by Knight, Amie
“Who was that and why are you smiling like that cat who ate the canary?”
Hazel’s questions snapped me out of my thoughts. “What? Who? Nothing.” God, I was worse at this than she was.
She reached around in the booth, snatching the phone out of my hand in the process. It was so fast I’d barely blinked and she was scrolling my phone, reading the text already up on the screen. What the hell? It was like she was a ninja instead of a freaking video game store manager.
Her forehead scrunched up and she turned the screen of the phone toward me so she could show me a text I’d already seen. “What the hell about this made you smile?”
“I wasn’t smiling.”
Pursing her lips, she threw me a sardonic look. “You were totally smiling and you’re smiling now, you weirdo.”
I smacked my teeth. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She turned the phone back toward herself and read the text again, her eyes squinted, her attention laser focused on it. And I couldn’t have that. I couldn’t have her figuring everything out.
“How about you give me the phone back now?” I grabbed for it only to be dodged.
“Ella. Hmm.” She tapped her finger to her chin dramatically and held the phone high above my head. For such a small girl, she had arms like an orangutan.
And then I saw it. Realization painted her features. It was like I could see the little light bulb over her head turn on. And it was bright. Too damn bright.
“Oh my God. Is this from Lukas?”
I didn’t say anything, so her eyes widened. “The Lukas! Like star quarterback Lukas Callihan you mooned over our entire freshman year of high school.”
“It wasn’t our entire freshman year.”
She was totally embellishing. It was only the last half of freshman year. And this was getting so embarrassing.
“Give me the damn phone, Hazel!” I lunged for it again and this time I actually got it. Shoving it into my bag, I ground out, “It’s not a big deal.”
Her eyebrows flew up. “It seemed to be a big deal a minute ago when you were trying to keep the phone from me.” She stared at me. “Wow, I heard he was home. And about his mom. How is Ella taking it?”
Shrugging, I said, “I don’t know. She doesn’t really talk about it.”
She wore a complete shit-eating grin. “I can’t believe your dream man is home. And you’re teaching his baby sister. It’s like fate!”
“Let’s order the food.” I was ignoring this. I wasn’t going back there. With him or her.
She opened her menu and looked at it even though we’d been coming here at least once a week for years. We never looked at the menu and we always got the same thing. “Fine. I won’t mention that Lukas Callihan messaged you. Or how formal it was. I won’t mention that it seemed like he didn’t even know who you are.”
“Drop it, crazy lady.”
She laid down her menu and threw her hands up in front of her. “It’s already dropped.”
After we ordered food, Hazel picked up her phone to respond to a text, so I did the same. I may have grinned a little as I typed it out because I’d liked to give Lukas shit years ago, but it seemed that now I loved it.
Was she fucking for real? Who in the hell did she think she was? Not even my mother had talked to me like this. I read over the text again and again because I still couldn’t believe it. This woman had more balls than the whole damn NFL. That was a lot of damn balls.
You have a very hard time following directions, Mr. Callihan. I specifically gave you exact instructions on when it was appropriate to contact me. Was this a mistake or another bout of completely disregard for my time? Again.
P.S. Ella hates peanut butter and jelly.
Ella didn’t really hate peanut butter and jelly. Did she? I made it for her almost every morning for lunch. God, it had been a long time since I’d even considered what she liked and didn’t. She’d liked them at one point. Right? God, now this woman was making me question everything. This woman who I didn’t give two shits about. What did I care what she thought about me and how I took care of Ella?
I was childish as hell, so I programmed in her number and added her as a contact that would show as She-Devil From Hell whenever she messaged from now on. I wouldn’t be caught off guard again.
I realized I’d been meaning to contact her for days but kept getting thrown off. Between Ella and football, I was a fucking mess. I was barely getting enough sleep and this woman was going to complain about me not contacting her at the exact hours she’d requested. The whole thing seemed absurd and definitely a power trip. Besides, how the hell did she know what Ella liked to eat? She was just her teacher.
It was only 5:00 a.m., but I had no fucks. I wasn’t putting up with this shit anymore. I hit reply faster than I ever had in my life and started mashing the buttons on my phone harder than probably necessary.
“Ella, you up?” I yelled as I sat up in bed, still typing my text to the teacher from hell.
My feet landed on the cold hardwood as I finished and pressed send. I felt good about my text until I actually hit send and then I realized it might have all been a huge mistake.
Me: Teach, what exactly crawled up your ass and died?
That may have been a touch dramatic, but I was sick of taking her shit. It wasn’t easy juggling a demanding career and raising a child. I had no idea how single mothers did it.
My first order of business was taking a piss, so I walked to the adjoining bathroom off the master. It had been weird taking my mom’s room in the house and for the first few months home I didn’t, but I needed my old room for my gym equipment and when I’d finally decided to take it out of storage, I definitely felt like I couldn’t use my mother’s old room for a gym, so here I was, using it to sleep in. It was still weird as hell, but I was making do for Ella.
The tiles were cold against my feet. I turned the light on and looked at my almost twenty-eight-year-old self in the mirror, practically feeling like I was one hundred.
“Ella!” I yelled again. “Get up!”
Walking to the toilet, I noticed someone had once again removed the toilet roll from the dispenser and not replaced it. That someone had to have been Ella and it wasn’t the first time she’d done it. I wasn’t sure why she came into this bathroom, removed the almost empty roll, and never replaced it, but stranger things had happened and at this moment in time I had bigger fish to fry.
I did my business and noticed my phone buzzed from the bathroom counter while I did.
Oh, I couldn’t wait to hear what this teacher said to me. I was part nervous and part elated as I picked up the phone after I washed my hands.
She-Devil From Hell: Excuse me? You must have meant to send this to one of the other countless women who are no doubt in your phone.
I couldn’t help it. When I left the bathroom, I was grinning from ear to ear like a complete loon and maybe I was. This was the most fun I’d had since I’d moved home. This here was right what the doctor ordered. Why did she sound like a scorned woman? Like she was my girlfriend? Oh, this chick was completely crazy and I dug it. Hard.
Before I typed out my response, I poked my head into Ella’s room and she was still under the covers, her head under her pillow. I sat down on the side of her bed. “Don’t make me do it, Ellie Bellie.”
“No, Lulu. Go away,” she groaned from beneath the pillow.
“You wanna do this the hard way or the easy way?”
She rolled over onto her stomach and held the pillow close over her head. Sweet stubborn Ella. She was impossible to get out of bed every morning. Mom had been resorting to this since she’d been a small child.
“I said go away!”
I laughed quietly. She only got more adorable when she was angry. And she was pretty much angry every day before 9:00 a.m. She loved her sleep.
I set my phone down on the nightstand. The crazy teacher could wait. I pulled back Ella’s covers and gave her side a poke.
I stared down at her. “Then you need to get up. I can’t have your teacher pissed at me. She’s already giving me a hard time.”
She turned her head toward me and gave me the stink-eye. “What did you do to Ms. Lettie? You’re mean to her.”
I was offended. “Me? Are you kidding? She’s the spawn of Satan.” I gave her side another poke. “You’re gonna make me do it, aren’t ya?” This time my poke was more of a tickle.
She laughed and moaned at the same time like I was both hilarious and the worst brother in the world.
“Fine. Fine. I’m getting up.”
“Good,” I said, standing and grabbing my phone, then heading toward the kitchen to start a big breakfast for Ella and me. Ella always did Zumba in the mornings before school and watched her soaps after. She never deviated from the plan, so it was no surprise to me when she came into the living room and turned on her Zumba DVD while I started cooking up eggs.
“Want eggs this morning?”
This time I didn’t get an answer or even an acknowledgement. If she didn’t feel like talking to me, she just didn’t. It had always been like this. But since the peanut butter and jelly comment, I was questioning everything. “Do you even like eggs?”
No answer.
Still, I made the eggs and some bacon and by the time I was done, my phone was burning a hole in my pocket. I sat down, Ella across from me, our breakfast plated on the table, and I picked up the phone, smiling as I started to type out a text.
“You’re a jerk.”
My smile fell and my head flew up. “What? Why?”
“Because you called her Satan.”
I grinned and set the phone on the table. “I didn’t actually call her Satan. I said she was the spawn of Satan.”
Ella poked her eggs angrily with her fork.
“Chill out, Ellie Bellie.”
“I like her.” She stuffed some egg into her mouth.
I nodded, taking a bite of bacon. “I know you do.”
“Then be nice.”
She wanted me to be nice. I guess she didn’t realize how awful Ms. Lettie she-devil was being to me.
There was only a piece of bacon left on the plate between us. I looked up at Ella, her eyes on the bacon as well. I stabbed it with my fork quickly. “Dibs.”
“Fine,” she grumbled at me, shoving the last bit of egg into her mouth.
I didn’t know what she was grumbling about. I always shared with her. I tore the bacon down the middle and placed half on her plate and shot her a grin. Dibs just wasn’t as fun without Mom and Dad. In fact, it sucked.
We finished breakfast in relative silence just how Ella liked it most days. I loved Ella more than anyone in the entire world, but now that I couldn’t even confide in Aunt Merline without her trying to convince me to give her Ella, I had no one. No one to sit and chat with about my day. And I was having shitty days. No adult conversation at all, really. I had no one, except her. And I just kept telling myself over and over again that she was enough.
I cleaned off the table and started to pack us both lunches when a thought occurred to me. “Hey, Ella. You still like peanut butter and jelly, right?” I called from the kitchen. She was in her room, but I knew for a fact that the girl could hear like a champ. She was a top-notch listener.
“No,” she called back and I stood there, feeling dumb as shit.
Thinking I heard her wrong, I said, “Excuse me?”
“I said no.”
Her teacher had been right. I stopped packing lunches and walked back to her room, knocking before I pushed the door open a crack. “Can I come in?”
She didn’t answer me, so I went on in and watched her load up her bookbag and put her glasses on her face. She couldn’t see well at all without them, but she did a hell of a lot of other things well. My mom made sure Ella was as high-functioning as she could be. She put her in schools and classes and never treated her like a kid with special needs. And thank God for that, because I was already struggling.
“If you don’t like peanut butter and jelly then what did Mom pack for your lunch every day?”
“She didn’t pack my lunch.”
“What?”
Using her pointer finger, she poked her own chest. “I pack my lunch.”
I wanted to scream what again, but instead I closed my eyes, placed my hands on my hips, tilted my head back to the ceiling, and prayed. I didn’t use to be a praying man, but it seemed like I was now. I prayed for the patience of a father that I absolutely wasn’t. I prayed for the patience of a mother because that was what I was going to have to be now. And I prayed for Ella because Lord knew she needed both of those and all she had was me.
And then I prayed for me because just when I thought I couldn’t get any worse at this parenting thing, a tiny girl would trick me into packing her lunch every day even though she didn’t like it all.
And then I laughed. It may have been the first time in two months. It started out with just a small shake of my chest and then a tiny tickle in my throat and before I knew it my hands that had been on my hips were covering my wet eyes and I was letting loose huge, grand guffaws that were less close to genuine laughter and leaning more toward complete hysteria.
I pulled my hands away and used the backs of them to give a good wipe under my eyes before looking over at Ella. Her bookbag was on and she was ready to take the bus to school, but I didn’t miss the small smile that was playing at her lips. I hadn’t seen too many of those either lately and my heart ached at that small smile. It was better than nothing. And that was what I’d be left with without Ella.
We both missed Mom so much. It was like we were in survival mode.
Still smiling, I asked, “So what have you been eating if you don’t like peanut butter and jelly and you usually pack your own lunches?”
She shrugged, her small grin growing. “Ms. Lettie’s lunch. It’s good. She brings a hot lunch every day.”
And then I laughed again. Because not only had this devious angel been tricking me, she’d been tricking her dear, sweet Ms. Lettie, too. And for some reason that made me ecstatic. I’d felt slighted by this teacher that Ella had grown to love so much. Like maybe Ella preferred her to me, but now I knew. Good ole Ms. Lettie and I were on an even playing field and even though the spawn of Satan didn’t know it yet, I always played to win.
“Well, the gig’s up, kiddo. Looks like you’re back to making your own lunch. Better get it done before Allison comes and gets you for the bus.”
“Fine.” Her words were grumpy, but her face was anything but. It seemed like Ella thought this situation was as funny as I did. God, she’d really pulled the wool over both mine and her teacher’s eyes. I had to give it to her.
While she set about making herself a ham and cheese sandwich that I took note of for future reference, I shot off a text to my favorite teacher.
Aww, Teach. You feeling jealous about all the women in my phone? ;)
I shouldn’t have felt so damn good about firing off that text, but honestly this was the only adult interaction I’d had in months that wasn’t me getting my ass handed to me on a football field. I was enjoying getting this woman fired up.
And as I packed my bag for practice and got into my SUV, I wondered what she looked like. If she was older or younger. And then I kicked myself in the ass for even thinking about it. It was none of my damn business and my hands were already full.
I turned into the stadium, laughing at myself. Because this woman was probably a hundred years old and had been teaching students with special needs for forever and here I was thinking about if she could possibly be my age and hot. God, I wanted her to be hot.
I wondered too damn much about this Ms. Lettie. All the way to practice and the whole time my team failed to block me and sacked the shit out of me. I knew this couldn’t continue past the off season or we’d be fucked. No connection. No love for each other, but for some reason I couldn’t be bothered to care at the moment
. I had my own shit to deal with.
So when Mason tried to talk to me again, I threw in my headphones and ignored his ass. I checked my cell to see if I’d received a reply text from Ms. Lettie and I hadn’t.
As I changed, I tried to think back to if I remembered a Lettie from ten years ago in town. Back then, Summerville had been a small place, but over the past ten years it had experienced a huge boom of growth.
Summerville used to have only one Walmart and, well, nothing else. Now, it was a booming suburb of Birmingham. In ten years it had changed completely and there were more people here that I didn’t know than I did.
It was on the ride home that I heard the ping for a text, but I didn’t text and drive, even though it nearly killed me to wait until I got home to check it. So when I pulled into our old garage that I needed to clean out ASAP because it still had a ton of Dad’s old shit in it and I could barely fit my vehicle, I reached into the console and grabbed my phone.
I read the text and I read it again. And then again, my heart pounding in my chest like I’d run around the block five thousand times, my hands gripping the phone for dear life because I had to be wrong. I couldn’t be right. And I went back. Back to late afternoons in a quiet library after school, an adorable redhead leaned over my textbook, the sweet smell of Skittles on her breath as she enunciated a complicated French word. I went back to late evenings at my house, baby Ella bouncing in that same redhead’s lap, their faces close, my heart so full compared to how it felt now. It just couldn’t be, but could it? And then I read it again, just to be sure.
She-Devil From Hell: You’re mistaken. I couldn’t care less about the copious amounts of women in your phone, Mister Quarterback. All I care about is Ella and her well-being and education.
There was only one person who ever in my whole life had called me Mister Quarterback and I hadn’t seen her or spoken to her in over ten years. And all of a sudden, that seemed way too damn long.