My Love for You Would Bust Kneecaps: The Untold, Unauthorized, and Mostly Untrue Story of an Olympian and her Most Devoted Lover (Intimate Moments #769)
by Trent Walters
Editor: Any resemblance to this famous public figure is purely coincidental.
Gilly Fahrenheit lived on the other side of the tracks. Tonka Hearty lived in a trailer court. Their forbidden love affair had begun at Camp Marshmellows where they hid from the camp counselors and rolled among the tall weeds behind the latrine.
Tonka could no longer conceal the truth from her mother. Mother, elbows on the formica, stood hunched over a six-inch black and white playing a crucial scene from “One Life to Live.” A damp and musty washcloth dangled from her hand. Tonka tried to wait patiently for a commercial.
“I’m having a baby,” said the TV.
But Tonka’s news was too important. “Mom?”
Her mother tapped her finger to her lips.
“If you loved me,” the TV rumbled, “you’d abort it.”
“And if you loved me,” the TV piped, “you’d divorce that hussy who stepped out on you to have an affair with Rick.”
“If you loved me,” Tonka said, “you’d let me date the boy who lives on the other side of the tracks.”
“If you won’t divorce her,” said the TV with a sob in its throat, “then I’ll have a secret love child, and after the court releases the DNA results, the world will know who the father is!”
“So?” Tonka’s mother glanced at her child, then back at the black-and-white. “It’s all in the same trailer court.”
“It’s not a secret,” said the TV, “if you just told me.”
“You don’t understand!” Tonka slammed out of the trailer and ran flat-footed to the court’s edge where Gilly crouched in the bushes.
“What’d she say about us hunting horny toads by the lake?” Gilly croaked in a whisper.
Tonka wiped her nose, sniffed, and shook her head.
“Geez. Your mom doesn’t let us do anything ‘sides play house and skate at the ice rink.”
“Gilly.” Tonka braced Gilly’s shoulders. “I’m having our secret love child.”
***
A decade later, across the rooftop of a rented Yugo outside the Olympic ice rink, Gilly professed his undying 4e passion with a boot to the hub cap, setting it ringing hollowly. “My love for you would bust hub caps.” Gilly climbed into the left side believing he was still in America.
Buckling herself into the driver’s seat and tossing her ice skates into the back, Tonka thought that, with one life to live, she couldn’t have many Olympics yet to go. “That Kerry Schmancy chick ain’t no better than me. If only she’d…. What did you just say, Gilly?”
“My love…”
“Never mind. I want you to prove your love like Madonna said you should. If you loved me, you’d…”