The Twenty-Seventh Chapter

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"Aim for the three, sweet Cherry. The solid red. She's lookin' right at you, callin' your name, winkin' at you an' shit, beggin' for a kiss and a little dip in the pocket. Give it to her."

The last three days have been an anomalous blur of daring flips and catches, deliciously forbidden kisses and wicked trailing hands laced with racy sweet nothings, the deafening roar of packed audience after packed audience, skating to The Sweet Hereafter soda fountain on the edge of town for root beer floats, dripping with sweat and glitter under piping hot stage lights, bonfires on the breezy beach at night while Harry quietly strums his guitar, draining practices with blistered hands and arduous schmoozing with the press, cuddling and making out in your soft sheets with your even softer boyfriend. But by far your absolute favorite activity has been learning how to play pool under Harry's tutelage at the swanky pool hall just a quick pink van ride away, dubbed The Cat's Paw.

And three days from your first performance also marks the end of Tex's silent grace period, meaning if he doesn't grow some balls and own up to his cowardly deed by tomorrow evening, it'll be on your shoulders to break the very unsettling news to Harry yourself. At least he will have some processing time afterward to manage his inevitable rage with Sunday looming on the horizon, the one day a week in which you are liberated from both stage performances or practices. It's hard to know how much resentment he'll carry towards you upon hearing the information about Riff's set-up; if he will be compassionate about your involvement or if the news will act as a fault line in your recently seamless relationship. Truthfully, you've been on edge all day long about the confrontation and subsequent probable shift and of course Harry's picked up on it, but you're trying your absolute best to love him as boldly as you can in the vain hope that he'll take pity on you when the time comes. Because you know deep down in your stomach, no matter how much you were hoping for the contrary, this will all come crashing down on you. However, the weight of the avalanche still remains to be seen.

The timing is truly a shame, considering how well things have been going between you two and how hard you've worked to open yourself up to Harry. You've navigated a lot of obstacles thus far in your relationship and you know that you'll be able to handle another one, but it just doesn't seem fair to either of you. You're both just trying to catch your breath, but no one around you is giving you very much space or air, forcing you to wheeze your way through your liaison with your palms over your mouths and eyes in order to keep toxins out.

It's hard to know if it would have been better for him to find out about Riff sooner rather than later. It doesn't do very much good to ruminate about it now, but your anxiety doesn't let your mind rest as you wish it would. Your kneejerk response is to think that if he'd known about your compliance too early in his pursuit, it might have sent him running in the other direction with his bubble of patience bursting under the heartsick pressure of your deflections. But finding out now, after so much time and opportunity for disclosure has passed, is just downright hurtful and you know it. You're prepared for his array of emotions; deceit, annoyance, humiliation, anger, distress. And your all-time least favorite reaction that he has a habit of reverting to: avoidance.

Part of you understands that withholding the information from him may have had a tinge of selfishness attached to it, but mostly it came from a fear of confrontation. Facing him by way of facing yourself and the objective, stony truth of the entire, stupid situation: you're a naïve, perfectionistic and guarded person. Harry has never been shy in telling you this, in begging you to peer inward and scrutinize your patterns and behaviors for your own sake. Sometimes he's so accepting of you that it's easy to forget that you have emotional work to do. But at the same time, you know that his composure and sympathy have a limit and when that runs out, you must be able to stand on your own in order to maintain your share of the scaffolding of your newly remodeled relationship or the entire thing will cave in once his weakness begins to buckle. Harry's strong, but he's not fire-proof. No one is. Even superheroes armed with the vitality of the sun need rescuing too.

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