AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Teachers are pretty overloaded, in general,” I said. “So what did you do?”
I sat back down at the table while he told me what happened. When he said the part about the handshake, I rolled my lips together to keep my smile hidden.
“What a man thing to do,” I said under my breath.
Ian exhaled harshly. “Was I supposed to just stand there? I don’t know what the fuck you’re supposed to do with a kid who’s worked so damn hard to get a chance and then one bout of nerves gets the best of her.”
“There’s a balance.” I shrugged. “Sometimes the best thing you can do for your kids is let them do the hard thing and have it not go well. That’s how they learn. And sometimes you step in when an adult isn’t playing it straight. I don’t always do it right either, but it’s usually a gut instinct. And it sounds like you followed yours.”
His gut instinct was to be overprotective of my daughter, which, you know, didn’t help The Thoughts. Not like he could know that, though.
He sighed, tipping his head back. “I just wanted her to have her chance.”
“Sounds like you got it for her,” I said quietly.
“I think my brother got it for her because the coach had the balls to ask, if we’re being honest.”
I laughed. “Fair enough. Does she know about that yet?”
“Doesn’t sound like it.”
“Do you want to tell her?” I asked.
He gave me a brief look. “No, you can do it. I’m not trying to make it about me.”
“You care about her. That’s not making it about you,” I told him. Ian took his seat again, emitting a weary sigh. I nudged his foot with mine. “Remember my sixteenth birthday?”
His eyes searched mine and then he nodded slowly. “Yeah.”
“I thought my parents were going to throw me a party, or do something a little bit bigger that year, and when the day came, and nothing happened, I couldn’t get up the nerve to ask, you marched in the house and told my mom what I wanted.”
Ian swallowed, the thick line of his throat moving as he did. “Pretty sure she’s hated me ever since.”
I thought about the girl who’d sat in Ian’s car in the driveway, crying because she always felt just a little bit like a burden in her own house, too nervous to ask my parents if we had anything special planned for my birthday. And I thought about the boy who wiped my tears, listened to me melt down about how it would probably always be like this, how they’d never change, and I’d probably end up alone and making my own birthday cake because they didn’t care.
“My mom doesn’t hate you,” I said. “But I don’t think she understands you either. The way you always took care of me. It didn’t make sense to her,” I added quietly.
The way you still take care of me. I left it unsaid though, because suddenly, an admission like that didn’t feel so inconsequential anymore.
Ian’s eyes held mine, just a touch longer than was comfortable, and then he looked away, just before my pulse shot off like a rocket. “Your birthday’s coming up.”
“Thirty-five,” I said smoothly. “Wasn’t that part of my freak-out that day?”
“Might’ve been,” he murmured in a deep, rumbling voice that I felt in my chest bone. The vibration of it was soothing and low, like if I laid my head against it when he spoke, it might lull me to sleep.
“It sounded so old to me back then.” I shook my head with a slight laugh. “Like this was the age you have everything figured out. And I can’t tell you how much I don’t. Every single day, I feel like I’m winging it. Constantly looking around for someone adultier than me who has all the answers.”
Ian smiled a little. “I don’t think adultier is a word.”
“It should be.” I cocked an eyebrow. “You knew what I meant, didn’t you?”
He didn’t answer, simply gave me one of those looks again with a hint of a smile in his eyes, and I sat back with a grin.
From the second-floor landing, Sage yelled down the stairs. “Mom? Can I sleep over at Aunt Rachel’s tonight?”
“Did they invite you, or are you inviting yourself?” I yelled back.
There was a telling beat of silence.
