Mo brought Tami flowers on their first date. He charmed her parents. He charmed her. Tami didn't know what her father had been worried about. Mo was the model gentleman. She had a wonderful time, and all he wanted in the end was a kiss.

They began dating regularly. Yes, when he got moved up to the varsity team, Mo walked with a little more swagger than he had in the past, but he didn't get in trouble. Sure, when he got the starting quarterback position, he began to expect a little more leeway on the due dates for his assignments, but he still kept up his grades. Yes, he quit the church choir, but he just didn't have time to rehearse with all that football practice. And of course he got more attention from cheerleaders, and maybe he smiled at them a little more than Tami would like, but he told them all he had a girlfriend.

In short, Tami was certain her father had been wrong. Mo's popularity wasn't going to change him.

In November of their junior year, after playoffs, when the Tigers didn't quite make it to State, Tami comforted Mo with a steamy make-out session in the back seat of the car that Mo's father had bought him in an attempt to buy his affection after the divorce. Tami let Mo feel her up without her bra on, but when he asked for a blow job, she told him no: "I want to take it slowly. I'm not even sure if I want to have sex before marriage." She hoped he understood. He was a good, Christian boy, after all.

"I understand," he said. "But...a blowjob's not really sex."

"It's close," she told him. "I just want to take it slowly." Chewing slightly on her bottom lip, she waited anxiously for his response.

"Okay," he said, and kissed her, and then he asked, "Could you at least…you know…a hand job? My balls are turning blue here."

Tami complied, though she wished he hadn't asked so directly and crudely. She wished he'd let it happen in the course of making out, at her initiation, if it was going to happen. She wished it had been more romantic.

"A romantic hand job?" Shelley asked when Tami shared her complaint the next evening, in the privacy of Shelley's bedroom. Shelley was thirteen and a half now, and Tami had thought she could begin sharing with her on a more equal level. "A romantic hand job!" Shelley squealed again, and, howling with laughter, she threw herself, back down, on her bed.

That was the last time Tami ever talked to her little sister about her sex life.

[*]

Tami was relieved when football season was over. It meant Mo had a little less attention from cheerleaders and other girls. For Valentine's day, he gave her a pendant to wear around her neck as a symbol of his commitment. "You're my one and only, honey babe," he told her. "I love you."

His I love you sung in her heart, and for days to follow, she would admire her pendant, feel the silver beneath her fingertips, angle the little sapphire until it twinkled in the overhead light.

Yes, her father had been wrong about football players. Mo was a wonderful boyfriend.

By April, however, he was pressuring her for sex. His hints were subtle, and his complaints were veiled, but the message was clear. Tami feared losing him if she held back. Besides, how fair was it to Mo to keep saying no? She'd said yes to Boone, after all, and she was nothing to him. Mo had dated her for so long. He was her boyfriend. They were going steady. And she loved him.

So the night of their junior prom, they left the dance early and went back to Mo's house. His mother, making up for lost time since the divorce, was out on a date.

Tami lied, told Mo she was a virgin, and asked him to be gentle. "Of course you are," he said. "So am I."

She gave herself to him that night, in his twin bed, with the lava lamp slow dancing its thick waves of red and blue and green on the nightstand beside them.

[*]

One evening in June, Tami stood in the doorway of her father's home study. "Mom said you wanted to talk to me?"

"Shut the door."

She did, and she sat down in his armchair, the one he sat in for pleasure reading, when he wasn't behind his desk. He scooted the chair out from behind his desk so he could sit across from her.

"This isn't going to be a comfortable conversation," he said, "but I'm going to have it with you anyway."

Tami felt suddenly cold. "Are you and Mom getting a divorce? I thought things were better."

"No!" he exclaimed. "I would never divorce your mother. I made a vow to her. And things are going better on that front. Haven't you noticed that she's more – "

"- Pleasant?" Tami asked.

He nodded and smiled slightly. "I think we were both waiting for the other one to change, but change can spark change. I didn't realize how much influence my words and actions could have on her moods. I imagined it was all her doing. That was my failing." He shook his head. "I counsel so many people. I don't know how I can see other people's needs and problems so clearly, and yet when I try to read myself, it's like looking through a glass darkly."

"Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?"

"No. Something else." He sat back in his chair. "This thing with Mo is getting quite serious."

She smiled. She touched her pendant.

"You've been dating for a while, and I know how boys are when they've been dating a girl for a while, even good Christian boys. They can begin to…exert a certain amount of pressure."

Tami's eyes fell straight to the dark brown shag carpet of the study floor.

"And I just wanted to make it clear to you, in case I haven't already, that you don't have to do anything, Tami, anything at all. If Mo's as good a young man as you think he is, and as I hope he is, he won't expect it."

"Yes, sir," she said quietly, the guilt welling up within her, because she and Mo had been having sex for two months now. She enjoyed it, but she did wish she had waited longer, or that every date didn't seem to be a rush to bed or to the backseat of Mo's car.

"I also want you to know," he said, "that if a girl were to have sex with a boy, that doesn't mean she has to keep doing it. Or, if she were to have sex with a boy, and they were to break up, that doesn't mean she has to have sex with the next boy she dates."

"I know, Daddy!" she insisted with exasperation. "No sex before marriage. I know. It's wrong. Mom has told me a thousand times."

"You're not hearing what I'm saying to you, Tami." He sighed. "Just don't…" He leaned forward in his chair and put his hand over her hand. "Be smart, Tami. And above all, be you. Don't be what you think someone else wants you to be, or what you think you're obligated to be."

Though she would process his words in time, at the moment, as far as Tami was concerned, her father might as well be speaking Latin.

[*]

On the first day of Tami's senior year, four cheerleaders were chattering in the girls' bathroom as Tami tried to fix her makeup. She and Mo had been in a fight that morning, because he'd said he didn't think he could make it to her first varsity volleyball game on Saturday. She had gone to every one of his football games last season, and this game was important to her. They'd made her team captain! She'd cried a little, and her mascara had run. Mo had apologized, kissed her on the cheek, and promised to try to rearrange his schedule.

"Where's he from again?" Cindy Miller asked.

They were talking about the new kid at school, a certain Eric Taylor.

"Austin, I think," Marie Washington said.

"No, Dallas," Sue Beth Hershey corrected her.

"They put him on the varsity team his freshman year!" Anita Nesbith exclaimed.

"He won a state championship his junior year," Marie added.

Tami applied her mascara cautiously. The first time she'd tried to use it, at the age of fifteen, she'd ended up poking herself in the eye. To this day, she was still careful about the process.

"He has the most gorgeous eyes I've ever seen," Sue Beth gushed, "What color is that?"

"Hazel," Cindy answered. "But who cares about his eyes. My god, that voice. Did you hear him when Mrs. McNichols made him introduce himself in English class?"

"Voice, how can you possibly care about his voice?" Marie asked. "Those arms. My God."

"Arms?" Anita Nesbith cried. "How about that ass?" She turned to Tami. "What do you think, Tam Tam?" Tami hated when she called her that. "Arms or ass?"

"I have a boyfriend, thank you," Tami replied. "With very nice arms. And a very nice ass."

"Just because you're on a diet doesn't mean you can't look at the menu," Anita told her.

"Easy for you to say," Cindy quipped. "You're never on a diet."

"Well, I can't possibly tie myself to one guy," Anita replied. "Though I wouldn't mind letting Eric Taylor tie me up a few times."

All the girls laughed, except for Tami, who rolled her eyes.

"Well I call dibs on him," Marie said.

"Like hell you do!" Anita cried. "Besides, I already asked him to the homecoming dance."

"What?" Marie exclaimed. "Already? On the first day of school? Homecoming is three weeks away."

"Hey, I act fast."

"Well," Cindy muttered, "we all know that."

Tami tried not to smile.

"What did he say?" Marie asked.

Tami recapped her mascara and threw it in her book bag. It was time to go, but she was curious to hear the response.

"He said he just broke up with his steady girlfriend back home, so he wasn't sure if he should rush into dating anyone. So I said, how would you like to rush in to the best blowjob you've ever had in your life?"

Marie gasped. "You did not!"

Cindy sighed. "Of course she did."

"And what did he say?" Sue Beth asked.

"He didn't say anything. He just blinked and turned around and walked into his class. I think he thought I was joking."

The warning bell rang for second period. Tami slung her backpack over her shoulder and headed out the door.