Page 84 of The Fix-Up

“Broken man picker, remember?”

“No other relationships since?”

I shrugged and hugged a pillow to my chest. “Lots of first dates, a few lasted for a month or so but no one serious and no one I wanted to introduce to Oliver. That kid only gets the best of the best and that hasn’t happened yet.”

He looked at me from the corner of his eye for a long moment. “Yes to the arrest question. The first time, I was thirteen. It was the year my mom died, and I started to act out a lot. Some neighborhood kids found a bunch of spray paint intheir garage, and we started daring each other to tag things. I was the one who got caught.”

“You rebel.”

“The police officer didn’t really arrest me. He did put handcuffs on me, put me in the back of the patrol car, and drove me home to make an example out of me. I got a lecture the whole drive, too. It didn’t help. I was determined to ruin my life.” He shook his head.

“Sounds like you were a handful.”

“More like a kid who couldn’t deal with his feelings. I can see that now but being that age is hard and losing my mom…I didn’t know how to cope. Unfortunately, it lasted for a few years. I’m not sure how my stepdad didn’t kick me out. I skipped school constantly, got into fights, snuck out of the house. When I was seventeen, I got caught driving around in a stolen car with friends.”

“What happened?”

“I got lucky. The judge decided to give me one last chance. I had to do a lot of community service and pay restitution. I ended up volunteering at an afterschool program for kids and something sort of clicked.”

“What do you mean?”

“I like helping—kids, animals, people with special needs. It made me feel good and stopped me from thinking of my own problems. No, that’s not right. It made me feel like I was making a difference, even if it was something small.”

“So, you became a teacher.”

“So, I became a special education teacher. I taught elementary school for a few years while I got my master’s in social work, then I moved on to the community center. I worked with a lot of at-risk kids until my program was cut at the beginning of the school year.”

I was a little giddy he was answering all my questions. “What are you going to do now?”

“I don’t know exactly. I’ve been offered a teaching position for the fall in Austin.”

For reasons I would examine later (or never), a wave of sadness washed over me. He had plans in place already. I knew he’d be leaving at the end of the six months. Of course I knew that. It shouldn’t hit me quite so hard. Shake it off, Ellie.

I smiled. “That’s great.”

“But if we’re talking about my hopes and dreams…” He shifted a little closer, not on purpose but I noticed. Boy, did I notice. “I’d want to open a day program or group home, maybe both, for kids and adults with special needs. I’d love to have a place where I could create a little community. I visited a place like that once. It was residential with a café and a shop. The clients who lived there made the items they sold, worked in the café, led productive, happy lives. They went on field trips and were out in the community but surrounded by so much support, you know?”

“That’s a big dream,” I said quietly. “You know, you could always move to a small town like, oh, I don’t know, Two Harts, where you already own part of a house and a business and twenty acres of land.”

With a grunt, he laid back and stared at the ceiling, his mouth pressed in a thin line. A mouth I was having a hard time not looking at. Absently I wondered what it would be like to kiss it—would his lips be firm and demanding, soft and coaxing, somewhere in between? Would?—

“All of that is just a dream, one I have no way of accomplishing any time soon.” He gave me a hard look. “Besides, I can’t just move to Two Harts, especially since I won’t own any property or business once it gets sold.”

Or he could open his mouth and say something like that, and all thoughts of kissing would go right down the toilet.

I shot off of the bed. “Why are you so set on selling? Is it money? You can see this is the only home Oliver has ever known. You can see how much this means to me.” I paused in front of the bed, my hands on my hips. “Tell me what it is that’s this important to you. Make me understand why.”

“Do you know how selfish you sound? You aren’t the only one who has responsibilities.” Selfish? Was I? I opened my mouth to argue but he kept going. “I get that all of it is important to you. Find a way to buy me out, then.”

“I can’t afford that.”

He sat up and removed his glasses. When he spoke, his voice was quiet but no less intense. “I need the money.”

I sat on the edge of the bed. “Why? If I knew, maybe we could figure out a way to make this all work.”

He hesitated, avoided eye contact.

“Okay, then. How about something else? For example, why do you go to Austin every weekend?”

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