“Yes,” I answered without hesitating.
I did think he was clever. And talented. And so much more than he even realized.
His lips twitched. “I don’t think I’ve said anything clever to you.”
“You have a dry, clever sense of humor. You get my jokes,” I cracked, nudging him with my arm. While he smiled at me in return, I continued. “You always think before you speak. Some of the most intelligent people in the world haven’t learned how to do that.”
His eyes washed over me and my insides dipped like I was on a roller coaster. We’d never been this close to each other before.
“I bet your parents tell you you’re smart all the time,” he muttered.
“Yeah, they want me to believe in myself.”
“That’s good. You should believe in yourself.”
I made an impulsive decision right at that moment and my palms began to sweat as the blood rushed in my ears. “I think believing in yourself means having to be brave sometimes.”
Before Marco could reply to that, I leaned forward and pressed my lips against his. My heart was slamming so hard in my chest I could barely hear anything over the sound of its beating. Marco stiffened beneath my kiss, but I didn’t pull back. Instead I put more pressure behind it. Seconds later, I felt the heat of Marco’s hand on my waist and his lips moved against mine.
I didn’t have time to feel relieved or triumphant because he was kissing me back, taking control of the kiss, and sending my hormones into overdrive. My skin was flushed, my lips tingling, and all I wanted was to sink deeper into him and feel his hands all over my body.
My hands suddenly had a life of their own, one coming to rest on his knee, while the other cupped the nape of his neck.
He squeezed my waist and I sighed involuntarily, my lips parting on the sound. Almost instantly I felt the touch of Marco’s tongue against mine, and the surprising bolt of lust that hit me between the legs made me stiffen in shock.
Just like that, I found myself pushed away as Marco abruptly stood up.
I looked up at him, panting for breath, watching him rub his hands over his short, dark hair and drag them down over his face. Then he dropped his hands and his taut features were revealed to me as he lowered his incredulous gaze.
Before I could say a word Marco strode down the steps and disappeared up the street.
CHAPTER 4
T
he fourth-year class erupted into boisterous conversation as soon as the bell rang. Chairs scraped against the wooden floor, jotters were stuffed into backpacks, and friends who had been separated in my seating plan reunited as they headed toward the door.
I had finished a year of teacher training at the beginning of the summer, and now I was two months into my probation year. Once this year ended, I’d be fully qualified. After that came the really hard part – finding a permanent teaching position.
I felt confident that I knew what I was doing, but every now and then someone would remind me I was just starting out and there would be this moment of panic. I couldn’t let that kind of self-doubt win, and I definitely couldn’t let it show. Kids were like predators – show a sign of weakness and they’d take you down.
My eyes caught Jarrod Fisher’s as he lazily put away his things. His friends, two of my problem kids in this class, stood by his desk, waiting on him. From what I had heard they followed Jarrod’s example, but in my class Jarrod wasn’t a nuisance, though his friends were obnoxious brats. I’d heard stories from the other teachers, however, that Jarrod could be a menace. He swore, he talked back, and he disrupted lessons.
I wondered what was causing him to clash with those teachers. I got his cheeky side, but never an aggressive manner.
“Jarrod, may I speak with you, please?” I asked, and then gestured to his friends to leave the room along with the rest of the students.
As per usual they ignored me, looking to their ringleader.
As per usual I didn’t let that fly. “Boys. Out. Now.”
The boys threw me dirty looks but turned and walked out of the classroom. Jarrod stood up, stretching out his tall body. He grabbed his backpack and came over to me slowly, a small smirk playing on his lips. At fifteen he was already well over six feet. With his dark skin and light eyes he’d reminded me of a certain someone from my past the moment he’d entered my class. After I discovered the photo two nights ago, that resemblance seemed somehow more pronounced. Of course, Jarrod was less brooding, but perhaps just as angry underneath his cocky charm. Sometimes it was difficult not to wonder what caused that anger in a boy so young. Sometimes it was difficult to try not to care about that and just teach him English.
“What’s up, Miss Nichols?” He slouched against my desk, completely at ease with me.
“I’ll be handing back the first draft of your personal essays tomorrow, but I wanted you to know that you did exceptionally well.” I studied him, knowing there was more to this cocky boy than met the eye. There had to be. I knew that after reading such a wonderful essay about his little brother. “You’re very insightful, Jarrod.”
His eyes widened slightly. “Seriously?”
“I’ve written notes. You can look it over tomorrow. I just wanted you to know that I enjoyed it.” I gave him a knowing look. “If you would work like that in all your classes, you’d do well. You should start thinking about university.”
The spark that had lit in his eyes at my praise died, but he offered me a cheeky smile. “And why would I do that? That’d be no challenge for the teachers.”
I gave him a look of reproach. “Jarrod.”
He shrugged. “They piss me off. Mr. Rutherford does it deliberately. I’m not going to sit there and take it.”
I didn’t know if that was true or not, but since Mr. Rutherford, a maths teacher, rubbed me the wrong way whenever we crossed paths, I couldn’t find the words to disagree with Jarrod.
Instead I went with, “Don’t swear. And don’t let anyone stand in the way of your future. You’re a really smart kid. You should do something with it.”
“If you say so, Miss Nichols.”
“I do say so. Maybe the other teachers would as well if you’d stop smart-arsing them.”
He cocked his head to the side. “Did you just swear?” he teased.
Knowing I’d be in trouble if he decided to report me, I cursed myself inwardly. Sometimes it was hard to separate teaching the kids and volunteering with the adults. When I swore in front of my literacy class it was no big deal. Swearing in front of youngsters? Not so professional. I shook my head in innocence. “I don’t recall doing so, no.”
Jarrod laughed. “Look, the other teachers aren’t like you. They’re immune to my charm. That’s the problem. End of story.”
“Oh, Jarrod.” I gave him a mock-pitying look. “I’m not charmed by you. You aren’t that charming. What I am is pleasantly surprised by your abilities.”
“Whatever you say, Miss.” He winked at me and then swaggered out of the room as if life was one big joke. It was all a pretense. I saw through his crap.
Although I felt we had a rapport, I did worry about whether my advice and encouragement were penetrating the barriers he had built up around himself. I knew all about building walls. Sometimes you needed those walls to keep folks out because letting them in broke down the glue that was holding essential pieces of yourself together… but there were times when you needed to learn when to let those walls down, to let people in because they were the glue that held you together.
Perhaps I’d have a better chance at getting through to Jarrod if I were better at recognizing the difference myself. I’d learned quite young that there was a massive divide between theory and practice.
Sometimes I just couldn’t quite pull myself out of theory.
I had my reasons.
I reached down for my bag, ready to pack up and return home to do my marking there. Shoving a folder into the large handbag, I heard a crinkle and knew exactly what had happened. I’d crumpled
the photograph.
Hands shaking, I reached in and tugged at the photo, pulling it out and smoothing it flat with the tips of my fingers. Why had I kept it? Why had I brought it to school?
Staring at the photograph of me – the younger, cockier, romantic sixteen-year-old me – as I smiled into the camera for the selfie I’d taken with my friend Marco, the boy I’d fallen for hard, I wondered not for the first time where that version of me had gone.
It was funny… I sometimes wondered if I lost her because of Marco, and yet I think I hadn’t found her until I met him.
I couldn’t explain how I knew there was something wrong when Marco texted me to meet him. It’s not like he hadn’t done that before. I’d met him several times at a library to help him with his Higher English work – a course he didn’t need to take because he already had an apprenticeship with a joiner in Edinburgh. That didn’t seem to be enough for Marco, though. It was like he was challenging himself, trying to prove to himself he could do what other people told him he couldn’t. He’d surprised me over the last year and a half with his quiet determination.
It wasn’t always about schoolwork. Sometimes he texted me to meet him at a shop or a restaurant only to spend the next few hours wandering the streets of Edinburgh with him, me chattering away while he mostly listened. That kiss, that impulsive kiss, so long ago was never discussed. He’d avoided me for a month after that kiss. But kissing him and being rejected had actually been somewhat liberating. Okay, it hurt like hell and I felt humiliated, but after a while I began to realize that the world hadn’t ended. I’d done something for me, something brave, and I’d made it out okay. It had changed my perspective. I spoke up in class now, and I stood up for myself and for my friends against petty name-calling. I entered my short story in the junior writing competition my English teachers had urged me toward, and I joined the debate team.
That was sort of why Marco started speaking to me again. I, of course, missed the bus after my first meeting with the team, and when I walked outside, there he was. He never said a word to me about the kiss. He just pretended like it had never happened.
As long as I got to spend time with him, though, I was able to shove my disappointment deep down inside myself.
Usually I was filled with excitement when on my way to meet him. However, this time I was filled with a sense of foreboding as I walked in the early dusk toward Douglas Gardens.
The small gardens that ran alongside the Water of Leith were empty. Except for the large figure sitting on a bench.
“Marco?” I asked quietly.
He gave me a nod as I approached, and as I got closer his features came into better focus, as did the red swelling under his left eye. I sucked in a breath and hurried toward him, sitting down close. Without thinking I reached a hand toward his face, my fingertips tracing the skin just underneath the developing bruise.
“What happened?”
He looked lost. I felt a painful ache in my chest for him. “Some people are afraid of me. Because of my height, my build, the rumors, my reputation.” His mouth quirked up at the corner in disdain. “And some see it as a challenge. Me as a challenge.”
Infuriated for him, I lowered my hand to rest on his shoulder. “What did your uncle say when he saw?”
Marco snorted. “Hannah, who do you think did this?”
I didn’t know what I wanted to do more: cry for him, or bring a world of pain down on his uncle. There would never come a time when I would understand how an adult could abuse a child under their protection because I’d never known anything but absolute love and devotion. I knew Cole had suffered at the hands of his mother and Jo at the hands of her father. I’d felt helpless upon hearing that. I felt helpless again.
“Has he… has he done this before?”
He shook his head. “And probably never will again. Aunt Gabby went ballistic at him. She told him she’d leave him if he ever touched me again.”
I squeezed his shoulder. “I like your aunt Gabby.”
That got a smile out of him. “Yeah, she’s cool.”
“Did you tell your grandparents what he did?”
“Hannah —” He smiled sadly. “Nonno pretty much hates me. He could give a crap. I was bad news in Chicago. I hung around guys that were getting into really ugly stuff. That’s why my grandparents sent me away.”
Intrigued, I leaned forward. “Why do you think your granddad hates you?”
My mum’s dad had died before I was born, but my dad’s father was still alive and he always showered me with love the few times a year I got to see him. I couldn’t understand a grandparent hating his grandchild.
“I’m half African American. My Italian grandfather can’t stand the fact that his precious daughter slept with a black guy.”
My lips parted in shock. “He’s racist?”
Marco shrugged. “My dad could have been Japanese, Jewish, or Mexican and it would have pissed Nonno off. What mattered was that my dad wasn’t Italian and my parents weren’t married when my mother got pregnant. Nonno is really old-fashioned and a total traditionalist.”
You could call it whatever you wanted. There was no excuse for mistreating a child ever, and for it to be based on simple genetics? I was furious for Marco. “Was he awful to you?”
Marco shrugged again, but this time he met my gaze when he said, “My mom pretty much disowned my dad and my grandparents wouldn’t let him near me. He gave up, took off before I was even one. My mom stuck around for a few years, but she couldn’t take being a mom. She was only seventeen when she had me. And she couldn’t take the fact that her dad, who she’d once idolized, couldn’t stand the sight of her and the massive disappointment she represented. So she took off too. Left me with them.”
My stomach felt heavy. “How bad was it?”
He looked me straight in the eye and I knew by his expression he wasn’t going to tell me. By not telling me, though, he left my imagination to work overtime and I felt nothing aside from fury at his grandfather and a need to protect Marco. “Nonna’s great. She tried to make up for… everything else. And most of the Italian side of the family are great. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to live with them.”
“So you got in trouble and they sent you here to your uncle?”
He nodded, a scowl forming on his handsome face. “My mom’s big brother. My aunt Gabby is Scottish Italian, but her dad is originally from Chicago. She came for a visit years ago and my uncle Gio fell for her. They came up with the idea for the restaurant, her parents had capital, he moved here with her, and D’Alessandro’s was born.”
Silence fell between us and I suddenly felt awkward touching him. I dropped my hand and settled back against the bench. My eyes moved down the long sprawl of his legs, and I thought that if he’d wanted to, Marco could have fought back. He didn’t. Out of respect or refusal to be brought down to his uncle’s level, I didn’t know. I just knew it made me care about him even more.
“Is this why you texted me?” My voice sounded loud in the darkening gardens.
“Nah. I texted you to hang out with me. To talk.”
I laughed softly. “You? Talk?”
I felt warm all over at the sight of his grin. “I talk. I just did, didn’t I?”
“I suppose. But you’re really more of a listener.”
“Whatever.” He shook his head at me, still grinning.
Wanting to keep him smiling, I attempted some easier conversation. “Well, you said talk, so I’m going to make you talk more.”
“Yeah?”
I nodded, turning to the side and stretching my arm out along the back of the bench. Marco shifted slightly, turning his body in toward mine. “Let me see… okay. What’s your favorite song?”
“‘Dirt Off Your Shoulder’ – Jay Z.”
I burst out laughing and his smile widened. “You’re lying.”
He shrugged.
“Seriously? Favorite song?”
Marco sighed, rubbing his hand over his head. He seemed almost s
elf-conscious as he replied, “‘Hurt’ by Nine Inch Nails.”
“I’ve never heard of it.” But I’d definitely be YouTube-ing it when I got home.
“It’s good. Real, you know.” He shifted again so he was sitting to the side, facing me. “Nonna’s neighbor died and her son inherited the house. He was a big Nine Inch Nails fan. He’d blast that music, pissing off Nonno and half the neighborhood. Nonno sent me over one afternoon when I was twelve to tell the guy to shut it off. But when I got there ‘Hurt’ was playing. I’d never really paid that much attention to lyrics until that moment. Didn’t get how they could be like a letter someone wrote to you… to let you know you weren’t alone.”
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