He should have known better, especially since Rickard had been a colleague, a married father of three with a delicious arse, and a twinkle in his eyes. Lukas had broken him, from the very first innocent smile and a friendly hand on his shoulder. A series of innocent touches. A friendly beer after work. Standing just close enough to feel his breath hitch, to see the creep of a blush under the collar. The faint waft of sweat, pearls of fluid gathering at the temples as eyes close and Lukas goes in for the kill. He has it all down to a fine art, seducing the straight dude. It never ends well and makes Lukas an arsehole. He deserves everything he gets. He deserves the tears, the fear and the heartbreak. He should have stepped away the moment those words left Rickard’s lips. My wife. My kids. My life.
Rickard now lives alone in a sublet one-bedroom apartment in the bad part of the worst suburb, having fucked up everything he has held dear for a few weeks of mind-blowing sex with a man like Lukas. A man with no shame, no sense, and no clue of how to make things right. And whilst Lukas has slowly rebuilt his broken heart and tried to forget the fact that he has behaved like an imbecilic love-sick twat, Rickard is still desperately trying to get regular access to his children and make his estranged wife speak to him without crying.
It is a mess and it ended over a year ago. Lukas hasn’t had any contact with Rickard, having been blocked on every platform in a fit of rage, the two of them having been lost in the death-throes of the lingering shred of what had been. Both just shells of the people they had once fallen in love with, broken shadows of the men they have now become. Rickard has transferred to a different school and Lukas hasn’t seen him in months. He’s heard the snippets of rumours from the gossip in the teachers’ lounge. The glances of worry and fear from a few colleagues who still remember that it is all Lukas’s fault. That he is the one. The one who has caused the avalanche of destruction of an innocent family.
But it won’t happen again. Lukas has learned his lesson. From now on, it will be a single man’s life for him. He is too old for clubbing and picking up strangers for a quick fuck. And Grindr scares the living daylights out of him. He has a fully functioning hand to get himself off when he needs it, and the rest of the time he will try to make amends. He will be the best teacher he can be—kind and understanding. Also, hip and cool enough to make his students trust his judgement (which has been questionable at the best of times), yet still adult enough to ensure the kids who need him will confide in him.
And, to be very honest, his work week has him in an over-social tailspin most of the time, spending eight hours a day constantly interacting with people, talking and teaching, staying on top of his game to keep his classroom in a state of manageable calm with all eyes on him. When he kicks off his trainers at the end of the day, all he wants is silence. He will sit on his threadbare sofa, a relic from his university days, and just stare into the darkness until his mind becomes too heavy to care.
Especially now that it is evaluation-talk season for the students he is assigned to mentor. The week when the students who are failing are brought in with their parents, so the school can offer some misguided illusion of support. When in reality, it is more often a shit-fest of familiar tragedies playing out in the empty classroom, giving an insight into levels of dysfunctionality and fear that make Lukas shiver. He tries to meet the students’ gazes, tries to speak with his eyes. Say, hey kid, I see this. I see you. We can’t fix this, but I see you. Please know that I do.
That is why he is here. That is why he has fallen head first into a teaching degree, because along the way he has had teachers who have seen him. Who have looked at him that way and said just that. “I see you. I know. I get it kid. You are not alone in all this. You may think life is unbearable right now, but trust me, there is light, and when you find it, you will be fine. Life will get better. It always does.”
He has to deal with the Magnusson kid today. He can’t wait for summer when the last of the Magnusson clan will get out of his hair, with their spoiled, over-achieving kids. Parents with illusions of grandeur over their perfect little darlings, who have made his life a living hell for the last three years. The youngest one has almost driven Lukas to write out his email of resignation and consider pushing the damn send button. Then he wakes up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, thinking he might have just made another clusterfuck of his life.
The other kid he is dealing with today is a completely different story. He’s retaking Year 2 after being asked to leave the neighbouring senior school, something that is so buried and twisted in bad practice and cover ups that the headteacher can’t even begin to make it up.
Max Andersson. He’s a weird kid. Works hard, but is obviously troubled way beyond Lukas’s experience. Spends most of his time in class so lost in his head that Lukas sometimes struggles to get him to stand up at the end of the lesson. On top of that, he has a filthy mouth on him, and a completely erratic temper. According to the teachers’ lounge gossip, the kid has frequent panic attacks in between lessons. He has also failed to turn in any of the assignments in Lukas’s class, which is quite a problem since failing Biology means the kid won’t graduate. And that is something Lukas Myrtengren just doesn’t do. He still has a flawless record of never having failed a kid. His kids pass his classes, however hard he has to push them.
Failure is not an option. Not as long as Lukas is here.
TOM
Tom should never have been allowed to parent. It’s not that he doesn’t love the strange boy that he shares his life with. He absolutely adores his son, loves every little molecule in his far too skinny body. He will get off this bloody train right now and lay himself down on the tracks in front of the slightly smelly carriage he is on, if it will make Max’s life easier to bear.
He doesn’t understand how a seventeen-year-old kid can be so hard to deal with. And to be truthful, Max is almost an adult. A grown up. A responsible young man with a bright future. He hopes. Fuck, he will do anything to just make it better. To make Max see what an amazing kid he is. What an amazing life he can have, if he can just try a tiny little bit. Just for him.
Not that he blames Max. He has had a tough upbringing at times, when Tom hasn’t been alert enough to understand, and his parenting skills have sometimes lacked. When he hasn’t seen all the signs or the subtle hints. Tom is a fully qualified Doctor of Medicine. He has a surgical degree and has spent the last fifteen years putting the fine population of Stockholm back together at the Sergel Hospital’s emergency room, saving lives, one suture at a time. Yet, he hasn’t even seen it coming. He hasn’t spotted his own son becoming more and more unwell. His son is amazing, but he’s also a fucking twat. He loves him so much he sometimes thinks his heart is going to burst. The next minute he wants to smash his fist into the kid’s frankly filthy mouth.
They are so alike. Like they have been steeped in the same mould. Sometimes it scares him. The same tall, lanky bodies, impossibly long unruly hair that refuses to be defined as anything but mousy blond, despite the many highlighting disasters the two of them have been roped into by their longstanding mess of a hairdresser. Both of them always looking like they have dressed in the dark, and then been dragged through a hedge backwards most mornings.