Chapter 18
AVERY
I’d never seen Wilder look so defeated, not even at the beginning of the school year when I’d laid down the law about him being late all the time. Not even when he’d forgotten Gracie’s snacks on her first day and I’d shut the door in his face.
It won’t happen again. None of it will happen again.
Like, the fuck did that mean?
It didn’t take a genius to work out that he wasn’t talking about the fucking Adventurama.
I stared at the door. I wanted to go after him, but it seemed like that would open a whole can of worms. As though she could read my mind, Mrs. Freeman nudged me with her elbow and said, “He seems pretty shaken. I’ll watch the kids if you want to go and talk to him.”
She meant as class teacher, right? She couldn’t possibly know about the other stuff. “Right,” I said. “Thanks.”
I didn’t run out the door exactly, but it was a close thing. Wilder was halfway across the parking lot when I caught up to him.
“Wilder,” I called. He kept walking, so I tried the only thing I could think of. “Johnny!”
He stopped dead, then slowly turned to face me. To a stranger, maybe it would have looked like he was stony-faced or pissed. I knew him better than that. He was barely holding himself together, and it made my chest ache.
“Johnny,” I said again, softer this time, in the same tone of voice you’d use to coax a stray cat closer. “What do you mean, it won’t happen again?”
A driver honked, and I moved out of the way. When I glanced at Wilder again, he looked like a man who was one breath away from a breakdown. “All of it,” he said, sounding like the words were being torn from him. “Us. Everything. I—we can’t.”
“Because your father made some dumb complaint? The school isn’t even taking it seriously, so why should it matter?” I laid a hand on his shoulder and counted it a win when he didn’t shrug it off.
“You don’t get it,” he said. “My reputation’s shot in this town already. If it gets out that I’m with you…”
And suddenly it all made a terrible, sickening kind of sense.
Wilder was just starting to salvage his reputation.
If it got out he was dating a guy, he’d be back to square one.
And I got it. He had Gracie to think of.
But at the same time, what the fuck? He was happy to have his dick sucked and my fingers up his ass as long as nobody found out about it? That was bullshit, and it hurt.
“I don’t care about that,” I said. “I guess you do, though, right?”
He blinked. “What?”
“You don’t want it getting out you like—” I looked down at Gracie, who was following this conversation as avidly as an episode of Bluey. “Who you like.”
“What?” he asked again. “Avery, I don’t give a fu—lip about anyone knowing I like guys. You’re the one who doesn’t want to date me!”
My jaw dropped.
“And I get it,” Wilder continued, less fire in his voice this time. He shook his head. “I’m the pastor’s son who had everything going for him until he knocked his girlfriend up and dropped out of school. My job’s not great, and my other job is—” It was his turn to look at Gracie. “Also not great.”
“But you’re the one who said you didn’t want a relationship and you’d prefer to stick to, um”—I glanced at Gracie—“playdates.”
Wilder shot me a look that said I wasn’t getting it. “Avery, let’s be real. Everyone in this town thinks I’m trash, okay? I’m worried that if we get together, they’ll think you’re trash too.”
I looked at him standing there, tension and insecurity rolling off him in waves, and it hit me what he was saying. It wasn’t his reputation he was worried about if we dated. It was mine.
Well, fuck that. It was time someone taught John Wilder exactly what he was worth. So without thinking too hard about it, I said, “So what if people think I’m trash? Let ’em.”
And then I took a step forward, cupped his face, and kissed the hell out of him.
Wilder froze for a second, and then he kissed me back eagerly, and just like always it felt right and the world around us ceased to exist. We probably would have stood there making out all day except we were interrupted by Tyrell calling out, loud enough for the entire town to hear, “Mr. Smith is kissing Gracie’s daddy! ”
We pulled apart and Wilder ran a hand through his hair, his cheeks flushed. But Gracie, bless her, didn’t miss a beat, shouting back, “They’re boyfriends!”
Oh, to have all the stubborn certainty of a five-year-old.
“Are we?” I asked softly and tried to remember how to breathe while I waited for Wilder to answer—this was his call, after all.
He bit his lip, and then a tiny, pleased smile crept onto his face. “I guess we are.”
Boyfriends.
Holy shit, but I loved the idea of that.
I slunk into the teachers’ lounge a few minutes after my parking lot kiss, having gone by my classroom first to check if any of the kids were still waiting to be picked up.
In the movies, a kiss like that—with a declaration involved—would come at the final credits, or at least the end of a scene.
In real life, a car had beeped at me for standing there too long, and Wilder had rubbed the back of his neck and said, “I guess I’ll see you later? ” before he and Gracie had walked away.
Then Pete the crossing guard had pointed his sign at me and glared, and I had no idea what that meant, and I still had work to do before I could leave school for the day.
It was all very awkward and anticlimactic.
Fortunately, those two things were so familiar to me that they were almost my comfort zone.
Well, that was what I told myself as I walked into the teachers’ lounge with my head held high.
It was lucky my head was held high or I wouldn’t have had a chance to deflect the scrunched-up ball of paper that Alan threw at my head.
“What was that for?” I asked.
“I had twenty bucks on after Christmas,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
Dana sailed toward me with a coffee. “And I thought you’d hold out until Thanksgiving at least, asshole.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said hopefully.
Mrs. Freeman stood up from the couch. “They’re talking about the bets we were laying on when you’d finally ask Wilder out.”
So much for my hope. Also, so much for my preconceptions of Mrs. Freeman, who was now holding out her hand for the twenty-dollar bill Alan was begrudgingly handing over.
“Mrs. Freeman! I’m shocked!” I said.
“Not as shocked as Pete the crossing guard. He thought you’d make it till the end of the school year because you’d be afraid of getting in trouble, and now he’s out a fifty.”
No wonder he’d waved his sign at me threateningly.
Okay, so this whole thing was grossly unprofessional, but I couldn’t even be angry about it, because—betting losses aside—everyone seemed genuinely happy for me.
There were a lot of bad things that could have happened in a different school in a different small town if the teachers had found out I was seeing one of my students’ fathers.
And while none of those bad things would be my fault, they’d certainly be my problem.
So it filled me with a sort of joyful relief to discover that none of my colleagues was going to be a dick about Wilder and me.
Mrs. Freeman might have been unprofessional by letting the betting pool happen under her watch, and even more unprofessional by winning it, but it turned out that I didn’t want a professional in these circumstances.
I wanted a friend. And looking around the teachers’ lounge, I could see that I was surrounded by them.
I couldn’t even pretend to be mad, not when I was smiling this hard.
I could only imagine Wilder’s face when I told him about it. Wilder, my boyfriend. He’d probably be horrified and avoid speaking to Mrs. Freeman for the foreseeable future. But hopefully he’d think dating me was worth a little embarrassment.
“Hey,” I said to Dana as a brilliant idea struck me, “is there anywhere in town that sells flowers?”
“Wait, let me just text my husband and tell him you’re already outgunning him in the romance stakes,” she said, pulling out her phone.
“Goose Run Gas sells something that could pass for a bouquet in bad lighting,” Mrs. Freeman said, “but that’s about the only place in town.”
“Thanks,” I said. I still had some paperwork to do and I hurried through it so I could get out of there and away from the knowing looks of my colleagues. My friends.
I stopped at Goose Run Gas on the way home, hoping Danny wasn’t there.
Not because I was trying to keep Wilder and me dating a secret, but Danny was Wilder’s best friend, and I didn’t want to let it slip we were a couple before Wilder got a chance to tell him himself.
I was in luck—Danny wasn’t working. When I asked the woman on the register where the flowers were, she gave me a doubtful look then led me over to a bucket tucked away in a corner near the drinks refrigerator and pointed.
I’d had visions of a nice bunch of roses or something, but this was Goose Run, so my choices were a bunch of chrysanthemums with half the heads missing, or… no, that was it. A battered bunch of mums. I looked at the flowers and at the woman. “What happened to them?”
“Goose. I can sell them to you for five bucks.”
“Sure.”
She was busy ringing me up when a familiar voice said, “Who the fuck are you buying flowers for? I thought you had a thing with Wilder.”
I turned to find Chase glaring at me.
So much for keeping things quiet—but then, this was Goose Run. I gave him a wary smile. “We do have a thing. These are for him. We’re kind of… dating now.”
“Yeah?” Chase’s brows knit together. “Well, don’t fuck it up, or I’ll fuck you up.”
“What did Bobby say about threatening customers, Chase?” the cashier said mildly.
I looked Chase’s skinny frame up and down and took in his murderous expression. I’d never had someone threaten me over who I was dating before, and it kind of felt like a rite of passage. And I was glad Wilder had people like Chase in his corner.