Page 67 of The Boy Who Loved Wicked
“Oh. Sounds like fun?” he parroted back with humor, turning it into a question.
He got what he’d aimed for, I was amused and the mood had lightened. “Yeah, it is actually.” And I meant it with every beat of my heart. I’d stayed with Emily the first month after the baby came, but I had my own place now a few blocks away. It was time to live our new normal. A normal that for me was the time of my life. Every sleepless night of it. Phoenix was off to do what young people did. And I was off to replace a baby bottle warmer. More than ever we were at different ends of life’s spectrums.
“You’re a dad now,” he said. “The most important job in the world.”
“You would know.”
“Yeah, I would. Your little…?”
“Boy.”
“A boy...” He said it like it hurt him to. “Your little boy couldn’t have a better father.”
“Unless he had yours, of course.”
“Of course,” he said, his grin dying midway. “Can I see him? A picture I mean.”
I searched my pockets for my phone. “That’s every parent’s dream question. We want nothing more than to whip out the camera roll.” I shared a shot taken that morning when I’d stopped by to feed him. He slept swaddled in my arms. Emily had taken it.
“Wow. He looks exactly like you. The hair, the dimpled chin.” He touched the photo reverently. “He even has a touch of your melancholy if his pout is anything to go by.”
“Yes, well, that seems to be a thing passed down through the men in my line. You should meet my grandfather.” The laughter that inspired quickly ebbed, leaving behind realizations of bad timing and harsh realities. Perspectives that hadn’t been thought out and put into place until that very moment.
He waited for the screen to go black before returning the phone. “You’ll need to put him first.”
Phoenix knew more than anyone the importance of a father. Mine hadn’t been a great example, but I hoped to be different. I hoped to have picked up a thing or two from Dr. Michaelson through Phoenix’s eyes. “Yes, I will.” I peered up at the university’s brick walls.
An affair with a student wouldn’t bode well for my career if uncovered. Something we knew but until then hadn’t fully tallied the loss column on. I could tell his thoughts had been aligned with where mine were right up until this reunion. That maybe we could do it. Maybe we could be alive and in love and no one would notice. A few stolen moments at least. A night somewhere here and there under the disguise of false names.Maybe...
The footprint Phoenix’s father left behind was unmatched and it was something to be emulated with pride. I wanted that for my child. I couldn’t afford to have it stripped from me. The world was bigger than us and our love. We had more to consider, and more to lose. We stood there in silence, the weight of that pressing down heavy around us.
“And you have a path to blaze. New friends to make. Healthy risks to take.”
He gave a thin-lipped smile. “That’s all great, but love trumps all, Sebastian. My love foryoutrumps all.”
I smothered the lump rising in my throat, and my heart cried out for his. “I’ve missed you.”
“Me too.” He moved past me, stopping at my shoulder, and I removed my hand from my pocket. Students passed by seemingly unconcerned by us, and he chanced a graze of his pinky against mine. “One day,” he said.
Yes, one day, perhaps. But today it wasn’t our time.
Chapter 22
Phoenix
“There is no harm in repeating a good thing.”
~Plato
“‘The political theorists’ aim is to figure out what would make the whole community happy.’ Who owns that notion?” asked Sebastian from the lecture hall’s podium. The scale of his platform was much larger here at the university than at Denwin High, and with nearly a hundred students, some quite as engaged as me, it made for a less intimate learning experience. One I was still adjusting to a month into the semester. Sebastian squinted in my direction along the third row. That was another thing, it was a fight to get a front row seat, and with my first class letting out only twenty minutes before this one began, it took a sprint across campus to ensure I didn’t end up in the nosebleed section, all but forgotten.
“Aristotle,” I said, raising my voice to be heard.
“And how do we go about that?” he asked. And to my disappointment, he called on someone else.
“We must first understand the current level of happiness within the individual,” Safrin, my roommate, said from down below. “Quantify their eudaimonia”—he stumbled over the word—“which is the Greek word for cheerfulness.”
“It’s you-die-mo-neeya,” I corrected. “It relates to a spirit or minor divinity. It means blessedness. To say it means cheerfulness is dumbing it down.”
