Forever in Blue by Ann Brashares Read Free Book Online

I’m pretty sure. I don’t know when it happened.”
    She could get pregnant. She could be getting pregnant right now. What about STDs? Herpes? What about, God, AIDS?
    No, he was a virgin. He said he was a virgin. He had to be. He was, wasn’t he? “It happened when we were having sex,” she said sharply.
    He looked up at her, trying to understand the strange tone of her voice.
    She could get pregnant! Easily! This was exactly how it happened! She needed to think. When was her period? These were the things that happened to tragic girls who weren’t nearly as cautious or practical as Tibby.
    What should she do? What did this mean? For all this time, being in all these strange places in her life, she had taken a certain refuge in the fact that at least she was still a virgin. At least that category of fears was not hers to fear. It was the single transom she had not crossed.
    She wasn’t a virgin anymore! Why had she let herself forget that it mattered?
    She looked at Brian, almost as far away as he could be in a room so small. She should be having these worries aloud, with him, not just alone. But she couldn’t help it.
    She wished she could dress without his seeing. She turned away.
    “Tibby, I am sorry. I’m so sorry this happened. I didn’t even know—”
    “It’s not like you did anything….” Her words were backed by minimal breath and floated to the wall.
    “I just wish…,” he said.
    Bridget’s stomach had been groaning since she’d woken up that morning, but when her father put a plate of eggs on the table for her, she fitfully roved around the kitchen instead of sitting down with them.
    “Dad, why did you let Perry quit school?” she asked.
    Her father was dressed in shapeless twill trousers and a tweed jacket, the same outfit he’d worn to work as long as she could remember. He was a history teacher and associate dean at a private high school, and he was clueless in the way she imagined only a longtime high school administrator could be. He’d made a career of tuning out teenagers. He was in good practice when it came to his own.
    “He didn’t quit. He took some time off.”
    “Is that what he said?”
    Her father adopted his look of silent retreat. He didn’t like to be demanded of. He resisted her in his passive way. “You should eat if you want me to drop you on my way to school,” he said quietly. He was always eager to drop her places.
    “Why is he taking time off? Did you ask him that? Three courses at Montgomery Community College is not exactly overwhelming.”
    He poured his coffee. “Not everyone belongs in the Ivy League, Bridget.”
    She glared at him. He was trying to force her to back off. He knew she was neither a scholar nor a snob, that she felt defensive about going to Brown. He probably calculated that this would shut her up, but it wasn’t going to work. “So he’s going back to school in the fall?” she said volubly.
    Her dad put forks on the table. He sat down to eat. “That’s what I expect.”
    She tried to grab hold of his gaze. “Is that really what you expect?”
    He salted his eggs. He paused, waiting for her to sit down. She didn’t want to sit down. When it came to him, she was a passive resister, too. It was one of the few things they had in common.
    He’d made these eggs as a gesture. He’d done it for her. And yet the sight of them turned her stomach. Why couldn’t she receive what few overtures he made?
    He refused to give her what she wanted. She refused to take what he gave.
    She sat down. She picked up her fork. He ate.
    “I’m worried about him,” she said.
    He nodded vaguely. His eyes wandered to the newspaper on the table beside him. On most mornings the Washington Post was his breakfast companion, and she sensed he wasn’t enjoying the break in routine.
    “It seems like he’s just…rotting away in his room.”
    Her father looked at her finally. “His interests are different than yours, but he does have them. Why don’t you