“You are correct,” I confirmed.
Harlow shifted in the seat beside me and said, “Maybe I should take your truck back home?”
“No,” I immediately answered. “If she’s too childish to ride with me to get it, then she doesn’t need a ride.”
Doc made a sound in his throat that sounded surprisingly close to a growl.
“I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t call her childish,” Doc said quietly. “You don’t know her story. Not all of it. And she deserves to be treated like she’s an adult, because she is. Has been for a very long time.”
I didn’t argue with him, but I hadn’t seen the adult that he’d seemed to have been introduced to.
Every time I dealt with Calli, she acted like a child.
“What was the reasoning for her needing to go to the school?”
I scrubbed at my face and explained what happened.
Harlow made a soft sound in her throat, but it was Doc’s blazing eyes that had me blinking in surprise.
“What?”
“That fuckin’ teacher.” Doc shook his head. “We’ve had nothing but trouble out of her. She’s also Anders’s coach for swim. She hates Anders, and you can tell. There’s no way you can convince me that she didn’t know that Anders still believed in Santa. She wrote a poem about the fucker last year around this time.”
“What makes you think she hates Anders?”
“Other than when she doesn’t cheer loudly enough, she says in front of the whole team ‘you don’t deserve to be here. If I was your head coach, you’d be riding the bench’?”
I blinked. “She’s twelve! And what’s she have to cheer about in swimming? They can’t hear her anyway.”
“Anders is super introverted and has quite a bit of social anxiety. We’re just happy that she’s out there swimming and doing something. Yet this teacher treats her like trash, and now Anders wants to quit. Though she’s hella good, so it’s hard for Searcy and me to tell her to quit when we know if she can just get past middle school she’ll be fine.” He sighed. “And she purposefully misgrades Anders’s stuff. Gives her lower scores for bad handwriting. Like any twelve-year-old has good handwriting. So we have her taking occupational therapy to help improve it. But honestly, she writes better than me. And I get along just fine.”
“That’s probably why Calli reacted like she did.” I explained exactly what had happened, and how Calli had reacted.
“Luckily, she didn’t know all that other stuff, or she might’ve punched the bitch. And, just sayin’, but the thought has definitely crossed my mind.” Doc crossed his arms over his chest. “Did she take Anders home?”
“Anders wanted to stay,” I explained. “She went back to class, and we left.”
“Good,” Doc said. “Searcy was out buying Anders her big gift. She might’ve seen it if she came home early.” He paused. “Though I don’t think we need to hide it as well as we used to now that she knows.”
Webber smacked Doc on the shoulder. “Why don’t you go pick her up and take her home then?”
Doc grimaced. “I think I’ll let her walk.”
My brows rose. “She’s five miles from home. And most of that is highway miles.”
“Then you should’ve taken her straight home and not here,” Doc pointed out. “I’m fairly sure she’d rather walk down the interstate than get a ride right now. She’s stubborn and convinced that she doesn’t need anyone’s help.”
“But she does, because she needed a ride today.”
“She wouldn’t have called at all if it wasn’t for Anders,” Doc pointed out, his eyes sharpening. “I’ll be surprised if that truck is still there for you to get when you get there. She’s probably already called another tow truck.”
“She wouldn’t.”
Fifteen minutes later, I pulled up to find her truck nowhere in sight. “Looks like your friend Doc was right.”
I looked over at Harlow and grumbled darkly. “That girl is so fucking stubborn.”
“What’s her deal?” Harlow asked.
