The Teacher

Part 24: Diving in Head First

Her hand wouldn't stop shaking as she scrolled through her address book and punched the call button, and she felt a wave of anxious nausea surge upwards through her stomach and into her chest. She was in the middle of a noisy exhale when he abruptly answered on the first ring.

"Courtney?" he said, "Is that you breathing heavily on the phone?"

Shit.

"I, I uh—" now she couldn't speak, she had sucked in her breath so fast that she gasped. She started coughing.

He patiently waited on the other line for her to collect herself.

"Mr. Walker, Kyle, I'm sorry," she began and then stopped herself. She needed to get it together or she was going to be babbling like a crazy person any minute now. She took one more deep breath, and for a moment was able to once again appreciate the way the Walker men let her speak and act on her own timetable. Her own awkward, weird timetable.

Then again, maybe he had simply hung up on her.

"Kyle, are you still there?" she said.

"I'm here Courtney, what can I do you for ma'am?" How, she wondered, could he sound so kind after everything that had happened between them this summer? The pointed warning he had given her about Cam, her fury at his appearance at the car rental place, the way she had ignored him in the parking lot.

"I ran into some of my former students today, out here at the creek. They told me Cam hasn't been around all summer, they made it sound as though perhaps ..." she hesitated, unsure of how much she should say. "Well they made it sound like perhaps he had gone missing this summer. That no one had heard from him in awhile, and they seemed a little worried."

"I see," he said.

Okay, she thought, what does that mean? "I see" as in, "Yes, that sounds about right"? Or "I see" as in, "You sound crazier than usual Miss Park"?

Or maybe it was "I see" as in, "Yes and it's all your fault Miss Park"?

When she realized he wasn't going to follow up with anything else, and that the ball was now firmly in her court, she took another deep breath and forged ahead. For Cam. She would do it for Cam. She owed him that much.

"Well, I wanted to let you know that I received a text from him this morning," she said.

"It was the first I have heard from him since I left for New Jersey in June," she hurriedly added, in case he suspected her of texting with his son all summer or something.

Still he said nothing. She was beginning to feel a little annoyed.

"I mean, maybe it was silly to call you about it, I was worried was all, after talking to the girls."

"No," he said at last. "I'm glad you called Courtney. I haven't heard from him either, nor for over a month now."

"Okay," she said, relieved. She had done a good deed, and discharged it successfully, and now she could worm her way out of this very uncomfortable conversation. It didn't help matters that the deep, masculine sound of his voice was sending an unwelcome thrill through her already overheated body.

"What did it say?"

"What?" she said. "What did what say?"

"The text, from Cam. What did it say?"

Her stomach dropped again.

"Oh right, the text." Of course Cam's father would want to know what the text said. Except "I need to see you" coming from her teenaged student didn't really sound that great when read out of context to his father. Or probably read in any context.