Bishop: A True Lover's Story

“Bullshit.”

“I didn’t even try to find you a good mother. I just screwed around. I watched you go in and out of juvenile detention. And instead of being pissed for losing my little homie for a while, I should’ve been trying to make a way to keep you from constantly going back.”

“Dad,” Bishop whispered. “You did your best as a fucking teenager, okay. I could’ve ended up in a dumpster or traded for drugs. But you kept me around.”

“Well, shit.” Mike barked a pained laugh. “That’s the standard I’m compared to. Fuck, dude.”

Bishop struggled to loosen his jaw. “Well, my father’s here now and I um… I could really use your help, man. This is a lot…” Bishop pointed at the closed laptop.

His dad stood and gripped his shoulder. “It’s me and you, lil homie. We got this.”

“Where are you going? Don’t we need to finish?” Bishop asked.

“First thing it said we have to do is go down there and register for the testing and pay the fee. That can’t be done online.” Mike shoved his boots on and grabbed his keys. “We’ll stop at the Adult Learning Center on the way to the job site and knock that out. Text Manny and tell him we’ll be a couple hours late.”

Bishop wanted to grab his dad and hug him, but he just followed him out the door, his chest feeling lighter than it had in months. He finally had some sort of plan, and also some much-needed help. It’d been difficult to ask for, but he was glad he had. Wood used to tell him that a good man offered his help, but it took a wise man to know when to ask for it.

~

Bishop was glad there wasn’t a line or a big, open waiting area. He and Mike walked straight up to the information desk where three women sat talking and drinking coffee.

One with a wide smile and bright blue eyes looked up to acknowledge them. Her eyes bounced back and forth between them, her smile getting impossibly wider. “Good morning. How can I help you?” Her tone was professional.

“Yes, my son wants to sign up to take the evaluation testing for the GED prep courses.” Mike’s deep voice got the attention of the other two women behind the long, waist-high desk.

“Your son?” The black woman, with a bun drawn so tight on top of her head it pulled at the corners of her eyes kept staring. “Get outta here. You look like brothers.”

“Twins.” The other one giggled.

“No, ladies.” His father immediately turned on the charm like he used to do when Bishop was a kid and they were trying to secure a place to stay for the night. Mike loved women, that was no secret, but he had a steady lady now. However, he didn’t mind flirting to see if he still had it. Bishop turned his head to hide his frown. “Nope. Not brothers. This is my boy. He’s lucky I decided to share these good genes with him.”

“He sure is.” Blue eyes batted her long blonde lashes.

Mike leaned on the desk, his thick biceps bulging as he braced himself against the low surface. “Now that’s not fair. Why would this learning center put three pretty ladies right here in the front? Don’t they know how distracting you all are? I had some questions about the testing, but I forgot what they were.”

Kill me. Bishop wasn’t in the mood for much more of this crap. It wasn’t as if Mike was going to charm these women into giving him a cheat sheet, or better yet take the damn thing for him. “Dad,” Bishop murmured. Giving him a stern look that he was sure he could interpret. Move-it-the-fuck-along.

The women soaked up the attention, but finally the black woman broke free from his dad’s trance and started clacking away on the keyboard. “We have testing Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. So, you’re here at the perfect time. I can sign you in. It’s not crowded back there, we only have two other people for evaluation testing.”

Shit. Test right now? Bishop didn’t think he’d have to actually do anything today. Fuck. He thought they’d give him a bunch of pamphlets and paperwork to complete first.

“That sounds great. Thank you, girls,” Mike said, taking the clipboard of forms and grabbing a pen from the holder. “about how long does it take?”

Bishop was shitting bricks, and nobody was the wiser. His head pounded, and his jaw was clenched so tight it made his ears hurt.

Blue eyes shrugged, “Not long, about a half hour to forty-five minutes. There are fifteen questions each at various grade levels for each of the five GED sections. Math, Science, Social Studies, Language Arts sections, writing and reading. There’s no certain grade you need to make in order to enroll. We take all levels.”