Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 111089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 555(@200wpm)___ 444(@250wpm)___ 370(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 555(@200wpm)___ 444(@250wpm)___ 370(@300wpm)
“Do you mind not talking about me with other teachers?”
It’d been nagging at my thoughts since he’d mentioned chatting with Ms. Eiken. I felt bad bringing it up after he’d told me about his brother, but it was something I wanted to state clearly, without question.
“I didn’t say anything that would have let her know who it was. I just…I was trying to do the right thing.”
“I don’t doubt that, but I got enough people who talk about me at school, is all.”
There was something in the way his gaze shifted, like maybe he knew that was true from things he’d heard.
How couldn’t he have? Rumors abounded at Wyachet High. No one could evade them, least of all me—my own parents having used their position to run a smear campaign to keep me from ever being trusted if and when I decided to speak the truth.
My truth.
Certainly hadn’t helped that I lacked my father’s charisma and social skills.
Or any desire to challenge anyone’s negative opinions of me.
James rolled up to the side of the road, stopped the truck, and turned to me. “I’m sorry. I won’t do that again.” Then he pressed his foot back on the gas and headed back en route.
Had he really stopped just to assure me of that?
I was so stunned by his reaction, his sincerity and thoughtfulness. He couldn’t have known what that meant to me. He couldn’t have known what he was coming to mean to me.
12
James
I was glad I’d pushed myself into talking to Kyle about his bisexuality.
I couldn’t help thinking that if Cody had held Kyle’s attitude about who he was, he never would have taken his own life. Still, despite Kyle’s openness on that one subject, it was evident he kept plenty close to his chest.
Each conversation with him was like discovering clues within the mystery that was Kyle Forsythe. Like in any good mystery, there were enough to keep me hooked. Not just for my own interest, but because mixed with all the tension and aggression—this way he had of holding himself that shouted “stay the fuck away from me”—I saw something else.
Masked vulnerability, guarded so closely.
Something I knew a thing or two about.
When I graded homework, I found myself having to resist the urge to pull his from the stack and reading his answers first. It wasn’t just because I knew him more than most of the other students, but his responses genuinely interested me. Like his rather severe thoughts about Ophelia’s relationship with her father and brother, something I made sure to comment back on in the margins, while giving him an A since, as always, it was clear he had done the reading. Unlike several of his peers, whose responses either read like they had based their opinions on googled ideas of what Hamlet was about or were inappropriately primitive for their age.
Between the responses on his assignments and the time we spent chatting on Saturdays, it was hard not to think that in another life, he wouldn’t have been my student. We would have just been buddies. Since that couldn’t be, I accepted the precious fun we had on Saturdays and that warm smile he offered every day he’d walk into class. Despite constantly giving me hell about shit I rightly deserved it for, he didn’t take advantage of it, the way I knew so many guys his age would have. Certainly, his classmates Brian and Daryl would have given me shit over half as much.
With each passing weekend, we spent more and more time together, goofing off or chatting about Supernatural, which he’d gotten into after I recommended it, prompting me to cycle through a repeat viewing to be able to see where he was at in each season as he reached it. He’d also tell me about some of the characters he’d run into while making his deliveries. Or one of his uncle’s latest dates. Or homecoming stress with his friends.
We’d been working on the roof, when Maya asked us for help bringing plywood around the house to make room for a truck. It seemed Kyle and I had become her go-to guys for errands, something neither of us minded. We set a board down on the new stack, and on our trek back around the house, I pulled out my phone and responded to a text.
“Is that Kendra?” Kyle asked, a smirk on his face, though I detected something else in his expression too. Annoyance, almost. Like he’d said something and I missed it when I checked for a message, but I couldn’t remember him having said anything.
“Now how could you have guessed that?”
“The past few times you’ve texted, I’ve seen her name pop up.”
What I hadn’t told him already about seeing her, I was certain he picked up in some of my conversations with the other guys.