Page 56 of Fighting For You

"I'm not going back to school."

The restaurant noise filled the space where my voice had been. Silverware clinking. A couple laughing two tables over. The bartender shaking something behind the bar.

"What do you mean you're not going back to school?"

"I mean I'm not enrolling for the fall. I've thought about it, and I'm better off working. I'm making real money at the shop. I'm learning a trade. I don't need a diploma to do what I'm doing."

"Ian, you promised me."

"I know what I said. But things are different now. I have a job that's paying me well, and I'm good at it. If I keep working, I don't have to depend on you for money anymore. You've been carrying me for six years, Nora. Let me carry myself."

I stared at him across the table. The button-down shirt. The new shoes. The dinner at a restaurant he could barely afford. All of it paid for by a job at a shop I'd never been inside.

"Ian, I've told you already. You don't have to worry about money. That has never been your problem to solve. You just need to finish one more year. One year, and you have your diploma. Can't you work and go to school at the same time?"

He looked at me for a long moment. Then he exhaled and sat back in his chair.

"I'll think about it."

"Please, Ian." I leaned forward. "I'm not asking you to go to college. If that's not what you want, I will never push you. But get your high school diploma. One more year. That's all I'm asking."

"I know." He looked at me, and for a second he looked like the twelve-year-old who used to fall asleep on the couch waiting for me to come home from my CNA shifts. "But I'm asking you to trust me on this. The same way I'm trusting you with the lot. I know what I'm doing."

The drive back to Barb's was quiet. I walked up the porch steps, went to my room, and sat on the edge of my bed without turning the lights on.

I wanted to be proud of him. I did. He had a job. He was paying for dinner at a restaurant I couldn't afford when I was his age. He was standing taller, dressing better, talking like someone who had figured out where he was going.

But I couldn't shake the feeling that where he was going was somewhere I couldn't follow.

KNOX

How was dinner?

NORA

Not great.

KNOX

???

Do you want me to come over?

NORA

Can you?

He was in the driveway in fifteen minutes.

I climbed into the truck and wrapped my arms around him before he could say anything. He didn't ask. He just held me. One hand on the back of my head, the other steady across my shoulders, and he let me stay there until I was ready to pull back.

"That bad, huh?"

I sat back in my seat. "My brother wants to drop out of high school."

"Did he say why?"

"He wants to work and make money. I've told him a hundred times that money isn't a problem. I can manage. He just needs to finish one more year, and then he can do whatever he wants. But he won't listen."