Never Met a Stranger

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

In the shower at 9:30, a lunch meeting in two hours sounded doable. But somehow between then and now, Gavin lost track of time. He’s showered and dressed by ten, and Evie’s already ready, so when 11:15 rolls around and they haven’t left the apartment yet, he’s at a loss to explain why.

Maybe it’s because she’s so quiet watching TV. Cartoons first, then she plays a game on the Wii, and leaves him alone to critique the next round of stories for his upperclassman fiction workshop. Red pen in hand, one leg tucked up under him, he sits in front of his laptop in the small second bedroom he converted into an office and time just seems to disappear. He doesn’t hear the TV click off, or the tap tap tap of Evie’s little dress shoes on the hardwood floor in the hall. There’s a tentative knock on the open door, then a small voice so unlike his daughter’s usual harpy cry asks sweetly, “Is it time to go see the movie yet, Daddy?”

The movie.

Lunch.

Damn.

With a start, Gavin glances at the clock on the wall, but he’s already scrambling for his phone. The student papers get dumped unceremoniously on his chair when he stands. “Lunch first, remember, sweetie? Then the movie. Daddy has to meet with a student…”

“A kid like me?” Evie brightens. She’s outgoing and gregarious, already Miss Popularity in her second grade class. The prospect of meeting a fellow student only means one thing to her—the opportunity to make a new friend.

Gavin hates having to tell her, “Older than you, honey. A college student. A grown-up.”

Evie pouts. “A grown-up can’t be a student!”

“Sure they can.” Gavin checks his pockets to make sure he has everything—phone, wallet, keys. Nope, no keys. They’re hanging on a peg by the door, so he skirts around Evie and out of his study. She trails along behind him, the sound her shoes make punctuating his words. “You can be a student at any age. You can even go to school your whole life if you want to.”

She stops in mid-step and, when he turns, he sees her mouth gape comically. When she sees him looking, she opens it wider to show the extent of her shock. “No. Way. Who wants to go to school forever?”

Gavin laughs as he retrieves his keys. “I go to school every day just like you do.”

“Yeah, but you’re the teacher,” Evie points out. “That doesn’t count.”

Outside his apartment, Evie jumps on the top steps in the breezeway as he locks the door, then jiggles the handle to make sure it’s locked. When he skirts the railing towards the stairs, she jumps down ahead of him, little bunny hops that flutter her dress around her knees and bounce her ponytails on either side of her head. She’d wanted a mermaid braid down the back but Gavin had to admit defeat—he can’t braid hair, and even if he could, he isn’t sure what makes one braid mermaid-ish and another not. Ponytails he can do. At least they’re even, and the part down the center of her head is straight. He’s proud of that, even if she isn’t.

Downstairs, they exit the breezeway and Evie’s small hand slips into his as they head towards the parking lot. Halfway to his car, she squints up at him and asks, “Daddy? Do you get recess every day?”

Gavin smiles. Sometimes he thinks recess would be nice, particularly when he has a room full of bored freshmen with glazed stares watching the clock tick down to the end of class. “No, sweetie. No playtime for me.”

“My teacher doesn’t get recess either.” She says it so seriously, as if they’re discussing world politics or the war in Syria. He has to stifle a laugh. “That’s why I don’t want to be a teacher when I grow up. I like school okay but I don’t want to go if I can’t play outside, too. The swings are my favorite. Can we swing today, Daddy?”

His first impulse is to ask her, “Where?” His apartment complex doesn’t have a playground—the majority of his neighbors are elderly couples living off Social Security. But he learned early on that saying no is a sure way to trigger another tantrum. He can’t say yes, either, because she’ll hold him to it, and when he doesn’t deliver whatever it is he promised, she’ll throw a tantrum anyway.

So he goes with the old standby. “We’ll see, honey.” It isn’t exactly no, so she can’t get mad about it yet, but it isn’t yes, either, so if things don’t work out, she won’t be able to be too upset.

But she’s caught onto him, and with a dramatic sigh, she moans, “You always say that!”

“Lunch first,” he promises her. This much of their agenda is already set in stone. “Then the movie. You still want to see it, right?”

She beams up at him and gives a little skip, tugging on his hand. “Yeees, of course! You promised!”

“Then we’ll have to see about swinging after that,” Gavin says.

Evie clasps his hand in both of hers and hugs it under her chin. “Okay, but I really really want to, and if we go, I’ll love you forever.”

“You already love me forever,” Gavin jokes.

“Then I’ll love you more,” Evie promises.

Seriously, where does she come up with this stuff?