“Now!” Merida called from somewhere beyond the living room we were standing in—my guess was the kitchen.
Raleigh sighed, looking between me and her brother, then to her father, and back again.
“Don’t do anything stupid.” Raleigh looked first at her father, then to her brother.
With that, she left, leaving me alone with two men who didn’t look anywhere near as accepting of me as they’d been when Raleigh had been standing there.
“So…” Croft started. “You finally decided to give her the time of day?”
I tilted my head. “I what?”
His eyes narrowed, and he opened his mouth to say something before Gates slammed his hand on Croft’s shoulder.
Just when I was about to ask ‘what’ a second time, Camryn, another teacher from the school that Raleigh and I worked at, came bustling in, a frazzled look on her face.
“Hi, Gates. Douche. Ezra,” Camryn said on her way past.
I followed her whirlwind, then turned to face ‘douche.’
“Douche?” I asked carefully.
Gates started to laugh. “Seems my children suck at seeing what’s right in front of their eyes.”
With that cryptic statement, Gates walked away calling out for me to follow. “Come on. I have good beer.”
I followed, because who the hell wouldn’t want good beer? Especially amongst this crowd.
It was two hours later, when dinner was consumed, and I was forced to the back porch with Croft and Gates once again, when it happened.
Camryn, who I learned was Raleigh’s best friend, and Merida, along with Raleigh, were in the kitchen cleaning dishes, then bringing dessert out.
I, on the other hand, was outside even though I wanted to be inside to help them clean. But, when I’d made that attempt, Raleigh had shaken her head and ushered me into the back yard, which was where I now found myself.
“So…how did you and my baby sister start being a thing?” Croft questioned.
I shrugged. “I saw her a bit at school this year, and she took over my sex-ed class…”
“She took over your sex-ed class?” Croft’s voice rose. “Isn’t that a seniors’ class?”
I nodded. “Yeah. How’d you know?”
“Same high school, bro. And I’m not that old.” He paused. “But Raleigh doesn’t teach seniors. That was the agreement.”
I didn’t have any idea what he was speaking of. “Agreement?”
“Yeah,” he looked at me. “When Raleigh started working for Gun Barrel ISD, part of the agreement when she signed on was that she wouldn’t be assigned any age levels over freshman.” He looked at me like I was crazy. “I don’t…why would they do that to her knowing that she has panic attacks?”
My stomach dropped. “Panic attacks?”
I’d heard nothing of any panic attacks. Not from the principal that I’d addressed it with to find help with my class, and not from Raleigh.
“Yeah. When she was attacked while being a student teacher during her schooling, she suffered some PTSD. Now, any time she gets close to the bigger boys, she kind of freezes up. Hyperventilates. That’s why we’re really careful about her being at sporting events. If she does go, one of us is always with her.”
I felt bile rising up the back of my throat.
“I don’t…I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I admitted. “She never…”
The sheer horror of what he was insinuating made me want to vomit.
“She never told you,” Gates supplied, sounding just as miffed as Croft.
And, if what I was understanding was true, he had a reason to be.
The more I sat there and thought about it, the more that it made sense.
A sick sort of sense that made me want to throw up the good food I’d just consumed.
“Shit,” I said, running my hands through my hair. “She told me that she was okay with it.”
“More like, she told you what everyone wanted to hear,” Croft grumbled. “What do you want to bet that they threatened her job?”
I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to be partially responsible for what she’d gone through, either.
I closed my eyes. “What happened?”
That was when the two men took ten painstaking minutes to explain what had happened to Raleigh, and why she was the way she was.
And now everything became clear.
Why she became antsy when she was around the baseball team. Why she avoided sporting games—because most of them were with large, rowdy boys that were the very thing that scared her.
And, to make matters worse, she’d been terrified to do a class with seniors, and I’d been the one to make it happen.
“Fuck,” I groaned.
Before we could talk any more about it, though, the door opened and Camryn walked out, followed shortly by Merida.
Raleigh was the last one out, and she smiled at me as she took a step over the threshold.
In her hand was a bottle of beer for me, and a can of Dr. Pepper for her.
She’d just made it to where she was reaching back for the doorknob when she tripped on air and went flying.