelings for Sarah never changed. I loved her from that day in the library forward. I stepped aside for my big brother, but I would have taken his place in a heart-beat.
I kept waiting for Sarah to realize that it was me that was better for her, it was me that she really loved. And although she later gave me the impression that was how she felt, as well, she got pregnant and married my brother, right out of high school. They met in March and in November they presented the world with Paige Alexandra McConnell, the second most incredible creature I had ever beheld.