“I’m really over the rain,” Jane says as she steps out of the music building. She pauses to open her umbrella before continuing toward her next class.
I’m about fifty yards away, standing under an overhang of a building across from her. “It’s supposed to clear up before your afternoon class.”
When she gets within about ten feet of me, I step out to meet her. She holds the umbrella out so it blocks some of the rain from landing on my hat and shoulders.
“Heading home now?” I ask.
“Actually, I was hoping we could grab lunch at University Hall.”
I glance over to catch her biting the corner of her lip with an almost nervous smile. “Sure.”
“I mean, together. I have something I need to tell you.”
I stop in the rain and face her. She is nervous, but why? “Okay.”
“Not here,” she says.
My phone vibrates in my pocket. I’m prepared to ignore anyone except Logan, but I didn’t expect Knox to be calling.
I take Jane’s hand and lead her into the nearest building as I answer, so she’s out of the rain while I take the call.
“Hey, what’s up? Everything all right?” I ask him.
“Everyone is fine, but Flynn needs to be picked up from school and I’m an hour away at a job site. Any chance you can get him?”
“What about Archer?”
“I tried him first, but he didn’t answer. I think they’ve got a team meeting or something today. The fuck knows with their schedule. Can you pick up Flynn or not?”
“Yeah. I can get him.”
“Thank you.”
“You don’t need to thank me. He’s my brother too.” I glance over at Jane to find her watching with concern. “Is he sick or something?”
“No.” Knox’s tone slips deeper. “But I bet he wishes he was. I don’t know all the details, the principal wouldn’t say much, but I’m so sorry I won’t be there to see your face when he tells you what happened. Gotta go. See you in a bit.”
He ends the call, leaving me with no idea what the hell is going on.
“Is everything okay?” Jane asks. Her voice echoes in the empty entryway of the old building. Her cheeks are red from the cold and that makes her green eyes more prominent.
“I don’t know. I gotta go pick up Flynn from school.” I take the umbrella from her and then hold the door open for her to step out.
She tries to take it from me. “Go. I can get home on my own. I’ll even text you when I’m there, so you know I made it.”
It’s a reasonable request, but she had something to tell me, and I got the feeling it was important.
“Come with me. We can pick up Flynn and drop him off at the house, and then I’ll take you to lunch so we can talk about whatever it is you wanted to talk about.”
“Are you sure?”
I’m already ushering her toward my truck. “Positive.”
Like everything else in my life, things don’t go as planned. Jane graciously hangs in the living room while I follow Flynn into his room and shut the door.
He tosses his backpack onto the floor and then throws himself onto the bed. “Can you just yell at me already, so we can get it over with?”
I resist the urge to do just that. Our dad yelled when he got pissed, or when he drank too much. He got off on being loud and having the last word. I can remember wishing he’d just hit me and shut up.
But I doubt Flynn remembers too much of that. We always did a good job of shielding him from the worst of our father.
“I’m not going to yell at you,” I say finally. It’s the first thing I’ve said since we left the school. I sit on the edge of the bed. “You should put some ice on that eye, so it doesn’t swell shut.”
He shrugs. “I don’t care.”
I let out a long sigh. “Do you want to tell me about the fight?”
“There’s nothing else to tell. I got into a fight.”
I wonder if Knox is better at getting Flynn to open up, or Archer or Brogan. Is this about me not knowing the right questions to ask or is this just Flynn? I should know something like that, right? I should be able to have a conversation with my baby brother without him completely shutting down at every turn.
“Did he provoke you by saying or doing something to you?” The idea of Flynn being bullied hadn’t occurred to me until now, but it makes icy-hot rage trickle down my spine.
“No.” He scoffs.
“All right. Did you say something to piss him off?”
This gets an eye roll, but it’s not quite as effective as it might be if his right eye wasn’t half-closed. “No. It wasn’t even about me.” His tone reaches an exasperation that finally breaks the truth free. “Randy was telling everyone that would listen about how he and Mariah hooked up last weekend.”
“O-kay.” I process this information and look for the next logical jump. “He hooked up with a girl you like?”
“No. I don’t even know Mariah that well. She’s a freshman.”
“Then what does that have to do with you?”
“Nothing. It doesn’t have anything to do with me.” With every word his shoulders creep up until he’s hunched, and his body is tense.
“Look, Flynn, I want to understand, but you might have to spell it out for me.”
“Randy is dating Hannah, okay? They’ve been together since last summer, but every weekend he’s hooking up with some other girl behind her back and then bragging about it to all his buddies. An hour later when it starts to get around school and Hannah finds out and confronts him, he plays it off like people are just talking shit and he’d never do that to her. I couldn’t take it anymore.”
“You like Hannah?”
He shoots me a look that I’m sure is meant to say, ‘don’t be stupid, of course I don’t like Hannah’ but pretty much says the opposite. “So, Randy’s a prick and a liar and you hit him because he’s cheating on his girlfriend and then gaslighting her. That sum it up?”
“Pretty much.” His shoulders fall back to their relaxed position.
His bed is pushed back so the entire length is butted up to the far wall. I sit crossways so my back rests against the wall and my legs stretch out over the plaid comforter. “I got in a fight like that once.”
“You did?” Both of his brows rise in surprise.
“Yeah. I had this friend in high school whose boyfriend was just the worst. He was always talking down to her and stuff. I never understood what she saw in him. Then one day I caught him making out with some other girl in the stairway between periods. I don’t even remember throwing the first punch. Probably because I only got off one before he kicked my ass.”
“You got into a fight and you lost?”
“Oh yeah, he was way bigger than me. It was freshman year, and I was still scrawny and short. He was a junior and captain of the wrestling team.”
Flynn laughs, really laughs, and the sound mixed with his smile makes me feel like Mom is here right now. He looks so much like her when he smiles.
“No way. How did I not know about this?”
“I begged Mom not to say anything.” I smile as I think back to it. “I knew Knox and Archer would give me so much shit, so I told them I got elbowed during practice.”
“And they never found out?”
“No. Mom kept her word. They were still in middle school and by the time Knox got to high school it was old news. And even if anyone had said anything, it was my word against a guy that’d already graduated.”
“They would have given you so much shit,” he says. “What happened with the girl after the fight? Did she break up with him?”
“Eventually, yeah, and we dated for a little while.”
Flynn laughs again, this time a little quieter. “I can’t believe you got your ass kicked.”
Noise outside in the living room grabs my attention. “Sounds like everyone else is home.”
“Do they all already know?” he asks with a whine.
“Knox has a big mouth,” I say with a smile. “But no, all they know is that something happened at school and the principal called. We were all worried.”
“I don’t want to deal with telling this story again. I just want to sleep.” He throws an arm over his face.
“I’ll cover with Archer and Brogan, but at least talk to Knox. He was stressed that he couldn’t get to you faster.” I realize as I say it that it’s true. Knox has taken the brunt of the parenting when it comes to Flynn, and with that comes responsibility and pressure that I didn’t consider.
“Yeah, all right,” he agrees.
I scoot to the edge of the bed and stand. “Oh, and the other thing Mom did when I got into that fight was ground me for a week.”
He groans, then mutters, “Knew that was coming.”
By the time I cross his room, open the door and am closing it behind me, he already has the music blasting.
Knox stands from where he’s sitting on the arm of the couch. A protective fierceness in his eyes flashes as he walks toward me.
“He’s fine,” I say.
“What the hell happened? Jane said he got into a fight with some kid in the cafeteria.”
“I’ll let him tell you, but yeah, that’s basically it. He was defending a girl.”
Knox’s serious expression finally morphs back into the playfulness he shows the rest of the world. “I should have known it was over a girl.” He lets out a short chuckle. “Did he get suspended?”
“Yeah, three days.”
“Fuck, that sucks.”
“Yeah. The principal also mentioned his grades aren’t the best. He’s barely passing all his core classes.”
“Barely passing is passing,” Knox says. “Is he benched for the game this weekend?”
“No,” I say. “And they’re letting him attend practices after school.”
“Good. It’s the last regular game of the season before the conference tournament,” he adds, then crooks one arm behind his back to squeeze his neck. “How the hell are we going to get him to practice every day?”
“Shit. I didn’t think of that.”
“I’m working all week and I don’t think I can get anyone to cover. This attic job is hot and dirty, and nobody wants it.”
Now that he mentions it, he is covered in dirt pretty much from head to toe.
“I’ll figure it out.”
Knox doesn’t look convinced.
“I’ll figure something out. All right?”
He nods, takes a step toward Flynn’s room, and then looks back to glance at Jane and then me. “Did you take Ivy Greene to pick him up?”
“I didn’t have much of a choice.”
“I would have killed to see that. Pro football player Hendrick Holland and Hollywood star Ivy Greene walk into Valley High School . . .” He stops and grins. “It’s probably already hit TMZ.”
He succeeds in making me laugh. “Shut the fuck up. No one but the woman at the front desk and the principal saw either of us. And stop saying my name like that.”
“What? That is your name, isn’t it?” With that he knocks on Flynn’s door and then disappears inside.
I continue into the living room where Jane is hanging out with Archer and Brogan. The latter are playing video games while Jane sits at the end of the same couch with her laptop open in front of her. She looks up when I take a seat across from them.
“Hey.” She aims a small smile at me.
Brogan pauses the video game. “How’s our little Rocky?”
“They dragged the highlights out of me,” Jane confesses.
“It’s fine,” I assure her. “He’s all right. Gonna have a hell of a black eye and he’s suspended for three days.”
Archer whistles. “Damn. I can’t believe it. Flynn punched someone?”
“I’ll let him tell you the details if he wants, but maybe give him a few hours before you start hounding him?”
“We gotta head back to campus anyway.” Brogan drops the controller onto the coffee table and looks to Jane. “You need a ride?”
“Oh.” She shakes her head. “No. I’m good.”
“I can take her,” I say, standing.
Brogan and Archer get up and start for the door, but not before they both send me a knowing smirk.
Once they’re gone, I wait for Jane to pack up her things.
“I’m sorry about dragging you along,” I say, then remember we were supposed to get lunch. “Dammit. You must be starving.”
“I could eat,” she says. She lifts her backpack to her shoulder.
“I’ll swing by and get you something on our way.” I glance at the clock. “Or I’ll drop you first and then go to University Hall and grab food. If you sit in the back of that giant lecture hall, I can sneak it in.”
“Or we could go sit down somewhere together and have lunch? You haven’t eaten either and you look like you could use an hour or two of downtime.”
“I’ll be fine. Come on, I don’t want you to be late.”
She does move to the door, but not all that quickly. “I already emailed my sociology professor and let him know I had something urgent come up. We’re just reviewing for a test next week.” She shrugs. “It shouldn’t be an issue.”
“You didn’t need to do that.”
“I know. I wasn’t a hostage here.” She smiles. “It’s no big deal. Seriously. But feeding me is a big deal because I’m on the verge of getting hangry.”
We go to In-N-Out. The lunch rush is gone, and the place is quiet as we sit together at a little booth by the window, eating burgers and fries and watching traffic.
“It’s sweet,” Jane says after I tell her the full story about Flynn. “This is the kind of stuff I missed out on in high school. No guy ever punched someone in my honor.”
I find that incredibly hard to believe.
“That you know about,” I say as I swirl a fry in a ketchup and mayo mixture before tossing it in my mouth.
“Trust me. I would have known.”
“Listen,” I say, holding back a sigh. “I know Flynn doesn’t need someone watching over him while he’s home during his suspension, but I’d like to be there for him anyway.”
“Right. Of course.” She nods, and she looks so understanding that it makes me feel worse.
“I’ll find someone to cover for me. That part shouldn’t be a problem.” I spent all of lunch trying to come up with a solution and this is the best I can do. I hate it.
“What if I just hang at the house with you guys?”
“With me and Flynn?”
“Yeah. I mean, I guess that’s presumptuous, but I could just chill there during the day. I won’t get in the way or anything. You won’t even know I’m there.”
Yeah, right. There’s no room we could be in together that I wouldn’t be aware of her.
“Or I can stay at my place, of course. My roommates all have different schedules, so someone is there most of the time during the day.”
“I don’t love you being there by yourself when I can’t get there quickly, but you also can’t miss three days of classes.”
“I’ll email my professors and just do whatever I can outside of class. It won’t be a problem.”
It feels like such an easy solution, and maybe it’s asking too much of her but I’m just so happy to have a solution that doesn’t require me to navigate twelve different hoops that I agree. “Thank you. I really appreciate it. I want to be there with him, even if he doesn’t really want or need me to be.”
“I think he wants it more than he’d ever let on.”
“Maybe.”
Jane eyes my fries. “That looks disgusting.”
“Ketchup and mayo?”
She nods.
“Try it.” I push my tray toward her and watch as she carefully dips the very end of a french fry into the sauce before tasting it.
She immediately makes a face. “Oh, no. No, no, no.” She takes a long drink of her lemonade before she speaks again. “Looks disgusting because it is.”
We smile at each other over our food and it’s the first time in an hour that I feel like I can take a full breath.
