Life on the Porcelain Edge

by C. E. Hilbert

  His face softened for a brief second, but he shook his head. “No, we should get home. This is your dad’s first adventure out of the house. He doesn’t need a four year old and her non-stop questions tiring him.”

  “I insist.” She squatted to eye level with Emma. “Would you like to have a sandwich with Pastor Tom?”

  Her round cheeks puffed with a grin that took the whole of width of her little face. “Yes, please.” Emma dropped her jacket to the floor, scooted a chair to within inches of her friend and climbed up. “Did you hear, Pastor Tom? I gets to stay.”

  Ryland puffed a sigh. “You get to stay.”

  But Tessa noticed the soft lift of his lips as his daughter and her father cuddled.

  Tessa’s chest tightened. “Emma, do you like ham?”

  She nodded. Her curls bounced.

  “Then you eat the sandwich in this basket. Your dad and I’ll pick something else, OK?” Before Tessa could finish, Emma began methodically picking the sandwich apart, placing the pieces into separate piles. Tessa leaned into Ryland. “What’s she doing?”

  “She doesn’t like the food to touch when she eats it.”

  “But isn’t that the point of a sandwich?”

  “Yes, and Emma will throw a little fit if you don’t present her with an actual sandwich for her to demolish.”

  “Interesting kid.”

  “She knows what she wants and isn’t afraid to go for it.” His gaze drifted from his daughter to Tessa. The warmth and welcome she found in his dark gray eyes sent shivers of anticipation up her spine.

  “From whom did she inherit that lovely trait?” Tessa chuckled.

  He lowered his head, his breath warm on her cheek. “From me. I always get what I want.”

  5

  By Friday, Tessa felt as though she’d been in a panini press baking on high. She was crunchy on the outside, but warming to gooey on the inside. The week had been a series of revelations, all beginning with the impromptu Monday night dinner.

  Revelation #1: Emma Jessup might be smarter than every adult in her sphere of influence.

  After recovering from the shock her father was a regular meal-sharer with Ryland Jessup, Tessa found herself falling under the spell of the enchanting Emma. The four year old was kinetic. Both Ryland and Tessa’s dad were wrapped neatly around her plump toddler fingers. And if Tessa was being brutally, in-the-mirror honest, she was well on her way to being a card carrying member of the Emma Jessup fan club.

  Revelation #2: Ryland Jessup was not the actual devil—he just played one from time to time.

  Tessa’s heart instantly softened toward her arch-nemesis when he was with his daughter. He treated Emma as if she were a precious jewel, encouraging her to shine and sparkle. Within hours of knowing the ‘new’ Ryland, Tessa quickly understood that the unspoken topic of Emma’s mother was not to be discussed. Her father told her Ryland’s wife died in a car accident a little over a year ago, about the same time he retired from the NFL, but no details beyond those two facts were shared with her. She didn’t pry. But even with her near life-long distaste of all things Ryland Jessup, she couldn’t stop her heart from breaking a little for him—losing nearly everything he loved in such a short amount of time.

  Revelation #3: Tessa Tarrington didn’t hate Ryland Jessup.

  The knowledge that the one person she’d single-handedly held responsible for her miserable childhood and adolescence was not the awful human being she’d assumed him to be was disconcerting. After Make-Up Monday, she continued to ‘bump’ into Ryland around town and at school. She saw him three out of four mornings at the café when she picked up her triple shot cappuccino. She walked headlong into him in the hallway outside of her classroom as he waited to escort a few students to their athletic physicals. And, following a treacherous exercise session, she cut through the park and crossed the battle lines of an epic snowball fight between Emma and Ryland.

  He was everywhere. And yet, the loathing of him she had nurtured since she was six years old was losing the internal battle with forgiveness. In spite of the old adage that past performance dictates future behavior, Ryland Jessup was rapidly ascending her dislike meter. He now sat on par with a ten-minute mechanical flight delay: annoying but quickly overcome once the plane reached its soaring altitude. He was inching towards the like half of the meter, and she was struggling with how to cope with the rapid transition.

  That she had thoughts falling into anything other than revulsion made her feel like the time she ate four beignets in one sitting—kind of nauseous and uncomfortable. Closing the novel her AP English class would begin next week, she watched the final seconds of the school day tick by as her eleventh grade American Lit class hurriedly finished their surprise quiz on Ray Bradbury. The bell shrilled and twenty-two heads popped up in unison. Tessa barely suppressed her grin. “Didn’t finish?”

  “Aww, Miss T. This was impossible!” Jared Noland whined, and twenty-one fellow victims, err students, bobble-headed behind him.

  “Well,” she said, shifting to the front of her desk. “I guess no one will refer to this class as a…let me see what was so cleverly written?” She lifted her tablet from her desk and swiped to unlock the hidden social media page dedicated to Slacker Subs in Central Ohio school districts.

  Two days earlier, an incessant beep notified Tessa she was on the list placed there after Grady Bell and Bode Michaelson posted comments about their first class with her. Their reviews were not flattering.

  “Yes, here it is: ‘Tessa Tarrington hit the halls of GRHS this morning. She stutters when she’s nervous and we clearly make her a bundle of nerves. We’s toats gonna Bueller out of her class. We got her snowed. And no sweater’s gonna keep out our white stuff. She thinks we care about all that literature junk, but if we play it right we’s be able to convince the Newb that Mrs. Slow-Mo’s plan for the semester was to watch the movie adaptations of the dumb books we’s supposed to read. Slam! Here come da ‘A’. Can’t spell easy without it. Welcome to GRHS Miss. T. The Junior class was never so thankful for a hip surgery.’” She glanced at the back row of boys including Jared, Grady and Bode.

  All three faces were bright enough to keep the town’s fountain spouting water for the next three years.

  “Would you like me to go on, gentlemen?” The entire back row of the class slouched in their chairs. “I didn’t think so. You’re dismissed. Please lay your tests on my desk.”

  Only the muffled sound of shuffled papers hovered in the room as each of the twenty-two students filed past her. Jared, Grady and Bode tried to sneak out with the masses. “Guys, I think you owe Miss Tarrington an apology.”

  Her head snapped toward the doorway. The air sucked from the room forcing Tessa to drag in shallow breaths.

  Ryland Jessup leaned against the frame with the appearance of a man who had all the time in the world.

  “Sorry Miss T.” The culprits mumbled in unison.

  “You three meet me in the gym tomorrow morning at six sharp ready to work. And skip hanging out at PaPa Pete’s tonight. No pizza until your grammar steps out of the gutter and resembles something in line with those glowing letters of reference I composed last fall.”

  Work? Their grammar was atrocious, but what could the boys possibly retain in a gym at six o’clock in the morning? She could barely retain the cup of coffee she greedily gulped down at six.

  “But Coach,” Jared’s voice rang out—the octave of a thirteen year old girl denied the latest boy band concert with her friends. “Tomorrow’s Saturday. It’s a holiday weekend. MLK’s Monday.”

  Ryland straightened and all three boys visibly swallowed against what looked like baseballs in their throats.

  Grady dropped a hand on either of his buddies’ shoulders, guiding them toward the doorway to move past Ryland. “We’ll be there Coach. Six. On the dot. Promise.”

  With a flip of his chin, Ryland allowed the students to slip out of the room. His narrowed focus followed them until they’d disappeared
.

  Her heart twisted as he swung his gaze to meet hers. How had she never noticed his eyes were the color of the sky during a summer storm or that he had a dimple in his right cheek which seemed to wink at her with his slow grin? She grabbed the stack of unfinished tests. “Umm, thanks, but I had it under control. I think the pop quiz got their collective attention. I don’t believe I’ll have similar problems in the future.” She shuffled the papers, stuffing them in a folder with shaking fingers. “I’m not as much of a weakling as I used to be.”

  “Whoever said you were weak?” he asked.

  With a snort, she turned to face him. “Well, I wasn’t exactly the picture of strength when I was a teenager.”

  “I don’t know.” He propped his hip against a front row desk, his weight causing the leg to squeak against the freshly waxed floor. “You always seemed pretty strong to me. And a little scary.”

  “Scary?”

  “Sure,” he said with a shrug. “You’re the pastor’s kid. From the time you showed up in kindergarten you were a mystery. This girl who seemed to appear out of nowhere with long blonde hair, and knowing green eyes. Who seemed to anticipate every wrong move one us would make. Back then, I thought you had a secret phone line to God in your house so you could rat me out.”

  “Rat you out?”

  “Yeah, Joey thought you knew the Big Guy personally because your dad was the preacher. You were so quiet and kept to yourself—we were convinced the only One you ever talked to was God. And with that kind of connection, you could’ve spilled all of our dirty secrets in one not so long phone call. Pretty intimidating.” The pull of his grin was nearly impossible to resist.

  God had been the only One with whom she ever talked. Mostly she sought His comfort because she’d been lonely. Had they really been intimidated by her? Ryland Jessup? Joey Taylor…a vision of slightly over-grown locks and eyes the color of rich espresso flashed through her mind.

  Joey Taylor would likely always be the one who got away. Of course she would have had to have him for him to really have gotten away, but the sentiment was still true. In theory.

  “Hmpf,” she puffed, trying to hide her rising blush. “So making me the recipient of your teasing-genius was your strategy to keep on the good side of God?”

  “Genius, huh?” He snatched her bag from the coat rack and slung it on his shoulder.

  “Criminals can be geniuses.” She tugged her multiple layers of winter wear from the rack. She’d only been in Louisiana fulltime for four years, but her blood was thinner than the elbows of her father’s favorite work shirt.

  Wrapping the six foot scarf around her neck she tried to shake the near palpable pull of Ryland as he stood behind her. She’d been trying to ignore him all week, but the task was nearly impossible. He was everywhere. What was she to do with a problem like Ryland? And not for the first time since returning to the purgatory she called high school, her eyes drifted shut and she lifted a silent prayer to her BFF. Please Lord, help me find a way. She wasn’t quite sure what direction she preferred but she knew at the moment she desperately wanted the way to be far from jock turned coach, Ryland Jessup. Being in his presence was messing with her only strong muscle—her mind.

  His snort drew her spirit out of prayer. “How many layers do you have there? Its only thirty degrees. It’s Ohio. That’s practically a heat wave in January.”

  Wiggling her cable-knit-sweater-covered arms through the double feather-down sleeves of her new winter coat, she probably presented as pretty a picture as sausage finding its new casing.

  “Thirty is cold. Water freezes at thirty-two. I should be asking you ‘where are your layers?’ Polo shirts in the winter aren’t a very good example.” She wrestled with the zipper and silently cursed her new affinity for Maggie McKitrick’s salted caramel brownies.

  Her reflection in the window looked as if she should be advertising for a tire company. Why couldn’t she look cool one time? Just one time. Especially when she was in the irritating presence of Ryland Jessup. Since the moment she crossed the county line four weeks ago, her hanging-by-a-thread confidence seemed to have slipped into winter hibernation.

  “Need help?”

  She faced Ryland. With her best Delta Alpha Psi smile plastered across her lips, she answered him. “Thank you for the offer, Coach, but as you can see I’m quite capable of dressing myself.” She tugged on her gloves as her knitted cap fell to the floor. How would she fold twenty plus inches of down circling her middle to retrieve her hat?

  Ryland swiped the cap from the floor. He tugged the scratchy hat on her head, flattening her ponytail to her scalp and trailing a stream of sparks down her cheek from his light touch. Ryland Jessup shoving her hat on her head was becoming a habit she needed to break.

  He rested his hands on her puffy shoulders. “Everyone needs help, Tessa. It’s OK to ask.” He lifted her bag from his shoulder and looped it across her down-encased body. “I’ll always be here for you. All you have to do is ask.”

  6

  Ryland blew his whistle. Seven boys pivoted, sprinting to the opposite end of the gym. The wooden planked floor squeaked under the pounding pressure of the teenagers—all of whom were avoiding suspension, detention, or expulsion by participating in Coach Jessup’s Saturday Suicide Session. A tradition he started soon after becoming the full-time Athletic Director and Head Football coach.

  Within days of taking over the job, he’d received a stack of complaints from teachers, administrators, and the band director, claiming athletes were not following the same rules as the rest of the matriculating student population. The standard punishment did little to deter an occasional roll of toilet paper thrown across the town square or the rite of passage of mooning the band after football practice.

  Ryland offered to take on the challenge of disciplining all athletes—male or female—for the balance of the year, without influence or intrusion of the principal or the school board. Frustrated with the ineffectiveness of the students’ responses to the punishments delivered to date, the school board agreed. Ryland dusted off his dad’s old whistle and went to work establishing Saturday Sessions.

  After three weeks, the football team dubbed the non-stop sprints as Jessup’s Suicide Saturdays and the name stuck. Student-athletes caught breaking school rules, circumventing the honor code, or crossing the line between joke and jerk were sentenced to two hours of hard labor: line to line suicide sprints in the gym.

  The irony that he—Ryland “Jester” Jessup the mastermind of some of the greatest pranks in Gibson’s Run’s one hundred and fifty year history—was now the one doling out discipline was not lost on him. Considering he had been chastised by the best—Coach Carl Jessup—logic would stand he learned a thing or two. Ryland was more than willing to pass his knowledge on to the younger generation.

  Blowing his whistle, he motioned all seven boys to the bleachers for a water break.

  Grady, Bode, and Jared, the culprits behind the social media comments, limped toward the water cooler. All three boys were starters on the football and baseball teams. They were from great families, attended his church nearly every Sunday, and were the first to volunteer for the student council blood drive over Christmas. Why would they have written on that awful website about Tessa?

  Tessa Tarrington. His reaction to her return was unprecedented. Not since he was a kindergartener and declared his unending love for a green-eyed little girl had he been this consumed by a desire to be in someone’s presence.

  When he met Macy at a friend’s bonfire, he would go weeks without calling her. Even after they were married, he often went days on the road without contact, nearly forgetting he had a wife.

  But with Tessa, his need to see her—to be near her –was overwhelming him. Not that his attention made a difference.

  Tessa treated him as if she expected Ryland to have a shock-buzzer in his hand, diligently keeping him at a suspicion-filled distance. If he hadn’t deliberately stopped for coffee after dropping Emma off each
morning this week or conveniently remembered a few students were in need of physicals, he wouldn’t have seen her after dinner on Monday.

  He rubbed his neck and regarded the seven student-athletes oozing the toxic aroma of locker room stench from their pores. All seven—including Ball, Michaelson, and Noland—were excellent athletes, but they were bored. The long stretch of short days between the end of football season and baseball try-outs was primetime for a wide range of practical jokes and general mischievousness for non-basketball players or wrestlers. Sprinting lines in the gym on a holiday weekend wouldn’t be sufficient to keep them from lighting bags of doggie remains on fire or worse: crossing a line they wouldn’t be able to cross back over.

  “OK guys. I don’t want to see you here again. Ever. You get one Saturday Session. One.” He narrowed his focus on the first two boys in the row. “Simpson and Messing—did you write a note of apology to Mr. Tyler?”

  Both boys nodded.

  His starting QB, Blaine Simpson, and his best shortstop, Riley Messing, had painted Tony Tyler’s auto shop windows with a series of interesting, comic inspired cars. The words painted above the cars were nearly as colorful as the neon window paint they’d used.

  “One more thing…why don’t you use your obvious love for art in a more creative outlet? There’s an exhibit of Van Gogh at the Columbus Museum of Art. They’re open for the holiday. Enjoy Monday. I expect a fifteen hundred word essay on my desk before first period on Tuesday. Agreed?”

  Expressions shattered across the boys’ faces, but neither argued before jogging to the locker rooms.

  “Morgan and Ray.”

  Freshmen Trevor Morgan and Mason Ray were clearly trying to find their places in the hierarchy of high school by “borrowing” the neighboring school’s bulldog mascot. The dog was stuffed, but regardless, “borrowing” without asking was stealing. Both boys slouched over their thighs trying to fill their shallow lungs.

  Ryland feared he’d have to keep them late to clean their puke up off the gym floor. He really didn’t want to deal with messes of any kind, particularly vomit. He wasn’t sure he’d be strong enough to keep his power bar and coffee in his own temperamental stomach. “Will you borrow anything without asking, ever again?”