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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