Page 34 of Homecoming for Beginners

But the itch didn’t come back when he was on leave either, not really… not until a few months after he met Darcy, an aid worker in what passed for the local town. That at least reassured him his dick still worked, but eventually the area got too dangerous for civilians, Darcy and her team relocated, and that was the end of that.

It had become sort of the pattern.

“Tell you what,” Ollie said finally. “If Theo comes to me—on his own, with no interference from anyone else—and asks me when I’m going to get married, I’ll start dating.” It would be a long, slow process to meet someone he liked enough to try it with, but he’dtry.

He could practically see his mother turning the words over in her head as she looked for a loophole, her mouth pulled down at the corners.

She agreed just as the crack of a bat sounded from the diamond. Ollie looked over to see the visiting team hit a triple. He glanced at the count—one out. Could be a long night.

“Great. I’m going to get a hot dog. Anybody else want anything?”

AFTER THE18–3 loss—and the week of teaching that preceded it—Ty needed the weekend to recuperate.

So it really sucked that he had so much to do.

First, he had an appointment with his dad’s accountant. Ty knew enough about managing someone’s estate to know that it was about as much fun as a hot-sauce enema, but after sitting with Georgia for an hour, he was ready to hit up the grocery store for a quart of Frank’s and take his chances. Unless he wanted to make dealing with this nightmare his full-time job for the next year, Georgia recommended he hire a firm that specialized in the task.

Ty boggled that such a thing existed, boggled more at the price, and then realized it was the smartest money he’d ever spend and signed on the dotted line.

To add insult to injury, he also had lessons to plan. The wholethis is how you call 911improv schtick was only good for one class worth of material. Now Ty needed to teach kids things like how to clean cuts and administer EpiPens and check if someone was breathing.

Where did he evenstart? What was appropriate first aid to teach an eight-year-old? And how the fuck was he going to test them on it? Oh God, he needed a binder. He needed, like, six binders for keeping track of the kids’ grades. His team at the fire station called him Trunchbull behind his back—and occasionally to his face—because he was so strict with the paperwork, but Ty simply knew himself. The ADHD would take a mile if he gave it an inch. He could have six binders filled with kids’grades or he could have a briefcase of indecipherable wrinkled paper scraps. And bybriefcasehe meantsixteen-year-old backpack unearthed from his childhood bedroom.

So before he did lesson planning, he needed to shop forschool supplies, a fact so depressing it made him want to swing by the corner store for booze. Sadly, by this point in his life, Ty could recognize a self-destructive tendency from a mile away, and he lived with a kid now, so he refrained.

Instead he took extra joy in picking out color-coded binders. Rainbow would have been ideal—red for second grade, orange for third, and so on—but the tiny stationery store in town didn’t have orange, so he skipped to yellow and compensated for his disappointment by adding coordinating sticky notes.

After perusing all four aisles of the store twice with his arms increasingly tired, he still hadn’t found a set of dividers to keep his classes separate.

Which was fine. He could order them from Amazon Prime, right? Even out here, surely it wouldn’t take more than two days to deliver them. He could have them ready by Tuesday at the latest.

But sooner would be better, and he wasn’t going to resort to ordering online just because he was too chicken to face Mrs. Sanford.

Steeling himself, he made his way to the front of the shop and deposited his haul on the checkout counter.

Mrs. Sanford looked at him from over the wire rims of her glasses, then went back to her crossword.

At least she didn’t spit at him. She’d very nearly done that once. “Uh, hi.” Ty put on his best public-servant smile. “I’m looking for subject dividers. You wouldn’t happen to have any…?”

Mrs. Sanford clicked her pen and marked something on her puzzle.Slang term, Ty thought,five-letter word for standoffish person. Finally she said, “Back endcap. Aisle two.”

Right. “Thank you.”

He grabbed what he wanted and returned to the counter.

Mrs. Sanford didn’t look up.

Ty cleared his throat. “Thank you, again. Just these, please.”

She didn’t say a word as she rang him up, didn’t ask if he wanted a bag, only turned the till display toward him and announced the total.

Nothing like that small-town hospitality.

Before he knew it, half the day had slipped away and he still had things to do—grocery shopping, laundry, housework. Ty didn’t mind cleaning his apartment on the weekend, but his apartment wastiny. Cleaning his dad’s house was a Sisyphean task. By the time he finished dusting, he had to start all over again.

So it was really nice when he came home to pick up reusable bags and found Ollie in the kitchen, already unpacking groceries.

“Hey.” Ollie tucked two cartons of milk in the fridge—two percent for Ty, one percent for Ollie—and closed the door. “How was the accountant?”

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