With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo

 

Boys Will Be

The thing is, a part of me is still so afraid to believe Malachi. It had started like this with Tyrone, too. He’d been all smooth with the compliments and the small gifts. Showing up to school to walk me home. Taking me on dates to the movies. I wasn’t his first and although he knew he was mine, when his parents insisted he get a paternity test, he didn’t defend me.

He also didn’t argue when I was five months’ pregnant and accused him of cheating. Angelica had friends at his high school and they’d seen him walking around holding hands with some other girl. And when I told him this, said how they’d sent pictures to my phone, he just shrugged. “You’re big as a house, what’d you expect me to do?” Just like that. And Tyrone is good with his words. He knows exactly how to make them land soft as a kiss or cut sharp as a pocketknife. So I knew then that he was over us. He wanted to walk away but didn’t know how. And I would have respected him if he’d just said, “I don’t think this is working for me,” instead of saying, “I don’t understand why you’re getting so mad; you don’t even know her.” And I could have spit fire the morning he shrugged when I told him he would have to be my baby’s father but he could no longer be my man.

And every couple of months he comes back and wants to try to work things out. Or acts jealous if he thinks I’m flirting with someone.

That’s what I learned, about him and most guys: who they are when they’re giving you flowers and trying to get in your pants is not who they really are when it’s no longer spring and they’ve found a new jawn to hang out with. And I know the past isn’t a mirror image of the future, but it’s a reflection of what can be; and when your first love breaks your heart, the shards of that can still draw blood for a long, long time.