Page 73 of A Little Bit Naughty

“I did,” he whispered. “I don’t think I can play with them right now, though.”

“I understand.” Remi grew serious. “I apologize if I overstepped. I ordered them while you were here, but they took some time to arrive. Not sure if you saw that in my note.”

That made sense. Packages had been arriving all through Wednesday and Thursday.

“I didn’t read the note yet.”

“Well, that’s pretty much what it said. So they’re yours. No strings attached or anything.”

“OK.” Now he didn’t know what to say. Did he want there to be strings attached? Not strings of obligation, but other kinds of strings? Daddy taking care of him strings?

The silence grew and lengthened.

“So, how was your day?” Remi finally asked.

Oh, God. Small talk. Was that where they were now? This was almost worse than not calling.

But he could at least answer the question. “I started Neurorehabilitation Three today.”

Remi beamed. “Oh, that’s the one you were looking forward to. How was the first class? You like the instructor, right?”

Remi had remembered everything. Isaac couldn’t even explain how good that felt. “Yeah. She taught the first semester course, and today was really good. She makes the material feel very relevant and engaging. The lecture was intense, but good.”

“What was the coolest thing you learned today?”

“Oh, man. It was fascinating.” Isaac jumped at the change in topic, but he was excited to share everything he loved with an interested listener, too. “We’re looking at taking a motor rehabilitation approach to communication recovery with stroke patients. It’s a vicariative intervention pathway, which basically means that when you activate a neural system that interacts closely with the stroke-impaired network. For example, when you’re working on speech with aphasia patients, both neural systems are functionally active during the treatment. So if a stroke survivor is paralyzed on the right, training them to use the left hand for communicative gestures improves their oral language, which makes sense because the left brain holds the language centers. Though left-brain stimulation and arm training after left-brain stroke also improves language. It’s just… the brain is such an amazing organ.”

Remi laughed. “I think I understood about eighty percent of that. I thought that most of the research on left brained and right brained stuff was disproved, though. Right?”

“A lot of it. But not the speech centers. They’re right here.” Isaac tapped the area above his temple. “And when you’re working with stroke survivors, the area of the brain really matters. Like the visual cortex is so integrated in with everything else, so treatments that address visual dysfunction might miss body-based or motor-exploratory spatial errors. That’s why you need a whole clinical team.”

“And those were your other courses this week? You’re mostly taking management and clinical practice now, right?”

“Plus a research seminar and pulmonary rehabilitation.”

“Tell me about the rest of your classes.”

Talking to Remi was like breathing in the air right after the rain. Refreshing, and filling some need inside of him that he didn’t even have a name for.

Isaac settled back onto his bed, pulling Lizzy and Roary into his arms to fidget with while he talked. Chatting with Remi was just so easy. He was genuinely interested in everything Isaac told him, making connections and asking insightful questions.

Time started to slip away. When Isaac ran out of stories from his week, he turned the tables around and asked Remi about his classes. He started out slowly, saying he hadn’t done much planning this week, but then his enthusiasm started to grow. He’d been invited by someone in the ed school to co-teach the science methods course for the elementary education students, and was thinking a lot about how to make chemistry accessible to eight-year-olds, as well as their teachers who often didn’t understand the material well in the first place.

Soon conversation drifted to a book Remi was reading, and then to Isaac’s last soccer game.

All too soon, Isaac felt his stomach rumbling.

“What was that look about?” Remi asked immediately.

Isaac hadn’t even realized that he made a face. “My stomach was rumbling,” he said sheepishly.

“What? It’s nearly ten o’clock there. You haven’t eaten yet?”

“No. Um, I got home late and then I was talking to you.”

“Well, go eat. We can talk again some other time.”

Isaac loved the idea of talking some other time. But he didn’t want to get off the call now. “I’m not that hungry.” It was an absolute lie, but also true because he wanted Remi more than he wanted food.