Mo must have exited through another door, because Tami never saw him leave for practice. She eventually slid down the brick wall onto the hard, cool earth and sat there for well over an hour, her knees drawn up to her chest, stunned for half of it, and crying for the rest. Her feelings morphed from shock to sorrow, and then from sorrow to anger. It was the anger she was feeling when she watched Eric Taylor, always the first one out of the locker room, walking to the black pick-up truck he had parked that morning in the lot behind the school.

She stood and strode across the asphalt. He had just tossed his orange duffle bag into the backseat and turned around when she was upon him. She shoved him against his shoulder blades. More from surprise than force, he thudded back against the pick-up.

"You knew!" she shouted. "Didn't you!"

"Damn, Tami! What the hell!"

She pushed him again. "You knew!"

He gripped her by either shoulder to keep her from shoving him. "Knew what? What's wrong with you?"

"You knew Mo was cheating on me with Anita! You knew this whole time! I saw them in the stairwell before practice. I saw him…You knew!"

"Tami, you have got to calm down."

"You knew, and you didn't tell me! I thought you were my friend! You…you…." She trembled, and the tears started gushing again, and she collapsed against the hard pillow of his chest. It wasn't until his arms surrounded her, and she was engulfed in his warm embrace, that she realized how cold she'd grown from sitting against the wall for such a long time.

"Watch out, Taylor," came Tony's voice from several feet away. "That's Mo's girl. He warned you once!"

"Get in my truck," Eric told Tami. "Get in my truck before Mo gets out here."

"I want him out here. I'm going to claw his eyes out."

"That's why you need to get in the truck." He took her roughly by the arm and pulled her around the other side. Tony was lumbering up into his own pick-up several spaces away.

"Right now," Eric ordered. He opened the passenger door. "I'm taking you home."

Numbly, Tami climbed in, and he closed the door. Eric came around to the other side, leapt in, cranked the engine, and peeled out of the parking lot, the engine of his pick-up unsteadily vrooming, as if it couldn't quite keep up with its driver's will. He slowed down once they were on the street.

Tami wiped the tears from her face with the sleeve of her jean jacket. "She was about to give him a blo…" She choked and started crying again.

Eric stretched out one arm and opened the glove compartment. He rustled around on top of the truck manual, behind a pair of sunglasses and a tire gauge, until he found a pack of tissues, which he handed to her before slapping the glove compartment shut.

Tami blew her nose and shoved the Kleenex in the pocket of her jacket. His car smelled of fresh pine. How could she notice that, at a time like this? She stared out the windshield for a while, and finally said, "All those hints. I can see them now. How long did you know?"

He didn't answer.

"I thought you and I were friends. You don't even seem to like Mo, but you kept his secret anyway. Why didn't you just tell me? Because he's your football brother?"

Eric stared fiercely at the road.

"So you cover for each other, is that it?" she spat. "You lie for each other."

"I have never lied for Mo McArnold! I didn't know he was cheating. I just suspected it. And you never asked me if I thought he was."

"You could have told me you thought he was!" she sobbed. "You could have told me directly!"

"Look at you!" He glanced from the road to her, then from her to the road. "Do you think I wanted to be the one to do this to you?"

"How long have you suspected? How often did you see them together? How -"

"- Tami, these questions won't do you any good."

Tami was a seething cauldron of anger, ready to explode, but Mo wasn't here to receive the blast. "Fine," she spat. "You'd just lie to me, too. You're just like all the rest," she told him. "I bet you got a blow job from Anita too."

"That's ridiculous."

"You just didn't want to have to bother to take her to Homecoming first."

"Tami, that's ridiculous."

"You're all the same, aren't you? Boone, Mo…all of you."

"Who's Boone?"

He didn't know about Boone, of course. Didn't know what she'd done, who she'd been. "I guess it's just what I deserve. I'm just a whore like Anita, aren't I?"

"What are you talking about, Tami? Don't talk about yourself that way!"

"Boone is the 17 year old guy I had sex with at a party when I was fifteen. I hardly knew him. But I screwed him anyway. It was a mistake, and I never did anything like that again, but I guess maybe Mo heard I put out, so that's why he wanted to date me."

Eric shook his head. "Tami, you and Mo dated for over a year. It wasn't casual for him. Mo's an ass. He's impulsive. He doesn't think things through. But you are not Anita. And Anita's nothing to Mo. She's just a release to him."

"That's even worse, if she's nothing to him. He betrayed me for nothing! I'm worth less than NOTHING!"

Eric rubbed his eyes. "No, you're not. He doesn't deserve you, but you are not…" He sighed and fell silent.

She turned and stared out the passenger window. She said nothing else until he pulled up to the curb alongside the parsonage. Her emotions were a choppy sea undulating in a sudden storm. "What were you and Mo talking about outside this morning?"

"Tony told Mo he saw us walking together Tuesday night. I guess he was driving by. I told Mo I was just looking out for his girl by not letting her walk alone at night, like he would want me to do. And then I might have also told him, as a matter of brotherly advice, that he was lucky to have you and that if he wanted to keep you, he better make sure he treated you with respect."

"Because you knew," she spat. "All this time, you knew and didn't tell me."

"I didn't know. I suspected."

"And you told my father, but you didn't tell me?"

Eric switched off his running engine. "What?"

In her shocked and injured state, Tami's mind was a confused tangle of emotions, leaping from one perceived injustice to another, questioning everything. "During one of your little counseling sessions?" she asked. "On Saturday at the bar? Did you tell my dad Mo was cheating on me?"

"What? I wasn't even at the bar last Saturday. We were at play-offs."

"I was supposed to be working today." Tami's voice was high with anger. "I wasn't supposed to be in that stairwell. But my dad told me to go watch practice today. Did you tell him Mo would be there with Anita?"

"No, I didn't tell him that."

"Am I supposed to believe it was just a coincidence?"

"Tami, I didn't know Mo was going to be in that stairwell with Anita, and I certainly didn't know you were going to be in it. I talk to your dad at the bar, yeah, but we talk about my dad, about school, about my plans…We don't talk about you."

"It was a set-up. My dad set me up to find out Mo."

"I can't imagine him doing that, Tami, but if he did, it was because he had his own suspicions. We never talk about you in that bar. I swear."

"You're full of shit. You're a liar. You're all liars." She threw open the door to his pick-up and stumble down like she was drunk.

She'd taken two steps toward the parsonage when the door opened and her father walked out. He looked a little disheveled. His prematurely silver-gray hair was all askew; he had on his usual black slacks - but with no belt - and only a white undershirt. Maybe he hadn't set her up. Maybe he really had been spending quality time with her mother.

"Tami," he said. "I saw you out the window. I saw you screaming in the truck. What's wrong?" He took one look at her tear-stained face, and one look at Eric through the window of the pick-up. Anger and confusion flashed across his face. "Did Eric do something?"

"I just want to be alone!" Tami cried, and shoved past him and into the parsonage. She clamored upstairs to her bedroom, locked the door, threw herself on her bed, and wept.

Twenty minutes later, she went to the window to close the blinds. She didn't want any light taunting her. Her window faced the street. Eric's pick-up was still along the curb. She saw her father was in the passenger seat, and they were talking.

The blinds fell slowly shut.