Flirting with Forever: A Hot Romantic Comedy(85)

“And you never bothered to inform her father?” I asked.

“Dad, it’s okay, the memes were stupid,” Riley said. “Katie was doing it to be popular, and that’s just sad. I decided to stop being friends with her because she wasn’t ever my friend in the first place.”

“Then what happened today?” I asked.

She took a breath. “I guess they got bored of making fun of me because they started targeting someone else. Her name is Holly and she’s super shy, I think because she has acne. The stuff they’re posting about her is even worse than anything they said about me. I wish I would have said something about it sooner or told a teacher or something, but I was trying to ignore them. Then today in PE I heard Katie telling Holly that she was so ugly, she should commit suicide.” She looked down again. “I kind of lost it. I ran over and smacked Katie in the face.”

“Good,” I said.

“Mr. St. James.” Principal Teague’s spine snapped straight and she shot me with a look that I was sure would freeze a middle schooler in their tracks.

But not me.

“I get it, you can’t have kids brawling at school. But someone needed to stand up for that poor girl.”

“We have a zero tolerance policy for violence,” the principal said. “Riley is suspended for the remainder of the school year.”

“And that’s it? Katie tells a kid to kill herself and Riley is the one who gets punished?”

“Obviously we’ll investigate the situation further and deal with Katie appropriately.”

“You do what you gotta do.” I stood. “But I’m proud of my daughter for defending someone who couldn’t defend herself. You clearly have a bullying problem at this school, Ms. Teague. I hope you can figure out a better way of dealing with it.”

Nora stood and Riley followed. I led them out to the parking lot, my blood still boiling, although my headache had become a dull throb behind my eyes.

I stopped on the sidewalk and rubbed the back of my neck. I had no idea what to say to Nora. We needed to resolve things one way or another but probably not in the parking lot of my daughter’s school. And not in front of Riley.

“Thanks for coming,” I said.

“Of course.” She hesitated and I avoided her eyes. “I should get going. I’ll talk to you later.”

I didn’t reply. Maybe I should have. But I just nodded.

She went to her car and Riley and I got in mine.

“What did you do?” Riley asked as she fastened her seatbelt.

“Excuse me?”

“What’s wrong with Nora? Did you break up with her? Why would you do that?”

I turned on the car. “I didn’t break up with her. There are just some things going on. It’s grown-up stuff. You don’t need to worry about it.”

“I am worried about it.”

“How about you worry about yourself. You’re the one who just got kicked out of school.”

“Me being kicked out of school is dumb and we both know it.”

I sighed as I pulled out onto the street. “For the record, you shouldn’t hit people. It’s not a good way to solve a problem. But I am proud of you for standing up for that girl.”

“I know I shouldn’t have smacked Katie. I was just so mad.”

“Of course you were. That was a terrible thing for her to say.” I paused. “All this stuff with that Ryan girl and Katie… is that why you were failing PE? Mean girl stuff?”

“Yeah. They made fun of me sometimes so I sat out to avoid them. But I figured I shouldn’t let them get to me.”

“You’re a pretty amazing kid, you know that?”

She smiled. “Thanks, Dad.”

“But you’re still grounded.”

She groaned. “How long?”

“Forever.”

“Dad.”

“Fine, you have to go help your grandpa with his landscaping project until school is out. You don’t get to sit around and paint when you should be at school.”

“Fine. I can do that. Now tell me what’s going on with Nora.”

“It’s none of your business.”

“Yes, it is. She’s part of my life too, you know.”

How could I explain this? There was no way I could tell Riley that Nora might have become her friend just to get to me. She’d be heartbroken. But she was right, Nora was a part of her life and I owed her at least a partial explanation.

“Nora wrote an article about dating a single dad that was hurtful to me. It said a lot of stuff that I disagree with and made me realize our relationship probably wasn’t what I thought it was.”

“What did she say about it?”

“What do you mean?”

“When you asked her why she wrote it, what did she say?”

It started to rain so I turned on the windshield wipers. “We haven’t really talked about it.”

“So you don’t know why she wrote that stuff? Or even if she did write it?”

“Of course she wrote it. It’s her column.”

“Dad,” she said, her tone filled with exasperation. “She said they edit her stuff a lot and it bothers her because sometimes they make really big changes.”