Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle(112)

“I have faith.”

“Really? Can you tell me in all seriousness that you think I believe you’re innocent?”

Miles opened his mouth to say it, then closed it.

“Go ahead. Tell me. Do I think you’re innocent or guilty?”

Miles tried to remember whether Owen had ever said one way or the other, but he was pretty sure they’d never talked about it explicitly. Miles hadn’t wanted to—he didn’t want to know.

“Guilty,” Miles admitted. “But I assumed since you have a juvie shoplifting record, you’re okay with it.”

“I rest my case. That is bullshit, Miles. I know you’re innocent. I know it in my heart, my soul, my f*cking toes. I know you’re innocent. And I bet a lot of the people who work for you do, too, but you’ll never know that if you don’t talk to them.”

“What does this have to do with Nora?”

“Have you ever heard the saying that some things have to be seen to be believed?”

“Of course.”

“Well, some things have to be believed to be seen.”

Miles waited. Owen always had a point.

“Start acting like you’re innocent, Miles. See what happens.”

*

On the last full day of school before Christmas vacation, Nora broke the kids into teams and asked them to role-play saying no. The idea was to teach them to say no to social pressure so they’d be ready to say no to sexual pressure. They split up around the science lab and practiced the technique she’d taught them, noisy and as agitated as superheated molecules in a beaker.

This was today’s lesson plan, but Nora wished it weren’t, because she was stuck with her own thoughts—of Miles.

Three weeks ago, she’d flown home from Miles’s house, sandwiched between an overweight, talkative college student and a sullen, middle-aged businessman, and she hadn’t heard from him since. Not once.

At first she tried to contact him, partly because the act of dialing his phone number was a paltry kind of comfort—the sound of his voice, gruff on his voice mail, barely him, but fully him. All the Miles she had.

She left him message after message—phone, email, Facebook—but none of the messages contained the words she wanted to say, the words he needed to hear. She couldn’t find them. She didn’t have them.

I know you didn’t do it.

I believe you.

I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, you’re innocent.

But she couldn’t stop wishing for it. For the ability to give him what he wanted. For the ability to make things right, to bring him out of hiding.

She still missed him. It made no sense for her to miss someone she’d barely known, just as it had never made sense for her to love someone she’d just met. From the beginning, what she felt for Miles had defied logic, and yet it was the part of her life that, for the brief time it lasted, had felt the most right.

Being with Miles had been like teaching. It was what she did, what she was meant to do. When she taught, when she was with Miles, she was the most her. All the her came brimming to the surface, bubbled out.

Of course, with Miles, there was that whole other level of communication that she missed, too. She’d thought things with Henry were pretty good, sex-wise, but Miles had blown away her previous conceptions. He’d woken some sleeping monster, and she was twitchy and miserable, wanting him all the time. She kept going on stupid dates, but on the few dates that had segued into kissing, she had shut it down right away.

Not Miles.

It scared her, the possibility that she might never be able to kiss someone without thinking, Not Miles.

She blamed Henry for what had happened between Miles and her. Henry had stolen her ability to believe the best of people. When he’d said, “You’re too trusting,” he’d cast a kind of curse on her.

Henceforth, you will not trust.

He’d taken away her ability to be who Miles needed her to be. The timer she’d set for the role-play went off. “Back to your seats!” she called. “So—anyone want to talk about what this was like for them?”

“It was hard.”

There were murmurs of agreement. Good. She’d told them to give one another a tough time, to argue as forcefully as they would in a true social situation. Role-plays that didn’t mimic real life didn’t help them when the chips were down. “What made it hard?”

“Your brain gets all muddled up,” said Jenna, a skinny, slightly geeky brunette who reminded Nora of herself at the same age—a feeling that was both lovely and terrible. “You can’t think, and there’s all this stuff coming at you.”

“Anyone else have that experience?”

Hands went up.

“Anyone have strategies for dealing with that? The noise in your head?”

They shook their heads.

“Ask questions,” Nora said. “It slows things down. If your friend says, ‘Let’s sneak downtown during sixth period today,’ ask, ‘What will we do?’ Then name the trouble. Say, ‘That’s shoplifting, and if I do that, I could go to jail or have to pay a big fine.’ Suggest an alternative. ‘Instead of doing that, let’s spend the gift certificate I got for Christmas.’ Then turn and walk toward the alternative, so they have to follow you if they want to continue the conversation.”