“I don’t honestly know how long he was watching.  He might have just stumbled upon us, and I just happened to catch sight of him before he could leave.”

I moved into him, hand rubbing his chest.  “Let’s forget about it.  Let’s go to my grandma’s.”  I cupped him.  “We weren’t done, were we?”

His head fell back.  “Jesus, you’re going to kill me.”

We didn’t make it back to school that day, and even knowing he’d catch hell from his coach for it, he skipped practice.

The next day we couldn’t even look at each other without the past day’s sensory memories ruling us.  I lasted until just after third period.

“I’m so sore,” I breathed into his ear.

His answer was a very satisfying, half-stifled moan.

“I can’t sit down for another class, so I’m skipping,” I continued.

His hands squeezed my hips, and I may as well have been reading his mind.

“You know what’s not sore, though?” I asked him.

His only answer was a few helpless pants into my ear.

“My mouth.”

“At this rate,” he told me later.  We were in my bed, his naked form spooning me from behind, “I’m going to get kicked off the team.”

I didn’t tell him that that wouldn’t have made me sad.  He knew how I felt about football.

It was just a few weeks later that it happened.

It is so sad and so terrible how the most random and senseless things can set about your destruction.

Walking home alone that day was a complete fluke.  Nothing but a temperamental whim on my part.  Something so silly, some petty, jealous fit over Dante being too nice to Tiffany, and I’d gone into a rage and decided to go home early, ditching out while Dante was at practice, and sulk by myself.

When I think back on it there’s always some significant echo, some resounding weight to the steps I took alone into the woods that day.

But I couldn’t say if I noticed it then, only that it has attributed itself quite securely to my memories.

It is a powerful echo, one that aches with regret and a million what ifs.

What if I hadn’t gone that way?  What if I hadn’t gone alone?

What if I’d waited for Dante to walk with me?

Any of those things could have prevented so much heartache, so much pain, and the domino effect of destruction that followed.

One thing was for certain, whether it was memory or retrospect, those footsteps would reverberate like gunfire through the rest of my life.