Getting Schooled (Getting Some #1)(27)

“You know, that’s really deep, Garrett. Grown-up you is deep.”

He grins wickedly. “It turns you on, doesn’t it?”

“I’m not gonna lie . . . it’s pretty hot.”

He stretches his arms above his head, flexing all those muscles. “Yeah, I know.”

And that’s how it goes for the next few hours. We tease and laugh, about teaching and about life.

“How do I make the kids think I’m the bomb-dot-com?”

“Never saying ‘the bomb-dot-com’ would be a good start.”

I think back, remembering how I would roll my eyes every time my parents said “hip” or “far out” or “psychedelic.” How ancient it made them seem. My face screws up as I try to guess the current teenage lingo.

“Rad?”

“Nope.”

“Totally tubular?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Bitchin’?”

Garrett cringes. “Jesus, no.”

I laugh. “Okay, then what’s the new cool word for ‘cool’?”

He leans forward, legs spread, resting his elbows. “‘Cool’ is still cool. And if you really want to take it up a notch, throw in a ‘dank.’”

I squint at him. “Dank doesn’t sound cool.”

“Don’t overanalyze it . . . just trust me. Dank is cool.”

I take a sip of wine and lean forward too—until our arms are just inches apart.

“What else?”

“Thick,” Garrett says confidently.

“Thick is good?”

He nods. “Thick is very good. Try it in a sentence.”

I tap into my inner dirty Dr. Seuss. “Garrett’s dick is thick.”

He gives me the thumbs-up.

“I approve of this message.”

And we both laugh.

A little while later, Garrett asks, “Why aren’t you married, yet?”

I snort, giving him the bitch-brow. “My sister’s gotten to you, hasn’t she?”

A chuckle rumbles in Garrett’s throat.

I turn the tables back on him. “Why aren’t you married yet?

“No hard and fast reason.” He shrugs easily, the way he always did. “I just haven’t met someone I wanted to marry. Or who wanted to marry me.”

“Same.”

“So, no serious relationships?”

Now it’s my turn to shrug. “I’ve had relationships. I don’t know if I’d call them serious.”

“So . . . you’re saying you still like me most of all? I’m still the number one boyfriend?”

“This matters to you?”

“You’ve known me since I was fifteen years old. When has being number one not mattered to me, Callie?”

I roll my eyes, evading the question. Because Garrett’s cocky enough . . . and yes, he’s still number one in my book.



~



And then, even later, we sit in our chairs, facing each other. The air is quieter and so are our voices. Snoopy sleeps on the ground between us as I pet him in long, slow strokes.

Garrett lifts his hand, drawing his thumb across my top lip, over the small white scar above it.

“That’s new. What happened there? Wild night out with the girls?”

“No. I got mugged.”

Garrett goes still and tense.

“What? When?”

I tilt my chin up towards the stars, remembering. “Mmm. It was my last year of graduate school. I was walking home from campus at night and this guy just blindsided me, punched me, split my lip open—took my bag, my computer.”

Garrett frowns hard at the scar, like he wants to scare it away.

“It could’ve been worse. I only needed four stiches.”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Callie.”

And then I tell him something I never thought I would.

“I wanted to call you when it happened.”

The words float between us for a quiet moment, heavy and meaningful.

“I didn’t tell my parents or Colleen; they would’ve freaked out. But after it happened . . . I wanted to call you so bad. To hear your voice. I actually picked up my phone and started to dial your number.”

Garrett’s eyes drift intently across my face. And his voice is jagged but gentle.

“Why didn’t you?”

I shake my head. “It’d been six years since we’d talked. I didn’t know what you would say.”

He swallows roughly, then clears his throat. “Do you want to know what I would’ve said?”

And it’s like we’re in a time machine bubble—like every version of ourselves, the past and the present, the young Callie and Garrett and the older, meld into one.

“Yes, tell me.”

Garrett’s thumb skims over the scar again, then down, brushing my chin.

“I would’ve asked you where you were. And then I would’ve gotten on a plane or a train or a boat, or I would’ve fucking walked to get to you, if I had to. And when I was with you, I would’ve wrapped you in my arms and promised that nothing, no one, would ever hurt you again. Not as long as I was there.”

My eyes go warm and wet, but I don’t cry. Emotion pierces my chest, that feeling of being cared for, protected, and wanted. And the bones in my rib cage go limp and liquid with all the tenderness I feel for him.