I sharpened a pencil for him, gave him my brand-new eraser, and stumbled over how to teach a twenty-year-old boy primary grade English and math.
It took a few nights to find our groove.
I flew too fast through equations, and Ren grew frustrated.
I went too slow, and Ren felt like I babied him.
We bickered and squabbled about right terminology, and we ended for the night with clenched teeth and stiff posture from doing our best to work with each other while struggling with yet a new dynamic.
By the end of the second week, we had a system where Ren would read the text he could, point to the ones he couldn’t, and wait patiently while I gave him what he needed.
I didn’t try to interfere or pre-empt, and our scuffles gave way to happy cohabitation, hunched over workbooks, quietly studying side by side.
For most of my life, I’d believed I was special—mainly thanks to Ren’s perfection at raising me, ensuring I was solid in the knowledge that I walked upon the stars in his eyes. My teachers had further cultivated that mind-set by encouraging me and being awed at my easy progress through the grades.
However, sitting beside Ren as he memorized and problem-solved, I felt the first kernel of lacking.
I’d always known he was unique.
I’d loved him far too deeply and for far too long not to believe he was magical and immortal and every prince, knight, and saviour I could ever need.
But I’d always envisioned him as a boy in dirty clothes, sun-browned and field-worn rather than a neat gentleman with glasses, all library-kissed and book-learned.
Ren Wild was all those things, but now he was something more to be looked up to.
He had a quick-fire intelligence that made me proud and envious—two sins in one.
He might not have had the chance to learn such things, but it wasn’t from lack of cleverness. Even at his age and being fairly stuck in his ways, he soaked up numbers and letters as if he’d been thirsty his entire life for such knowledge.
And that was where my second deadly sin started to manifest.
Instead of going to bed frustrated at being teacher to a student far surpassing her, I fell asleep with pride tinting my smile that I was the reason Ren went from counting on his fingers to effortlessly reciting the times tables.
Without me, he still wouldn’t be able to spell or read the words he used on a regular basis such as tractor, paddock, and twine.
Now he could spell all manner of things, and I beamed like a proud parent as we held spelling bee standoffs in the hay loft, testing each other, blowing raspberries when we got it wrong and giving high fives when we got it right.
Pride.
Pity it felt so good because every time Ren nudged me with his shoulder in gratitude or read aloud a text that would’ve caused his cheeks to pink and anger to rise with the unknown, I suffered more and more pride.
I glowed with it whenever he chuckled over a simple word with a strange spelling. I beamed with it whenever he surprised himself by adding up two large numbers and getting the total correct.
For three solid years, our routine never changed.
Some nights, especially in high-summer when Ren pulled fourteen and sometimes sixteen-hour days to get all his work done, we fell exhausted into bed without a lesson, but most of the time, we both looked forward to hiding away, just the two of us, and trading information.
Because what I taught him, he taught me in return.
He taught me how to drive a tractor on my eleventh birthday and sat me on his knee for the first time in a very long time as my legs were too short to reach the rusty pedals.
He taught me how to drive the Land Rover on my twelfth birthday, and even accompanied me to the movies with Cassie and some of my friends when I said I’d love to go see something with him because he’d never come into town with me before.
It was like asking a bear to leave his comfortable den and enter a world full of chaos and calamity.
His eyes never stopped darting. His ears never stopped twitching. His body always on high alert and ready to maul an enemy or protect a friend.
But he did it.
For me.
He happily drove me there, took me out for a burger and fries just like our first official birthday together, and sat beside me while we watched some animated cartoon that I caught him rolling his eyes at but gushed about afterward for my benefit.
He even refused to hang out with Cassie’s entourage even though she practically begged him to go clubbing with them once I’d been deposited back home. She claimed he needed a birthday night too; her voice syrupy sweet with that hateful twinkle in her eye that reeked of sex.