Wrong. Sit in your wrongness and be wrong, I told myself, still feeling Ronan’s presence all those rows behind me. No complications. No drama.
But that damn twinge wouldn’t go away all week. It burrowed deeper until it resembled an ache.
On Thursday afternoon, I finished the paper. Not my best work, admittedly. Hopefully a solid B. I drove home around five and parked the Buick in the garage. The much emptier garage. My worktable and all of my tools and supplies were gone.
“Bibi?” I called, hurrying in through the kitchen. “I’m home.”
“Out here, honeypie,” she called from the patio table in the backyard. Behind her, was the finished work shed.
I froze, my eyes glued to the simple little shed. Green with white trim, it had double doors and even the window Ronan had shown me in his sketches.
Bibi clapped her hands. “It’s incredible, isn’t it? Go and see what he did.”
Moving slowly, I pulled open the doors. Inside, it smelled of cut wood and fresh paint, clean and new. Ronan had moved my table from the garage and had stacked my plastic supply bins neatly on one side. Shelves lined two walls and on them, sat all my tools. Ronan had spared me countless trips back and forth from the garage.
I ran my hand along one perfect shelf and inhaled deep. I could almost smell the campfire scent of him under the fresh wood and paint. Faint and fading fast.
“Our boy did a marvelous job, didn’t he?” Bibi asked when I came back out.
Our boy.
Tears sprang to my eyes.
“Shiloh?”
“It’s silly,” I said, blinking hard. I did not cry. “I’m getting emotional for no reason.”
“Not for no reason,” Bibi said gently.
I sank into the chair beside her. “It’s really perfect and will help me so much. I guess that’s why…”
“That must be it,” Bibi said, patting my hand.
“Thank you, Bibi.” I reached to hug her. “Thank you so much for this.”
“You’re welcome, honey. I know you’re going to make beautiful creations in it. Will we be seeing Ronan anymore now that it’s done?” she asked, light as a feather.
“No,” I said. “Why would we?”
“Oh, child.” She briefly laid her hand on my shoulder, then got up and went inside.
I hugged my elbows, feeling like she’d just passed judgement on me and found me guilty of a crime I didn’t commit. Ronan had made it clear—the other night and in class with his stony silence—that he didn’t want anything more to do with me. Even if that stung somewhere deep in a place I didn’t want to look at, there wasn’t anything I could do about it.
I studied the shed, still disbelieving it was really mine. I was going to work so much better—so much harder—in that space. That was all that mattered.
“Might as well start now.”
I got busy organizing everything the way I wanted it. It didn’t take long—Ronan had set everything up as if he knew exactly how I’d need it for maximum efficiency. I worked fast in fresh, clean air and sunlight instead of a dark, grungy garage.
By the time I was finished for the day, there was no trace of Ronan left at all.
“Let’s have’em, folks,” Mr. Baskin said the next day in History. “Pass your papers to the front of the class.”
Violet and I exchanged glances. “I don’t have a good feeling about this,” she murmured. “This paper was written under extreme duress.”
I smiled gently back at her. The entire school was buzzing about how River Whitmore had stood Violet up at the Homecoming dance. To add bitter insult to injury, she’d then witnessed Miller in a very NC-17 hook-up with Amber Blake.
And I wasn’t there for her.
Instead, I’d been wasting my time with Ronan, getting barbecue, my absurd imagination pretending he’d almost kissed me.
“You got this,” I said to Violet. “You write this stuff in your sleep.”
Her smile slipped. “If only I could sleep.”
The guy behind me tapped my shoulder and handed over the stack from our row. I added my report in its neat folder to the others like it, noticing that one paper was only stapled pages, the edges torn, as if it had been ripped out of a spiral notebook.
Ronan…
I passed the stack forward and bit my lip. Baskin had specifically said the papers had to be typed. Hopefully, he wouldn’t notice today. Maybe he’d only dock Ronan a few points. Maybe it wasn’t his at all…
Mr. Baskin shuffled through the stack, his brow furrowed behind his thick glasses. He held the handwritten report and squinted at it.
“Ronan Wentz.” He peered over the class until he found him in my row, last seat. “I specified more than once that this paper must be typed.”
My skin heated with anger that he’d call Ronan out like this. The rest of the class was turning to look. I kept my gaze forward, unwilling to add to his embarrassment.
“Mr. Wentz? Do you have a response?”
“I don’t have a computer,” Ronan said, his voice low, and in that moment, I hated Baskin.
“That’s what the school library is for,” Baskin said. “There is no excuse for not completing the paper as specified.” He walked down the aisle past me, to Ronan, and dropped his paper on his desk. “I’m going to give you a chance to remedy the situation. Get this typed up and returned to me. I’ll dock you one-half letter grade for every day it’s late.”
“Today’s Friday,” Ronan said.
“Then it had better start out as an A paper.”
Baskin resumed the day’s lesson, but I could hardly concentrate. When the bell rang, the class poured outside and dispersed. I lingered by the door.
“Heading home?” Violet asked.
“Um, not yet. Call me this weekend?”
“Sure.”
I gave a handful of braids a tug in frustration. My best friend was walking away alone because I was waiting for a guy. I was about to come to my senses and chase after Violet when Ronan exited the classroom, his expression stormy. Baskin probably kept him in to berate him more for not being prepared.
Ronan didn’t look up at me but strode fast down the walk, head down.
“Hey,” I said, falling in step with him. I practically had to jog to keep up.
Ronan grunted in greeting.
“What Baskin did is utter bullshit.”
“He’s right. It was supposed to be typed.”
“But he didn’t have to call you out in front of the whole class. Let’s go to the library. Right now.”
“What for?”
“We’ll get your paper typed up and get it in Baskin’s box before he leaves today.”
“It won’t work.”
“Why?
“Because I can’t type that fast.” He looked out over the campus, anywhere but at me. “It’s fucking embarrassing but… I’ve never had a laptop or computer. Never stayed one place long enough to learn.”
That’s what he said, but what I heard was that surviving ten years of foster care had taken up his time and energy. The ache in my chest deepened.
“I’ll type it for you.”
“Why would you do that for me?” he asked, suspicion hard in his tone.