I'm home early! My sister hurt her knee and we had to leave. It sucks, but hey. I get to update now :-)

There are officially going to be more than twenty chapters here.

"I'll have a blue Christmas without you... I'll be so blue just thinking about you..."

I suppose it would be funny to someone else. At least, it was funny to Ashley and her new boyfriend Chris to see me lying on my back singing depressing Christmas songs. I'd finished my record, and the guys at the studio said it would be out in about a month. Until then, I had nothing to do but sing Christmas songs... Christmas was in two weeks. I had to have my college application forms in by the end of February, and I was pretty near going crazy with the stress on top of the fact that Sodapop had told me that he was worried about me because I was hanging out with hippies. He also chose to do it on one of the two days that separated his eighteenth birthday from my seventeenth.

Yeah, it was pretty stressful.

But Star was helpful. She was a little spacey, and she offered me way too many drugs for my own comfort, but she was nice. I liked her.

"Decorations of red on a green Christmas tree... won'tbe the sameif you're not here with me..."

"Naomi, listen. I love your singing, and that's a nice song, but... you've been singing it for an hour now. Could you-"

Ashley's plead for sanity was interupted by a knock on the door. As she got up, I began to play quietly.

"And when those blue snowflakes start calling..."

"You're kidding me!" Ashley's voice carried in from the next room, "Wow, that's actually unusual for this part of town... oh, come in, you're covered in snow-" She led into the room possibly the second best looking guy I'd ever seen.

What? I wasn't singing 'Blue Christmas' because I hated Sodapop. Jeez.

"Hey," he said, "I'm... my car... I was across the street... I'm Adam." He looked like he was about to extend his hand, but didn't.

"Adam's car tires were slashed." Ashley offered helpfully. I smiled.

"Cut throat town, Tulsa is."

"Yeah... it's bad... the town... it's pretty, though..."

"Around here, it's pretty boring."

"I've seen some nice things. Hey... do you... you play?" He gestured to the guitar.

"Yeah."

"Care to play something?"

"Okay..." Being a complete stranger, I didn't want him to hear one of my compositions, so I stuck with the other songs I know.

"Yesterday... all my troubles seemed so far away... now it looks as though they're here to stay, oh, I believe in yesterday..."

"Wow," he said, smiling charmingly, "You could release a record!"

"I am. In about a month."

His jaw dropped.

"No way. That's the coolest thing I've ever heard!"

I laughed. "You've only known me for a minute! You don't even know me!"

"Well... I guess it would make sense for me to ask your name."

"Naomi Sterling."

"Alright. So, Naomi Sterling, do you have a boyfriend?"

I laughed out loud at his forwardness.

"No, I don't."

"I guess that's a good thing."

That day would stay with me for a long time. The night I met Adam. I spent the better half of my Christmas break with him, and I learned that he was turning 18 in January, he went to college in Oklahoma City, loved Mexican food, Eric Clapton, and painting portraits. He must have done twenty of me in those three weeks.

When the time came for him to go back to Oklahoma City, I'd expected a heavy hearted goodbye with someone I'd come to regard as a close friend. I hadn't expected what I got.

"Naomi," he said, tucking a loosecurl of blonde hair away from my face, "The past month has been... amazing."

I smiled.

"It hasn't even been a month."

"I know, but... I feel like I've know you forever. I'm coming home in May, and I'm staying all summer, and maybe then you'll even go to my university next year. The point is, I want you to have this." He pressed a tiny silver ring into my palm, "So you know I'm thinking about you."

"Adam... I'll think about you too, but you already know... there's another guy that I'll really be thinking about, and-"

"I know, I know... but you could forget about him and his tramp of a wife! Can you think about it?"

"I don't know..." But looking upon his hopeful face, I knew that I couldn't reduce him to the misery that I was feeling over Sodapop. In hindsight, it would have been easier for him to be cut off early, but maybe I just wasn't strong enough, "...Of course. I'll think about it. Thank you, Adam... you've been such a help. I needed the past three weeks. I feel alive again," I added, jokingly.

Adam smiled, and pressed his forehead to mine, his deep blue eyesstretching into mine, "Naomi... you're so amazing. How can you waste your time on him? He doesn't deserve you."

"Maybe I won't," I was trying to lighten the moment, and maybe I did. But what I really did was give him false hope. It was the same false hope that Sodapop had given Sandy, and I realized how it gave me some false hope as well.

Resting his hand on my cheek, he pressed his lips to mine. It evoked a sweet sensation in me, and I found myself giving in to his kiss. There were no butterflies in my stomach, dizzyness in my head, weak knees, shortness of breath, or racing heart like there was when I kissed Sodapop- butI was willing to hold on to this false sense of security as long as I could.

I didn't pay any mind to the fact that I was contributing so much to the problem which would have been solved so much easier had I not met Adam, because little to my knowledge, at that very moment, all hell was breaking loose at the Curtis house.

"You bastard!"

Soda duckedashoe as it flew by his head, buthe stoodhis ground.

"I mean it, Sandy. I can't take it anymore. You have to leave."

"You're divorcing me!"

"I don't know yet! But all we do is fight, and it's going to hurt Marie!"

"She's a fucking baby! She doesn't know what's going on!"

"Listen to her! She's crying!"

"She's hungry!"

"Give her to me!"

"No! I'm her mother, for God's sakes, I know what she needs!"

"Well,I'm her father, and it's starting to look like you don't have a notion what what to do with her!"

"Oh, how would you even know if you were her father?"

"I don't anymore! But I'm the only father she has!"

"A father that kicked her and her mother out of the house!"

"I didn't kick Marie out! I want Marie to stay!"

"You don't seriously think you'll get that, do you?"

"I don't think you'll leave her, no, but she'd be better off!"

"She's better off with someone who's definately related to her!"

"Sandy, tell me the truth this time. Am I Marie's real father?"

"I don't fucking know!"

"Well, that's good to know! Answer this, too- are you even being faithful to me?"

There was a heavy silence. Even though he was trying not to show it, it hurt Sodapop. He was angry at himself for not realizing it before. Sandy had cheated before, what was to stop her from doing it again? He was angry that it still hurt. Her betrayal still hurt him, like it did the first time.

Sandy noticed too. They had no love, but he was bound to her through their marriage. And he had to just sit there while his wife cheated on him. It didn't matter who she was, she was still his wife... and she wasn't being faithful. But she couldn't let him know it.

"How could you accuse me of cheating? And get a goddamn paternity test, why don't you?"

"Maybe I will!"

"Right before you divorce me!"

"Maybe I'll do that too!"

"You wouldn't really."

"What makes you so sure?"

"If you care about your pretty little singer, you won't."

Sodapop felthis face drain of color.

"What are you going to do to her?"

"I'm not doing anything."

"Who is?"

"Just think of this. You've hurt her alot. AndI know the female nature. She'll trust other girls and her friends before she'll trust a man that's hurt her. Too bad she doesn't know who her real friends are."

"I know almost all of her friends?"

"What about the hippies? And that handsome boy she was with? Adam Henderson? Do you trust them?"

"I don't know them."

"Well, then. Let's hope Naomi really does. Because if they trick her... she might be in big trouble." Sandy made a sarcasticsorry look and pressed her index finger to her mouth as if to indicate worry. Soda felt his blood boil.

"I'm not divorcing you. But get out right now," he hissed through gritted teeth, "And I will. Mark my word."