While Cody had probed me for more backstory throughout the years, I had blotted out most of my troubled past—especially the dark spots. There were too many of those stains, and they would have scared him away. I couldn’t risk losing the one good thing I had found, not after all I’d already lost.

Except for one tiny confession, one single slip of the tongue. By that fateful summer night we’d been dating for two months. His arm slung around me, my side pressed up against his in the backseat of his car as we watched Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever at one of the last drive-ins still standing in Western Pennsylvania. My dad had been a huge admirer of the trailblazing Black auteur’s work, and when I’d turned old enough to appreciate the nuances of Spike’s movies, I’d become a student of them too. The Starlight Drive-In was hosting a week-long retrospective of Spike’s joints (as he waggishly called his films), and that fateful Wednesday Jungle Fever, a provocative romantic drama about an interracial affair between a Black man and an Italian-American woman, was on the bill. Although the racial roles were reversed, it paralleled to Cody’s and my relationship, which I thought made the film a must-see together.

Despite the movie’s deadly serious tone, we’d both gotten a little silly from too much wine. When stars Wesley Snipes and Annabella Sciorra started having hot sex on a desk, Cody joked, “I got jungle fever, baby, and there ain’t no cure.” I turned to him, smirking, and he’d stolen a kiss. Realizing I was turned on as much as he was, I coaxed his tongue into my mouth.

For the first time it just felt so right being with Cody. He felt like the one. Wrapped in each other’s arms, kissing softly, Cody had taken his finger and written I love you Mare on the steamed-up back windshield.

I felt like I could tell him anything. Everything.

So I did.

I had said too much, though at first I didn’t think Cody heard me. He remained silent. I had expected a reaction, a dismissal, anything but nothing. Yet he acted like what I confessed was the most normal thing in the world.

So I had said it again, making sure he heard me. Dumb, I know. But I had never told anyone my terrible secret, and it felt freeing to release it out into the wild.

“Did you hear what I said? I killed my mother, Cody.”

Our conversation came to a standstill for a long minute, and then he kissed me. “I heard you, Marin. And it’s okay. Whatever you did in your past, it’s not who you are now.”

And that was that. No explanation needed. Or so I thought back then.