Getting Schooled (The Wright Brothers Book 1) (11 page)

“My story?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Military vet, mechanic–slash–car salesman, student, asshole… amputee. How did life bring you
here
?”

“Oh, so you’re interested in me now, huh?” I grinned.

“You know what… yes. I am.”

I shrugged. “Okay. I’m the youngest of three boys—”

“Which is why you’re a crybaby. Makes sense.”

I laughed. “Are you gonna let me tell it?”

“Yes, continue please.”

“Like I said, youngest of three boys. We’re 28, 31, and 34. By the time I was graduating high school, the college money had been exhausted between my brothers, and I didn’t want to add more financial burden to my parents. And, I wasn’t interested in school anyway.”

“Really?” Reese asked, sounding genuinely shocked. “But you’re obviously sma—I mean, you don’t seem completely stupid. Why wouldn’t you want to go to school?”

“Did you almost give me a compliment just then?!”

She laughed, then pretended to wipe sweat from her brow. “
Almost did
. That was a close one, wasn’t it?”

“It really was,” I chuckled. “But yeah, as far as school, I just didn’t really know what I wanted to do. Seemed like a waste of time. If I’d stayed home, Dad would have put me to work at the dealership—”

“The dealership?”

“Yeah, J&P. My father is the owner.”

Her eyes nearly bugged out of her head before she quickly schooled her features into a neutral expression. “Interesting.”

“Interesting?” I asked, narrowing my eyes. “How so?”

“No reason.”

“Reese…”

“It’s nothing, really. Just… your father is a really nice, handsome, charming guy.
Nothing
like you, at all. I never would have thought you were related. Not even a little. At all.”

“Daaaamn,” I laughed. “For your information, I take after my mother. Do you wanna hear the story or not?”

“Sorry. Continue.”

“Thank you. I didn’t want to work at the dealership, so army it was. I learned a lot, saw a lot, saved up some money, sent some home to help my family. No regrets.”

“So you enjoyed it?”

I scoffed. “I
loved
it. Traveled places I never would have imagined, doing something I loved – working with machines. I can build, or fix, an engine for anything. Mechanics are
vital
in the military, especially in a war zone, limited resources. Definitely got my fill of danger.”

Reese’s eyes went wide. “I bet. So why’d you leave? Because of your leg?”

Her voice softened over that question. I didn’t get the impression that she felt bad for asking, but that she thought it may be a touchy subject for me. And in a way, it was, but
her
approach wasn’t bothersome at all to me.

“Yeah,” I nodded, relaxing back into my chair. “I had my dream assignment – helicopter repair. Bad-ass Apaches. So, I’m over there, me and my team have to do a retrieval of a broken bird, because if it’s still possibly functional, we can’t just leave it there to get used against us. We find it. Fix it. Get it up in the air to fly back, and suddenly we’re not alone anymore. Um… long story short, there was enemy fire, and then there was a crash. I’m blessed that half of a leg is all I lost. Everybody on the assignment wasn’t as lucky.”

“That’s
terrifying
,” she said quietly, shaking her head. “You still think about it a lot? Nightmares? Trouble sleeping?”

“What, like from the crash, and the combat?” – she nodded – “Nah, not really. I guess I got lucky with that too, because I don’t have nightmares, I’m not scared of loud noises… no triggers, nothing like that. I know that’s not the case for everybody that goes through something traumatic, but I’m just happy to be alive.”

Again, she nodded. “I get that. And, you found something you like, that can turn into a career. I saw that you’re pursuing mechanical engineering. And almost done.”

“So you’ve been scoping me out, huh?”

She wrinkled her nose. “
No
…yes.” She laughed. “I’m a big girl, I can admit my curiosity. Wondering how you can write so eloquently, and have these views that aren’t steeped in patriarchy, and yet be…
you.
”

We both laughed at that, and I shook my head. “Like I said earlier, I’m just speaking my mind. I’m supposed to give an opinion, so I did. But growing up, my mother wasn’t having all of that “a woman’s place” this, and “get you a white girl” that. Not to say that my father
was
on that, but my mother was the one who drilled it in us. The value of our blackness, the value of a black woman as a person, and a partner, not how much sex she does or doesn’t have, or if she can cook, all of that. Just stuff that oughta be common sense. And we
stayed
at Tones & Tomes. Every Saturday morning.”

“It was Sunday afternoons for me,” Reese said, smiling. “Me, my mother, my best friend, and her mother. Our weekly “girl’s day”.”

“See there? My worldview sparked from the same place yours did. A mama who didn’t take any shit.”

She nodded. “Indeed.”

There was silence for a few moments before I leaned forward again, and asked, “What about you?”

Reese lifted an eyebrow. “What
about
me?”

“What’s your story? I gave you my condensed autobiography, I want to hear yours too.”

She cringed. “Oh. Um… I don’t really have one.”

“Bullshit. Stop stalling.”

Shaking her head, she laughed, then leaned forward over the desk too, propping her elbows on the dark surface and resting her chin on her hands. “Um… Only child. Parents divorced when I was fourteen. My father was a jazz musician. “The Reggie Alston Band.” A big dreamer, and a creative, and he instilled that in me. Academics came from mama. But anyway… um, when I was twenty years old, he died. And it broke my heart, because I loved my daddy, I still
needed
my daddy.”

She wasn’t looking at me anymore – she was looking down at the desk instead, unblinking, until finally she cleared her throat. “Uh… I completely broke down. I got kicked out of school because my grades tanked, and I was drinking, and fighting, hanging with some not-so-great people and… just not in a good place. I wasn’t very happy with myself, but I realized that I was hurting the people who were still here who loved me. And I realized I was fucking up my dream, and knew my father would be devastated if he could see that. So, I cleaned myself up, did what I needed to get re-enrolled in school, and I’m working on keeping the promise that I made to him, that I would fulfill my dream.”

I smiled at her when she looked up, pretending I didn’t notice the gloss in her eyes. “What’s the dream?”

“Well,” she said, perking up. “If this MFA program doesn’t destroy my soul first, eventually I want to teach a Creative Writing course, here at BSU. With a lot of writing courses, there’s so much focus on “proper technique” and “rules” and all of that. I want to teach people how to – productively – write from the heart.”

“How do you
teach
somebody to write from the
heart
?”

She smiled. “Instilling confidence, and encouraging individuality. Stripping away fear, burying the need to compete. Feeding
real
creativity, critiquing based on an understanding of an individual’s voice, instead of a guidebook on what’s right and wrong. Of course, there
are
certain rules, like grammar and spelling that should serve as the roadmap, but there’s a way to combine the two without losing the soul of the writing. A lot of times, we learn to write a certain way, and don’t figure it out until vital years have gone by. So as
I’m
learning, I’m figuring out how I can teach it to others. It’s still just a concept now, and not the “coolest” thing in the world I guess, but… that’s what I want to do.”

“I think it’s cool as hell.”

She lifted her head, surprised. “Really?”

“Yeah. I mean, maybe some of the people who end up taking your class will be writers who
could
have been Corey Jefferson. Sounds like you’ll be providing an important public service to me.”

Reese laughed, sweeping a handful of braids behind her back as she sat up. “You know, maybe thinking about that will make some of these classes a little easier on me.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Thank you.” She held my gaze for a long moment, and then pulled her lip between her teeth. “Hey… do you—”

“I am
so
sorry Mr. Wright,” Professor Bryant said as she breezed into the office, interrupting whatever Reese had been about to say. She blew out a big sigh as she headed to her desk, and then looked at me with a smile as she motioned for me to come over. Reese had already turned her eyes back to her laptop, and kept them there while I moved to Professor B’s desk. When she was ready to start, she called Reese over.

The professor reached down to dig something out of her bag, and I caught Reese’s eye again, giving her a wink. Just like in the bookstore the other day, she blushed, and that made me happy as hell for some reason.

Huh.

Maybe I
was
into bougie girls.

ten.

“What’s on your mind, little girl?”

My mother’s eyes met mine through her mirror as she slid the back on a pair of diamond studs. I grinned at her, then shrugged.

I was in her bedroom, on her side of our duplex, watching her get ready to go out. It wasn’t exactly a ritual, but ever since I was a teenager, once she was serious about someone, she’d let me – and usually Devyn – sit in her room while she dolled up, laughing through questions she mostly didn’t answer. In the twelve years since my parents divorced, I’d seen my mother get ready for a healthy amount of dates, even if I never saw the guy. She had this thing about bringing men around me – wouldn’t do so until they’d been dating three or four months. That remained true even through adulthood – I hadn’t seen Joseph since that day at the dealership.

“Thinking about you and your new boo. Y’all have been at it for how long?”

She smiled, then picked up a tube of deep red lipstick. “Two months now. It flew by.”

Yeah,
I thought.
It has.

Because if it had been two months for them, that meant it had already been two months since that first office meeting with Jason. A month and a half since that car drop off that had lit my little panties on fire for him. A month since that night at his house.

A whole sexless month.

I almost wished we hadn’t done it, because something had shifted. When I thought about him now, instead of sexual curiosity tainting my disdain for him, it was a just plain old curiosity, no ill feelings. What was he doing, what was he thinking about… who was he with? Was he wondering the same things about me? Within the span of two months, I’d gone from patent distaste to liking – as in
wanting
– him, and I really didn’t know how to feel about that.

I wasn’t ready to like anybody right now.

My midterms had gone well, despite my emotional state, and I was chugging along. I had been able to keep up with my own course work, plus the things I had to do for my assistantship, with little to no major problems.

Things were just now starting to feel somewhat normal again, after the bullshit with Olivia and Gray. He wasn’t calling anymore, I was over ducking and dodging her in the halls, and I really just didn’t have the extra energy to expend on anger for either of them. They could have each other.

Overall, life was good for me. I’d fallen into a groove, found just the right balance. When I was busy, or with my mother, or Devyn – basically with my family – I was really happy, and at peace, which I hadn’t been able to say in a while. It was the other times that were getting to be a little tricky.

I could enjoy my own company. Loved my own company, which was important to me because of the way things went after I lost my father. I could read, surf the internet, watch TV – I still wasn’t allowed back at Refill – do any number of things alone, and be perfectly okay with that… most of the time. But like almost any other human being, sometimes I craved human interaction.