cried as he knelt down and touched my arm. I jerked it away from him, and he backed away with a scared look on his face.
“How can you say that? Of course I would get hurt by you sleeping with Angie!”
“I didn’t sleep with her. I stopped before it got that far,” he blurted out.
The second the words left his mouth, he stuttered around trying to recover from what he had just confessed.
His words pained me beyond belief.
“Get out,” I said.
He didn’t budge.
“Get out!” I screamed this time.
We had never raised our voices to each other, and my angry tone scared him. Finally, after a moment of hesitation, he left. When the front door closed, I lost control of my emotions. I cried and cried until I couldn’t cry anymore. I wanted so badly to call Liz or one of my sisters, but I couldn’t. My head and heart were in too much shock to do anything at the moment.
The house was completely dark. Feeling frail and weak, I made my way to the living room and sunk onto the couch. For the next couple of hours, I did nothing but stare at the ceiling trying to figure out where I went wrong in my marriage to make my husband want to be with another woman. He and I had been together since I was fifteen years old and never would I have imagined that Aaron, of all people, would ever do something like this to me.
Chapter 3
“Hey there!” I heard from behind me as someone tapped me on the shoulder.
It was the summer before my sophomore year of high school in 1988, and I was at an open-air dance with my girlfriends. The dance, which was basically a concert in the park, was filled with many kids from our town and surrounding towns. A local band was on stage singing, and we girls were off to the side of the crowd listening to them. They were almost done playing for the night, and we were savoring every last second of their awesome show.
I turned around to see who had tapped me. Standing there with a smile on his face was Aaron Turner, a guy in my older sister Kellie’s grade. Trying not to be too obvious, I looked behind me to make sure it was me he was actually talking to.
“Hi,” I replied, still convinced he must have mistaken me for someone else.
“Are you having fun tonight?” he asked nonchalantly.
“Ah . . . yes. How about you?” I was still puzzled as to why he was striking up a conversation with me of all people.
“Yes, I am.” He paused. “You’re Kellie’s younger sister, Kate, right?”
“Ah . . . yes,” I repeated, sounding like a foolish little girl.
“I’m Aaron Turner, a classmate of Kellie’s.”
I couldn’t believe he was actually introducing himself as if I didn’t know who he was. He was only one of the most popular and hottest guys in our school, and every girl in a five grade radius wanted to date him. Unfortunately, though, he had a girlfriend.
“Didn’t you play on the varsity softball team this year?”
“Yes, I did.”
“I watched a couple of your games and thought you did a great job at short stop. Aren’t you only going to be a sophomore?”
Oh my gosh! He knows my name AND what grade I’m in. Wow—this is so cool!
“Yes, I am. You played varsity baseball, right?” The instant those words left my mouth, I felt like an idiot.
Duh, you big dummy. Of course he’s on the varsity team. He’s one of the best baseball players in our school’s history AND he’s going to be a senior.
By this point, I was ready to just walk away from him before I made a bigger idiot of myself, but he continued to talk to me like he hadn’t noticed my blubbering.
“I hope I’m not being too forward, but I was wondering if you would like to go out on a date with me tomorrow night.”
My jaw dropped to the ground, and I stared at him in disbelief. “You what?”
A smile came to his face. “I know we don’t know each other, but I’d really like to take you out on a date and get to know you.”
“But aren’t you dating Angie Sims?” I blurted.
This time he was the one caught off guard. “Actually . . . we broke up.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know that.”
“No need to apologize. It wasn’t a messy break-up or anything and we’re still friends. We just both decided that we wanted to enjoy our senior year of high school and not let each other influence what we wanted to do after graduation. But anyway,” he continued, obviously not wanting to talk about his ex-girlfriend, “would you be interested in going out with me tomorrow night?”
“Yes . . . I would like that very much,” I answered as casually as I could.
“Awesome. How does seven o’clock sound?”
“That works for me.”
“You live on Center Street, right?”
“Yes, the fourth house from the post office.”
“I’ll see you then.” Leaning over, he gave me a hug. “It was nice talking to you tonight.”
“You too,” I said as the butterflies in my stomach went crazy.
After walking away from him, I met up with my friends, who had all scattered like mice the second he and I began talking.
“Aaron Turner just asked me out on a date!” I squealed.
“Oh my gosh!” Liz shrieked her eyes wide with excitement.
The walk to Liz’s mom’s car consisted of six fifteen-year-old high school girls giggling and talking nonstop about how “Kate Stewart is the luckiest girl in the world!”
“He’s going to be here in three hours, and I’m so nervous I could puke,” I told my thirteen-year-old sister, Kristie. We were in our bedroom and she was lying on her bed reading a book while I was rummaging through our closet for something to wear.
“You’ll be fine,” she said matter-of-factly.
“What if he thought I was somebody else and asked me out on accident?”
Looking up from her book, she rolled her eyes at me and then went back to reading again.
What does she know? She’s just a kid. I thought to myself as I pulled a couple of shirts off of the hangers to try on.
“How’s it going, hot stuff?” I heard from behind me.
Kellie, my older sister,
