Naked in School: Michelle's Story, part 2

scared shitless. Look at me. I'm seventeen years old. What's 'better than fifty percent'? Is it seventy? Eighty? Even at that, I'm seventeen years old and I've just been told I have a twenty or thirty percent chance of not seeing eighteen. I'm scared out of my mind. I have my whole life ahead of me. College football. Med school. And, I was kind of thinking, you. And the dream just got very cloudy." He took a deep breath. "My parents are frantic. My younger brother and sister are worried sick. Somebody has to keep a stiff upper lip. So I do it-and cry alone in my bed at night."

"That's why I'm here," I managed. "Jared yelled at me at lunch today," I smiled. "He didn't know about Danny, so thought I was just a callous bitch. Said it wasn't like me. He knows now-Amanda told him, so he wouldn't keep thinking I was just a callous bitch-but it really didn't matter. I needed the kick in the ass, because he was right." I took a deep breath. "Eric, do you know how much I resent my mother? You could probably even say I hate her. She ran out when we needed her. And left a nine-year-old to pick up the pieces. And, here I've been, the past two days, doing the same damn thing." "No, not even close. I'm not your son, or your husband." "Close enough for me," I maintained. "Close enough to make me examine just what in the hell I was doing. Eric, when you left-well, I knew what was in my heart. I just hadn't worked myself up to saying it yet. I was waiting for the right time. Eric Andrews, I love you. And I can't turn away from that." I love you, too," he said. He chuckled. "I was waiting for the right time, too." "I can't promise you that it'll be easy. I can't promise you I'll be able to keep a stiff upper lip. The only think I can promise you that I'll try. And that I'll be here." "That's good enough for me." We had been sitting side-by-side on the field up until then. We hadn't touched. Then we found ourselves in each other's arms. He hugged me so hard I thought he'd break my ribs. That was fine with me. "Do me a favor," I whispered. "Don't cry alone in your room anymore." He didn't. He cried right there in my arms. I did, too. After we parted, and I was headed home, I felt strangely better. Look, worry and guilt are a particularly unhealthy combination. I still had the worry, but the guilt was gone. When I got home, I told Daddy. He took me in his arms on his lap like he did when I was a little girl and let me cry it out some more. I think his eyes were wet, too. Then he looked into my eyes and said, "I'm your father. You're my little girl. I'm supposed to protect you. And you have been through more shit in seventeen years than most people go through in fifty-and I haven't been able to protect you." Click for part3