Evan didn't know what to say. He hadn't been this embarrassed since the time he'd left the men's room in a busy restaurant with a long piece of toilet paper hanging out of the back of his pants. This kid couldn't have been more than seventeen or eighteen years old. When Evan had been seventeen he never would have thought about flirting with a thirty-year-old man. Evan smiled and turned fast. "I'm late. Sorry, again."
"No problem, dude," the kid said. As Evan headed to room 304 he had a feeling the kid stared at him the entire time. He didn't dare look back. He'd done things in his life he wasn't proud of, but he'd never flirted with a minor and he never would.
He slipped into room 304 as quietly as he could and tiptoed to a row of seats at the back of the room. The lights had been lowered and a small group of people sat facing a podium at the front of the room. When he sat down next to a man with dark brown hair and he looked up and saw Kenny reading something he'd written, he pressed his palm to his chest and smiled. For an instant, all his fears and frustrations disappeared and the world was a comfortable place to be again.
Kenny was reading something deep and meaningful, and his expression looked serious in an exaggerated way that came off more delightful and amusing than intense. Oh, it flung Evan right back to his own high school days when he'd been this serious about literary fiction and he'd sworn he could define true literary fiction. Back then, he knew all the answers. In those days he'd considered himself an artist, not a writer. He'd learned a great deal about life and writing and fiction since those days. There truly was nothing more entertaining than an amateur who thought he knew it all.
This reading turned out to be absolutely adorable. Evan smiled even wider when he heard the way Kenny had overwritten his narrative with too many adverbs and adjectives, and how he'd screwed up dialogue tags, making small minor errors all new writers make when they are just starting out. All his characters "grumbled, mumbled, pleaded, and cajoled," when they should have just "said" or "asked." If Kenny was serious about being a writer, he would learn these things in time and he would improve with each thing he wrote. Even though Evan and his son were not biologically related, Evan felt proud to see his son follow in his footsteps. Though Evan would never have said it aloud, he took even more pride in the fact that his son didn't want to be a billionaire Wall Street shark like his other dad. They'd never encouraged Kenny one way or the other. His natural abilities in English were evident from the day he entered school. He started to read full novels before most of the other kids, and it seemed to come naturally to him. And now, ten years later, he was actually writing his own fiction and reading it in front of a roomful of people.
When he finished, Evan applauded with the others and turned to the nice-looking young man sitting beside him. Evan was smiling so wide his face pinched. He said to the man, "That's my son. He wrote that on his own. Wasn't he wonderful?"
The handsome man with brown hair smiled and said, "I know. I'm his English teacher. He'd a good kid."
Evan felt his face grow warm. He'd thought this guy was one of the other parents, not the teacher. He looked to be around twenty-five years old.
The teacher reached out to shake Evan's hand and introduced himself. "Carson Savione," he said. Then he gave Evan the same seductive glance the kid in the hallway had just given him.
Evan ignored his look and he shook his hand. "I'm Evan Littlefield, Kenny's dad."
"I've heard a lot about you," Carson said. "You're the famous author in the family. I haven't read your work, but I'm planning to soon."
Evan stared down at his feet and shrugged. "Far from famous. I'm just a career writer trying to make a decent living doing what I love most. My son tends to exaggerate sometimes. It will help him with his fiction someday, I'm sure." Evan hated pretense of any kind. He wrote for a living; just like people clean teeth for a living or build houses for a living. He didn't think he did anything that special.
Carson stared into his eyes and said, "He left a few things out. He didn't tell me you were so young and attractive. I kind of pictured someone with less hair, a larger waist, and bushy eyebrows."
Evan was starting to wonder what was with the people at this school. First the kid in the hall, and now the teacher. So he smiled and said, "I wish my husband had been able to come tonight. I'm sorry he missed Kenny's reading." He figured if he mentioned Jeffery, the teacher would stop flirting.
But Carson tilted his head to the side and said, "I thought you and your husband were separated. That's what Kenny said."