⌜ chapter fifteen ⌟

"Hey, you guys are up early." Eric says as he makes his way down the stairs and into the kitchen, fixing his tie.

"Well, we didn't have any choice." Mr. Matthews says as he leans his head into this hand. "Someone was running the shower at four a.m., singing heigh-ho, heigh-ho—"

"'Cause it's off to work, I go." He smiles as he kicks the refrigerator door closed behind him, apple juice in hand as he walks over to where Letty's leaning against the island counter.

Eric winks at the brunette, making her chuckle. "It's a good thing Hope left for Sioux Falls yesterday, or she'd have killed you." Letty says, and he shrugs.

"So, now they want you at that tv station before school?" Mrs. Matthews questions, and Eric then turns to face his mom.

"Yeah. I get there early enough, I get to help Jimmy Jellybean lace up his floppy feet. We all know how much you kids love your floppy feet, right, Morgan?" He leans over and nudges his younger sister's shoulder.

"Eh." The blonde makes a so-so motion with her hand.

"I thought you were just interning for the news." Their dad says.

"Oh, I am. When Jimmy Jellybean takes off his nose, he's Arnie Cohen with Sports." Eric tells them, mimicking the voice from the tv, and Letty smiles as she watches how enthusiastic he is about all of this.

"Wait, I learned about potty training from a sportscaster?" Cory questions as Eric grabs his coat from the back of his sister's chair. "Oh, that's just wrong."

"Bye, love you." He says quietly to Letty as he kisses her cheek, and she smiles.

"Eric, wait, whoa. Hey." Mr. Matthews quickly gets his son's attention, and Eric turns back to him from the back door. "You're giving Scarlett and Cory a ride to school, remember?"

"Dad, you know how much I like driving Miss Cory — sorry—" He glances at Letty. "—but I can't be late to work." He says, putting on his jacket and then starting for the door again.

"You know, if you were this devoted to your schoolwork, you wouldn't need this internship to pass journalism." He tells him, prompting Eric to reclose the door.

"Okay, now, first of all, I wasn't failing journalism because of lack of devotion. I was failing because I was depressed that I lost the love of my life — who is also the person that makes me do my work. So, really, this is Letty's fault." Eric argues.

"I prefer to blame my father." The brunette says, drinking the apple juice he left on the counter beside her. "He's the one who broke me."

"See, still not my fault." He motions to his ex-girlfriend. "Besides, this internship is the second most important thing in my life."

"Well, the first most important thing in your life doesn't want to walk to school in the middle of a blizzard." Letty says, and he turns to look at her.

"First, I think it's adorable that you knew you're the most important thing to me." Eric smiles as he walks over and rests his hands on either side of her head, brushing her hair back. "Second, come on, babe. You know how important this is to me."

"Does it ever bother you that they already act like they're married?" Mr. Matthews whispers as he leans closer to his wife.

"Don't you babe me, Matthews. If you're not gonna drive us, then find someone who will." Letty curls her fingers around his wrists and narrows her eyes as she pulls his hands away from her face. "Or you won't make it the two more days to your birthday, and they won't find your body till the snow melts."

"No, I think she's good for him." Mrs. Matthews says in response to her husband's question.

"Mommy." Eric turns around to look at his parents. "Don't let her pretty face fool you, she'll really kill me. Please drive the beautiful girl to school for me."

"You scare him." Mr. Matthews says as he looks between the two teenagers.

"It amuses me." Letty smiles. "And occasionally keeps him from doing stupid things, like not doing his homework."

"It's true." Eric nods.

"Keep her." His dad tells him.

"I'm tryin'."

"I'll drive them to school." Mrs. Matthews chuckles as she looks between her oldest and the girl that he loves.

"Now that I get to live..." Eric turns and wraps his arms around Letty. "See you at school." He kisses the side of her head and then rushes for the backdoor.

At school later, Letty's sitting through History class, and the period's almost over. She's listening to Feeny. "So, Lincoln freed the slaves for political, as well as moral reasons, demonstrating again that this war was far less civil than its name implies." He says as the bell rings, and Letty sees Eric finally making his way into class, so she doesn't move from her seat. "But far more civil than I will be if I don't see your papers on my desk by tomorrow."

He rushes around the seats and grabs Letty as he makes it to her desk. He pulls her up, and she shakes her head as she scoops up her books, and he ushers her forward.

"Mr. Matthews, thanks for dropping by." Feeny says, wiping the chalkboard.

"Hey, great class, Mr. Feeny." He briefly removes his hands from Letty's waist. "Two thumbs up."

"Eric..."

"You're supposed to walk." He mutters as Letty leans back into him, making it so that he can't exit the classroom he just got to.

"No." She pushes, and he sighs as he turns to face their teacher.

"This internship was supposed to earn you credits, not keep you from graduating." Feeny starts, but Eric cuts him off.

"Mr. Feeny, I'm here now, and once I'm in your school, I give you no less than a hundred percent." He says, and Letty shakes her head as she leans in the doorway behind him. Then his beeper sounds. "Gotta go."

The brunette snatches the device and looks at the screen. "Really? This is what you missed class for?" She questions.

"It's not a big deal." He says, and she shakes her head.

"Yes, it is, Eric. You skipped class to lace up some grown man's floppy feet on his costume, and now they're sending you to pick up someone's toupee from the airport." She hands him his pager, and he takes it before she walks away.

"It was just one class." Eric says as he looks back at Feeny.

"Yes, well... Miss Black is a very passionate young woman who doesn't like to see the people she loves do things that could hurt their futures." His teacher says.

"You think she loves me?"

"I think she's afraid of how she feels, and understandably so. The people who've let her down the worst are the ones who were supposed to love her the most." He tells him. "But you already knew that, because you're a bright young man. Bright enough to know that skipping class is the opposite of what you should be doing." He then turns and goes back to the board, and Eric walks out of the room.

The next day, Letty's walking down the hall when Mr. Williams gets her attention. "Can I talk to you about Eric?" He asks, and she raises her eyebrows.

"The only one I take responsibility for is Shawn. If the Matthews are getting into trouble— Well, honestly, I get a little lost with—"

"No, he's not in trouble. Not yet, anyway." He tells her, and she nods.

"Because he's been skipping classes — I know. He's excited about his job, and he's not listening to anyone." She says, and he nods.

"Yeah, I got that. I figured the best chance at getting through to him was you."

"I've barely even seen him the past couple days." She tells him, and he sighs.

"I was afraid of that."

That night, Letty's sitting on the couch as she flips through the channels, and she happens to flip to the news. "—filling in for vacationing Cal Kilbride — Eric Matthews, weather." The announcer says as the teenage boy pops up onto the screen with a wide smile on his face.

"That's me!"

"Mrs. Matthews! Mr. Matthews! You guys need to see this!" Letty calls, and they both walk into the room to see what she's yelling about.

Hours later, the brunette hears an excited Eric in the kitchen with his parents and Mr. Feeny. She gets up and walks into the kitchen, and his smile widens when he sees her.

"Did you see me?" Eric asks as he rushes over to her. "How was I? Did I do okay?"

"You did great." She smiles when he pulls her into his chest, wrapping her in a bone-crushing hug. "And I hope you enjoyed it, because I'm stealing you from the station tomorrow."

"What are you talking about?" He asks as he pulls back to look down at her.

"The two-thousand word essay on Reconstructionism after the Civil War that the rest of us turned in for History class. You haven't, and if you don't, Feeny says you're not graduating." She tells him. "You know, 'cause you've been cutting classes."

"Okay." He nods as he turns to look at their teacher. "When do you need it?" He asks as he pulls off his jacket and goes to set it on the window-seat.

"On my desk by three o'clock Friday." Mr. Feeny tells him.

"Ooh. Not in my five-day forecast." Eric says as he walks back over to them. "I'm on call all week."

"Well, put it in your forecast, pal. You're doing that essay." Mr. Matthews tells him.

"Uh, Dad, I can't possibly do both." He says, and then his eyes widen. "You can't be asking me to give up the station. I mean, I finally found something I'm good at."

"This isn't a discussion."

"Eric, think about this." Mrs. Matthews gets his attention.

"I have." Eric nods. "And I'm going back to the station. I mean, that is where I belong. I don't belong in the back of some classroom pretending to listen. No offense, Mr. Feeny." He says, and his dad stands up.

"Eric, you see, that is your problem. You don't listen." He says as he moves toward him.

"Dad, look, I'm going to be eighteen tomorrow—" He looks at his watch. "In, like, less than an hour. I think I can make my own decisions. Letty, back me up here." He looks at the brunette, but her gaze moves to the ground.

"Eric." Mr. Feeny steps forward, and he reluctantly turns away from her. "I urge you to reconsider."

"There's nothing more to think about." The teenage boy says.

"Eric..." Mr. Matthews starts. "Are you, or are you not going to go to school tomorrow?"

"I'm not going." He tells him, and then goes after Letty when she turns around and makes her way back into the living room. "What was that? You're supposed to support me." He says, and she turns around to face him.

"Support you making the biggest mistake of your life?" She questions. "No chance in hell."

"It's not a mistake. This is what I've always wanted to do."

"You're an intern, Eric, and you got lucky with this right now. What happens when Cal comes back from vacation next week, and you're back to lacing shoes, picking up toupees, and hemming pants?" The brunette asks. "If you keep with what you're doing, you're not gonna graduate. Do you have any idea how much harder things are gonna be without a diploma?"

"What happened to you being proud of me?" He questions, his eyebrows furrowed. "All that talk about how you believe in me?"

"I do believe in you, and I was proud. I thought this was going to be a good experience. After years of saying that you wanna be a weatherman, I thought this would be a good opportunity to find out if it's something that you're really passionate about. I thought this internship would look good on college applications, and you could put it on your resumé when you start applying for jobs." She tells him. "I never thought this would turn into the reason you drop out of school!"

"This is a real opportunity here. Why can't you see that?!"

"Because you're only looking at the best case scenario!" She shakes her head. "Life doesn't always work out the way that we want it to, Eric! Sometimes no matter how hard we try, things get screwed up!"

"Just because that's been your experience, doesn't mean that's gonna be mine!" He snaps.

Letty takes a step back, like his words caused an actual blow. Her jaw tightens as her eyes suddenly turn glassy, and she quickly looks away from him.

"That's enough." Mr. Matthews looks between the two of them. "Eric, go to your room." He tells his son, and the teenage boy immediately turns for the stairs.

—

"I can't believe I'm related to a dropout." Morgan says from where she's eating her breakfast at the table with Cory.

"He's not a dropout." Mr. Matthews says. He's standing by the sink with his wife, both of them drinking coffee. "Yet."

"No, he's just taking a leave of absence, right?" Cory asks and then looks at his sister. "You know, like the guy with the tinfoil hat who pushes the baby carriage filled with empty tuna fish cans?"

"Looks like I'm gonna be the first Matthews to graduate from college." Morgan says.

"What about me?"

"Yeah, right." She gets up and walks away from the table as Letty walks into the kitchen from the living room, setting a box on the counter as she walks over to the window-seat where she left her jacket last night.

"Hey, Scarlett?" Cory stands up as his brother walks into the room from upstairs. "I never know what to get you, and I asked Feeny to let me pick some roses from his garden, but he had some bogus story about the bushes being dead."

"I bet he said dormant." The brunette says as she grabs her jacket. "Don't worry about it, you don't have to get me anything."

"No, no. I got you something better." He walks over to her with his hand behind her back. "Roses are your favorite, right? That's why you have that rose necklace?" He points at the one that she's wearing.

"She wears that because she's still pining after J." Eric says as he grabs the orange juice from the fridge, and Letty grinds her teeth.

"Yeah, Cor. Roses are one of my favorite flowers." The brunette says, not acknowledging his older brother.

Cory clears his throat. "So, I got you a bouquet that'll never die." He says as he pulls a dozen bright red roses from behind his back. "None of the real ones at the store looked good enough for a girl turning seventeen." He says, and she smiles.

"Thanks, Cory." She says as she takes the bouquet.

"Happy birthday." The younger boy says, and she then walks over to where she left the box on the counter by the phone.

"Yeah, happy birthday to us." Eric mumbles sarcastically. "The exes who can never escape each other because we're forced to live together."

"Eric." His mother scolds as Letty drops the roses onto the counter.

The brunette picks up the box and then starts for the trashcan, but then decides not to stoop as low as him. Instead she drops the box in front of him at the table. "Happy birthday. I'll ask Turner if there's any room at his apartment for me to live with him and Shawn." She tells him and then grabs her backpack from the chair before turning around and walking out of the house.

Eric hesitates for a second and then pulls the lid off of the box and looks at what's inside — a dark blue button-up and a black tie, folded neatly in the white box.

"She asked Turner to take her to the mall to pick something out for you the day after you told her that you got the internship. She said that you looked good in blue, and I wanted to barf because of how sappy she got." Cory tells him, shaking his head at his older brother. "Scarlett thinks that she doesn't deserve you, but it's you who doesn't deserve her." He grabs his big, red jacket and then leaves to try and catch up to Letty.

The next day at school, Eric walks over to Letty at her locker. "Can I talk to you?"

"Mr. Big-Shot Weatherman? 'Course, 'cause everything always works out exactly the way you want it to, right?" She says sarcastically. "Skip the apology, you're already forgiven. You don't actually need me for this conversation, do you?" She shuts her locker and turns away from him.

"Letty, please. Morgan wouldn't let me into your guys' room last night, and I really need to talk to you now." He grabs her hand, but she doesn't turn back when she stops walking. "I am so sorry. I was an ass, and I wish I could take it all back. You were right about everything. I made a huge mistake, and I lost the internship...but I can live with that. I can't live with losing you."

"What's the point?" The brunette asks as she looks back at him. "I'm pining after J, right? And you and I are just exes who can't escape each other because I moved into your house."

"Poor Eric."

"Stuck with trailer girl."

"Hey, shut up!" Eric yells as he turns to face the two girls who just walked past them. "Nobody asked for your commentary! You don't know anything about us!"

"I don't care what they say, Eric." Letty says, and he looks back at her. "I've been listening to crap like that since I was seven. Everybody has always talked about us like that."

"What?" His eyebrows furrow.

"They said that you didn't know how pathetic I was because you're a year older, and we didn't have any classes together before high school. And once we got here, they all decided that I'm using you to marry my way out of the trailer park." She tells him. "Jason was always getting into trouble for fights because he was defending me. And then Miller started getting into it with them too."

"That's what those fights were about?" He asks, and she nods.

"I don't listen to them because none of them mean anything to me." Letty says. "What you say matters to me, and you've said plenty in the last few days. You were the only one who never hurt me the way that others have, the only one who never made me feel like complete and utter crap about myself...and now I can't even say that. So, no, Eric, I—" She shakes her head as her eyes turn glassy, then she turns around and walks away from him.

"N— Letty!" He takes a step forward, but stops when she walks into the girls' bathroom.

Eric's sitting in the first row in History class later when Letty walks in a few minutes after the first bell. His chin's resting in his hand as he listens to Feeny talk, but he sits up straight when he sees the brunette. She doesn't look his way, and there's something different about her now, but Eric can't quite put his finger on it. Her jaw's set tight, her eyes seem almost darker, and her face is as expressionless as stone as she walks to an open seat in the back of the classroom.

"Nice of you to join us, Miss Black." Feeny says, and she doesn't say a word as she sits down.