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but I had to play it cool. “You think that’d be all right?”
    He shrugged. I was going to have to have a talk with Harlow about teaching the boy some basic communications skills. “Don’t see why not. I mean, she doesn’t hate you and you just said yourself, you’re gonna both be living here… unless you have plans already?”
    “No!” I answered a little too hastily. “Uh, nope. No plans. I was just gonna crash in front of the TV and watch football all day.”
    “Might as well do that with company, right? Besides, it’s Thanksgiving. It’s a time for caring.”
    “I think you mean Christmas, buddy.”
    “Oh,” he replied thoughtfully. He looked like he was just seconds away from rescinding his invite. That could not happen.
    “But technically, I think the entire holiday season should be about caring, right?” I laughed awkwardly.
    I was the world’s biggest moron. Luckily, like most fourteen-year-old boys, Ethan had the attention span of a toddler and didn’t seem to notice. “Sure. So you’ll come?”
    “Yeah, sure. I’ll see you then.”
    “Later, Coach.”
    It took everything I had not to break out in my happy dance and lose the respect of every single one of my players, but I somehow managed. I wanted to pat myself on the back. My plan went off brilliantly. I was only looking for a little intel and managed to smuggle myself an invite to Thanksgiving dinner.
    Hell. Fucking. Yeah!
    Time to put Operation Get-Harlow-Back into overdrive.

What had started as a pretty craptastic morning, ended up turning into something epically better. After Ethan took off, I’d booted up my laptop to email the high school principal about the photography teacher position, making sure to attach my resume, beefing it up to highlight my studies in photography at NYU. To my surprise I’d gotten a call back only two hours later. Mr. Whitfield had been the principal for as long as I could remember, and I was shocked to find that he remembered me. We spoke for well over an hour and he specified how impressed he was with my knowledge in the subject. He asked that I come in after Thanksgiving break for a formal interview, and by the time we got off the phone, he had indicated that as long as all the paperwork and background checks came back fine, the position was as good as mine.
    I was ecstatic. I would finally have something to do. And it was icing on the cake that my job would entail something I was actually passionate about.
    After that call, I decided to ride that high and do something I hadn’t done in a very long time—I went grocery shopping. Back in New York, Navie and I mainly lived off of takeout. On the rare occasion we bought groceries, it was as simple as a trip down the block to the little corner store where we only picked up what we needed.
    Thanksgiving was only two days away and I was determined to make it a good one for Ethan. He needed it to help fill the hole left behind by losing Grammy. And if I were being honest, I needed it just as badly. The only thing that could throw a wrench in my plan for a good Thanksgiving was the fact that I couldn’t cook for shit. But that was what YouTube videos were for, right?
    After climbing into my grandmother’s rusted, beaten-down, old Ford pickup, I started her up… or at least tried. It took twisting the key five times as I jammed the gas pedal in, beating the steering wheel repeatedly, and cussing a blue streak, but I finally got the old fossil started. It took a two minute long pep talk, but I pumped myself up enough to throw the truck in reverse and pull out of the driveway. I hadn’t driven in almost four years. Add that with the fact there was snow on the ground and it was safe to say that it was not just like riding a bike. By the time I pulled into the parking lot unscathed—physically, at least—I’d had a near brush with a tree, a concrete median, a senior citizen, and a partridge in a pear tree.
    But I made it, damn it! And I was going to buy