Page 19 of Made For You
“Since when do you have a girl?”
Sighing, I explained, “A while.” I hated lying to my grandmother, and seeing the excitement in her eyes left me feeling like a nasty piece of gum stuck to the bottom of a shoe.
Dean coughed at my lie.
“When do I get to meet her?”
“Um… soon… maybe.”
“Maybe? What? Are you embarrassed of your Gigi?”
“No.”
“Well, tell me about her. What’s her name? Where is she from? Does she want a big family?”
“Oh, look. I have a meeting to get to. I’ll call you later, Gigi.”
“Fine. I know when you’re being elusive. You don’t have to tell me about your lady friend.”
“Gigi….”
“I love you, Talon.”
I sighed as I told her I loved her as well, then hung up the phone just as the video ended with her bending in a way I’d never witnessed any human bend.
Dean stood from his chair, winding his body around my small office like a snake. “I always did love your grandma. I like to think our moms would have been like that in their old age,” he said wistfully.
I agreed with him, minus the craziness my grandmother exemplified. “Stop ganging up on me with her.”
“I do what I want.”
Boy, did I know that. I also tried my hardest not to let their antics get to me. Those two were the only ones who knew I wasn’t a complete asshole, and I planned to keep it that way, especially with Aurora. If I ever let her past my barbed-wire fences, I was afraid I’d never let her out again. And that would cause even more problems than the fact that I was going to be lawfully hers.
“So, are you in?” I grunted, reminding Dean why he was here with me to begin with. He’d always had my back, even when I was a scrawny kid in boarding school. That didn’t change as we became adults. He wanted to give my family a big fuck-you too, after the way they treated me when my mom and dad died.
“You know I am.”
Leaning back in my chair, I crossed my arms over my chest and laid out my plans. “Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do.”
Chapter Six – Aurora
My mother used to say we could make our own fate. Every choice we made could change that fate. It was ours to design.
And as I sat in another boring session, I thought about why I was there. To help make a change for those who could not. To help them change their fate. Kids of farmers usually never made it out of those picket fences. Most lived to carry on the family traditions, but with the downturn of local agriculture and most turning to massive manufacturing of grown goods, farms were being sold left and right, leaving nothing for those kids. They needed options, and I wanted to give them the best chance they could get. And not all kids were made to be farmers.
Aspen, was the only one with a true green thumb. She’d been my dad’s shadow since she was little, but I worried she settled into her role because no one else stepped up. Andrew did what he could, but his knack was on the business side. Aspen was the one we all expected to take the helm when our father retired. Something I worried was going to happen sooner rather than later. And she was only in her early twenties.
As I sat listening to the pros and cons of Smart Board usage in the classroom, I should have been enraptured by the way we could utilize this newer technology. Instead of making notes and taking everything in, a stranger from the bar kept running through my mind. Why did he have to be so nice and so handsome? And he seemed to hang on to my every word. Something possessed me to stick around the bar far longer than I intended, and it took every ounce of my self-preservation to leave, when all I wanted to do was accept that fourth drink.
Though I was still miffed about my ruined packet. I asked the conference head if she could get me a copy, but that was going to take catching up with the speaker, who already caught a flight home. I tried to ask around for a copy I could make notes from, but no one had theirs on hand.
For whatever reason, I’d been the only one with an actual interest in the topic.
Plus, everyone had learned about my verbal scuffle with Gertrude, who seemed to be pretty popular amongst the teachers in attendance.
Of course she was. She and her horde of frizzy-haired mavens were the popular clique of the convention. It felt like high school all over again, and I worried if teaching at the local high school was going to feel the same way.
“That concludes our session for today. I’ll hang around for the next five minutes if any of you have questions,” the speaker said.
