Epilogue.
"I wonder what happened to the Wormers?" Sam asked as we watched the kids playing Red Rover. We had also been part of the game but we got tired and were just sitting on the grass outside the game watching and cheering our neighbourhood kids. Damn I hate getting old! We used to say Chrissy was the fat one, but hey, I stole her place.
We all looked at Samantha as though she was nuts. Why remember the Wormers? They were brats. I noticed Chrissy looking at me pointedly. She better not say anything.
"Why don't we ask Roberta that?" Oh Chrissy you are SO dead!
"Chrissy, no! We said we'd take it to the grave." I told her firmly.
"What's going on here?" Teeny asked in her nosey way.
"Nothing. Absolutely nothing."
"Don't give me that, Roberta. I may not have seen you for ten years, but I still know you too well for you to hide stuff from us. Tell us. Come on, Chrissy knows. Why can't you tell us?"
I looked at Samantha. I looked into her honest brown eyes, so full of earnest. She raised an eyebrow at me, waiting for my answer. I may as well tell them. They'll find out anyway. Chrissy's bound to tell them.
"I don't know about the others, but I do know about Scott. We went to college together, took the same course, medicine. We went out for months. No, it wasn't months, it was years."
"You dated a Wormer?! But they were the enemy!" I could read the shock on Teeny's open, pretty face.
"Remember that summer we bought the tree house?" I asked looking up at it to avoid their eyes. "Well, do you remember I stopped taping up my boobs that summer? I did it because of him."
"What?" Sam and Teeny said together disbelievingly.
"It's true, she told me. And don't swear."
"Chris, boob is not a swear word. And yes it's true. You knew I stopped on that day we found out about Dear Jonny, but not why. Not even you, Teeny, who considered yourself an expert on romance at age twelve. None of you suspected a thing. Not through high school, when I was secretly dating him, not through all the years we dated."
"Yeah, I was surprised you managed to pull it off." Chrissy looked surprised. She had known, because she wanted to know where I kept disappearing to, so she spied on me and saw me with him.
"It wasn't that hard. Neither of us wanted to tell anyone for fear of what they'd think of us. He… was my first love, and I was his. The night before we found out about poor Jonny Sims, he kissed me, which was odd at the time because we both thought we hated each other. That's why he changed. It's why he wasn't such a jerk anymore." I broke off, a little choke in my voice betraying what I felt. I was still sore over the way it ended. Even though it had happened about seven years ago, and it was an on-off relationship anyway, it was still hard.
They all smiled at me and concealed their surprise.
"Who knew it would be you?" Teeny asked kindly taking my hand and giving it a squeeze.
"He did. He was such a gentleman. I really miss him." I finished quietly. A tear was threatening to escape so I got up and rejoined the game so they wouldn't see my emotion. I knew I could trust them and I had shown emotion before but they wouldn't understand. I'd only known real love once, and that was it. In a way I was still in love with him. No matter how hard I tried to forget him, I couldn't. Samantha should write a book about it.
Except she doesn't write romances.