Chapter Twenty-one

BEN SPENT Sunday alone, mildly hungover and completely humiliated, and it was all Liam Marshall’s fault.

The lack of Kevin was definitely Liam’s fault. Obviously and completely.

But normally Ben could have hung out with Seth and Dinah on Sunday—their post-party brunches were such a tradition there was barely any need for discussion. Except that Liam had stayed with them after the party, and he would probably stick around for the meal. And Ben had seen more than enough of Liam Marshall for one weekend.

For one lifetime, he told himself. Liam was done, finished, out of Ben’s life. Kevin was the future, as long as Kevin calmed the hell down and decided he actually wanted a future with Ben.

If not Kevin, then someone else. It didn’t really matter, as long as it wasn’t Liam fucking Marshall.

Ben made it through most of Sunday without wavering from that stance and turned it into his mantra as the week wore on. Anyone but Liam. Anyone but Liam.

By Thursday, when he walked into the long-delayed meeting with Peyton, his aggressive student, and Larissa, her even-more-aggressive mother, the words were imbedded firmly in his mind, a low buzz of denial behind everything he did. Wake up in the morning, anyone but Liam, go for a run, anyone but Liam, eat his breakfast, drive to school, greet his students, get through the day, anyone but Liam rumbling along in the background of it all.

But that background chant was finally silenced, at least temporarily, on Thursday after school when he looked up from his marking and saw Peyton and her mother stalking through the classroom door. Peyton lean and scowling in jeans and a baggy flannel shirt, her mother more rounded but with similar clothes and the exact same expression on her face. Ben needed to keep his full attention on the task at hand if he was going to survive the meeting.

“Hey, Peyton,” Ben said, working his best “friendly but in charge” tone as he stood up and made his way around his desk. “And Mrs. Dale. Thanks so much for—”

“Ms.,” she growled.

Shit. Stupid mistake on his part—he had no idea if Peyton’s dad had married her mom, but he sure as hell wasn’t in the picture anymore, and getting the honorifics wrong was a horrible start to a meeting. “I’m sorry. But—thanks for coming in. I really appreciate you—”

“You’re not going to appreciate me for long.” She looked at the three plastic and metal chairs he’d arranged around a student desk near the door and shook her head as if displeased with the accommodations. “We might as well sit down.”

And just like that, she was in control. She went on the offensive immediately, demanding to know why her daughter was being insulted, what was being done to punish the other student, and telling Ben how sick she was of her daughter being judged just for standing up for herself.

Ben made himself really listen. He absorbed the anger, the protectiveness behind it, and the love behind that. An angry parent was a parent who cared, and that was a hell of a lot better than the apathy he saw far too often. Not that he enjoyed being yelled at in front of a student, but he could take it.

And when Ms. Dale finally wound down, he was ready. “Peyton’s a great kid,” he said, and he meant it. “She’s doing well academically, and I love seeing what she’s reading and talking to her about it. I think she has some really mature insight into a lot of the stories.”

Yeah, that knocked Mom back at least temporarily. Damn, Ben was going to be able to pull something useful out of this meeting after all. “Socially, I think she’s struggling a little. Peyton, does that sound right? I know you were friends with Marlys, right? But since she moved away, is there—”

“I have enough friends.”

“And we’re not looking to you for help with any of that,” Ms. Dale growled. “You’re her teacher, not her social secretary. You teach her what you’re supposed to and leave the rest of it alone!”

“Well, the role of a teacher is a bit more complex than that. Students can’t learn well if they’re unhappy, or if—”

“They can’t learn if some asshole boy is bullying them and calling them names, that’s for sure!”

Ben managed to keep his sigh internal. “I agree. And as I said, there have been consequences for that student. But he’s not the only student that Peyton’s had trouble with this year. Peyton, you and I have talked about this—I always feel bad talking about a student as if they’re not in the room, but is it okay if I review some of the things we’ve discussed?”

“You don’t need to.” Ms. Dale looked at her daughter and her angry face melted, just for a moment, into something warm and gentle. “Peyton tells me everything. She’s told me all about your deep breathing and your drawers for feelings and all the rest of it. And we both think it’s crap.”

“It’s about self-control. About being smart and protecting yourself and not letting your emotions take over.”

Ms. Dale stared at him like he was an alien. “Protecting herself? Not letting her emotions take over? That’s bullshit. She’s eleven years old, and she’s strong and tough and she doesn’t need to protect herself, not from her own damn feelings!”

Ben was losing control of the conversation again. “I agree that she’s strong and tough, but the world can be a hard place. I think we need to help her figure out how to not get hurt—”

“Not get hurt?” He would have thought her glare was at maximum level before, but apparently Ms. Dale had the ability to turn things up to eleven. “Of course she’s going to get hurt! She’s been hurt already.” She glared at Ben as if he should have known that, but whatever the injury was, it hadn’t been in Peyton’s file. Then she turned to her daughter. “But after you get hurt you get back up and you keep fighting. Right? Your dad was an asshole—I should have protected you better. You could have given up after that, but you didn’t.” She turned back to Ben. “She didn’t, and she won’t. She’s been hurt, and she’ll be hurt again and again, because that’s what life is.”

Ben stared at her, trying to sort through the words and the emotions behind them. Emotions from Ms. Dale, but also, strangely, from himself.

Ms. Dale shook her head fiercely. “My daughter’s going to live. She’s not going to hide away from everything—from herself. She’s going to feel it all, and live it all, and she’s going to get hurt, but the times in between the hurt will be fantastic. She’s not going to turn herself into some prissy little robot. She’s not going to whimper, she’s going to fucking roar. And if Ty Connelly or any other asshole thinks he’s going to call her names, she’s going to make him regret it.”

Yeah, Ben had absolutely lost control of the meeting. He wished he’d recorded it, wished he could play it back and analyze where things had gone wrong. But in the meantime he said, “Ty Connelly is quite a bit smaller than Peyton, physically. She might be able to intimidate him, but sooner or later she’ll run into someone bigger than her and tougher than her.”

“Yeah, she’ll lose sometimes. So what? She should give up before she even tries, and go through the rest of her life being afraid?”

“She should figure out a smarter way to handle things! If she’d come to me and told me Ty was picking on her—”

“If she’d gone running to a man to solve her problems even though she can solve them herself?”

“I really don’t think this is a feminist issue.”

“Feminism? I don’t have time for that. But I don’t need a man to take care of me, and neither does my daughter.”

“The police,” Ben suggested. He was pretty sure he was letting himself be led far, far from where the conversation should be headed, but he didn’t seem able to stop himself. “If someone was breaking into your house, you’d call the police, wouldn’t you? That’s kind of my role in the classroom, or at least one aspect of it.”

“If the same asshole kept breaking into my house and the cops didn’t give him more than a slap on the wrist each time, and he came back and broke in again? It wouldn’t take long before I stopped calling the cops and started loading my gun.”

Yup, he’d walked into that one. He wanted to defend himself, talk about how Ty had received consequences, how Peyton’s refusal to back down made it much harder to see her as a victim who needed to be protected and therefore harder to treat Ty’s behavior as bullying—he wanted to say all kinds of things. But he was finding himself distracted by the words echoing in the back of his mind. Not the old ones about anyone but Liam. Something new, something he’d just heard from Ms. Dale. That’s what life is. Life is getting hurt, and then standing back up and getting hurt again. But not being a robot. Being alive. Roaring.

“I appreciate your perspective on this,” he said, and maybe she could tell that he meant it, because she didn’t snarl in return. “I want to think about it all. But I need to warn you—there are school rules, rules I agree with and support, banning violence. If Peyton gets physically violent with another student, especially when there’s a teacher right there willing to help her find a different solution, then all the talk about roaring and standing up for herself isn’t going to keep her out of trouble with the office. Or with me. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe getting detention or even a suspension is just one more adversity for her to overcome. But I don’t think there’s a need for it. I hear what you’re saying about being willing to stand up for yourself, but I also truly believe that you have to pick your battles. Sometimes the best thing is just to walk away from a fight.”

“And sometimes the best thing is to fight.” Ms. Dale held his gaze, waiting for him to object. But he didn’t. Sometimes the best thing was to fight. After a moment, Ms. Dale stood up and straightened her work shirt. “You think about what I said, and—we’ll think about what you said.” She took a step toward the door, then turned back around and spoke quickly, as if the words were being forced out of her mouth and she couldn’t control them. “Peyton likes being in your class. She says you’re a good teacher. All the breathing bullshit she could do without, but—she likes you. And she’s a good judge of character.” She looked him up and down and added, “Usually.”

With that, the two of them stomped out of the room, as fierce and independent and stubborn as they’d been when they arrived.

Ben sat quietly in the classroom after they were gone, and he couldn’t help noticing how empty the space felt without their intensity and vitality. Empty, even though he was still there.

“Liam fucking Marshall,” he said out loud. He wasn’t quite sure how to trace his current state back to Liam Marshall, couldn’t precisely track the connection through all the switchbacks and false trails, but he knew it was there. He knew this all came back to Liam somehow.

He pushed himself to his feet, the student desk rocking as his thigh hit it. He grabbed his keys and phone out of the drawer of his desk and left the pile of grading behind as he strode out of the building. Into the Toyota, then downtown, all without a single coherent thought. He pulled into the small parking lot of the small-engine shop and sat staring at the windows. The sign on the door said Closed, but that didn’t mean Uncle Calvin wasn’t inside. He shut down at five, most days, and spent another hour or two on the day’s more complicated tasks, the ones he couldn’t work on earlier when he was likely to be interrupted by customers.

He probably didn’t need to be interrupted by his angsty nephew either. And what was Ben hoping the old man would say, anyhow? Did Ben even know what he wanted to talk about? What question he wanted to ask?

Well. Yes. He did know that, as a matter of fact.

He pushed his way out of the car before he had time to second-guess himself and rapped on the front door of the shop. After thirty seconds or so, he rapped again and saw movement in the shadows inside. Uncle Calvin appeared on the far side of the glass, unlocked the door, and stood back as Ben pulled it open.

“Am I a coward?” Ben demanded. “Am I running away from things because they’re scary? Things that—that could be good? Or great, even? Am I settling for something less than what I could have just because I’m afraid of trying and failing? Of being hurt again? Is that what I’m doing? Am I roaring enough?”

“Well, those are all good questions.” Uncle Calvin frowned. “Except for the last one. That one’s just strange. But for the others—I think those questions are best answered while drinking scotch by a campfire. And probably best answered by you, not me. But if you want me to provide the scotch and the campfire, I can do that.”

“Yes,” Ben said before he could change his mind. “I want the scotch and the campfire. Please.”

“Okay.” Uncle Calvin wiped his hands on the rag he always had tucked into his waistband when he was working. “I need to get some of this oil washed off me before I go anywhere near an open flame, so I’ll go home and shower, and you’ll go pick up pizza for dinner. I don’t care what kind, but make sure there’s something green on it. We’ll meet at my place.”

Ben nodded. He wasn’t sure he wanted to have this conversation, really, wasn’t sure he wanted to feel the way he was feeling. The strange buzz in his brain, under his skin, the excitement of something new and scary on the horizon—something he might not be running away from.

No, he wasn’t sure he liked it. Not exactly. But there was something about it, all the same. Something familiar, a reminder of other times he’d felt this way, and the good things—and bad things—that had happened after the feeling.

It was being alive, he was pretty sure. This was what Peyton’s mom had been talking about. This riot of energy, uncontrolled and unfocused, with so much potential to cause damage and chaos, also had the ability to create something wonderful. But only if he was strong enough to let it keep flowing.

“I’ll get pizza,” he said. “Yeah. Okay.” He stepped back away from the door and looked at his uncle. “And you’ll get cleaned up, and we’ll talk.” All pretty obvious. But then Ben added, “Hurry. Please.” Because he wasn’t sure how long his nerve was going to hold, and he really, really wasn’t sure what would happen if it broke.

Uncle Calvin nodded sagely. “I’ll be ready when you get there.” He smiled, quick and true. “I’ve been waiting for this conversation for a long time.”