“Nice analogy,” she said.
And then she waited. Damn her, she waited.
Into the silence Liam said, “I think I worry that I’m just a shiny thing. Just a soap bubble. No depth, nothing beneath the surface. Easy to pop if I ever slow down, stop dodging and floating.”
“Bunny onesie,” Dinah said.
Liam stared at her, and she jabbed her finger at the pad of paper. “Bunny onesie. Margie Kane. Write it down.”
He did as he was told, then looked up. She grinned at him. “Bought myself a little time to think. Pretty clever, huh?”
“Brilliant.”
“And now you get the benefit.” She reached for another gift. “Do you think shiny things are always empty? I was going to go with, ‘Why do you think you’re a shiny thing’ but I decided against it. Because, honestly, yeah, you’re pretty damn shiny. You’re good-looking and successful and funny and sweet. You’re shiny, sure.” She looked at the gift she was holding. “If I controlled the universe, this present would be deeply significant. It would be something shiny, obviously… a baby rattle? One of those silver ones from Tiffany’s or something? And then—I don’t know. I’d expand things out from there.” She squeezed the present and shook her head. “But it’s a onesie. Guaranteed. And I don’t think anyone’s buying me shiny onesies. So—you’re a shiny thing. Fine. But that doesn’t mean you’re empty.”
“For sure?”
“For sure,” she said firmly. “I don’t know you too well, but I know Ben and Seth and Calvin, and they were close to you for a long time. I’m not saying you didn’t screw up back then, but I don’t think one screwup is enough to neutralize all the affection they had for you for so long. I trust their judgment—Seth had the excellent taste to fall for me, for example—so I know there must be something to you. Something more than the shiny surface.”
And it was happening again. The tears, not yet falling but threatening, and all because this woman, this virtual stranger, was willing to believe he wasn’t totally useless. Awards and publicity and kudos from all directions had left him dry-eyed and calm, but this? Apparently this was too much for his tender emotions to handle.
Dinah was kind enough to turn her attention to the gift for a moment, unwrapping a polka-dotted onesie with a matching hat, and Liam dutifully recorded the details. When he looked up from the page, Dinah was squinting at him.
“Is there something we could do with polka dots?” she asked.
“Something we could do?”
“As an analogy. Your soap bubbles got me inspired.” Oh, she was still on that track. He tried to catch up to her, but she was racing ahead. “Something about the dots all being different colors but still coordinating nicely—that’s true, and it’d be a good analogy for some life issue, I’m sure, but I can’t think of a way to really fit it to the current conversation. Maybe something about how the onesie is cute but also useful? And soft? Oh, and this is a good onesie, because the soft is on the right side! Sometimes there’ll be outfits that are super-soft on the outside, the part adults touch, but then weirdly scratchy on the inside, the part that’s right against the baby’s skin. Those suck. They’re for looks only. But good clothes, like this, are soft on the inside, pretty on the outside….” She stopped, scrunched up her nose, and shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s not an all-time classic, I admit. But for now—you’re a good onesie, Liam. Pretty on the outside and warm and soft on the inside. Sound okay?”
“You’re very kind. A little strange, and you’re almost certainly spending too much time with Calvin, but—kind.”
She grinned and took a sip of her punch. “I spend a lot of time with Ben too. Seth and I—possibly mostly me, but Seth didn’t think it was a bad idea—we kinda prodded him to give Kevin a call and see if there was something left in that relationship.”
Ridiculous that it felt like a betrayal. “So why am I here? It’s kind of you to host me, but if you think Ben should be with Kevin—”
“Oh, I don’t think he should be with Kevin.”
“What? Didn’t you just say—”
“I said we prodded him to call Kevin, to see if there was something left. I didn’t say I hoped there was something left. We just thought—well. Partly we just thought it would be interesting to see what happened—so you’re right, we probably are spending too much time with Uncle Calvin—but mostly we just thought Ben should be doing something. He wants to be in a relationship, but they never seem to last, and we thought he was just getting kind of tired of trying, like maybe he was going to give up. So—Kevin. Better than nothing?”
“He seems like a decent guy.” More or less.
“Absolutely. If he’d been a total jerk, we wouldn’t have suggested Ben give him another try.”
“And it seems to be going well.” Liam reached for a wrapped gift, trying to disguise how much he was hoping to be contradicted.
“Seems like they’re right back where they used to be.” Dinah accepted the gift from him, peered at the card, and said, “Nipple cream. Guaranteed.”
“Pardon?”
“Aunt Maggie is obsessed with my nipples. I guess hers were really a problem when she was nursing, and she’s made it her life mission to ensure that nobody else suffers like she did.”
“That’s noble.”
“But kinda weird.” Dinah slipped the wrapping paper loose, peered at the gift, and nodded. “Write it down. Aunt Maggie. Nipple cream.”
“Do you think—” Liam stopped. He’d been about to ask whether Dinah and Seth would be interested in seeing more of him. He’d have found a better way to phrase it, he hoped, one that didn’t make it sound like discussion of Dinah’s nipples had led him to propose a threesome. But then he’d realized it wouldn’t work.
Seth was a good old friend. Dinah was lovely. There was something undeniably positive about being around them, being around Calvin, being in North Falls itself. But would Liam actually be able to enjoy any of it if he knew he could turn around at any second and see Ben and Kevin together? Ben and anyone, really. Anyone who wasn’t Liam.
“Do you think I’m totally irrational?” he asked instead of his original question. “Am I ‘in crisis’ or some other psychobabble?”
“What do you think?” There was just enough of a twinkle in her eye to let him know she was aware of the therapist cliché in her question.
“I think I’ve gotten everything I wanted at work. I got it in kind of a strange way—kind of a bad way, maybe. I just pushed my way in. But still, I won. I’m in.”
“Yay?”
“It should be ‘yay,’ yeah. So why isn’t it?”
She reached for another gift. “That’s a really interesting question. What do you think the answer is?”
He snorted and took a sip of scotch. Before he could come up with anything more useful than I’ve been missing Ben for the last fifteen years and now that I’m actually seeing him again I have no idea how the hell I’m supposed to walk away, the front door opened and Seth came in, a somewhat bedraggled toddler in his arms.
“Tamara, can you say hi to Liam?” Seth prompted. “You remember him from the other day, right?”
Tamara raised an eyebrow and looked Liam up and down. “Raspberries,” she finally said. Then her gaze fell on the presents, and her body tensed with electric interest.
“They’re boring, sweetie,” Dinah said quickly. “But if you want to come help unwrap them, that’d be great. They’re things to help us get ready for your new brother or sister.”
And that was the end of the soul-exposing portion of the evening. Probably a good thing, really. Liam ended up in the backyard with Seth, drinking beer while wrestling with some raspberry sprouts that had survived the earlier apocalypse, and they were fine together, friendly enough and working in companionable silence. But there was no invitation to deeper conversation, and that was okay; it was fair. Seth was Ben’s.
Of course, Dinah was Ben’s too, according to any metric that made sense.
&nbs
p; Nobody in North Falls was Liam’s. Possibly nobody anywhere.
But what the hell was he getting worked up about? An old boyfriend who didn’t want him back? Big deal. He was Liam Marshall, up-and-coming New York City architect and man-about-town. His career was soaring, he had no shortage of interest from men who were, by any objective standard, way the hell more eligible than some small-town schoolteacher carrying a grudge about something that had happened a decade and a half ago. Liam was fine. He was good. Great, even.
By any objective standard.
By a subjective standard? By his own standard?
Well. He didn’t think he should start thinking about that. Not until he was safely at home, or at least in a guest bedroom where nobody would stare at him if the damn tears came back again.
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 ma
n 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.”
All That Glitters Page 19
