“How…?” Was he so open a book that everyone could figure him out, including his five-year-old son?
Jamie rolled his eyes. “I watched you all through high school. I had a crush on you big-time junior year. So, I know when you tap your fingers that you’re nervous and wound up about something. You used to do that a lot on test days.” He folded his hands in his lap while Todd pulled his hands off the table. “So just tell me.”
Todd didn’t want to sound ungrateful. “The clothes, the phone, letting us stay here… the food, the, well… everything. We’re costing you a fortune, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to pay you back,” he said softly.
“Those are all small things. A few dollars. Nothing more.” He leaned over the table. “But if you really want to know why?” Todd nodded. “Fall of senior year,” Jamie said softly. “Do you remember?”
Todd thought back and tried to think of some important occasion, but nothing came to mind. “I’m sorry, I don’t.”
Jamie didn’t get upset but shrugged and then nodded slowly. “I don’t suppose you would. But some friends and I decided to go to a football game. It was homecoming, and we thought it would be fun. We were dressed in green and white. Looking back, we probably looked silly, but we were showing school spirit and trying to get into the fun. After the game, my mother was supposed to pick me up. I called, and she said she was on her way. So, I sat on one of those half walls outside the entrance. I was alone, and Kyle Larch and Steve Mariner found me there.”
“They were meatheads,” Todd said. Those two guys were lucky if they had a brain to share between them. “I saw Kyle atAuto Zone once, and Steve went to work for his dad… until the shop closed.”
“Yeah, well, those two decided that since I was alone—and, of course, gay—that they were going to assault me.” Jamie shivered, and suddenly the scene from that night came back to him. “Apparently, their girlfriends had blown them off, so they decided that I was going to take care of them.” Cold fear flashed in Jamie’s eyes.
“I saw one of them pull you down and hurried over. I remember now. Steve had you by the hair and was saying a bunch of shit as he pulled you away.”
“Yeah. He wanted to get me in the shadows. You punched the asshole in the face. Gave him a bloody nose and a fat lip. Kyle backed away because no one messed with you. My mom showed up a few minutes later and took me home. I know at the time it didn’t seem like much to you, but to me, you saved me from God knows what. I don’t know what they were going to do to me. That was the closest I’ve ever come to being assaulted. I’ve been called names and shit, but…. You saved me once. I don’t know why you did.”
“Because I wasn’t going to let someone hurt you. I was so mixed up back then. But you were part of the reason I was allowed to play football. You helped me get through some classes I never would have otherwise to keep up my GPA.” Todd sighed. “Honestly, I never gave what happened another thought.”
“And yet, what you did may have changed my life. Or at least saved me from something pretty bad. So I can afford a few clothes and a cell phone.” Jamie took his hand. “Those kinds of things are not going to break me. But you helped me at a point in my life when I needed it… and I can return the favor now.”
Todd barely heard the words as his attention focused on where Jamie touched him. It was like he had fire in his hands, but fire that tingled. He swallowed hard. “I had no idea.”
“Sometimes the things you do without thinking can change someone’s world.” Jamie pulled his hand back and opened his computer.
Todd knew he had more opportunities to search for, so he checked the job sites, but he really wasn’t paying attention and almost signed up for a position as a truck driver. His attention was drawn to Jamie, and he found himself peering over the top of the computer just to get a peek at him. A few times, he saw him looking back, and Todd lowered his gaze right away. Then he tried to go back to what he was supposed to be doing, but again, looked up over the screen. It was like a game, trying to see how long he could watch Jamie without him looking back.
“I think I’m about done for the day. My lectures are ready, and I even have exam preparation pages set for them. I don’t know how much more I can do.”
“What kind of exams do you give?” Todd asked.
Jamie leaned to the side to glance around his screen. “My philosophy is that as the class goes on, we build on earlier concepts and ideas, so I don’t ask specific questions on material from earlier in the class but concentrate on the major themes and ideas that we covered. It isn’t as important that they can regurgitate facts from throughout the semester as it is that they can reason and have absorbed the concepts. I don’t grade on a curve because if I did my job, and the students did their work, then all of them should get a good result, and I’m okay with that.” He sighed, and that face Todd had seen in his dreams for years disappeared once again behind the laptop screen.
“I didn’t have college professors who looked at things like that. Remember Sheila Palmer?”
“By-the-book Sheila.” Jamie laughed hard. “And that book was written in 1985, I swear. There were no new ideas, and all we had to do was take what was in the book and change it to fit the assignment. There was no imagination or actual learninginvolved. I’m not at all like her. I want my students to learn to think for themselves, take difficult and sometimes unexpected positions, and make their case. That’s more important.”
“I was never very good at any of the school stuff. I tried community college because I thought I might have a chance, but I realized it wasn’t for me. I just couldn’t keep up. I wish I had stuck it out, but after a semester, I understood that I was never going to make it. Instead, I went out and got a job.” He tried not to go down the rabbit hole about where that left him. “Let’s change the subject.”
Jamie nodded from behind the computer. “Cool. What do you like to do for fun?”
Todd realized he hadn’t thought about that in a very long time. “I don’t know anymore. When I was a kid, I used to collect baseball cards. I still had my collection, but I think it’s long gone now. It was in the storage locker for my apartment, and when I lost it, I suspect the landlord probably just got rid of everything. I mean, they had no need to keep stuff. I was months behind in the rent. I told them what was going on, and they were good about it. I mean, we didn’t have fights or anything, but I….” The worst thing was that he’d had to leave most of Kenny’s things behind.
“Where did you live last?” Jamie asked.
“We had a place downtown over one of the stores. It used to be an antique shop, but the owners retired. I sold what I could and cleaned up the trash, turned in the keys, and took Kenny with me. I didn’t know where to go or what to do, but I figured things out. It was cold, and we spent some nights in a shelter, but after that, we were on our own.” Everything seemed to come back to that.
“Okay. I remember that store. It’s where I got the chairs in the living room. They put me in touch with someone who would upholster them for me.” He pulled out his phone. “I’m lookingup the number for the store.” He grinned and handed the phone over. “Give it a try. If they answer, you can see if they still have anything. I remember the back of the store had a warehouse area. You never know.”
Todd wasn’t sure if it was worth it, but he called the number, and damned if it wasn’t answered.
“This is Ellen.”
Oh my God.“I’m sorry to bother you, but this is Todd Morris.”
“Yes, Todd.” She sounded formal, and that was to be expected.
