“I can explain.”
Wrong answer, asshole.
I’m batting a thousand today. Because explanations are for cheaters—she doesn’t want to hear an explanation, she wants to hear it never happened, it wasn’t me, some kind of mistaken identity.
But I can’t tell her that. Not really. Not now.
“Mom.” Jason’s tone is suddenly soft. Tired and sad. “I saw them. They were in class and they were all over each other. I wish I didn’t see it, but I did.”
“That is not what happened,” I try, but it’s already like talking to the wall.
She’s going to believe him.
Of course she’s going to believe him. Lainey’s a good mother. And Jason’s a great kid.
And I am truly and completely fucked.
Lainey gazes down at her hands for a moment. Then she lifts her head and hardens her jaw, and meets McCarthy’s gaze head-on.
“I think Jason should be taken out of Coach Walker’s class.”
Coach Walker? Son of a bitch.
Miss McCarthy nods.
“Agreed. It’s a personal issue, a personality conflict. We can’t fix it overnight so it’s best for everyone involved that Jason be put in another class.”
“Hold on.” I lean forward, practically falling out of my chair. “You can’t do that. I’m the only one who teaches AP Calc—he could be taking college-level courses. Where are you going to put him—Algebra 2? His brain will atrophy.”
“Then I’ll get him a tutor.” Lainey’s voice is subzero and she barely looks at me. “It’s not your concern.”
“What the hell does that mean? Of course it’s my concern!”
Miss McCarthy snaps the papers on her desk again.
“Six-day suspension. Three out, three in-school. If you stay out of trouble, Jason, this won’t go on your record. You step an inch out of line again, and you are done here. Is that understood?”
He nods. “Yes, Miss McCarthy.”
McCarthy turns to me, and her tone is dripping with the disappointment I remember so well. She’s known me a long time, so she believes Jay too.
“As for your personal issues, it’s not my business. Take it outside, Dean.”
~ ~ ~
I walk Lainey and Jason out to the parking lot. I have to get back to class, but I can’t let her leave like this. And there’s no way I’m letting them pull Jason from my class. Which means I have three days to get him to understand that what he saw, was not what he thinks he saw. No time like the present.
“Kelly stopped by my classroom. She was upset. Her husband—”
Lainey stops beside her truck.
“Kelly? That’s the woman you used to hook up with on and off, even when you were with someone else?”
Her eyes are guarded, like she’s looking at a stranger—a stranger who may have just slashed her tires and kicked her dog. A stranger she wants to kick in the balls.
“In high school, yes, but—”
“Do you know what they say about you?” Jason asks from behind Lainey’s shoulder. “The stories the other kids tell about the different girlfriends you’ve screwed around on, and crazy hookups and how you’re like this legendary player around town?”
Karma sucks. If I had a time machine, I would go back and kick my younger self’s ass. It’s all his fault, the little fucker.
“But it didn’t bother me. Because I believed you cared about us. No way he’s like that now, I thought—he’s into my mom—he’d never hurt her like that.”
The words scrape raw up my throat.
“I didn’t, Jason. I wouldn’t.”
But he just shakes his head and jabs his finger at me. “Screw you for making me believe you.”
There’s a special kind of peace, especially for a boy, in knowing your mom is safe. If no one’s around to ensure that, the responsibility falls on your shoulders, even if it’s not supposed to—that’s how it feels. It must’ve been a relief for Jay to know, for the first time in his whole life, that his mom wasn’t alone. That she had someone to take care of her, protect her . . . love her.
That’s blown to hell now, but I swear on my life, I’m going to give that back to him. To both of them.
Lainey holds up her arms between us, like she’s afraid the kid is going to take a swing at me—and at this point, he might.
“Jason, get in the truck. Now.”
With a final glare my way, he climbs in, slamming the door behind him.
Lainey stands stiff and distant, her hands cradling her stomach, her shoulders and back strung tight with distrust and hurt. She can’t hide it and doesn’t try to, it radiates off her like the vibration of a bass drum. And I just want to take it away, make it better. I want to rewind to last night when she kissed me with soft, pliant, laughing lips and every part of her body and her heart was mine for the taking.
I reach out, kneading the tension in her shoulders. I press my forehead against hers, whispering, “I know this looks bad, baby. But I swear, it was nothing. It’s just a misunderstanding.”
For a moment, she leans into me and I soak up her scent and closeness greedily. But then she takes a deep breath and backs away on the exhale, lifting her chin and hardening her eyes.
“I have to get Jason home—he has to be my priority right now.”
“I know.”
“I have to talk to him, calm him down, figure out . . . I have a lot of things to figure out, Dean.”
“All right. I’ll come to the house after school and we’ll straighten everything out.”
For a second, Lainey looks like she’s going to tell me not to come, which would really suck because there’s no way that’s happening.
But then her eyes drop and she nods. “Okay.”
Okay. Good. I can salvage this. I may be down but the game’s not over. Not even close.
I move my hand to the back of her neck, pulling her near and kissing her cheek. “Don’t give up on me, Lainey. Not yet.”
~ ~ ~
Henry the janitor cleans up the glass in my classroom and boards up the window, but it’s still a major distraction. I assign busy work across the board and the kids complete it without commentary or complaint. Because high school is a petri dish of rumor and innuendo, so the stories of the shattered window in the Dork Squad class, the drama between me and Jay, and me and Lainey—and hell—probably some whispers about me and Kelly, spread like a contagion through the halls.
Garrett swings by my class on his lunch break, but I’m too strung out to talk about it. It’s like my lungs are filled with concrete. The only person I want to talk to is Lainey, and if I let myself contemplate what she must be thinking right now, I’ll lose my shit.
Garrett pats my shoulder.
“I’m here if you need me, man. If there’s anything I can do, just let me know.”
Finally, after what seems like a week, the clock ticks to three o’clock. I weave my way through the mass exodus of students, and I’m out the door while the echo of the last bell is still ringing in the hallway. Then I’m in my car, driving straight to Lainey’s house.
When I pull in the driveway, I see that she’s called in the reserves. Three of her sisters are waiting for me on the front porch, and I just bet number four is inside.
That was fast. I wonder if they all took a bus together or something.
I walk up the steps to the door.
“She doesn’t want to see you yet,” Judith says.
“Then she can tell me that herself.”
I open the door and walk inside. Lainey is in the kitchen, sitting at the breakfast bar. And it’s not good. She looks down, beaten—so frigging sad.
Linda, the writer-sister, steps between us and gives me the stink-eye above her tea cup. “You done messed up, cowboy. She’s not stupid—you only break a Burrows girl’s heart once.”
“I didn’t do anything to break anyone’s heart.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
From the corner of my eye, I see t
he other three peek around the corner—like a blond totem pole.
“Look—you’re Lainey’s sisters and I get that—but can you all kindly fuck off for two minutes?”
Slowly Linda sets her tea cup down on the counter, smiling ruefully. “I do like you, Ken-doll. I really hope you don’t turn out to be an asshole, because that would just be a damn shame.”
Then she steps out of the room, taking the other Three Amigos with her.
I hold out my hand to Lainey. “Come on.”
She lets me lead her outside to the back patio. I grab her coat, the pink Sherpa one, off the hook because it’s cold.
Lainey crosses her arms and looks out across the lake as the breeze tousles her hair.
“I talked to Jason. He told me what he saw.”
“Kelly’s husband was screwing around on her. He left her. She came to me, she wanted to hook up and I turned her down. That’s what Jason saw.”
Lainey fidgets and twists her fingers together—it’s what she does when she’s nervous or uncomfortable or upset—and I hate that I’ve made her that way.
“I think we should take a step back, Dean. Slow things down between us. Focus on the baby.”
I laugh and it sounds bitter. Because “take a step back” is just woman-code for break up.
“You don’t believe me?”
“I’ve thought about it, I’ve processed it . . .”
My words come out clipped and colder than the breeze off the lake.