While Robin was sipping Chianti, Jake was concentrating on what the instructor was saying about load balances. Engineering II was not his favorite class to begin with, but it was a hell of a lot harder with Cole on the brain. When he’d confronted Cole at his Mom’s, the kid had sat slumped down on the couch, his spindly legs spread wide apart, glaring. “You’re going to school, Cole,” Jake had said. “If I have to take you myself every single day, I will.”
“When are you gonna stop acting like you’re my father? You ain’t my father! You don’t have no say over me!” Cole had instantly shot back.
“Like hell I don’t have any say over you. I may not be your father, but I am your uncle, and like I told you, I’m all you’ve got.”
“Everyone’s always telling me what I don’t got,” he’d complained.
“Maybe what I need to do is have a visit with your school to see if something else is going on that causes you to skip class and not learn proper English,” Jake had snapped.
Cole’s brown eyes had grown wide at that threat. “I don’t want you to go to my school.”
“All the more reason to go then,” Jake had said. “If you won’t go to school like you’re supposed to, then I’ll go down there and find out what’s up.”
“I don’t have to take this shit!” Cole shouted and had vaulted off the couch, bounding up the stairs two at a time.
“You watch your mouth!” Mom had shouted up after him. They heard the slam of his door, and Mom had sighed wearily. “I might as well be raising Ross all over again.”
Jake had left before she could start her litany of complaints.
He was late for class, sneaking into the last seat. “Thanks for deciding to join us this evening, Mr. Manning,” the grad student instructor drawled. Jake frowned as the rest of the class turned around to have a look. Smirking, the instructor resumed his lecture, and Jake tried to concentrate. But by the end of the class, having lost most of what the instructor had said, he waited impatiently for last week’s assignments to be handed out. When the instructor at last came to Jake, he shook his head, handed him a paper that had a bright red D scrawled across the top. “You’re going to have to apply yourself, Mr. Manning, if you want to pass this course. There are names of students who will tutor for a fee in the library. I suggest you call one.”
Jake pushed down the desire to deck the pompous smart-ass, and went to find Lindy.
She had picked a table in the corner of the cafe, had spread her papers wide so no one would join her. Her face lit up when Jake approached. “I finished the assignment for Planning III,” she said happily, “so I’m all yours. I figured you didn’t have much time to do the assignment, but I think between the two of us we can work through it tonight.”
He couldn’t help but wince inwardly at her smile. Lindy was the kind of girl that could make a man very happy, such a nice girl that he thought he really ought to have his head examined. But the surprising and alarming truth was, he found an overbearing, stuck-up prima donna more interesting than the June Cleaver scene. He sighed, dropped his backpack, and folded his arms on top of the table. “Lindy, we really have to talk,” he said and watched the smile fade like a light from her attractive face.
Chapter Twelve
Evan drove her home, barely managed a good night. Robin let herself in through the kitchen, paused there to toss her doggy bag of ravioli into the fridge (she was not the type to leave food behind when her cupboard was Sahara-desert bare), then walked through a house as empty as she felt inside.
She didn’t like the feeling of emptiness. She didn’t like hurting Evan, either, or the fact that she couldn’t seem to form decent relationships. It always felt like there was some hard and high wall she was struggling to climb, but to what? God, who knew? She was too tired to think about it, thought it funny that a day of accomplishing absolutely nothing could exhaust her so. The moment her head hit the pillow, she fell into a deep sleep, interrupted only by one of those pesky dreams in which she was drowning.
When she awoke the next morning, she felt very strange, as if someone else had stopped by to inhabit her skin. The antsy feeling was so unlike her and so uncomfortable that she hurried out to the dining room to work, anxious to do something, anything, to make the feeling go away. She was still in her Curious George pj’s, engrossed in her research of bubble wrap when Jake let himself in the back door, carrying three pink flamingos and an Igloo lunch box.