“If you’re busy don’t worry.” My traitorous voice cracks on the last word, and I clear my throat to cover it up. But nothing gets by Dean.
“Hayes, I’ll be there in ten minutes, okay?”
“Are you sure? You really don’t have to come.”
“I want to,” he says, and that phrase sweeps me back to our sixth-grade bus stop. The day I met Dean McCafferty.
I was the laughingstock of the Four Eyes Committee as I boarded the bus in my first pair of glasses. Everything far awaywas clear, but up close, things melted together like honey. I’d already fallen behind in reading and avoided it at all costs, which meant I didn’t do much of it at home either. Of course, my dad never saw me read. But it took Aunt Karen a while to catch on too.
It wasn’t her fault. She was doing the best she could as the caretaker in my life. And even though I’m comfortable opening up to her, I’m always afraid that saying or doing the wrong thing will scare her away. Who wants to take care of a kid struggling in school when they’re not yours? I’d be left without anybody if it came down to that. I didn’t have room for error. So, I lied. For a long time.
Dean was new to my… community? It was less of a neighborhood in the sense that you weren’t walking two feet from your front steps to borrow a cup of sugar. I imagine moving cities in the middle of a school year is nerve-racking enough. But if Dean was intimidated, he never showed it.
Middle schoolers can be harsh. Mine? They waited until I was trapped in a leather booth surrounded on all sides. I tried to ignore it. I fused my eyes to the bus window and kicked myself for not asking Aunt Karen to drive me to school.
“Boys don’t make passes at girls that wear glasses,” a girl named Molly chanted over the seat behind us.
She was even more of a “neighbor” than Dean was. The fact that we’d been in the same class since kindergarten, yet she still treated me like that… it made me hate her even more.
She was right though. No boy was ever going to like a girl with bangs and glasses.
But it didn’t keep me from barking, “Shut up, Molly!”
It wasn’t my finest moment, but I was humiliated. I shrank in my seat, ducking my chin inside my coat so my face was half covered.
Dean acted unbothered. He shuffledthrough the front pocket of his backpack, and I peeked over the hem of my hood lining. From what I could see of the top layer—a washer and screw, a button, a couple scraps of ripped-up paper, a rainbow loom bracelet, and a handful of paperclips—it was filled with random junk he found off the street.
For the rest of the bus ride, he tinkered with the paperclips, stretching the kinky wires to their longest lengths. I wanted someone to talk to but resigned myself to the fact he didn’t have time for a four-eyed girl like me.
When the bus parked in front of the school, I turned to face Dean. He was grinning at me in a pair of paperclip glasses that sat crooked on the bridge of his nose. When the other kids caught on, I found out their teasing didn’t stop at me.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I said to him when we were the last kids left.
“I wanted to,” he said back, and wore them anyway.
I never forgot that day. Since then, he’s always shown up for me in moments when he didn’t know how much I needed someone.
Present Day
You can do this. Just break the ice, tell him you took the job, and everything can move forward how you’ve always wanted it to. You can finally give him a good reason to be close to you. One that you’ve spent the last several years working toward.
Who knows… maybe he’ll be happy for me. After all, he fell in love with a woman in this profession. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to him that I might consider it too.
I take a deep breath when I spot him between the living room and the kitchen. His feet are firmly planted on the ground in front of a guy being told what to do. A new guy, I decide, considering he’s wearing freshly laundered clothing.
I slow my steps so I don’t have to wait awkwardly for my turn to speak to him. But it doesn’t matter. He’s glancing up and ending their conversation. Dismissing the other guy and pushing past him.
I put on my brightest smile like it’s a layer of makeup I forgot. I don’t wear much makeup in the first place, so maybe it’s too much with the way he’s scrutinizing me. I try to come up with something to say as he eats up the ground between us.
“Hi, Jack,” is what I decide on. I gave up calling him dad a long time ago.
“I thought I said you didn’t need to come,” he reminds me, and I blink. Not the unintentional kind when your eyes get dry—which they are from the desert heat that’s permeated the walls of this building—but the kind that’s a lot like a swallow. A reset for your emotions.
I don’t need to see his face to know he wouldn’t be excited to see me here. He never did like me visiting him at work. His text message only confirmed it. I prepared myself for this. Already got my freak-out over with on the plane. I’m twenty-three years old and ready to handle him like the grown woman that I am. But something about him towering over me with his hands planted firmly on his hips makes me feel like I’m that small child who asked too many questions about her mom at bedtime. The one who was too eager and selfish to know he didn’t want to talk about those things and pushed him away instead.
I must have rehearsed what I was going to say at least three dozen times. Convinced myself he’d be happy about this part of my plan. But the news comes out of my mouth with a wobbly delivery.
“I’m your new EMT.”
