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mother was deploying again.
    “Pizza?” he asked, meeting Ben’s gaze in the rearview mirror.
    “On a school night?”
    “Yeah, why not?” He tried to act like it was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Those rarely happened in the Peterson household, though. His workload and Ben’s disability necessitated a schedule, which he did his best to maintain.
    Ben scrunched his face.
    “All right. Fine. If you don’t want pizza—”
    “I do,” his son protested, slurring his words the way he did when his muscles were tired. And there was that lopsided smile.
    Micah turned the Jeep Cherokee into the parking lot for Kirk’s Pizza House. It was the only pizza joint in Seaside, and the place was packed. A hostess showed them to the last table in the back and Micah followed, as Ben carefully maneuvered his chair down the narrow aisles.
    When they were seated, Ben seemed to shrink in his chair. “You have something to tell me.” It wasn’t a question. “Otherwise, we’d be having boring chicken and green beans. That’s what you laid out this morning,” he said.
    Damn, my kid is smart.
    Micah licked his lips, stalling like the old Mustang he’d had when he was sixteen. “Maybe I didn’t want boring chicken and beans tonight,” he said, silently thanking God when the waitress interrupted, bringing them glasses of water and breadsticks. He wasn’t ready to talk about Jessica yet. Couldn’t they just enjoy their night for a while before his ex squashed it with her proverbial combat boots? “So, tell me about your day.”
    Ben blew a breath toward a lock of dark hair falling in his honey-colored eyes. He’d inherited those from his mother. His left arm was too stiff to swipe the hair away, and his right arm—the strong one—was locked on a breadstick, slowly submerging it in pizza sauce. “We had a rally.”
    Micah grabbed his own breadstick. “A pep rally?”
    “Yeah.” Talking while he chewed, his son’s muddled words were even harder to understand. “Principal Chandler added a new subject to our curriculum. It’s called Good Deeds. We’ll be emailing the wounded soldiers at Camp Leon and writing letters to people in nursing homes. She’s also changing after-school detention to something called the Friendship Club. If you get in trouble, you have to stay after school and work on the campus doing recycling and making new friends.”
    Micah didn’t know what kind of friends were to be made in detention, but before he could think too much on it, the waitress was back to take their orders. He ordered a large pizza, half with just spinach for him and half with ham and sausage for Ben. His little man was a meat lover, and tonight he deserved whatever he wanted. “A club for misbehaving kids, huh?” he asked, recapping the conversation. Breaking his own rule, he reached for a second breadstick, promising himself that he’d run an extra mile in PT tomorrow. “That would’ve been nice last year, huh? A mean kid club.”
    Ben stopped dipping his bread for a second, and Micah immediately regretted bringing up the bullies.
    “Friendship Club,” Ben corrected quietly, his voice so low that Micah had to guess at what he’d actually said. “And the kids in the club have to do nice things for everyone.”
    “Even the girls?” Micah soured his face in a weak attempt to make his son laugh.
    Ben glanced up, not even cracking a smile. “Dad, I’m in third grade now. I’m allowed to like girls.”
    “You are?” This was news to him.
    “And I was thinking…” The tone of his voice, more confident now with a hint of wanting, made Micah’s heart beat in an
uh-oh
rhythm.
    “You should start liking girls again, too.” His son swiped at his hair, staring at him expectantly across the table. “I won’t get in the way anymore. I promise.”
    “In the way? Anymore?” Micah leaned forward. What was Ben talking about?
    “Like with Nicole.” Ben’s gaze fell on the table.
    Micah groaned at just the mention of the