Page 15 of Bone to Pick
“Iknowyou’re a good writer! For fuck’s sake, Porter. Everyone in the department sang your praises to me.Porter Sunday is a unicorn student. Porter Sunday spins gold with his words. Porter Sunday wrote a classic Shakespearean sonnet on sexuality discrimination that made the entire department weep.When Professor Chenault told me you wanted to take my class, I actually wondered, ‘What can I teach this person? It’ll be like trying to teach Marlon Brando how to act.’”
Porter made a scoffing noise.
“But I was here for it anyway,” I informed him. “Hell, I couldn’t wait to read your first assignment. And then you turned in this… this… beige fuckingcardboard. Technically accurate, every comma in place, but just… bland as fuck. So, okay, I thought. No problem. Porter Sunday clearly has talent; he just needs to understand what creative non-fiction is. How cool that I get to show him. But Icouldn’tshow you because you can’t teach someone who refuses to be taught. I gave you feedback, Porter. So much feedback. But you refused to incorporate it into your work…”
“Bullshit!” His chin firmed, and his eyes sparked green fire. “You said to put my heart into it, my personality, my soul. For that last piece, about our family home, I wrote about Sunday Orchard—a place that’s been in my family for generations. The place where my dad is buried. The place where my uncle and almost all my siblings and their partners still live to this day. There’s no topic that hasmoreof my heart—”
I sucked in a deep breath. “Then for fuck’s sake, why didn’t you let that come across? Porter, you wrote about apple varietals and growth timelines. About profit shares and hybridization. It was supposed to be a personal narrative, but it read like something out of an almanac, circa 1875. You took yourself out of the narrative almost entirely, which was theoppositeof what I asked for. You’re a brilliant writer, but it doesn’t matter how accurate or technically perfect a piece is if you’re not accomplishing what you’ve set out to do. And you wouldn’t come and talk to me about it.”
Some complex emotions worked across his face. Hurt, disappointment, anger, and then hurt again. “Forgive meif I wasn’t willing to come listen to you tell me how awful my work was.Forgive meif I wasn’t interested in one person’s opinions on how to write creative non-fiction. And fuckingforgive mefor walking out on you right now before I say or do something we’ll both regret.”
He turned and stormed out of the kitchen area, shoving his feet into his shoes and yanking my jacket on before disappearing out the front door.
I closed my eyes and bit out a curse.Well done, Dr. Hancock.
I’d spoken the truth. Ihadtried my best to teach Porter. I alsohadbeen progressively more annoyed each time he turned in an assignment that was technically proficient and entirely missing the point. Ihadasked him repeatedly to come to my office hours… even if part of me had been secretly relieved that I hadn’t had him in my space, where I’d be forced to deal with my inappropriate thoughts about the man for hours at a time.
But what had I just been saying to Porter about how it didn’t matter how accurate your words were if you didn’t accomplish what you set out to do? I definitely hadn’t intended to make him storm out.
I scrubbed at the dishes a bit more savagely than necessary, hoping the manual labor would serve to calm me down and that a walk in the frigid morning air would do the same for Porter.
Once I finished the dishes, I threw several ingredients into the slow cooker for a stew I’d planned to make for dinner. Then I looked at my tablet, sitting right beside my comfortable,emptyreading chair, and contemplated starting the new novel I’d downloaded.
For once, though, reading a new book didn’t appeal to me. In fact, nothing about being alone in my cabin was appealing all of a sudden.
I decided I might as well clear a path to the wood pile before the next round of snow came, so I stepped into my boots. But just as I was lacing them up, I heard the deafeningbrrrumof a chainsaw out in the yard.
I grabbed my parka, pulled the front door open, and rushed outside to find Porter cutting branches off the giant downed tree in the driveway, handling the heavy saw as easily as he’d handled his fork at breakfast.
Meanwhile, I hadn’t remembered that saw was in the shed, let alone the safety goggles and ear protectors Porter had found along with it.
“What are you doing?” I yelled.Stupid question.I gestured for him to give me the chainsaw. “Let me do that.”
Porter looked me up and down as if judging whether or not I could be trusted with my own chainsaw… which was all the more embarrassing because his concern was valid. I’d gotten pretty competent with certain power tools while helping my grandfather, but that hadn’t extended to chainsaws. “I don’t think so,” he decided.
I narrowed my eyes at him before reaching for the chainsaw. He yanked it away and held it up out of my reach. The edge of his mouth quirked up in a teasing grin.
“I don’t want you to hurt yourself, Porter.” The very idea of it made me shudder. “And I’m quite confident that I can do it at least as well as you can,” I insisted.
“Really? Because this thing hadn’t been oiled in years until I got to it, far as I could tell. And I grew up on an orchard. I’ve been using chainsaws since middle school.” He gave me a look that could only be described as smugly innocent. “If you want, I couldteach you.”
He was worse than a know-it-all. He was a know-it-all who actuallyknewit all. I was suddenly filled with the childish urge to throw him into a snowbank.
“No, thank you,” I said primly. “You can hand it over right now. This ismychainsaw andmyproperty, and I can figure it out just fine on my own.”
Porter shook his head and sighed. “Can’t teach a man who refuses to be taught,” he mocked, throwing my own words back at me.
Infuriating.
But I refused to back down, and he finally gave up the chainsaw with an eye roll. “I’ll get a handsaw from the shed, then.”
I opened my mouth to argue, and he lifted an eyebrow in challenge. “Or did you want me to stay here in this cabin with you forever and ever, amen,Theo?”
I refused to speak the retort that came unbidden to my brain.Only if I can gag you.
And suddenly, I could imagine it. Porter trussed up in my bed, gagged and pliant. Telling me, as he had the night before, that he’d do anything I wanted, if I only told him what that was. Those teasing green eyes would still dance and challenge me even if his sassy mouth had to stay busy with other things, and…
“Christ,” I muttered in disgust, turning away so I could trudge to the tool shed for a handsaw. “One of us won’t make it through this day alive.”
