Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
He didn’t think about his shirt.
That was the first thing Tyler registered as he pulled into the school lot—he was wearing whatever he’d put on that morning and he hadn’t checked the mirror once.
The blue linen was in the closet. The grey henley was in the laundry.
He was wearing a flannel he’d grabbed off the bedroom chair and it was fine and it didn’t matter and that was new.
Lindsey was on the front steps talking to a parent when he pulled up.
She saw the truck and held up one finger—give me a minute—and kept talking.
Tyler waited. Three weeks ago he would have rehearsed what to say when she came over.
Today he just sat in the truck with the window down and the October air coming in and waited the way you wait for someone you know is coming.
She finished the conversation, crossed the lot, and opened the passenger door.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
That was it. No preamble. She climbed in and set her bag on the floor and buckled her seatbelt and it was like they’d been doing this for years instead of weeks.
“Stella’s at darkroom,” Tyler said. “She’ll text when she’s done. Coffee?”
“Coffee.”
They went to the place on Forest Avenue—their place now, though neither of them had called it that out loud. The barista knew their order. That was either wonderful or alarming and Tyler chose wonderful.
They sat in the window booth with their cups and Lindsey pulled off her lanyard—WORLD’S OKAYEST GUIDANCE COUNSELOR still hanging from it, the letters fading—and set it on the table.
“Long day?” Tyler asked.
“Two college meltdowns, one schedule crisis, and a freshman who wanted to drop everything and become a professional gamer.” She wrapped her hands around her cup. “I talked him into keeping algebra.”
“You’re good at that.”
“At algebra?”
“At keeping people from quitting things they need.”
Lindsey smiled and took a sip. The afternoon light came through the café window and caught her hair and Tyler didn’t look away and didn’t feel the need to pretend he wasn’t looking. That was new too.
“How’s the Shack?” she asked. “Post-collapse.”
“Better. Anna cut back to weekends only. Friday and Saturday dinners, weekend breakfast. The rest is normal hours again. I can feel my legs again.” He turned his cup on the saucer. “I’m booking photography jobs again. Two this week.”
“Good. You missed it.”
“I didn’t realize how much until I stopped.” He looked at his hands—the same hands that had been poaching eggs at dawn for three weeks. “Stella told me my camera bag was gathering dust and I should be embarrassed.”
“Were you?”
“Yeah. Actually.” He set the cup down. “I let it go too easy. The photography. Three weeks and I just—set it down. Like it didn’t matter. And it’s the thing that matters most. Besides Stella.”
Lindsey leaned forward, elbows on the table, her whole attention on him like he’d just said the most interesting thing she’d heard all day.
“You were taking care of your family,” she said.
“I was poaching eggs.”
“You were taking care of your family by poaching eggs. Those aren’t different things.
” She set her cup down. “Tyler, you dropped everything to make breakfast for a restaurant that was in trouble because your grandmother built it and your sister runs it and your daughter works there. That’s not letting something go.
That’s knowing what matters in the moment. ”
“But the photography—”
“The photography was there when you got back. It waited for you.” She looked at him. “The good things wait.”
Tyler stared at his coffee. Something was happening in his chest that he couldn’t name and didn’t want to examine too closely because they were in a café and he was a forty-year-old man and there was a limit to how undone a person should become over a sentence about waiting.
“How do you do that?” he said.
“Do what?”
“I came in here thinking about eggs and now I’m—” He gestured vaguely. “I don’t know. Feeling things about cameras.”
“That’s literally my job.”
“Your job is high school students.”
“My job is helping people hear what they’re already thinking.” She picked up her cup. “You knew the photography mattered. You knew the schedule was temporary. You just needed someone to say it back to you.”
“And you’re that someone?”
“Apparently.” She took a sip. “I charge thirty dollars an hour for students. You’re getting the friends and family discount.”
“Which is?”
“Coffee.”
Tyler laughed. Lindsey watched him laugh and her face opened up the way it did—warm and unguarded and entirely focused on him, like his laugh was something she’d been waiting to hear.
“I’m not good at this,” Tyler said.
“At what?”
“This. Being with someone. I spent sixteen years being a part-time dad and a full-time photographer and I never learned how to just—sit across from someone and let them see me.”
“You’re sitting across from me right now.”
“I know.”
“And I can see you.”
“I know. That’s the terrifying part.”
Lindsey reached across the table and straightened his collar—the flannel, the one he hadn’t thought about, the one that didn’t matter. Her fingers brushed the fabric at his neck and Tyler’s ears went red and he didn’t care. Let them be red. Let her see that too.
“You’re doing fine,” she said.
“Fine and good are different things.”
“That’s Stella’s line.”
“She’s smarter than me.”
“She’s sixteen. Everyone’s smart at sixteen.” Lindsey sat back. “You’re doing good, Tyler. Not fine. Good.”
His phone buzzed. Stella.
Done. Whenever you’re ready.
Tyler looked at the phone. Looked at Lindsey. “I need to get Stella.”
“I know.”
“Same time Thursday?”
“I’ll be here.”
He stood. She stood. She picked up her bag and her lanyard and slung them over her shoulder.
“Tyler.”
“Yeah.”
“The flannel’s good. You should wear it more.”
“I didn’t even think about it this morning.”
“I know.” She smiled. “That’s why it’s good.”
She headed for the door. “I’ll walk. It’s three blocks.”
“I can drive you—”
“Three blocks, Tyler. And it’s nice out. But thank you.”
She walked out and turned left, bag over her shoulder, unhurried. She didn’t look back. She didn’t need to.
He drove to the school. Stella was waiting on the steps, camera bag over her shoulder.
“How was coffee?” she asked, climbing in.
“Good.”
“Good like fine or good like—”
“Good like good.” He pulled out of the lot. “She straightened my collar.”
Stella looked at him. “She touched your collar.”
“She straightened it. It was crooked.”
“Your collar was fine.”
“I know.”
Stella settled into the seat and looked out the window and didn’t say anything for three blocks, which was a record. When she finally spoke, her voice was different—softer, less teasing.
“You look different,” she said.
“Different how?”
“Quieter. Like someone turned something down.” She glanced at him. “In a good way.”
Tyler drove home with the window down and the October air and his daughter beside him and something in his chest that was settling into a shape he was starting to recognize.
For the first time in a long time, he wasn’t rushing toward the next thing. He was just here.