Page 36 of Protected By the Grumpy Single Dad
I lock my jaw, unlock it. “I’m here to let you know what I’ve learned and ask for your help. If Andrew pushed him …”
“If,” he echoes, smiling with only one side of his mouth.
“ … even as a joke, there needs to be a conversation. With you, with the school. It won’t happen again.”
“Conversation,” he says, like it’s a word he’s chewing. “And what if there wasn’t a push?”
“My son says there was.”
“Kids lie,” he says, and the smile widens, mocking. “Or maybe your boy’s soft, Sheriff. Maybe the world gave him a shove and he folded. What do you make of that?”
I breathe once, slow. “I make of it that you should talk to your son.”
“And I make of it,” he says, stepping closer, the door now a boundary he’s chosen to ignore, “that you should teach yours a backbone so he doesn’t come home crying next time.” He tips his chin. “Or did he not get a model for that.”
The rubber band across my chest pulls taut to the point of snap.
I hear my own voice from a distance.“You’re going to want to dial it back.”
He laughs the way some men laugh when they’re trying to make you smaller. “I’m on my porch. You came to my door to tell me a story about your little victim. Go home, Sheriff. Practice some dad skills. Try not to embarrass yourself in the meantime.”
The snap is not loud. It’s just final.
He steps into my space and gives me a shove—open palm, off-center, enough to rock me back a half step. “Or maybe,” he adds, “you want me to teach you how a man—”
I don’t remember making the decision. I remember my training making it for me. I trap his wrist, pivot, and pin him against the doorjamb with a forearm across his collarbone—hard enough to remind, not hard enough to injure. “We’re done,” I say. “Hear me? This stops here.”
He snarls and bucks his shoulder beneath mine; we stagger. He aims a sloppy punch. It connects enough to ring the bell in my ear. I tighten the pin and step us both off the stoop before his skull meets the frame. “Do not swing at me,” I say, and the steel in my voice surprises even me.
“Get off my property,” he spits, breath hot.
“I will,” I say. “After I look you in the eye and say the words ‘You will talk to your son.’ And ‘You will keep your hands to yourself in your own house from now on.’ Because if you teach him this?” I press just enough to get attention, not pain. “He will end up as a case file, not a man.”
He tries to shove. He fails. His elbow clips my ribs. The move is ugly and accidental and still finds a place that will be a bruise by morning. I step back, break contact, give us both air before the next bad choice can arrive.
“This is me walking away,” I say, and mean it.
“This is me not apologizing,” he says, and he also means it.
We stare at each other, two men on either side of a line that doesn’t care who drew it. He’s breathing hard now. So am I. The porch light makes everything a little too bright.
I force my hands open, open, open, and step off his stoop. “We’ll be in touch through the school,” I say. “Do better.”
He snorts. “Teach your boy not to fall.”
I get in the car and drive, every muscle arguing with itself until the house is three turns behind me and I can finally breathe in something that isn’t another man’s contempt.
***
Brick notices the mark by my eye before I manage to make a plan to hide it. “What happened?” he asks, small.
“Caught the door with my face,” I say, because the truth is complicated and the truth will make him feel responsible for something he didn’t do.
He looks like he believes me and like he doesn’t. He’s a good kid. He knows I’m not telling him something. I hate it, and I do it anyway.
I get him through dinner and the volcano show and teeth and into bed. Every movement costs. My ribs throb a dull drumbeat.When I close his door, the throb moves through the house like the HVAC. I check the cabinet for painkillers. Aspirin. Two left. I take them dry and stand in the kitchen listening to the refrigerator hum and my conscience keep time.
The doorbell rings.
