God Bless This Mess(31)

*

That’s what was happening behind the scenes of my life when I started competing to get into the Miss America pageant.

I won Miss Tuscaloosa, the first step in the process.

That led me to become the youngest competitor for Miss Alabama that year, and the whole town rallied around me—which made things even worse for me at school. I found my validation in the winning. I tried to keep my focus there, in the only place where I seemed to be accepted. But I went into my senior year terrified that I might win homecoming queen, because if I did, I knew people were going to be pissed.

For homecoming court, it was just my class that voted. For homecoming queen, the whole school voted, and because of all the attention I’d had around town, the odds were in my favor, which is exactly what I did not want.

Oh, and as if to add insult to injury, Brady’s on-again/off-again girlfriend, who had gone to another school during her sophomore and junior years, was now going to our school again. Which meant I had to face her scornful looks every time we passed each other in the hallways.

That October, at an assembly full of the whole school, it was announced that I had been chosen homecoming queen—and a majority of the seniors didn’t clap for me. In an auditorium full of people, one whole section of my classmates sat silent.

It should have been a moment to celebrate, and it was awful. Since no one had asked me to homecoming, my little brother, Patrick, was kind enough to stand up there next to me as my escort. He kept patting me on the arm, saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

In the parking lot after school, just as I was getting ready to leave, Brady’s on-again girlfriend walked over and spit her gum in my face through my open car window.

“That’s what you get for being a b*tch,” she said.

I sat there in shock as she walked away. I rolled up my window. What had just happened to me? What had I done?

*

People on the outside kept describing me as the most popular girl in school, but in reality nobody really knew me. Most Friday and Saturday nights I stayed home watching movies with my mom and dad. I wasn’t invited to the parties; I wasn’t asked to join the hangouts.

My life in high school looked one way from the outside, when in truth it was completely the opposite. And no one felt bad for me. I was “popular.” I was the homecoming queen. Why would anybody feel bad for that girl?

But man, I was so lonely. And hurt.

And when people feel hurt, they tend to seek out something—anything—that feels good.





Chapter 11


Boundaries Matter


One of the only people who I really connected with during my senior year of high school was Brady.

Yes, that Brady. The boy I fell in love with at first sight.

He was in my history class senior year, and we started talking again. And flirting again, innocently. He texted me sometimes, about homework, or just to say hi. We hadn’t talked, really, in years, not after all the drama with his girlfriend. Up until senior year, I’d basically avoided him.

It was the third week of October 2012. He and I were texting, late at night. Taylor Swift’s new album, Red, had just come out, and I mentioned that I hadn’t had a chance to listen to it yet.

Neither had he.

“Come pick me up,” he texted.

“No way! It’s too late. We’ll get in trouble.”

“Come on,” he texted back. “Everyone’s sleeping. No one will know. We can drive around and listen to it in your car.”

I don’t think he really wanted to listen to the album.

My heart was beating so fast as I snuck out of my house and pulled out of the driveway with the headlights off. I turned them off again as I pulled up to his house, and I texted him, and he snuck out, closing the door to his parents’ house real careful so he didn’t wake them up.

We whispered as we drove away, which was silly because no one could hear us from inside the car.

“Why are we whispering?” he said.

“I don’t know!” I said, laughing.

We started talking like we always did, and then I put that album on and turned it up, and I swear that girl was singing about my life. Every album of hers seems to be that way, like they all come out at the perfect time for whatever’s going on in my world.

After that first night, Brady and I just kept sneaking out together. At first it was just as friends. Flirty friends, like always. But then one night we drove out to his hunting property, and he made a bonfire, rigged up a radio, and we sat out there for hours listening to music and chatting. It was chilly, so I cuddled up right next to him, heart racing. And he brushed my hair behind my ear with his fingers, and we looked at each other, and we stopped talking.

It was a first kiss right out of a country song. And it was an A+ first kiss.

It was everything I ever dreamed.

I swear, either Tim McGraw’s “Felt Good on My Lips” or George Strait’s “Give It All We Got Tonight” came on the radio every time we were together.

Brady was still on and off with his girlfriend at the time. I never really knew if they were together or not, but I also didn’t want to know, so it wouldn’t make me feel bad. It would break my heart when I saw them holding hands in the hallway, finding out they were back on. I didn’t want to be that girl. I never thought I would be the girl somebody was cheating with, ever! But it felt so good to kiss him. So wrong, but so good. I kept thinking, Pick me. Choose me. Love me. (Yes, I was a Grey’s Anatomy fan.) Every time I thought they were broken up for good, I would get so hopeful. Maybe we really could just have a shot and give it a real go, instead of sneaking around, me waiting for those texts to come meet him. But that’s what we kept doing. We met up in the parking lot by the Econo Lodge, near the Publix. You couldn’t see where we parked from the street. It was all supersecret, because, well, he didn’t want to be seen. And I didn’t want to look bad.