Page 106 of Never Stop

“Chey, when boys are young, they are immature. They say that boys mature slower than girls. I’m still not convinced your dad’s mature yet.”

She stared at the ceiling as she spoke. “At school, he runs his fingers up my back, and then all his friends laugh at me with him. I don’t understand.”

My gaze slipped to her flat chest. I knew why boys ran their fingers up girl’s backs; they were looking to see if they wore bras. Cheyenne didn’t need one yet, but maybe it was time for her to get one so the boys didn’t laugh at her.

I smiled and placed my hand on her knee. “I can fix this.”

She sat up, and her cornflower blue eyes looked at me. “How?”

“We go shopping.”

“Everything good?” Easton asked as Cheyenne and I walked into the kitchen.

“We’re going shopping tomorrow after my game.”

Easton’s eyes flicked to me, and I smiled. “Retail therapy?”

I laughed. “Something like that. Is dinner ready?” I asked to change the subject. Cheyenne didn’t want Easton to know her problem, but of course I’d tell him later.

“Is dinner ready?” Easton mocked me. “You two aren’t going to tell me what crawled up her ass?”

I slapped his shoulder. “You don’t need to know. It’s women issues.”

He stared at me, his jaw dropping. “She got her—”

“Oh Lord.” I laughed. “No! It’s something else, and you don’t need to know about it.” I winked at Cheyenne to show her I was on her side. I was, but I was playing both teams. I reached up on my tiptoes to kiss Easton’s cheek and whispered, “I’ll tell you later.”

“Don’t start kissing. I can’t take that right now,” Cheyenne groaned. I started to laugh, but she continued to speak, and my laughter died in my throat. “Actually, I heard kissing leads to sex. Is that true? Are you two going to have sex instead of eating dinner?”

“Are you fucking kidding me, Peanut?” Easton started to step toward her, and I grabbed his wrist to halt him. He shrugged me off. “I’m out! You,” he pointed at me, “deal with this.”

He left the kitchen, dinner forgotten. I didn’t have the sex talk with Bailee until she was a freshman in high school. Did I really need to have it with an eleven-year-old? “All right.” I sat across from Cheyenne at the table. “Do you know what sex is?”

“Yeah. I Googled it.”

“You… um… Googled it?” I broke out into a light sweat as I envisioned her seeing images of people having sex. I didn’t even think kids her age knew that word.

“Yeah, and I watched a video.”

“You… um… watched a video?” My throat felt as though it was closing up, that I would lose all train of thought and forget how to speak. This must have been how Easton felt. How was I supposed to tell my husband that his baby watched porn?

Help! S.O.S!

“Yeah, he said that it was between two people—”

“Wait,” I held up my hand to stop her, “a guysaidsomething?”

She grumbled, clearly frustrated I wasn’t reading her mind or something. “Yes! A guy on YouTube didn’t know what sex was, so he did a video of him searching the internet. On the video, some old lady said that kissing leads to… What did she say?” Cheyenne looked off, staring at the wall as she gathered her thoughts. “The old lady said it leads to… love—love making.”

“Love making?” I asked, wanting to laugh. I didn’t. This was adulting, and apparently parenting.

“Yeah, and then she used some words I can’t remember what they’re called and the guy was confused. I was confused, but he was funny and had a funny accent. So I kept watching, and he was getting grossed out. I was laughing still. Then the old lady did this…”

I watched as she brought her hands up, made one into a loose fist and the other hand she pointed her finger and slid it into her circled fist.

What kind of video was this?

I stayed silent. There were no words, and she was clearly not done explaining thiseducationalvideo she watched.