anything. I figured you would have boyfriends and that you would have sex, but... I don’t know. Why were you so sneaky?”
“Did you want me to tell you everything?”
Her mom shook her head. Bree felt awful because Mom’s feelings were so obviously hurt. “No. not necessarily. I’d like to think I respected your privacy. But why didn’t you tell us you were seeing him?”
There was the million dollar question. Why hadn’t she? Yes, there was a big age different between her and Jake, but it wasn’t illegal. Granted, on the experience scale there was a greater difference. Jake was a pro athlete, he’d been around, he’d even been engaged to a wealthy young woman he met in the city. Sabrina, as popular as she was in school, hadn’t really dated. Hadn’t shared more than a few chaste kisses with one boy during her junior year.
No, Jake was totally out of her league—then and now. Bree knew it, and her mother would have known, too. Sabrina kept him a secret because she didn’t want her family and her friends telling her she was in over her head. She didn’t want her parents to make him leave; she didn’t want her brother freaking out and she didn’t want her friends pressing her for a play-by-play every time she and Jake saw each other.
The thing her mother didn’t understand was that Bree hadn’t told anyone. And while the girls found out about Jake when Bree discovered she was pregnant, they weren’t only shocked beyond words; they were also hurt and angry. Fortunately, her friends had gotten over the slight, but it made Bree think. How would she feel if Charlie kept something from her that was so important? She’d be pretty upset.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about him,” she said as she laid her head on her mother’s shoulder. “I shouldn’t have been so secretive, but are you saying you would have been okay with it?”
Her mother pursed her lips and shook her head slowly. “Absolutely not. I probably would have told him to leave you the hell alone and found him a new place to live”
Bree grinned. Her mother was predictable if nothing else. “I figured you’d say something like that.”
“Well, I mean come on, Bree, look at all this stuff.” She waved her hand to everything on the bed.
“What about it?”
Picking up the t-shirt from the University of Wisconsin where Jake had gone to school, Sabrina held it close to her face, feeling the softness of the faded fabric, and wishing it still held his scent like the sweatshirt Charlie had worn to bed. She’d worn this shirt for weeks after he’d left just to feel close to him, to hold onto him a little longer.
It was sad, really. She was so young, and if she had gone to her mother, maybe she wouldn’t have stayed with him. Maybe they would have gotten Jake out of her life. However, that would mean no Charlie, and there was no way she could ever consider her beautiful girl a mistake. Ever.
So while Jake had certainly brought her a lot of heartache, he’d also given her the greatest joy in her life. Her baby would never be a regret.
Laying the shirt across her lap, Bree reached for the pictures, and then held them out to her mother. “You looked at these already, I guess?”
Mom nodded but she still plucked some of the photos out of the batch and looked at them again as Bree let the memories seep into her. It seemed like she took a picture every time they were together. The collection spanned their short relationship in surprising detail from walks on the beach, to dinners, to a camping trip they took that August to Acadia National Park.
That trip was the biggest lie she’d ever told her parents. She certainly wasn’t in Boston with a college friend. But she didn’t second guess her decision. There was something new with each picture, just as something was always constant.
Both she and Jake looked happy. They looked like they were in love.
Because they were.
Thankfully, there were tissues on her nightstand, because the
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