The entire city of Linton can be seen from up here. There are pine trees and tulip poplars dotting the hills that flow on all sides of this peak. On the left there are fields with muddy ruts and to the right the trees have been knocked down on the gentler slope.
“This is Bluebird,” Lance says, resting his cheek on the top of my head. “We used to come up here drinking when we were young and dumb. And in the winter, my brothers and I still get together at least once and slide down that side just to prove we aren’t too old to do it.”
“Looks painful.”
“It can be,” he chuckles. “Peck always devises some crazy sled and tests it out. One year it was an inner tube sprayed with cooking spray. Last year he used a piece of Plexiglas that almost killed him.”
“He seems really nice,” I note.
“He is. We all give him hell, but he’s a good guy.”
We stand still for a few moments, taking in the scenery. Lance’s heart thumps steadily, his chest rising and falling in a way that could put me to sleep if I let it. Every time I’m with him, I just want to be with him more. Every time I want to be with him more, I know I better watch myself because if the rug gets pulled out from under me, it’s going to hurt like hell.
“What do you do up here?” I ask, pulling away.
“Lots of things,” he says, strolling to the back of the car. “But today, I have about a hundred essays to grade.”
“Sounds awful,” I kid, joining him at the trunk. He pulls out a blanket and a worn leather briefcase before latching the lid.
I follow him to the front of the car where he spreads the multicolored blanket out on the grass. “Nana made this,” he tells me. “She made each of her grandkids a blanket when we graduated high school.”
“And you’re putting it on the ground?”
“Trust me. She’d be happier to hear I’m using it than have it rotting in a closet somewhere.”
We grab our drinks and my book and settle on the blanket. The sun hovers over the tops of the trees, a large, orange circle that seems to shine just for us.
The only sound is the crinkle of Lance’s papers and the occasional swirl of the pen against them. The air is tinged with the scent of pine and the spice of Lance’s cologne.
My book rests on my lap, a love story with a heroine loved by two drastically different men. I’ve wondered what it would feel like to be loved by two heroes, but now that I sit on top of this hill with Lance at my side, I wonder what it would feel like to be loved by one, everyday kind-of-guy.
A guy like him.
“What?” Lance’s voice startles me, bringing me out of a daze I didn’t know I was in. He removes his glasses and wipes them on the end of his shirt. He watches me with a careful curiosity. “Something wrong?”
“No. Nothing is wrong.”
“Um, yeah. Something is going on. I can tell by the way you’re looking at me.”
I’m not about to tell him what I was thinking, so I glance down at the stack of papers next to his side. “What made you want to be a history teacher?” I say off the cuff.
“Honestly?” He places his glasses on his lap. “I couldn’t imagine working for an asshole eight, ten hours a day. I saw what my dad went through owning his own business and I didn’t really want that either. I didn’t want to spend my entire life at work like everyone else.”
“But why teaching?” I ask.
“Well, I dislike most adults,” he laughs. “Kids have always been more my speed. They’re pretty innocent most of the time and you can still mold them into becoming something good for the world. So, it was either that or becoming a veterinarian and I don’t like getting bitten. Most of the time.”
We exchange a grin as he clamps the shoulder I marred a couple of days ago. My body hums with the memory. Instead of going there, I keep us focused.
“Was there a moment though when you knew teaching was it for you?” I ask.
“What’s with all the teaching questions?”
“I’m curious.”
“When did you know you wanted to be a librarian?” he asks, turning the tables.
“When I was eight and we took a field trip to the library,” I say easily. “I walked in that building with its dusty shelves and tattered covers and knew it was where I wanted to spend every day for the rest of my life. Now you. When did you know?”
He stretches back, his hands on the line where the blanket meets the grass. His watch sparkles in the sunlight, his forearm flexed beneath it.
“When I was in high school, there was a girl in my grade who was going through some shit at home. We all knew it. It was a different time then though, people didn’t get in other people’s business like they do now. Know what I mean?”
“Yeah. It was a different world then.”
He nods, gazing off into the distance. “Her dad killed himself accidentally in a hunting accident the year before and she never really got over that, I don’t think. I remember her sort of not being in the gymnasium, not being in the cafeteria, not really participating in classes we had together.”
His tone gets soft on the last few words. He works his jaw back and forth as he relives a memory I’m not privy to.
“What happened?” I ask.
“She killed herself.”
The sentence is harsh. Black-and-white. So final. The reality of the end of a little girl’s life, a child I didn’t know, spirals over my skin, chilling it to the core.
“Oh, Lance. I’m sorry,” I say.
“We all went to the funeral,” he continues, not moving his eyes from the tree line below. “I remember sitting there and wondering why no one helped her. How all of these people sort of let her down, you know? I think I knew that day I’d be a teacher or somehow working with kids. I’d be the guy who maybe sees those things and helps somebody out.”
“That’s why you’re so great with Ollie, huh?”
He shrugs. “It’s hard to explain.”
“You explained it just fine,” I promise, resting my palm on his calf.
“My mom was always beating us on the head to be decent people,” he says, dragging himself into a sitting position. He takes my hand when I start to pull it away and places it on his knee, his hand pressing on top of it. “She had four kids. All of us were healthy. All of us were bright, capable kids. Almost every night at dinner, piled around a round table in her kitchen, we’d say our prayers. When we’d open our eyes, she’d be sitting there, one hand holding Dad’s, just watching us almost in awe.”
The picture he’s describing comes to life in my imagination, a woman with dark hair like Lance’s and brighter eyes, smiling back at him. I can see them all sitting at a table, passing around bowls of homemade dishes, the room full of a love I’ve never known.
My heart aches at the vision. It squeezes, craving to have something fill it in a way Mrs. Gibson’s heart must’ve been full.
“She would tell us,” he continues, “that we couldn’t rest on our laurels. That we were given more blessings than other people for a reason and that was to help those who needed a hand or an extra set of eyes or ears.”
“She sounds amazing. I can’t imagine being raised by a woman like that.”
He chuckles. “She was tough as nails though. There were expectations and we had to meet them.”
“Like grades and stuff?” I ask as he squeezes the top of my hand.
“Kind of. I guess we had to work to our potential. But she better not catch you back talking or driving by a broken down car or not holding a door open at the grocery. That happened to Machlan once. Poor guy,” he says, smiling at the memory.
“She sounds lovely.”
“She was lovely.” He sighs, seemingly content with the conversation. So, I press my luck.
“What was your dad like?”
He wiggles on the blanket, taking a moment to get comfortable again. “Dad got up every morning at four forty-five. He was out the door by five-thirty and rolled in a few minutes before six every evening. We had supper at six sharp and then he’d take out the garbage while two of us kids did the dishes and Mom relaxed. Then he’d take one of us outside to do something. Throw a ball, work on a car, head to the bait shop. Whatever it was that needed done or we wanted to do.”
“I love that he made you do the dishes,” I giggle.
“Oh, trust me. These hands have met their fair share of dishwater,” he laughs. “If it needed done, he didn’t care if you were a boy or a girl. Blaire took out the trash, she took her turn mowing the lawn. Us boys would clean toilets and mop floors. You were never too good to get your hands dirty,” he smiles.
“I think I would’ve loved him.”
“I did,” he admits. “I always envied my dad in a way. He was a man’s man, you know, without the chauvinism. He was proud of his family. Proud of us. But if someone said something cross to him, he’d kick the fuck out of them.”
I burst out laughing, my hand slipping out from under his. “I didn’t see that curveball.”
“Let’s just say Machlan got it honest,” he laughs. “I guess Dad was a ruffian back in the day too. I hear stories now sometimes about him in the eighties in the pool hall downtown.”
“Days of the pool halls,” I sigh. “I had this little fantasy for a while growing up that I would walk into a pool hall and some bad boy would whisk me away.”
“Sounds like you watched too many Patrick Swayze movies.”
“There’s no such thing,” I giggle. “My first crush. I wanted to have all his babies.”
Lance’s smile falters. He scoots around again, a wrinkle dotting his forehead. “What about now?”
“What about now what?”
“Do you still want to have babies?”
I’m not sure if it’s because he doesn’t look at me when he says it or if it’s the tone he uses to pose his question, but it feels like it’s a set-up of some sort. I give him a second to turn to me, but he doesn’t. He keeps his gaze across the hills towards the setting sun.