Chapter Text
Parent-Teacher Conferences. A huge waste of time.
Regardless, Eddie still rushed to make the conferences on time. Ever since him and Myra split a year ago, Jack’s grades started slipping. Eddie tries to be sympathetic with Jack’s circumstances— it’s not easy going back and forth between two houses of people who live by very different rules at the age of 15— but somebody has to get on him about his science grade, and Myra wasn’t going to do it.
Eddie shuffled through the crowd of parents, running through the list of teachers and subjects. He squeezed into his last meeting of the day: English with Mr. Tozier. Eddie hung around in the back of the classroom as Mr. Tozier finished up with another meeting. The first thing that caught his eye was the bright yellow, patterned button-up his child’s teacher was wearing. It was covered in… chili peppers? Something a Muppet would wear. Speaking of Muppets, the glasses he wore were square, black, and almost comically thick. This clown was teaching his kid?
Eddie moved forward when the other parents left. His eyes followed Mr. Tozier as he stood up to greet him. Eddie didn’t think he was short, but he was compared to this guy. He tried to grip Mr. Tozier’s hand the best he could, but the guy’s hand was like a baseball mitt.
“Hey, nice to meet you! I’m Mr. Tozier to my students, but you, sir, may call me Richie!”
Eddie was taken back to say the least, “Right. Eddie Kaspbrack. My son, Jack Kaspbrack, is in your…” he checked his little notepad, “fifth period.”
“Ah, right.” Richie picked up a folder and started flipping through, “Let’s see here… So, Jack is doing pretty well in class. Most often than not, he shows up prepared. Always does the assigned readings, but it is a bit spotty if he turns in worksheets or finishes essays. He also seems to get spacey here and there.” He paused to give Eddie an opportunity to chime in. Nothing, “I, uh, consider myself to be a pretty easygoing teacher. I want to give him the benefit of the doubt if he has stuff going on, but when I’ve tried talking to him about it, he just dismisses it.”
Eddie sat there and nodded his head along. His situation really isn’t what he wants to get into right now, but this is a bad habit he passed to his kid apparently, “Right. Yeah. Jack’s mother and I have been separated for about a year now, and it’s been pretty hard on him. We’re apparently not the co-parenting type.”
Richie fiddled with his pen, “Right, gotcha. Since you’re here, I’m guessing you’re who he lives with?”
“Most of the time. His mom gets him over the weekend, and she had him all summer.” Eddie cringed thinking about it. Jack came back unruly and agitated, but he didn’t want to talk about what happened at Myra’s. Eddie looked at Richie with big, worried eyes, “I do my best to get on him about his work, but with the divorce proceedings and my own job, I haven’t been able to really help. Any work over the weekend is definitely not getting checked on.” Eddie’s face set in a deep frown, and he started wringing his hands together, “Jack’s usually such a good student but his grades really took a hit and he’s considering quitting soccer and he’s always been such a good English student and I really don’t know what to do if he starts letting this go too.”
Richie laid a hand over Eddie’s, “Whoa, whoa, hey. Quite alright, can’t do it all. Look,” Richie took off his glasses and cleaned them with his shirt. Eddie hadn’t notice how soft and tired his eyes were, “we do need to end the meeting since it’s the end of the conferences, but I would like to keep in contact with you about this. Is there an email I can reach you at?”
“Oh sure,” Eddie scribbled in his little notepad and ripped a page out, “here. Thanks for being patient about this. His science teacher sure wasn’t.”
“Who, Mrs. Fitzgerald? Yeah, she’s a bit of a bitch in my experience.”
Eddie’s jaw dropped, “Should you be speaking like that? As a teacher about another teacher?”
“Oh shit, right.” Richie ran a hand through his curls, “Yeah, sorry. I mentally check out once I’m off the clock, and the conference ended five minutes ago. Can I walk you to your car?”
Eddie expected the walk to his car to be silent, but, my God, can this guy talk. Eddie stopped listening when the conversation went from curriculum to some weird Shakespeare rant. He wasn’t much of a theatre guy, so he wasn’t going to be able to follow along anyway. He did get some nice glances of Richie, now that he wasn’t freaking out about his own life to a man he just met. It’d be unfair for him to describe Richie as a big guy, because he isn’t that big of a guy. But he’s certainly broad. Broader than Eddie is. He’s also a bit hairy. Dark hair down to his hands, face a bit scruffy, and his hair isn’t in the short, neat, professional style Eddie keeps his. But if Eddie had dark, curly hair, he’d probably let it grow out a little too. Richie was still yammering away as Eddie unlocked his car, but Richie made sure to open the door for him. “What a gentleman,” Eddie rolled his eyes as Richie was still talking. He started his car with the door open so he could roll down his window before shutting it, not wanting to interrupt whatever the fuck was happening.
“Ok, so, yeah. Just my thoughts on how Shakespeare influences modern comedy,” Richie peeped his head a bit in the car window, “Have a good night, drive safe.”
The ride back was blissfully silent, aside from the few chuckles that escaped from him. When Eddie walked into his apartment, Jack was watching TV in the living room.
“The conferences ended a bit ago. Stuck around for any single moms?”
Eddie rolled his eyes, “Oh stop it. I just didn’t realize being the last one to see your English teacher meant I’d get a lesson on Shakespeare on the way to my car.”
“Oh yeah, Mr. Tozier will do that to you. Robby has him for fourth period, and they’re always going to lunch late because he doesn’t stop talking.”
“Speaking of school, did you get all your homework done? The stuff due tomorrow at least?”
“Yeah.”
“Including the packet Mrs. Fitzgerald assigned?”
Jack rolled off the couch and trudged to his room.
“Thanks, kiddo,” Eddie yelled. Eddie poured himself a glass of wine and got settled on the couch. He turned off the TV and basked in the silence. Eddie learned to appreciate silence when it wasn’t from someone passive aggressively knitting beside you.