Chapter 13 #3
Bryce cut in sharply, his voice dripping with seriousness and a bit of sarcasm. “Isis, you pass out pretzels and play charades with seat belts. Ain’t nobody calling you when somebody leg falls off. If the plane crashes, your job is to die politely and bougie.”
Isis waved him off dismissively and redirected her focus back to Adrian. I noticed Bryce didn’t seem fazed at all by how attentive Isis was being to Adrian. It was like he expected nothing more from her anyway.
“Talk to me! Are you breathing?! Do you know your name?! Follow my fingers! How many do you see?!” Isis blurted out, holding up three gloved fingers in front of his dazed face.
“Twelve,” Adrian croaked, his voice pitiful, like he’d just been shot and cheated on by the same person.
“Twelve?!” Isis shrilled, her hand flying to her chest in dramatic disbelief. “Oh yeah, he definitely concussed!”
I know damn well she didn’t just diagnose a fake concussion based on a number pulled straight out of a fever dream.
If stupidity was contagious at that cabin, I was ten seconds away from packing my hoodie and voluntarily social distancing with the wolves and bears.
Hell, I’d take a bobcat with trust issues, a moose in mating season, and a family of raccoons running a meth lab behind a pine tree over that mess any day.
I rolled my eyes and crouched down beside Adrian, brushing the snow off his pants leg. With a firm grip, I reached for the cuff and started rolling the fabric up. He winced before I even got halfway.
“Relax,” I muttered. “It ain’t like I’m peeling off your skin.”
His knee was red and scraped, swollen and angry, with a shallow but long cut running just above the bone.
It looked like it stung more than it bled.
It was one of those injuries that hurt a person’s pride just as much as their flesh.
However, in no way was it a life-threatening wound by any means.
It didn’t require stitches, an emergency surgery, or the melodramatic amputation Adrian was moaning about like we were losing him to the spirit realm.
And there was definitely no need for Isis to be hollering like a surgeon on standby for a knee operation in the snowy wilderness.
“How did this happen?” I asked, annoyance evident in my tone.
“He tried to flex with a hatchet, hit the log at the wrong angle, and bounced the handle right off his knee… real simple story,” Bryce explained, then leaned down and effortlessly picked up a thick log as if it weighed nothing.
“These kinds of things tend to happen when lies collide with lumber,” he included.
“What?” I asked, confusion washing over me as I looked between the two of them.
“Your boy just confessed that he ain’t no real carpenter. He quit the class halfway through but kept the toolbox for clout.”
Adrian shot Bryce a wounded glare, an expression of betrayal etched onto his face. “So much for you not telling her, huh?”
“Nigga, you made a deal with her ex,” Bryce pointed out.
“That’s like making a deal with the devil and asking for a hug instead of heat or signing a lease in hell and asking him to lower the thermostat.
You don’t walk into hell hoping to stay cool…
especially not when you lied on your way in.
Ain’t no safety clause there or here. You signed up for the burn.
Sue me,” he shrugged. “Besides…” Bryce nodded at Adrian’s sad little pile.
“She already smelled the smoke; I just came out here to confirm the fire.”
“Adrian, what the hell is he talking about?” I demanded to know, my impatience growing as I tried to make sense of the subliminal talking.
“Chess, don’t listen to that nigga. It ain’t like how he's trying to put it.”
Bryce grinned, slow and sinister. “Yeah, it is. I warned you, though. I told you wood don’t play with posers.”
Isis gasped, as if that was disrespectful to all patients everywhere. “Stop it, Bryce! He’s hurt!” she snapped at him.
“And yet… he will live,” Bryce shot back in a callous tone.
My piercing glare turned sharply toward Adrian. “Adrian, is this true? You’re really not a carpenter?”
Adrian shifted uncomfortably, glancing between us like he was trapped in a snowstorm of shame.
“Okay… I might’ve exaggerated a little," he admitted finally, his voice barely above a whisper.
I scoffed, disbelief dancing on my lips. “A little?”
“Aight… look. I took carpentry for like two weeks, then I dropped it.”
Bryce snorted. “He lying. My man said he took carpentry for two weeks and quit ‘cause the class was cold.”
Isis blinked, her brows knitting in confusion. “It was cold?”
“Yeah. The building was cold. The tools were cold. The instructor? Cold as ice. Hell, probably the truth of it all was cold, too,” Bryce added.
“I can’t believe you’ve been lying to me this whole time,” I said, voice low and edged with disappointment.
“I don’t know if I’m more mad at you or myself for being so damn na?ve and just taking your word for it without looking deeper into what you really did.
Now it all makes sense why you never posted much of your so-called ‘work’ on social media.
” I narrowed my eyes at him, leaning in closer.
“And since this is the moment that we’re all being honest, let me just say, the few things you did post, they looked a bit sketchy.
It’s like you typed ‘weld me a dream’ into Midjourney and hit send. "
Adrian's face fell as he seemed to shrink under the weight of our accusations, looking as if he wanted nothing more than to bury himself in the snow and reboot his whole life.
He winced, regret flashing in his eyes. “Chess, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lie. I just didn’t want to scare you off by making you think I was just some lame substitute teacher or a broke-ass dude barely scraping by.”
I nodded slowly, my lips curling in disbelief at his flimsy excuse. “And yet… you are just that. Well, the lame part for lying for sure."
I let the pause settle before dropping it on him, clear and steady.
“Truth is, I’d rather deal with a broke, honest substitute teacher than a dressed-up delusion strutting around in steel-toe boots.
One teaches with heart; the other lies with empty pride.
And if you think being a substitute teacher is lame, then you’re in the wrong profession for all the wrong damn reasons. ”
My chest tightened a little bit—not from rage, but from something deeper.
I thought about my students.
I sat across from students who cried when they passed my course, not because it was hard, but because life was.
Those were the same ones who sat in my office too long just to avoid going home, called me “Ms. Hollis”, “Professor Hollis”, “Dr. H,” or even Ms. Hollywood’, but hugged me like I was a second chance or turned in late papers with long apologies, even though I could see the life dragging them by the collar.
I watched Black boys who never had a male role model walk a little straighter after I brought in a guest speaker who believed in them.
I’d seen young women with babies on their hips—tired, working two jobs, bruised by life, holding it together beneath a full course load and a fake smile—show up anyway to chase a dream.
And there Adrian was… sitting there like stepping into a classroom was somehow beneath him, like shaping the minds of the next generation made a man lame.
And maybe I’m speaking from a biased standpoint. I mean… I am a professor.
Substitutes—hell, teachers—don’t get enough credit.
Some of them are holding it down in classrooms with no heat, no working projector, no lesson plan, no damn clue what they walked into, but still show up…
and not for the check, but for the kids, for stability, for presence, or even for the chance to be the one adult who didn’t leave.
So to hear Adrian lump male substitutes into some weak-ass, dusty category like it made a man “less of a man” to teach… that did it for me.
If the bear incident or finding out he was a fraud with half a lie tucked in every sentence didn’t do it… that ignorant, tired-ass mindset was the final nail in whatever this was pretending to be.
I gave him a slow once-over. “Seriously, though… it’s 2025. What grown man still does that corny shit?”
Isis slid a stick of gum in her mouth like we were on a break.
“Well, he wouldn’t be the first. I had this guy—”
I snapped my head toward her, shooting her a look so grimy that she clamped her lips shut like a mime caught in a moment of trouble.
Back to the point.
“But yeah,” I proceeded coldly with my eyes narrowed on Adrian.
“You should’ve been scared to lie to me.
Do you even realize the danger your lie could’ve caused just then?
You could’ve turned this area into a crime scene with your discount manhood and zero qualifications, all because you think confidence is a substitute for competence.
You out here swinging metal like you building the ark with no damn blueprint, no training, no skills, and barely enough testosterone to hold the damn thing right!
Seriously, you could’ve killed somebody; hell, you could’ve killed yourself!
And for what? To play hero in front of a bunch of people who can barely tolerate you? !” I argued.
“Damn,” Bryce muttered, scratching his head.
Adrian nodded, his eyes filled with understanding and a flicker of regret. “I get it. I do. And you’re right… I should’ve been honest. I ain’t perfect, but I do care about you.”
I held up a hand. “Save it!”
There was nothing else to say.
Silence hung in the air for a second. My jaw tightened involuntarily as I glanced down at the knee that had sparked that whole damn scene.
I turned to Isis, who was still patting Adrian’s forehead in a manner reminiscent of someone tending to a patient in hospice care.
I scoffed. “This what you ran over here for?”
“What?” Isis shrugged, her shoulders hunching defensively. “He was in pain!”