Teach Me (16 page)

She
leans on my shoulder and sighs. “I
don’t know. I just
want him to be okay. But if he’s
in pain, then maybe it’s
better if . . . ”

I
pat her hair, but then she sits up and draws in a deep sniff.

“Let’s
talk about something else.”
She forces a smile, and I know what’s
coming. “How are you
doing? How’s that
lovely lass of yours? You know, we haven’t
seen Hannah in over a year—I
saw on her Facebook page that she’s
back at Oxford. Why didn’t
you tell me? We could have driven down to visit!”

“She’s
not my lass,” I
mutter. “We split
up, remember?”

“Oh,
you always say that, but you always end up right back with her.”
She slaps my knee for emphasis. “She’s
the only one who will put up with you, Jacky-Boy, so you better seal
that deal fast if you know what’s
good for you. You already let the others all slip through your
fingers. Pretty soon there will be no women left!”

“Can
we not have this conversation now?”

“When
is a better time?”
She gestures at the family around us. At my sister and the fiancé
she hardly knows. At Aunt Betty
and Uncle Ralph, currently bickering over whose coffee has more
cream. At Dad’s
sisters in the far corner, glaring at all of us in their usual
judgmental way, like they’re
evaluating which one of us is the biggest disappointment of all.
“Surrounded by a
family that wants better for you. Outside the room of your dying
father, who I know wants you to find your place and settle down for
good.”

“I’m
already
in
my place, Mum.”

She
only pats my cheek. “Temporarily.
But you need a real home, Jack, a real woman to take care of you,
kids to give you purpose.”

I
push back my chair to stand. “I’m
going to go see him.”

“He’s
sleeping, the doctors said—”

“I’ll
be quiet,” I say,
already halfway to his room. Really, I just need to get away from all
of them. The pressure of all their combined glares at once is more
than I can stand.

It’s
dark in Dad’s room,
quiet but for the soft blip of machinery around him. It is sad to see
him like this, the wrinkles on his face more pronounced now, his
hairline completely receded and white, his skin pale and flecked with
sweat. I ease into the chair beside his bed, careful not to wake him,
and finally, I let myself relax.

It
doesn’t last long.

“They
convinced you to come, I see. Thank your sister for me, would you?
I’m sure she had to
force you into this.”

I
glance over at the bed to find him studying me, his usual,
ever-present frown hovering at the corners of his mouth. I bring that
out in him. “Of
course I came,” I
say, because it sounds better than what I’m
really thinking, which is
Do
you even give a shit?

“Alone
as usual, I presume?”

I
grit my teeth.
Be nice,
he’s
sick
. “You
know me. Regular lone wolf.”

“When
are you going to get serious, Jack? Your sister finally got her act
together, Lord knows it took her long enough. You’re
supposed to be the older brother, set a good example. Instead,
you’re, what, thirty
now, and still as lost as ever.”

“Yes,
thirty years old, a professor at Oxford, on tenure track in the
discipline I’ve
always wanted to study, in which you were convinced I could never
possibly find work. I’m
a real failure, Dad. I see what you mean.”

He
waves a hand dismissively. The heart rate monitor remains as steady
as ever, though. Further proof how little he cares about anything I
have to say about my own damn life. “Sooner
or later you’ll
realize what really matters in life. Kids. Family. The kind of job
that makes a difference, the kind of job men do, not boys still
trapped in university mindsets. And a
wife
.
You keep going through these poor women, leading them on for a year
here, two years there. Any one of them would be decent for you. The
last one would’ve
been perfect. But you’re
too stuck in your own head to even see what’s
right in front of you.”

I
shove my chair back so hard it hits the wall as I stand. “Thanks
for this chat, Dad. Been a real pleasure. Thanks as usual for the
enlightened insults to my livelihood, masculinity, and life in
general.”

“I’m
serious, son. You’ll
regret it if you don’t
listen now. Sooner or later, these women are going to wise up about
you. You’ve got
yourself a regular track record now—Hannah
is probably the last one left who will give you a real shot at making
a home. You should take it now, while you still have the option.
Before she realizes you’re
not good enough for her.”

Right.
Because he’s a
regular expert on building a great life. Retired from construction
work when he finally wore out both knees, still living in the same
cramped two-bedroom townhouse where he and Mum raised two kids
tripping over each other, hasn’t
left the country since the single time he took a weekend honeymoon to
France with her forty years ago.

He
lucked out. He met someone he wanted in college, when he was only
eighteen years old. That’s
not me, and it never will be.

So
I do the only thing I can at this point. I stalk out of the room,
letting the door shut hard behind me.

“You’ll
wake him!” Mum
protests from the waiting room, already on her feet, a full
contingent of aunts scowling at me from behind her.

“He’s
already up,” I say,
making a beeline straight for the exit. Mum ignores me to rush into
the hospital room, along with half of said aunts. Only Kat follows
me, and only long enough to grab my shoulder, squeeze it once.

Nobody
but siblings really understands what your parents do to you. “I
can’t stay,”
I tell her.

“I
know. I’ll make
something up. Just . . . try
to make it back again. Maybe next weekend?”
Her eyes are huge, her hands clasped. “You’ll
regret leaving it like this when he goes. It’s
not going to be too long now. Couple months.”

“I’ll
think about it,” I
promise. Then I’m
gone.

Give
the git a taste of his own medicine
.
I stand on Jack’s
porch, hand poised over the knocker, debating this for the dozenth
time since I started walking over here.

It’s
been three days since we talked. Three days of trying to catch his
eye in class while he avoids even looking in my general direction.
Three days of me sending him uber-professional emails to his work
account asking when we should meet to discuss next steps on the Eliot
papers. Three days of him saying
Would
tomorrow be okay?
And
then emailing me a few hours later to push it back yet another day.

I
don’t want to be
that girl
.
The stalkery, clingy one who can’t
leave her relatively new lover alone for even a couple days at a
time. But this shit has gone on long enough. He can’t
leave me hanging like this for days on end, and not give one iota of
help back from his end.

If
nothing else, we still have a paper to write together.

I
let the knocker fall on the door. Once. Twice. Three times. A shift
in light catches my eye, and I look up, fast. Not fast enough—all
I catch a glimpse of is a curtain swaying in the dim light from the
bedroom. But as I stand there glaring up at the window, a shadow
crosses the curtain and disappears.

I
knock one more time, then kick the door. “I
know you’re in
there, you coward!”
I shout in the window’s
general direction, before I storm back to my dorm room.

But
I can’t sleep. Not
with all this hanging over my head. I flip open my computer and open
a new email from my personal account. To J. Kingston.

I
don’t
know what I did to deserve this kind of treatment, but we still have
to work together, you know.
I
leave the rest unsaid, out of deference for it being his work account
I’m emailing. Then I
shut down the computer and collapse face-first into my bed.

It’s
a bad habit, but I refresh my email first thing the next morning, and
there’s a new
message waiting. From an email account I don’t
recognize: JK85. I open it, despite the no subject line, and skim the
message.

I
told you I’m
a jackass, Harper. I was trying for you. I really was. But this is
just how I am—it
comes out sooner or later. You might be the last person on the planet
to still think I was decent, until now. So thanks for that. But this
is the real me.

I
stare at that paragraph for longer than I should. I could read a
million things into it. But the main thing I’m
getting is: that’s
not gonna cut it. If he wants this to be some kind of
Dear
Jane,
we
can’t
be together cause I suck
letter, he’s going
to need to tell me what really brought this on. In person.

So,
twelve hours later, I find myself in the same position, banging on
the same door. I’m
lifting the knocker to drop it a third time when the door swings open
before me, and suddenly all the anger and insecurities I’ve
been lugging around for three days drop right out of my head.

He’s
dripping, a towel wrapped around his waist, doing nothing to conceal
the abs I ran my hands over just days ago, or his pectoral muscles,
and just the right amount of hair on his chest and below his navel,
tracing a line down to the towel. His hair hangs in his eyes, even
longer now that it’s
wet.

But
then I notice how bloodshot those eyes are, and the huge bags beneath
them, a detail I could never have made out in class, sitting all the
way in the back row like I do.

Deliciously
distracting abs aside, he looks
 . . . exhausted
.
Mentally, physically.

He’s
also staring at me with huge, desperate eyes. Before I can think,
before I can react, he’s
wrapped both arms around me and he’s
pulling me inside, crushing me to his chest in a tight embrace. But
somehow, even though he’s
standing here naked under that towel, it doesn’t
feel sexual at all.

Well,
okay, maybe a little. But mostly it feels necessary. Inevitable.

Until
I remember what an asshole he’s
been, to get me here like this. “What
the hell is going on with you?”
I shove away from him, push him backwards into the house so I can
slam the door behind me. “The
real story this time, not some bullshit
wah
I’m
bad for you
email.”

I
cross my arms and fix him with my best death stare.

His
Adam’s apple bobs as
he swallows. “I’m
sorry,” he murmurs,
like he can’t bring
himself to speak any louder. “I
shouldn’t have
treated you like that on Saturday.”

“Damn
right,” I mutter.

“And
I shouldn’t have
avoided you the last couple days. I just . . . ”

I
cock one eyebrow and wait for it. This had better be a really fucking
good excuse, or I swear I am out of here. This time, I won’t
let my heart rule my head.

But
then . . .
“My father is
dying,” he whispers.

Of
all the things I expected to hear, of all the reasons I’d
imagined in the past three days for him acting this way, that wasn’t
one of them. I gape at him for a moment, mentally backpedaling. I’d
been expecting some shitty excuse like “I
had a work thing,”
or something really bad like “My
wife called.” Not
this, though.

I
bite my lip. “What
was the phone call?”

“My
sister Kat calling to say his cancer came back. It’d
been in remission for a couple years, until now. I’m
sorry, I should have just told you, but I . . . didn’t
really want to talk about it.”

“I
had no idea,” I
murmur.

“How
could you have?” He
steps back and runs a hand through his hair. “Honestly,
we were never that close to begin with, and when I drove up to see
him on Sunday, it only reminded me why. But, well. I guess I’ve
got a lot going on.”

The
way he says it makes the knot twinge. “Do . . . do
you want me to go?”
I don’t want to
leave him. Not like this. Not after he finally opened up and let me
in. Not when he so clearly needs someone to talk to about this. But
if he asks me to leave, I’ll
do it.

Except,
instead, he lifts a hand to cup my cheek, staring deep into my eyes.
“Stay.”

My
heart hitches in my chest. How could I say no to that?

Surprisingly,
I resist taking advantage of the towel. He disappears upstairs to
dress while I make popcorn in the kitchen. When he comes back down in
a plain gray T-shirt and plaid pajama bottoms, my heart aches all
over again for a new reason this time. He looks so simple, so sweet.
I knew he was hot, hell, everyone on campus knows. But nobody sees
him like this—in his
casual, just-another-day-around-the-house clothes. Almost like we’re
a normal couple.

We
settle in on the couch with the popcorn balanced across our laps,
bickering over whose handfuls are larger while
Doctor
Who
reruns play in the
background. I love that about him—his
closet nerdy side. I opened his DVD deck to find every Star Trek
episode ever, and he immediately swore me to secrecy.

All
the little things. The things nobody else sees.

The
things that make him mine.

The
popcorn bowl is empty, but before I can leave to take it to the
kitchen, he grabs my hand, still greasy with butter, and catches my
eye, slowly licking every digit clean. By the time he reaches my
pinky finger, I’m
running my hands through his hair, trying to lie back and drag him on
top of me.

He
grins. “Uh-uh.”
With one swipe of his arm, he swings me over until I’m
straddling him, evidence of his intentions prodding me through his
thin sweats. It doesn’t
take us long to disrobe, lights on this time. Normally I’m
self-conscious about my body, but the way his eyes drink me in, like
every inch is another delicious morsel and he can’t
get enough, I feel like a goddess.