something?”
“No. She’s nice.”
“But do you get in trouble?”
“Not yet. Kind of. I don’t know. Are we calling Mom tonight?”
“No, but I’ll help you write an email to her.”
“Okay.”
“Ryder. Why does your teacher say you’re talking too much in class?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask her? Can we get pizza for dinner?”
God dammit. He gets the evasiveness from his mother. He gets the talent for driving me nuts from his mother. But he’s still the greatest kid ever.
And now I totally want pizza for dinner.
The phone in my hand vibrates with an incoming call from an unknown number. Normally I’d ignore it, but I now realize I’ve gotten a couple of missed calls from this number recently. I think I know exactly who this is.
“We aren’t done talking about this, buddy.” I stride out of the kitchen and to my home office before answering. “Hello,” I say in a tone that is perhaps a little-to-a lot more gruff than usual.
I can hear air blowing out of the person’s nose, and I swear I can hear eyeballs rolling too. “Mr. Vega?”
Well, I was not expecting such a sexy voice on the other end of the line.
“Yes.”
“This is Miss Stiles. Ryder’s teacher.”
I was definitely not expecting Miss Stiles to sound young and hot.
There’s no photo of her up on the school website, so I’ve been picturing the teacher from that picture book I used to read to Ryder—Miss Nelson is Missing. Viola Swamp. With the creepy witch nails and the potato nose and the mole on her pointy chin.
“Hi. I just got your email. I was going to respond.”
“Great! Are you able to come in after school?”
Now I can hear the distinct sound of a wineglass being placed on a table, followed immediately by the sound of the glass hitting the table and Miss Stiles saying “shhhhhiiiit!” and rustling things around.
“Everything all right over there, Miss Stiles?”
“Yes! Shhhhh—hang on a second, I have to—hang on.”
She drops the phone, and I’m treated to a mumbled monologue that begins with “Fucking balls!” and ends with “motherfucking cocksucker—Atticus, no! Don’t lick that! No!”
And then for about five seconds, I can hear the unmistakable score to Cinema Paradiso in the background before it gets switched off.
There’s a moment when I can just hear her exhaling into her phone. I can’t tell what she’s doing, but she’s moving around and exhaling, and I fucking like what I’m hearing. More than I do when she’s talking. What exactly are you doing over there, Miss Stiles?
“Hi. You still there?” she finally asks.
“Yes. How’s it goin’?”
“Well, I had to wipe something up with my shirt so my dog wouldn’t drink it, but everything’s fine now.”
Does that mean she took her top off to wipe it up? She sounds topless. Exacerbated and topless.
“I hope it was white and not red.”
She almost laughs. “It was white. Hopefully I haven’t ruined the remote control. So can you come in for a quick meeting? It would be best if we could all talk face-to-face. The three of us.”
“Was that Cinema Paradiso I heard in the background?”
A brief pause. “Yes.”
“Are you watching it?”
After another brief pause, she answers. “I was about to start it. Or finish it. Sometimes I just like to watch the ending. With all the kisses.”
So do I.
Miss Stiles is a romantic.
“Would you be able to come in this week?”
Miss Stiles is impatient.
“Could you maybe elaborate on how exactly my son’s talking is disruptive?”
A sigh.
Miss Stiles is annoyed.
“Like I said in the email, it’s mildly disruptive behavior so far. And he is a very bright student. But he talks a lot in class. About topics that are not directly related to what I’m teaching, and he doesn’t raise his hand or wait for me to call on him. He gets the other kids at his table worked-up about things, and it can take me a while to get everyone back on track.”
“What topics, exactly, does he bring up?”
Another brief pause. “That’s not necessarily the issue. The issue is that we discussed the classroom rules about talking on the first day, and he continues to disregard them.”
“This hasn’t been an issue for him before, you know?”
“I’m aware of that, yes.”
“My kid is not a troublemaker. Maybe you just didn’t explain the class rules in a way that he understands.”
“At no point did I refer to Ryder as a troublemaker, sir.”
Sir?
Why does my cock like it so much when she calls me sir like a sassy little teenager?
She clears her throat. “I didn’t mean