Pay It Forward by Catherine Ryan Hyde

how long it took her to give up. “You ain’t gonna tell me you never kissed him.”
    “I ain’t?”
    “You been out with him four times. Don’t you think that might start to hurt his feelings after a while?”
    “Well, I know you won’t believe this, Loretta.” She dumped her coffee and sat back down, leaning close and talking low, a girl-type conspiracy. “It’s not me that’s holding out.”
    “You’re right. I don’t believe you. Say. Now, don’t get this question wrong. I ain’t dared to ask it yet. What you dating this guy for, anyway? You give up on Ricky?”
    “Of course not.”
    “Why, then?”
    “Why do you think? How can you even ask me that? It’s been over a year, Loretta. Don’t you think I got needs? Besides, serves Ricky right if he comes back and I been with somebody else. It’s what he gets.”
    Loretta rocked back in her chair, more dramatically than was absolutely necessary. “Uh-oh.”
    “Uh-oh what?”
    “That’s, like, the worst reason to date a guy I ever heard.”
    “What is? I didn’t say anything about a reason.”
    “’Cause it would serve Ricky right.”
    “Hypothetically speaking.”
    “So this guy’s just for sex in the meantime?”
    “Yeah, I know how guys just hate that.”
    “Some guys might hate it.”
    “Not no guy I ever met.”
    Arlene looked up suddenly to see Trevor standing in the kitchen doorway. “Trevor, how long you been standing there?”
    “I just woke up.”
    “Don’t sneak up on a body like that.”
    “I just came for breakfast.”
    “Get on out and play, would you?”
    “I haven’t had my breakfast.”
    “Oh. Right. Sit down, let me fix you something.”
    Trevor shook his head in apparent bewilderment and settled at the table, leaning his chin on both hands.
    Loretta said, “Well, anyway. Can’t use a guy for what he won’t give you.”
    Trevor perked up his ears. “Who you talking about?”
    “This don’t concern you, Trevor. And Loretta, little pitchers have big ears, if you catch my drift.”
    Loretta shrugged and refilled her own cup at the Mr. Coffee machine. “Anyway. Sounds like a personal problem to me. If I were you, I’d be talking to Bonnie.”
    “Nothing to talk about, Loretta. Just drop it.”
    She set two toaster waffles in front of her boy, then ran down the hall and called Bonnie on the bedroom phone. The machine picked up and Arlene left a message saying she had a personal problem she’d like to discuss.
     
    S HE CUT HER WAY through Bonnie’s little double-wide mobile home, through knickknacks and home crafts and needlepoint and feathers and pottery and blown glass and porcelain clowns. Bonnie liked things and kept plenty of them around the house so things would never be in short supply. Arlene made herself comfortable on the soft couch in a nest of embroidered pillows.
    Bonnie said, “So. You finally quit the damn Laser Lounge.”
    “Yeah. Guy come and bought the engine off me for eight hundred dollars, so I got two months ahead on the payments.”
    “And in two months? Then what?”
    “Cross that bridge when I come to it. Least I’ll get caught up on my sleep before I gotta worry. That’s not what I come to talk about.”
    “How can you be having relationship problems? I thought we said no new relationships in your first year.”
    Arlene sighed and studied the ceiling. “Well, I’m sorry, Bonnie, but for one time I didn’t do what you told me.”
    “For one time?” Bonnie’s sharp voice cut the air like a siren. If there’d been dogs in the yard, Arlene figured they’d howl along, but there were no dogs allowed in Bonnie’s mobile home park. “Girl, where’d you learn to count? You don’t never do what I told you. What about Ricky?”
    “You see him around here?”
    “No, but what if we do?”
    “Cross that bridge when we come to it too.”
    “In other words, just go on a spending spree and worry about the bills when they get in.”
    “I didn’t say that.”
    “It’s what I