Chapter 11 #2
“Yeah.” I watched as Gennie set a wedge of cheese on a plate and then jabbed a knife into the heart of it. My eyes round, I blinked up at Noah. He glanced at her and shrugged. “I’ll be taking Mrs. Calderon’s second grade class through November or so.”
“Mrs. Calderon is the nice second grade teacher. Everyone says so.” Gennie unwrapped a small round of bread and plunged a knife right into that too.
When I gave Noah is she allowed to play with knives eyes, he said, “Butter knives. And it’s the pirate special.”
“Is that what we’re calling it?”
His only response was a lopsided grin. “Second grade. That’s good? That’s what you want?”
“Yeah, I can hang with second graders. They’re fun bunnies.
Not as fun as the cool cats in kindergarten, of course.
I’m just a little”—I brought my hands to my temples, let my fingers wiggle—“frazzled. I thought I’d be doing the daily assignment thing.
Covering whichever random classes came up.
Now I’m starting the year with a class and I only have the next few days to prep.
It’s a big shift. Mentally and…everything else. Like I said. Frazzled.”
Gennie carried the bread and cheese—and the knives protruding from each—to the table. “Can I tell you my big good thing now?” She bounced on her toes as she spoke.
“Of course. Tell me. I need to know.”
“I’m not a cool cat.”
I blinked. “What? Say that again?”
“You said kindergarten kids are cool cats but I get to go to first grade so I’m not cool.”
She was beaming ear to ear, her whole toothy grin taking over her face and narrowing her eyes into happy slits.
I jumped up, wrapped my arms around her.
“You’re not cool at all,” I said. “Now, you’re fab.
Totally fabulous first grader. It’s way better than cool.
” I turned to Noah. His arms were still crossed and that lopsided grin hadn’t gone anywhere.
“I thought your meeting was at the end of the week.”
“It was. They called this afternoon, asking if we could come in because there was a scheduling issue.” He lifted a shoulder.
“I think the scheduling issue was a result of me sending some documentation from the psych about an evaluation, including specific recommendations for additional layers of special needs support.”
“I showed them that I read extra good now,” Gennie said. “And did some stupid word problems too.”
“I am certain you were incredible,” I told her. To Noah, I added, “Sounds like you did pretty well for yourself too.”
He met my gaze and held it for a long moment while Gennie bounced and twirled between us. Slowly, he tipped his jaw down, and for the briefest of seconds, his stare dipped to my mouth. What was that ?
“Are you gonna take the bus to school?” Gennie asked.
Noah met my eyes again. “Shay doesn’t ride the bus. Never has.”
“Because Noah takes pity on me,” I replied.
“Because—” He shook his head. “Teachers don’t ride the bus. Sorry, kid.”
She looked up at me. “Can I go in your car? The bus sucks balls.”
Noah started to reply but I held up a hand. “I brought all of those awesome explorer books I told you about but I think your news calls for a celebration. Should we visit the dogs? Or the goats? What do you think?”
Gennie sprinted to the oven and squinted at the digital clock on the panel. “Four…zero…nine.” She repeated the numbers to herself a few times. Then, “Noah, is it cow time?”
He rocked back on his heels, sighed. “Yep.”
“Cows,” she bellowed. “The cows! They go to the milking barn! For milking! And-and-and—”
“It sounds perfect,” I said. “Can we do that?”
“There are rules,” Noah said.
“Don’t touch anything and be nice and don’t start any crazy shit and listen to all directions and leave the dairy guys alone and if I’m super best good, I can pet one cow before they go to the pasture.”
Noah shot a glare between me and the untouched plate of cheese and bread. “Eat. I won’t have you collapsing in the dairy barn.”
I broke off a bit of bread, some cheese. Made a little sandwich out of it. “Okay? I’m eating.”
He ran a hand over the back of his neck, saying, “You’re sticking with me. The last thing I need is you losing a shoe in there. We keep it clean, but god, I can’t have you falling over around cows. And finish that juice, would you?”
I brought the straw to my lips, smiling at him as I downed the rest of my pirate’s Shirley Temple. He held my gaze for a long moment before muttering something to himself and stomping out the door.
I didn’t know what I’d accomplished there but I knew it was something.
* * *
We climbed into the four-wheeler, Gennie babbling about cows as she fastened her seat belt in the back seat, barely managing to stay in her skin. Noah glanced over at me, his sunglasses blocking his eyes again. Then he reached all the way across my body and settled his hand on my shoulder.
“It’s a long ride,” he said. His face was so close. “Think you can handle it?”
I didn’t know what to do with my hands. Where were they supposed to go? Was I supposed to know that? More to the point, was I supposed to know anything or was it cool for me to sit here and let him lean into me like this?
“Yeah,” I murmured. “I think so.”
What are we even talking about?
“I hope you’re right about that.”
I didn’t know what he was thinking but the way he traced the ball of my shoulder and how his breath caught just enough for me to notice gave me a good idea. Whatever I’d accomplished a few minutes ago, it was now Noah’s turn to get his.
Then he yanked a seat belt across my chest and locked it into place beside my hip.
“Hold on,” he snapped, hands on the wheel now. “The dairy’s on the other side of the hill. I’m not stopping if you or your shoes fall out.”
Noah gunned it out of the barn and down the drive while Gennie chanted “Cow time! Cow time!” from the back.
Noah was very adept at allowing me to believe that the friendship we’d once had was in the past, and the present was grudgingly knit together with Lollie’s will, Gennie’s academic needs, and the fragment of familiarity lingering between us, but that wasn’t the truth right now.
Perhaps it hadn’t been the truth at all since I’d returned.
Noah had been a shy kid. He’d never talked much until I pestered him into it.
Even then, he’d listened more than he spoke.
Now that I thought about it, our best conversations took place in the notes we passed each other every day.
Those were where he opened up the most. It was how we’d connected beyond those sleepy morning drives to school.
Was it possible this was his new version of shy?
Was this what shy looked like when a man who wanted nothing more than to leave farm life behind got swept back into the family business and had to adopt his niece along the way?
Were his grump and his grouch the grown-up rendition of eating lunch in the library to avoid other kids?
And his use of me as a human shield against the pee-listening lady, was that just another example of rusty social skills?
“I’ll do my best,” I replied as he slowed at the end of the drive.
He paused, looking twice in both directions before crossing Old Windmill Hill Road. “If your best is anything like what I’ve seen today, I’m going to need you to do better than that.” He turned, catching a narrow path running along a line of white fencing. “Pudding cup,” he muttered.
“Would it help if I told you that I usually have coffee and a giant cookie at the Pink Plum in town?”
“Jesus, no. Why do you—never mind. It doesn’t matter. Hey, Gennie.”
“Argh,” she replied.
“When we finish up at the dairy, I want you to get some eggs for Shay.”
“I don’t need eggs.”
“Obviously you do,” he said.
“I don’t even like eggs for breakfast,” I said.
“I don’t like bare eggs,” Gennie said. “But Noah mixes up the eggs with cheese and bacon and all the other good stuff, and puts it on a sandwich, and that’s good shit.”
The four-wheeler was loud enough to drown out my laugh. “Bare eggs,” I repeated.
“The first time she said it, I thought she was saying bear eggs. Like grizzly bear. I tried to explain that bears don’t have eggs and she told me bare eggs are real and disgusting, and, well, we got donuts that morning. Those first few weeks together were unreal.”
“It must’ve been hard,” I said, low enough that little ears wouldn’t hear. “Being thrown together like that.”
He nodded and shot a quick look over his shoulder. “I didn’t know what I was doing. Still don’t.”
“Yes, you do. You’re just fishing for compliments.”
A smile passed over his face. “I would never.”
“Are you sure about that? You weren’t fishing for compliments when I tried to tell you that your friend Christiane won’t stay away because you’re rocking that hot uncle vibe real hard?”
“I—no.” He shook his head, and if I wasn’t mistaken, his ears were turning red. Interesting. “That’s not what happened.”
“Good clarification.”
He reached over as if he was going to touch me but then fisted his hand and dropped it to his thigh. “I don’t think I thanked you for everything. At the game.”
“You did.” I watched that blush climb up his neck. Very interesting. “Two loaves of bread is more than enough thanks.”
He drove over a rise and down a gentle slope, and a long blue-gray barn came into view. Several other buildings stood nearby, along with at least twenty of the same black-and-white cow trucks I’d run across on my first day in town.
“Cows ahoy,” Gennie called.
“Remember the rules,” Noah said to her.
“I know. I know, I know,” she sang, bouncing in her seat.
To me, he said, “You too. Wander away from me and there will be consequences.”
I stared at him. I wanted to say something but no words could be found.