The Big Sister - Part One (14 page)

“Ask me anything, then,” I said. “I’m more than happy to help teachers who are struggling with connecting with their students.”

I’d made the comment offhandedly, just trying to assert something in this interaction that was spiraling swiftly out of my control, but it bit deeper than I’d hoped it would.

“I have zero problem connecting with my students, Ms. Morgan,” Adam said, his voice icy and his eyes blazing coldly to match. “And when I perceive I’m getting a block from one of them, it’s usually a clue that something’s going on with them here at school, at home, or elsewhere. I’ve never been wrong on this.”

“Everyone’s wrong sometimes, Mr. Shapiro,” I said, smiling, thankful that I’d at last redirected the conversation in my favor. “There’s no shame in admitting it. I won’t tell on you, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

He returned my smile, and the ice vanished from his eyes. He was really, really good at this.

“I’m afraid we’ve gotten off topic again,” he said. “I’m aware that you are your brother’s legal guardian. That’s easy enough to ascertain from Luke’s records, from the application packet.”

“Congratulations,” I said, spreading my hands. “You’ve figured it out. I am Luke’s legal guardian.”

“And that’s what I’d like to talk to you about. You’re young, Ms. Morgan, and I’m concerned about your experience with raising a child. You don’t have any children of your own, do you?”

“Of course not,” I snapped, all veneer of pretended friendliness rubbed off instantly. “And, in case you’re confused, the United States of America decreed that I was an adult as of my eighteenth birthday. I’m twenty.”

“That’s still not very old,” Adam persisted. “Haven’t you thought about what’s best for your brother? What’s best for you?”

If my hackles hadn’t been raised before, they officially were now. “Let me tell you what’s best for both of us, because I’ve thought of it plenty. Family is best for both of us. Sticking together is best for both of us. You have no idea what you’re talking about. Are you the State of Florida? Are you able to make decisions based on your relationship with a student who might require a little extra attention, a little extra effort, whom you haven’t even known for an entire semester?”

“I think you should calm down.”

“I think you should wake up,” I spat. I didn’t care anymore that I was supposed to be playing his game, supposed to be beating him at being cool and confident. I was furious.

“The thing is, I have been in contact with the State of Florida, specifically with their child protective services division,” Adam said, studying his hands, almost as if he didn’t want to look at me. “They don’t have any record of Luke Morgan there.”

“The better explanation for that is that professionals like child protective services aren’t in the habit of sharing personal records of minors with strangers. Probably some concern about pedophiles.” That was a low blow, but I couldn’t help my joy at the way Adam winced.

“Then maybe you can help me get my facts straight,” he said, “seeing as how you’re so passionate about helping misguided teachers.”

“I already told you that you could ask me anything,” I said flippantly, crossing my legs even though it was a struggle in the tiny desk.

“Where are your parents?”

Easy enough, and innocent enough, too. “They’re dead. Any other questions?”

“Plenty more,” Adam said, serene. “How did they die? Where did they die? How did they die? How long have you been your brother’s legal guardian? Why doesn’t the State of Florida have any records for this? Have you and your brother sought counseling services? Losing your parents so young has to be a traumatic experience for you both.”

It was a barrage of questions, most of them questions I didn’t want to answer. Why was this guy trying to dig in so deep? What was it about my brother — or that stupid assignment — that had rubbed him the wrong way?

“Do you treat all your students and their guardians like this?” I asked, my voice shaking with both rage and fear. “Are you so suspicious of tragedy, Mr. Shapiro, that you would interrogate a student’s legal guardian just because she doesn’t fit into your cookie cutter idea of what a family should be?”

I would’ve felt vindicated with how flummoxed Adam was looking, rubbing his hand over his buzz cut and everything, but I was way too angry.

“It’s not like that,” he began, but I cut him off sharply.

“Oh, it’s not?” I was spitting mad. “Are you marginalizing my brother’s education just because it’s his sister who’s raising him? Wouldn’t you agree that we’ve had enough tragedy to deal with in our lives without you coming in and fucking things up?”

The air between us practically crackled with hateful energy, and I started to regret the heat I’d used on that last statement. I really didn’t curse. Things were usually awful enough without the dirty language, and I’d probably just confirmed everything that Adam suspected of me with the casual drop of the f-bomb. Plus, it was easier not to cuss, since I was raising my little brother the best way I knew how. Crap.

“You read the theme, didn’t you?” Adam’s voice was quiet, and he’d left a good deal of pomp from it. Something inside of me appreciated that. “Wasn’t there anything about it that troubled you?”

Should I be honest or should I deflect? Adam hadn’t given me any choice at any point during this meeting.

“It’s obviously a student who didn’t think he could trust his teacher,” I said.

“Or a child who couldn’t reconcile his present with his past, no matter how many hurtful things have happened,” Adam countered.

I bristled again, thankful that I hadn’t let my guard down just when I was thinking I might be able to trust this man. Of course the theme had been troubling. It had its uplifting parts, like when Luke talked about Jennet and Nick and me. But it did have a lot of half-held secrets, things that my brother seemed to be almost wanting to tell people. Would he ever be appeased with letting the past be the past?

Even with all the worries I had about my brother, I still couldn’t believe my brother’s teacher was making so many snap judgments about my family. He had no right to make such vicious assumptions. Sure, things might be falling apart a little right now, but that didn’t mean I was doing a bad job of raising Luke. Even normal families — families who had never suffered through major deaths of loved ones and tenures with social workers and sentences with abusive adoptive families — had ups and downs. Just because Luke and I weren’t a family in the traditional sense, I was failing him?

How dare Adam. I hadn’t come this far to one day just up and admit to some stranger that I’d bitten off more than I could chew with my brother. I was killing myself for him, working at least twelve hours a day in order to ensure that we could even afford this stupid school. I wasn’t paying to be paraded around as a model of what guardians shouldn’t be.

I stalked closer to Adam, my frown deepening as I weighed what words to lash out with first. Should I start off with how ignorant this professed educator was to my familial situation, or should I go on the offensive with my own defense, making sure he had no right to judge me for my working schedule, my method of raising my brother, or anything else? I was sure that the majority of students who attended St. Anthony’s were born with silver spoons in their mouths. Just because their mothers were always available for conferences with teachers didn’t mean that I could be. I had to work for a living. I had to work to ensure our survival here, to get Luke the attention and education he needed and deserved.

Just as I leaned in, really got in Adam’s face to make sure he knew how badly he’d screwed up, how terribly he’d misjudged this whole thing, something happened that I hadn’t even begun to expect.

I kissed him.

I kissed that motherfucker.

My eyes fluttered closed as I locked lips with Adam, right there in the middle of the man’s classroom. Some part of me wondered if anyone had ever kissed in here — specifically, if Adam had ever kissed anyone in here before — but the part of me that had propelled me forward into kissing the guy in the first place shushed me. I hadn’t kissed anyone since Parker had arranged for me to escort her old friend, Marcus, and I was a little surprised to realize that I’d missed it. Something about that lip-on-lip contact threw off sparks like nothing else could. And we were throwing off enough sparks to ignite the entire campus.

For a teacher, and a total jerk, Adam was a good kisser. As if we’d rehearsed it, we both tilted our heads in opposite directions at the same time, allowing each other better access. Our lips parted of their own accord, simultaneously, to accommodate our curious tongues. Adam tasted faintly of coffee and something sweet — he could’ve added sugar to the mug, or snacked on a donut or strudel or something while he was imbibing his daily caffeine. Judging by his hard body pressing up against mine, however, I sincerely doubted that he indulged in anything that fattening.

My imagination ran wild, visualizing the man standing before me naked. Where did he get his muscles from? There was such a solidness to him that I had to wonder. Did he work out religiously at the gym twice a day? I pictured him grunting as his biceps strained to complete some insane number of repetitions, the veins standing out in bold relief beneath his golden tan. Or was he some kind of athlete? What sport would it be? My mind’s eye dressed him up in football pads and slapped him on a field, going through drills, performing bone-crushing tackles, chugging water and letting it splash down his bare chest to cool himself after a hard practice.

Adam reached up to cup my jaw, to deepen our kiss or guide me toward some further something, but his touch on my face might as well have been a slap. His hand wasn’t rough at all, and the gesture had been gentle, but that single touch was enough for me to wake up — wake up to the fact that I was kissing my brother’s teacher, a man I’d been ready to come to blows with because of what he thought of my family.

I ripped myself away from him with a gasp, as if I’d been burned, and glared daggers at him. My first urge was to apologize, but that was the last thing I wanted to do. If I were the one who said sorry, then I would be admitting fault. What had I done? All I’d wanted to do was get up close and personal with the man who was threatening what my brother and I had.

Well, I guess I had gotten up close and personal. Just not in the way I had imagined or desired.

Except, some tiny part of me said that I had wanted it. The niggling thought made me want to scream. Okay, maybe, just maybe, I’d thought he was cute. But that was right when I saw him. As soon as I heard what he had to tell me about my skills as guardian to my brother, including his arrogance about our particular situation, whatever mild attraction I’d had for him vanished.

In fact, I hated him.

So why had I kissed him? And, more importantly, why had he kissed me back?

My brain searched frantically for the right thing to say after the absolutely worst thing I could’ve done. It probably would’ve been better if I’d just cocked my fist back and punched him in the face the moment he’d pissed me off.

“This meeting is over,” I finally managed, aware of just how long I’d been standing there, opening and closing my mouth like a fish flopping out of water. I was so out of my element. Even if I did like a guy, I had no idea how to approach the idea of seeing him, dating him, or being intimate with him. Sure, Marcus had given me a basic primer, but he’d also been paying for the privilege. I was up a creek without a paddle when it came to simple attraction.

Only I wasn’t attracted to him — I wasn’t. I couldn’t be. He was my brother’s teacher. Even worse, he was a threat to my family. Nothing could come between Luke and me. I wouldn’t let it.

“I think we should talk about what just happened,” Adam said, clearing his throat as if it pained him to speak. Yeah, right. He loved to hear himself talk. He was probably just embarrassed that he had kissed someone as lowly as me. He’d just finished insulting me, after all. How shocked he must have been when I launched myself at his mouth.

I couldn’t bear to stay in the same room as him for another second. Making a sharp turn on my heel, I made a beeline for the door.

“You can’t just walk away, Ms. Morgan,” Adam said, lunging forward and seizing my arm, stopping me dead in my tracks.

“Take your hands off me,” I hissed at him, scowling up at his stupid, handsome face. At least I got this reaction right. “Is this how you treat your students? You manhandle them to get your way? No wonder my brother is having trouble relating with you.”

He released my arm as if I’d scalded him, and most of me hoped against science that I had. I had to get out of here.

“We’re not done here, Ms. Morgan,” he persisted, sounding almost unsure of himself. Good. Maybe he found himself as flummoxed by me as I was by him.

“We are very done, Mr. Shapiro,” I said, flipping my hair and stalking out the door. My heels made satisfyingly sharp strikes on the floor beneath me as I made my escape.

“Faith, wait!”

Hearing my name on his lips was enough to make me stumble, but instead of stopping and turning around, I increased my pace to a trot that turned into a run the moment I fled the front doors. I didn’t care who was staring. I had to get out of there.

I drove away from campus with one hand tangled up in my hair, worrying the strands as I gnawed my bottom lip. What the hell had that been? What had driven us to kiss like that? It would’ve been one thing if it had been just an ugly little peck of a mistake. But we’d … we’d practically made out, right there in the classroom, the door open for all the world to see. What would happen if some student had seen us? What if it were Luke?

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” I muttered, banging my hand on the wheel with each quiet outburst. What was wrong with me? It was my job to deal with men, and at the club, I always knew what to say or do. Had I forgotten myself completely in front of just another pretty face?

Even though I was due back at the apartment — I’d promised Luke that he was going to get a stern talking to once I’d finished meeting with his teacher — I couldn’t bear it. I’d screwed up massively and I wouldn’t be able to face my brother or my friends.

No, I needed a distraction in the worst way.

“Hey, Jennet,” I said, holding my cell phone in the crook of my neck as I pulled a U-turn at a stoplight.

“Hey, how’d the meeting go?” I could hear the sound of Nick strumming the guitar in the background. It made me happy when they were both together with Luke. He loved them so much.

“It went all right,” I lied. “But I’m going to have to run back to work. Would you mind chilling with Luke for the evening? I’ll make it worth your while.”

“Ooh, worth my while?” Jennet laughed. “What, exactly, are you proposing?”

“Cookies, and lots of them,” I said. The quickest way to my roommate’s heart was through her stomach, especially since she couldn’t cook a lick.

“You, madam, have secured your child care throughout the evening,” she said grandly.

“Hey!” I heard Luke pipe up in the background. “I’m not a child!”

Nick and Jennet laughed, and I wanted to, too, but I was just too upset with my brother right now. He was still a child, especially when he was acting like one, but even as frustration made my nostrils flare and my head throb, I knew I was being unfair. Yes, my brother was still a child, and yes, he deserved to act like one. His adoptive family had robbed him of so much, and I felt unfair putting extra pressure on him to fit in and be normal. He’d stabbed the man who’d been a father figure to him. There was probably nothing normal after that.

I should’ve been celebrating that Luke had made the strides forward that he had in such a short period of time. When he’d come to me after the incident, bloody and trembling and practically mute and numb with terror, I’d uprooted him from everything he knew in order to save him.

For the first time, I wondered if that had been the right decision. And that was only because Adam Shapiro had planted a seed of doubt in my mind.

“Faith? You still there?”

“Oh, I think the call must’ve cut out for a second,” I said quickly, lying yet again. It was getting to be second nature, at this point. “I was saying that I was probably going to be late, and to not wait up or anything.”

“No worries,” Jennet said, and I could visualize her doing a smart little salute into the air. I probably bossed her around too much.

“I put together some enchiladas,” I wheedled, trying to make everything up to her. I owed her everything, and I really couldn’t afford to strain our relationship. I wouldn’t know what to do without her. “They’re in the fridge. All they need is the oven.”

“You are going to spoil me rotten,” Jennet declared. “Good luck at work.”

“Thanks.”

“Want to talk to Luke? He’s right here.”

I hesitated for a few moments. “No, that’s all right. I’m just walking in the door to the club.” I was living a lie. It shouldn’t matter that I was spitting out all these little fibs, but they were making me wince at myself.

“All right. Have a good one.”

“Bye.”

I ended the call only to have the phone vibrate in my hand again. What had Jennet forgotten? Had Luke really wanted to talk to me?

“What’s up?”

“Ms. Morgan, this is Adam Shapiro.”

Shocked to my bones, I nearly ran a red light in my haste to end the call. There was no way I was going to have a phone conversation with that man about what happened. If it were up to me, I would just avoid ever talking to him or thinking about him again for the rest of my life. I was mortified, angry with myself, and wished I had a time machine to go back about an hour or so in my life.

No. If I had a time machine, I’d go back ten years to prevent Luke from being adopted by those people. Better yet, I’d go back just a little bit further and stop my parents from going out the night they were killed in the wreck.

Yes, perfect. Excellent thinking. Science fiction was the answer to all the problems in my life.

My phone buzzed again and I recognized the number — Adam again.

“Nope,” I muttered, flinging the offending device down onto the seat next to me. Mr. Shapiro was just going to have to forget about that kiss — and the angry words we exchanged.

I pulled into a parking spot at the club with no small amount of relief and jogged inside. I was so ready to slip into my fantasy world, a place where I could control everything and everyone, a place where I never made mistakes. I’d always knew that the money I earned from my work would help me escape the problems that came with poverty, but I’d never really imagined that the job itself could provide an escape for me from other problems.

“Hey there,” Parker greeted me as I entered the club. “I wasn’t expecting you back here today.”

“I was able to get my roommate to watch my brother,” I said, eyeing the club floor, assessing the men that sat at the tables, ogling the dancer currently up on stage. There were so many bodies filling those chairs. So many possibilities to lose myself in.

“That’s fine by me,” my boss said, making a notation in her ever-present ledger. Parker was meticulous about record keeping at the club. “I didn’t expect it to be so busy this afternoon. We need the extra help.”

I was glad she didn’t press for details, thankful she didn’t ask any questions that she didn’t need to. Parker was a consummate professional, secure in the belief that she didn’t need to know everything that was going on in all of her employees’ lives. I’d opened up to her at the beginning, when I applied here, but only because she didn’t think I had what it took to be a dancer at her club. When she had all the pieces she needed to understand where I was coming from, she made her decision — one that had meant everything to my family.