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“I see.” Officer Lester studied me for a moment. “Is there anything else that’s happened in the last few days that may have precipitated this?”
Oh. I’d been making out with my best friends, had sex with one of them, fought with them, found out my mother was having an affair with one of their dads, and had a fight with my mom. While all of that was true, Ian inviting me to homecoming was the most likely trigger. “Not that I can think of.”
Diane sighed, but she nodded to me and, Officer Lester said, “Thank you for coming in, Frankie. If you run into any other issues, I encourage you to come back and talk to us. Please.”
“Go on and wait for me out there,” Mr. Rhys said, and it took everything I had not to grimace. “It’s not bad,” he was quick to assure. “I promise. Just wait a couple of minutes for me? I’d like to talk to Dr. Miller and the officer.”
“Sure thing.” I was up and out of the chair. I’d not taken off my backpack the whole time, and as soon as I was out, I found Jake waiting by himself.
“Hey…” The door closing behind me seemed louder than it was.
“Hey.” He stood up and glanced past me. “You okay?”
Shrugging, I said, “Pretty sure I should be asking you that.”
I took the chair next to where he’d been seated, and he dropped to sit next to me. There was a faint bruise on his jaw, and his knuckles were raw on both fists.
“Eh, well, I’m not suspended yet. But I might have to sit out a couple of games.”
Oh crap. “Jake…”
“No biggie,” he said, catching my hand. “Seriously. Totally worth it. Punk had a mouth on him.”
“People are going to give us shit…”
“Then they can give shit to us,” Jake said firmly. “They don’t get to say shit to you.”
“I don’t want you losing out on scouts seeing the games.”
He shrugged. “I really don’t care. I’m not going to college for football anyway. Bubba deserves any scholarship money there is.” Which was great, but that wasn’t what Ian wanted to go to college for either. “The guys are outside,” he said. “Waiting for us. You got your phone?”
“Yeah, it’s in my backpack. I had to talk to Diane, and then she brought me up here.”
Jake pulled his phone out and texted something, then looked at me. “Can you go?”
“Mr. Rhys asked me to wait,” I said with a long sigh. “I can’t believe he sat through that. They showed him the pictures, Jake.”
“Fuck.” He grimaced, then tapped something else on his phone. “You all right?”
“I’m fine.” I’d said that statement so many times today, it didn’t have any meaning.
“No you’re not,” Jake countered. “But we’ll talk about this after.” The warmth in his pale blue eyes steadied me. He still hadn’t shaved. It took me this long to even make that belated realization. Tired hung around his eyes, but his smile chased some of that away. The urge to run my fingers over the stubble on his cheek left my hand twitching.
“Okay,” I conceded, and his smile grew. A minute later, I laughed, it was a hysterical little giggle, but he bumped my shoulder. When one of the doors opened, the humor faded, and we both glanced to where Mr. Rhys exited the office with Diane and Officer Lester behind him. Almost a heartbeat later, the other office door opened letting, Mrs. Benton out, followed by Officer Jennings.
Mrs. Benton looked irked. More than she had when I got here earlier. Jake stood when his mother reached him. “You can leave for the rest of the day,” she told him. “They aren’t suspending you. But you will have to talk to Dr. Miller this week about some anger management.”
He nodded.
“You’re also going to apologize to that boy.”
Mutiny appeared in Jake’s eyes. But before he could open his mouth, Mr. Rhys said, “Let’s discuss it later and not here.”
Mrs. Benton nodded, then turned to me. “Frankie, sweetheart, are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I told her. Yep, it didn’t gain an ounce of truth, no matter how often I said it.
“Frankie,” Mr. Rhys said. “I’m going to sign you out for the rest of the day, if you want to just call it and go home.” At this point, I’d missed most of lunch, and Jake wouldn’t be there for Euro or Study Hall. I really was worn out…
