Then he collapsed against her, spent and happier than he’d been when he’d thrown that fifty-yard touchdown at the state championship game the year before. For a few moments they stood there together, arms around each other, breathing hard, both in shock over what had just happened.
Until a sharp voice behind him said, “Josie Marie Witherspoon!”
And all hell broke loose.
“Oh, my God. Mama!” Josie pushed against his chest. “Get off me!”
He pulled out of her, hastily pulling his own jeans up over his waist.
Loretta Witherspoon stood there with a plate of food he recognized as leftovers from the dinner she’d served his family earlier that night, her face a combination of shock and anger. “I can’t believe what I’m seeing. Oh, Lord, help me.”
“Mama, no. It’s not what you think.” Josie said. He turned towards her and found she was already back in her jeans.
“It’s exactly what I think,” Loretta snapped, her eyes filled with disgust. “I can’t even look at you.”
“Loretta, calm down, I can explain,” Beau began.
But Josie interrupted him. “Mama, I made a mistake. But I swear to you I’m not—”
Before she could finish that sentence, Loretta had already turned around and headed out the door, her angry words trailing back towards them both. “I don’t believe you could do this to me! After all I done told you, after all I’ve done for you.”
“Mama, I swear I’m not in love with him. We were just messing around. Mama, please!”
She started to go after her, but Beau who had been about to claim his undying love for Josie before she began swearing up and down that she didn’t feel that way about him, grabbed her arm.
“What do you mean you made a mistake?” he asked her.
She gave him a withering look. “You know exactly what I mean, Beau Prescott. You came in here with all your sweet talk and your featherweight glasses, and I ended up doing something I shouldn’t have, ever.”
“Why not?” he asked.
She tried to snatch her arm back, but he wouldn’t let go.
“Why not?” he asked again.
She glared at him. “Because you’re Beau Prescott, rich asshole quarterback, and I’m better than that.”
Her words felt worse than a punch to the gut, and he dropped her arm. “You think that’s all there is to me?”
“I know that’s all there is to you,” she spat back. “And I must have lost my damn mind to let you anywhere near me.”
She angrily readjusted her new glasses on her face. Then as if remembering where she got them from, she said. “But thank you for the glasses. Now we’re even, I guess.”
With that, she ran after her mother, leaving him there like he wasn’t even worth a goodbye. And for the rest of the weekend, she refused to so much as look at him, much less explain why she had turned on a dime like that, all hot for him one minute, then acting like he was a walking pile of radioactive waste the next.
He tried to corner her on Sunday morning after he saw Loretta leave for church without her.
“Josie, if it’s Loretta you’re upset about, I can make her understand. But you’ve got to give me something here.”
Josie rolled her eyes. “It’s not my mama, Beau, it’s you. I shouldn’t have touched you with a ten-foot pole. I know it. She knows it. Everybody knows it but you. So just leave me alone, okay?”
Then she’d walked away from him again, leaving him to simmer over the contempt he’d heard in her voice, like what he’d regarded as the single best moment of his life had been the single worst moment of hers. Really, it had seemed like more of an eye for an eye than hurt feelings when he came up to her and Colin in the hallway the following Monday at school, his body thrumming with boiling anger.
They were laughing over something at her locker. Those two always seemed to be laughing together, like they were the only people on Earth clever enough for the other’s company.
He interrupted their conversation by saying loud enough for everyone in the hallway to hear, “Guess what, Fairgood. I fucked your crush but good last Friday in my family’s shed.”
Then he shoved Colin into the lockers, and it was like swallowing a whole gallon of satisfaction when the junior hit the metal compartments with a loud clang that reverberated down the now silent hallway. Everything had come to a standstill and everybody was watching with mouths gaping open.
Beau’s next words were meant for Colin, but he looked straight at Josie when he said them. “Now we’re even.”
Then he strutted away. However, this time, Josie didn’t walk away like the last time he embarrassed her at school.
“Thank you, Beau Prescott,” she yelled behind him. “Thank you for showing me and everybody else you really are as big of an asshole as I thought you were.”
His only answer to that was to give her the finger over his shoulder as he walked away. After that, they both made it a point to steer clear of each other until Beau went off to college to play football first string for the Crimson Tide at the University of Alabama.
But he’d thought about the incident a lot over the years. Mostly because it hadn’t worked.
What happened between them should have killed any desire he ever had for Josie. But humiliating her in front of Colin and a hallway full of students and teachers hadn’t kept his dick from going hard with memories of the one time they’d been together whenever their paths crossed his senior year or when he came home for college vacations. He’d even found himself trying to leash in his desire for her at Loretta’s funeral, which she’d attended with her husband.
And now here he was, unable to see and completely dependent on her.
What had happened to the husband she been with at Loretta’s funeral? And why was she acting so subservient with him? The Josie he used to know would have never deferred to him as Mr. Prescott.
He lifted up and pulled the special phone his assistant, Carol, had given him out of his back pocket. It was a large, rectangular cell phone with oversized buttons covered in braille numbers. And, according to Carol, it was fully voice-activated and set to speakerphone, so he wouldn’t have to constantly speak a command then hold the phone to his ear to hear the answer.
“Call Mom,” he said.
“No number matches that request,” the phone answered in a robotic monotone.
He frowned, hating that he couldn’t just look up the number in his contacts like he used to. Then he tried again. “Call Kitty Prescott.”