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  “Thank you for coming!” she said. She wasn’t as emotional as I was, but she also still had another two showings to get through, one Saturday and then one on Sunday. She probably wasn’t going to let herself get emotional until it was all said and done.

  “How could I not?”

  “Because I thought maybe you’d have club stuff to attend to.”

  I shook my head vigorously.

  “I’m taking a step back from that, Alyssa. I’m going to be home more.”

  I could see her eyes widening in shock. I cursed myself for dropping that tidbit here. I didn’t want tonight to be about me, but by revealing that…

  “Hey, who’s your director?” I said, quickly changing the topic back to her.

  “Oh, that’s Miss Ross; let me get her.”

  Alyssa went around a corner then behind the stage. I folded my arms, shaking my head to myself. I needed some practice at not being out of the club. I needed some practice being Vance Newhouse, not Sensei.

  “Dad!”

  Alyssa came out seconds later, Ms. Ross trailing her.

  And damn if this Ms. Ross wasn’t one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. She was on the shorter side, just a couple of inches over five feet, but she was lithe, with gorgeous blonde hair, pale skin, and flush red cheeks. She looked very attractive and very cute.

  This could be interesting.

  Chapter 2: Courtney

  I couldn’t lie.

  I was just trying to stay awake for the play. I was so hungover and so tired from the week that the very play that I had directed and produced for a bunch of ambitious, wide-eyed teenagers could not keep me awake.

  It had been a rough week. Seeing the Savage Saints on TV had really gotten to me in a way I wasn’t particularly proud of. It had reminded me of my husband’s murder, and after breaking that sixty-day sobriety streak, well, the wheels really came off.

  In short, I was not very good at preventing one small mistake from turning into a massive run of errors.

  Over the next week, up until this very Friday, I don’t think a night went by where I didn’t have a drink. I know I had set some rules for myself, but I was quite terrible at following them. In fact, I was perfect at not following them. Every single night, without fail, I’d have at least four glasses of wine.

  The worst part of it was, I’d even gone to some meetings for Alcoholics Anonymous to try and get a hold on this. People were much more sympathetic and understanding than I had feared. I assumed that because I had relapsed after two months of being clean, I’d get judged and stared at, but I avoided that for the most part.

  Still, there was no meeting for survivors of gang violence. That group just didn’t exist, and it especially didn’t exist in the town of Green Hills. I was alone in that regard, and so I struggled to cope with it.

  I’d started the night by standing before all of my students, thanking them all for their efforts as I struggled not to show that I was hungover. Some of the older ones could probably tell something was up by my slow movements and other factors, but I put on a pretty enough face that no one said anything. Most of them were probably burdened by the heaviness of “Our Town,” a rather far cry from the cheerful, upbeat musicals we had done my first few years as a teacher.

  Probably says something about me that I’ve gone from “Oklahoma” and “Anything Goes” to the play that makes people cry.

  Fortunately, the play went so well that I couldn’t help but be in awe of what I saw. Alyssa Newhouse, most notably, stood above the rest. Though she was just a freshman, I could tell already that she was going to be a star well beyond what anyone else had ever been at this school. Some of the seniors had been jealous that she had gotten such a prominent role in the play, but I didn’t care. I was there to put on a good production, not feed the ego of teenagers.

  Suddenly, applause broke out. I snapped out of my stupor and also applauded, rising out of my seat. The entire play just transpired, and I had no idea that it had. Am I that in my own head that I can’t even do my job?

  Fuck, I need to lay off the drinking.

  I slowly made my way backstage, trying to avoid the eyes of the adults and the parents who would undoubtedly recognize me as the director and realize that I had probably come close to dozing off multiple times. Thankfully, none of the teachers or the school’s administration had sat near the front, as they wanted to give room to the parents to sit. It made my life kind of easier when the people who saw me most frequently spent the least amount of time with me.

  Once I got backstage, I thanked each student for their contributions, but the person I was most eager to see was Alyssa, and not just because of her talent.

  Alyssa, more than anyone else, reminded me of myself when I was younger—tough but smart as hell; strong but cheerful; and well liked. I was Alyssa Newhouse before everything that had happened with my husband, and I almost saw it as a sort of duty to make Alyssa as successful as possible. Maybe if I did that, at least someone in Green Hills with some acting talent could go far—maybe even as far as a little bit south to Hollywood.

  “Alyssa, I’m so proud of you,” I said, embracing her in a hug. “For such a young girl, you have such a presence on stage.”

  “Aww, thank you, Ms. Ross,” she said. “Can I introduce you to my father?”

  “Sure,” I said, not thinking anything of it.

  Alyssa, though, moved awfully fast when she heard me say yes, making me wonder if her father was someone of importance. She grabbed my wrist when she did so as if it was of the utmost urgency that I get to meet her father.

  I turned the corner, and she took me to her father.

  “Ms. Ross, this is my dad, Vance.”

  I had to admit, upon first glance, he was very handsome. He had dark green eyes, the right shape for a bald head, and a well-defined figure. He had a beard that was starting to show signs of age with some silver in it, but for the most part, he still looked very young.

  He also looked incredibly familiar, like I had seen him somewhere before. I couldn’t place where—maybe I’d seen him at one of the parent-teacher conferences, or maybe I had just seen him out and about in Green Hills. A man as handsome as him would certainly draw eyes, especially as a father.

  But that didn’t quite sit right with me. I felt like there was a different reason that I knew him, a reason that had nothing to do with how he looked… but in my hungover and exhausted state, I couldn’t quite place where.

  “Ms. Ross, you did a marvelous job with the show; thank you so much for all you did.”

  He extended his hand, and I took it. He had a natural ease to the way he spoke; it was almost like his day job was as a radio DJ, easily able to connect to anyone and everyone.

  “Well, I just unearthed the talent her parents must have given her.”

  Vance’s smile flickered for just a second before he brought it back up. Her mother. She’s not here. She must…

  Don’t make assumptions. But I think it’s fair to say her parents are separated in some fashion.

  “It all came from her mother,” Vance said.

  Came… not comes… so… is she gone?

  “But I think a woman like you, Ms. Ross, did the most in unearthing her talent.”

  “Oh,” I said, suddenly feeling a heated rush in me. “You do need that natural bit first.”

  Was Vance flirting with me? Was he making moves on me… in front of his daughter? No, that didn’t seem right. He was probably naturally this charming and charismatic, this easily able to make connections and give compliments.

  “Genetics play a role, sure, but you know, Gladwell said you need ten thousand hours of practice to be good at anything. Heaven knows that it’s not me who is helping her practice!”

  He politely laughed at his joke, but I was feeling something very different—impressed. References Gladwell? I can see where Alyssa gets her smarts from.

  Makes me wonder who her mother is or was. If he’s this smart, and she’s this smar
t, Mom must have been a genius.

  “It helps, anyway, for her to have someone so youthful like yourself,” he continued.

  I found myself feeling strangely attracted and interested in what he had to say. The hangover, ironically, was probably helping that cause—the usual blockade I would have thrown up to prevent myself from flirting or engaging with the parents of my kids was not present.

  But I don’t even think he was trying to flirt with me. I’d definitely had fathers and older brothers of students flirt with me before, and it was always painful when they did so. I could never be caught so much as touching the arm of anyone, let alone doing anything else; that was grounds for getting fired faster than I could snap my fingers.

  And yet, his very act of flirting by not flirting was getting to me like nothing else ever had. It was effortless.

  “She needs someone that she can feel connected to when she practices. Someone beautiful like her, someone smart like her, someone sweet like her.”

  “Oh, well, thank you, uh, Vance,” I said, slowly finding myself becoming weaker and weaker by the moment.

  God bless Alyssa, though, because I think she picked up on what her Dad was doing. She grabbed his wrist, essentially tugging him away from me.

  “Dad, we gotta go,” she said, but there didn’t seem to be any usual teenage embarrassment in her voice. If I didn’t know any better, I would swear that she set this up herself. Like she wanted to see us flirt and then pull us apart when things started to get too intense.

  That’s probably just my exhausted brain talking, though. I know better.

  “Thanks, Ms. Ross, for everything. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “You got it,” I said, a weary smile on my face. “Be here no later than an hour and a half before show time.”

  Vance left with one more look. He didn’t wink or make any other expression, but that was just as well—if he had, it would have felt very out of character with the whole experience.

  Still, that was an encounter that I could not get out of my mind, even as I met the other parents and shook their hands and congratulated their son or daughter before them. Vance was probably a bit old for my tastes; I was thirty-one, while he was probably in his early forties at best.

  But from what I saw, he had the body of someone closer to my age, and he had the smarts and the charm of someone I would have met in my college years—someone like my former husband.

  No, don’t go down that path. You had a great night. Don’t ruin it by going down a dark road.

  I avoided that by heading home as soon as I saw that every student had their parent or someone else picking them up and taking them home. I needed some detachment from students and parents who reminded me of myself and Nathaniel.

  As soon as I got home, I was practically dying of a lack of “proper hydration.” I turned on the TV to an old rerun of Friends, went to the kitchen, and grabbed the bottle of wine. I poured myself a glass and held it to my nose.

  And then I paused.

  That guy you met tonight? Vance? Do you really think he’d be attracted to an alcoholic?

  And Alyssa, for that matter. Do you think someone like her is going to reach her full potential if her teacher is drunk and hungover all the time?

  Remember how you felt when you were sober.

  I also knew that logic wasn’t something that worked with me or with most addicts—a word that I freely admitted I was, but a word that had lost its shock value in getting me to stop. It took emotional experiences and emotional moments to get someone to stop. I’d read stories of people who stopped because of a near-death experience or because of the loss of a loved one but even then there were no guarantees.

  It took framing it as Alyssa not reaching her potential, of me not being able to teach my students, of me being an embarrassing mess on future dates, for me to get control of myself.

  Well, I didn’t control, I would say. Part of my weekly meetings were about letting go, giving it up to a higher power.

  But I did have enough control to dump the glass of wine down the drain and put the bottle of wine in one of the random bottom cabinets where I would hopefully forget about it.

  The rest of the night was rough; I couldn’t lie. The craving for a drink was strong.

  For at least one night, though, thanks to the realization that I could make a real difference and that my actions were appreciated, I was able to put that craving to the side in favor of a sober morning without a hangover.

  Chapter 3: Sensei

  I knew exactly what I was doing.

  I was getting “practice” in. Proving to myself I still had it.

  That’s what I told myself as I spoke with Ms. Ross, or Courtney, if memory served me right. As soon as I saw Courtney, I figured that it would be a chance to remind myself what it was like to flirt with someone.

  I didn’t think that I was going to be ready to date anytime soon. That wasn’t going to be the case for me, not until I made peace with how Olivia had died and had told the truth to others. But, if I was going to be free from the club, I couldn’t just rely on the club to bring me women—and so, in that light, it made sense.

  That’s what I told myself, at least.

  “Were you nervous beforehand?” I said, making conversation as we headed to my bike.

  “Nah,” Alyssa said. “The nerve-wracking part is in the buildup to the actual day. It’s when you first have to leave your playbook behind and you have to do everything by line. That’s the hard part. Once you get this far, Dad, it’s easy. You just go out there and do what you’ve practiced.”

  “Yeah?” I asked. “You make it sound so easy. I would be a nervous wreck out there!”

  Alyssa laughed, looked at me for a second, and then got a wide-eyed smirk that made me realize I was about to get some heavy-hitting grief from her.

  “You didn’t seem like a nervous wreck about it when you flirted with Miss Ross.”

  Damn! She does have her mother’s biting sense of humor.

  “Hey now, I was just making conversation with her.”

  “Conversation, uh huh. Like how you called her beautiful and youthful?”

  “I…”

  OK, maybe that was a little flirtatious. Don’t even pretend like you weren’t trying to do that, Sensei. Or, Vance.

  Damn, I really do need to step back from the club.

  “I’ll admit I thought that she was cute,” I said. “She’s definitely not your typical looking theater teacher.”

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?” Alyssa said, glaring at me.

  Sometimes, my old-school thinking could get me in trouble with my little girl, who was passionate and fiery about what she believed in. I had in my head the idea of an old lady with curly gray hair and reading glasses watching the play unfold, maybe with a little bit of a Southern accent to boot as well. It would’ve been what I would have encountered as a teenager.

  Let’s just say that Courtney was the exact opposite of that, and Alyssa seemed to have no hesitation with calling me out for thinking otherwise.

  “Just, that, you know, from what I experienced back in my day, maybe it was different. You know? I have my view on things, and you have—”

  “Oh, hush, Dad.”

  I chuckled but obeyed. Alyssa had her control over me, that was for sure.

  It also helped that right then, we got to my bike. I reached into the compartment, handing her my helmet. By now, her riding with me was old hat; she knew what to do, she knew how to hold on, and she didn’t freak out as other first time riders did. She was someone who, when she got her license, would also learn how to ride a bike, although that had as much to do with her own curiosity as it did with a desire to actually become a full-time biker. Heavens, no, she is going nowhere near the Saints. Last thing I need is for my daughter to become a friend of the club.

  The other adults, though, definitely weren’t used to it. Whenever they saw Alyssa getting on, they would shoot me dirty looks, thinking me an irresponsible
father. Because I never wore my cut around the school, many of them felt they could stare me down and intimidate me, but I just laughed.

  If they knew that I was a member of the Savage Saints, I’m not sure many of them would have so directly stared at me.

  Of course, that’s assuming I’m still a member here in a short while. I mean, I will be, but it won’t be the same. It’ll be impossible for me to be.

  I revved the engine, waited for Alyssa to pat my shoulder twice to let me know she was ready, let her wrap her arms around my waist, and headed out of the lot. Because of the noise of the engine, we couldn’t talk, but my mind was on her the whole time. I might have been the safest rider of anyone in all of the Savage Saints.

  It carried over outside of my rides with Alyssa, too. Once I got in the habit of doing things like following the speed limits, signaling for turns, and not cutting off people for the laughs, I did it even when Alyssa was off-bike. It was only during time-sensitive tasks for the Saints that I sped, and even then, I mostly went with the flow of the other riders, never speeding ahead.

  If I was being fully honest, though, I knew where I could trace my extreme safety back to—the time when my lack of safety had killed my wife.

  We pulled up to my house a short while later. I pulled out my cut from the compartment once Alyssa got off and hung it in the garage as we both walked inside. Alyssa grabbed a bottle of water and drank it.

  “Got a lot of homework?” I asked.

  “Nope, actually was able to get it done before the play started.”

  “You weren’t…” I said, stopping myself before I asked the stupid question.

  “Nervous? Nope, I’m not you,” she said with her tongue sticking out. “Although, again, you weren’t nervous around Ms. Ross. Maybe you and her could… you know…”

  I sighed, although I’d be lying if I said the thought of us never crossed my mind. She was a very attractive woman, and the fact that she worked with kids told me she would make a great mother figure. I just wasn’t in a position to date; that was true whether Courtney Ross was a drama teacher or an international model.