Chapter 37
"So you yelled at her mom?" Octavia tossed her head back and laughed.
"I didn't yell at her," Bellamy said as he continued to meander around her new living room. Lincoln's living room, technically. She'd given him the grand tour today. "I spoke in a stern voice."
"Like a dad voice," she presumed.
"No, like a protective boyfriend voice." It probably wasn't that different than his regular voice, since he spoke so deeply, but oh, well. It'd done the trick and gotten Abby out of there the other night. "What was I supposed to do, just let her mom lay into her?"
"Maybe you should let them sort it out on their own," his sister suggested.
"No, there's nothing to sort out," he argued. "Clarke doesn't wanna go to med school. I don't see anything wrong with that. In fact, I'm happy she's finally standing up to Abby. And so am I."
"Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm happy about that, too," Octavia said. "You've let that woman walk all over you for way too long now. It's just . . . I'm surprised. Telling the woman to leave her own house? That takes balls."
Bellamy plopped down on the leather couch—damn, that thing was nice—and said, "Well, yes, I've got balls."
"Ew. Metaphor balls, Bellamy," she said, sitting down beside him. "I never thought you'd stand up to her like that."
"Well, just imagine if Lincoln's mom came in here and started sayin' stuff to make him feel like crap."
"That would never happen," she claimed. "His mom's a saint."
"Okay, but just imagine," he urged. "Even though you haven't been living here long, wouldn't you tell her to fuck off if she was making somebody you love feel like crap?"
Octavia thought about it for a moment, then said, "Yeah, I probably would."
"See?" And knowing his sister, she'd use those exact words, too. She wouldn't censor herself like he did.
Octavia startled a bit when her phone rang and leapt off the couch to grab it from the kitchen counter. "Oh, speaking of . . ." she said. "It's Lincoln's mom."
"She calls you?"
"Yeah, she just likes to check in and see how I'm doing."
He snorted in disbelief. "Must be nice." If Abby ever called him, it'd probably be to yell at him or lecture him. Or both.
...
Bellamy almost felt like he was in a trance as he watched Clarke slowly progress through the lunch line. She was standing with Zeke and Raven, and he wanted to be standing right beside her. Normally, he would have been. Hell, sometimes they got so handsy in the lunch line that didn't even make it all the way through. They had to duck into a bathroom or dart out to his car or find someplace to go to just . . . release the sexual tension. But he and his mom had had a nice little sit-down with the principal after school yesterday, where Mrs. Sydney had made it abundantly clear that he was not supposed to have any contact with Clarke Griffin on school grounds whatsoever.
"Look at her," he said, practically salivating. "Look at that body. She's so hot." When Clarke bent over to pick something up off the ground, giving him a nice view of her ass, he literally had a knee-jerk reaction. His knee shot up and hit the underside of the lunch table.
"Not my type," Miller said as he crunched away on the last of his overcooked French fries.
"Well, no shit." Maybe Miller's gayness was one of the reasons why they'd stayed such good friends all these years. They never hooked up with the same people.
"Zeke, on the other hand . . ." Miller said, growling low in his throat. "If he swung that way, I'd be all over him. Don't tell him I said that."
"I won't." Bellamy returned his full attention to Clarke, who managed to look captivating to him even when all she was doing was tucking her hair behind her ear. "I miss her, man," he said.
"You mean, just the sex or . . ."
"No, all of it." Contrary to what her parents may have thought, their relationship wasn't purely a sexual one. They made each other laugh. She sang for him. He tried to explain football plays to her, and she never completely understood. "This sucks," he lamented. "I can't even call her. Her mom confiscated her phone." He'd found that out the hard way last night when he'd texted something kind of dirty and gotten a response from Abby.
"That could end up being your mother-in-law," Miller said.
"No, come on, it's not that serious," he said.
"Isn't it?"
Bellamy wasn't exactly sure what his best friend meant by that, and he didn't get a chance to ask, because out of the corner of his eye, he saw his buddy Jasper stumbling towards the table with his lunch tray in hand. He appeared to be tripping over his own feet. "Hey, Jasper, what're you doin'?"
"Being a spaz," Jasper said, scrambling into the seat next to Miller.
"He's looking at a girl he likes," Monty said, sitting down next to him.
"Hey, what a coincidence," Miller said. "So is Bellamy."
Jasper's head was downcast as he bemoaned, "Yeah, but mine doesn't know I exist."
"So go sit with her," Bellamy suggested, "talk to her." Jasper's voice had definitely dropped a notch over Christmas break, so he was starting to seem more like an actual high school freshman and less like a former eighth grader. Girls would dig that.
"I wouldn't even know what to say," Jasper mumbled.
We gotta work on that, Bellamy thought. He only had a couple months left with this kid, the little dweeb he'd decided to take under his wing this year just so high school wouldn't be too much of a living hell for him. They had to build up his confidence more before he left for UCF.
Thinking about UCF, even for just a second, made him think about his grades and how they were back in the shitter again, so he changed the topic by asking Monty, "Hey, do you think maybe you could start tutoring me again?"
Monty, with food on his fork and his fork poised to enter his mouth, froze and just stared at him in disbelief. "Wait a minute," he said, setting his fork back down, "not once in three years have you asked me to tutor you when it's not football season."
"I know, but I'm on this new campaign now where I wanna prove to Clarke's mom that I'm not such a bad guy," he explained. "So I figured it wouldn't hurt to show her I can be a good student." He wasn't completely sure that he could be, but he was willing to try, to find out if he had it in him without football as a motivator.
"Sure," Monty said. "Today after school?"
"That works." It wasn't like he had anything better to do since he couldn't . . . do Clarke.
Much to his surprise, their table got a little more crowded when Zeke, Raven, and Clarke herself approached. Even though they'd all been sitting together for the majority of the year, he'd pretty much figured that Raven and Clarke would sit with the other cheerleaders today. But Clarke sat down right next to him like it wasn't against the rules.
"Hey, what're you doin'?" he asked her.
"Eating lunch with my boyfriend," she replied simply.
"She's a rebel," Raven remarked. The table was short one chair, so she chirped, "Ooh, chair shortage," and seized the opportunity to sit on her boyfriend's lap instead. Unbelievable, Bellamy thought. Zeke and Raven were eating lunch like that, yet he and Clarke were going to be the ones to get in trouble. Simply for sitting next to each other.
"You sure about this?" he asked his girlfriend.
"Yeah," she said, wasting no time opening her ketchup packet to squirt it onto her burger. "Who's gonna stop me?"
Looking over her shoulder, he saw a teacher approaching. "Mrs. Walters, for starters." She taught all the IT classes and was probably one of the nicest teachers in the whole school. At the very least, she was one of the only ones who thought he wasn't a total lost cause when it came to education. She kind of gave off a grandma vibe, so Bellamy couldn't really be mad at her for interrupting. She was just doing what she'd been instructed to do.
"Clarke, I don't—I don't think you're supposed to sit there," she said softly.
Clarke was just exuding defiance, though. She didn't even bother to glance up as she challenged, "Why not?"
"Well, because your mom-"
"My mom's not here," she cut in.
Mrs. Walters sighed and said, "Could you just move to another table? Please?"
"Nope," Clarke answered quickly. "I like it here."
Mrs. Walters, clearly at a loss for how to handle the situation, wandered off, probably to find Mrs. Sydney or someone else in the school who was a lot more stern and intimidating than she was.
"Nice," Miller said, reaching across Bellamy to fist-bump Clarke.
"My girl's a bad girl," he said, sort of turned on by the complete and utter disregard she had for her mom's stupid rules.
"Your girl misses you," Clarke said. "A lot."
"She's horny, Bellamy," Raven clarified.
"Yeah, I got that." Last night, he'd lain in bed for about an hour just imagining what she was doing, wondering if maybe she was touching herself and pretending it was him.
"And breaking the rules sounds all fun in theory," Raven added, "except when it comes back to bite her in the ass."
He frowned. "What do you mean?"
Raven gave Clarke a look, a serious one, and asked, "What do you think happens when you refuse to move? They tell your mom about it. She tightens the reins even more. Before you know it, you're gonna end up in private school."
Private school? Bellamy's stomach clenched. Was that really an option? There was a private school in Polis, only about twenty-five minutes away. And although Clarke would look hot as hell in one of those uniforms, he didn't want to risk her going there.
He glanced over in the direction Mrs. Walters had gone, and indeed there she was, talking to the principal, motioning towards Bellamy and Clarke, probably explaining that Clarke wasn't listening. Clarke must have seen them, too, because she sighed heavily and said, "I'll figure this out, I promise," as she grabbed her tray and got up.
It sucked to just sit there and watch her switch tables, but what was he supposed to do? If he tried to stop her, he'd just make the situation worse, draw even more attention to it. Maybe now that she'd moved seats, they wouldn't tell her mom about it. And they could get away with a whole whopping two minutes of interaction.
Raven got up and moved tables with her best friend, of course, but Zeke stayed put. Once it was just the guys, Jasper said to Bellamy, "You really like her, don't you?"
He ignored the question and instead watched Clarke, noticing the way her shoulders were slumped now, the way Raven rubbed her back, and the way she lifted her napkin to dab at the corners of her eyes. She was sad; she was crying.
Yeah, he liked her. He really did.
...
It seemed like Octavia was going to be on the phone awhile with Lincoln's mom—Linda, apparently. They were on a first name basis and everything—so Bellamy got up, pointed to the door, and waved goodbye. She waved back, and he left her to talk to someone who might be her mother-in-law someday as he headed out.
He sighed heavily as he shut the door, discouraged that it wasn't as easy for him as it was for her. As anxious as he'd been about her relationship with Lincoln, he had to admit, it all seemed to be going well. She had a nice apartment to live in now, and she got along well with his mother, and it was just so simple for all of them. Meanwhile, here he was, six years after a lackluster first impression, and his relationship with his girlfriend's mom was still a work in progress. Or . . . in shambles, actually. It wasn't an overstatement to say that it was in shambles.
Sure, he was happy for Octavia. But it really didn't feel fair.
...
Clarke finished cleaning off the corner table, then went back behind the bar and resumed her conversation with Raven right where they had left off. "So do you think I'm making the right decision?"
Raven hesitated a moment, then said, "I think it's a big decision. But . . . if that's what your heart's telling you to do, then yeah, I think it's right, for sure. I mean, if you're not fully committed to becoming a doctor, then the last thing you should do is commit to med school."
Clarke grunted. "I wish my mom would see it that way."
"Yeah, that sucks," Raven empathized. As much as she could empathize. She and her dad had one of the best parent/child relationships in all of human history. "To be honest, I'm surprised you stuck with the doctor plan as long as you did," she said. "I thought for sure you'd do one year as a bio major and then switch over to something else."
"I probably should've," Clarke said, wishing she would have had the guts to speak out earlier and tell her mom that, no, this wasn't what she wanted to do with her life.
Her attention diverted as the door to the bar opened, and in strolled Finn, sporting a slightly shorter haircut but still looking like he'd just rolled out of bed. "Speaking of things I wish I hadn't spent more than a year on . . ." She trailed off.
Raven glanced over her shoulder, took one peek at Finn, and said, "I'm gonna get going. Good luck." She slapped a ten down on the counter, hopped off her bar stool, and scurried towards the door.
"Hey, Raven," Finn said.
"Whatever," was the only response she gave him on her way out.
Lucky, Clarke thought. She would have loved to have been able to dismiss Finn with one word like that. But she was literally carrying the guy's offspring around in her stomach, so she couldn't do that.
"Wow," Finn said as he took over Raven's stool. "You're so pregnant."
She made a face. "Yeah." It was going on twenty-four weeks now. She'd kind of noticed.
"I just mean . . ." He let his sentence fade and then started over. "It's kind of weird to see you like this."
"Well, it's kind of weird to be like this." It was interesting, though, that Bellamy didn't have any surprised reaction to seeing her. Because he saw her like this all the time. Her pregnant belly was just normal to him. But not to Finn.
"I was thinking of names," he said. "Just ideas, you know. For girls."
"How'd you hear it was a girl?"
There were plenty of people in town who could have told him, numerous mutual acquaintances they had, so she didn't expect his answer to be, "Bellamy."
"Bellamy told you?"
"Yeah, at that baby shower thing you guys had."
Baby shower? They hadn't had a baby shower yet. "Gender reveal?" she said.
"Yeah, that. Anyway . . ." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, crumpled up paper, the kind people wrote grocery lists on. He handed it over to her, and she saw that it was indeed a list of names. Just a short list, about a dozen or so, but long enough that he'd given it a little thought.
"Emma," she read, immediately nixing it in her mind because of how damn common it was. "Violet." Pretty, but too old-fashioned. "Florence?" Where had he come up with that one? Did he even know where Florence was?
"That was my grandma's name," he explained.
It was a nice enough name, but it just made her think of Italy, and thinking of Italy made her picture Bellamy dressed up as a gondolier. So she mentally scratched that one off and continued onto the next one. "Brianna." She had to squint her eyes to read what he'd scribbled in parentheses right next to it. "Bri for short." She laughed. "Oh . . . no. No. We are not calling her Bri." Even if it was spelled differently than Bree from high school, there wasn't a chance in hell she was giving her daughter the same name as that bitch.
"What about the other names?" Finn asked. "You like any of those?"
She skimmed the rest, finding nothing particularly wrong with them, and said, "They're fine. But Bellamy and I already picked out a name for her."
"Oh, really?"
"Yeah." They'd never actually made it official, but ever since he'd suggested it, it'd stuck in her mind. "Avery."
"Avery," Finn said slowly, as if he was testing out the name. He didn't object to it, but he did ask, "Avery what?"
"Well, we haven't picked out a middle name yet." But when they did, that would be another her and Bellamy thing. Not her and Finn.
"No," he said, "I mean her last name."
Her last name? she thought, feeling like she was being put . . . on the spot. She didn't have an answer. Avery . . . Something. She didn't know her own daughter's last name.
...
Clarke was able to fake some nausea in order to leave work early, before it got dark out, and that left her a little extra time to swing by Kane's youth center to see if he was still there. She wasn't surprised to see that he was. Kane put in a lot of hours with those kids. Sometimes he was there for twelve hours out of the day.
She found him outside on the steps, zipping up the backpack of a chubby little boy who didn't look old enough to be walking home on his own yet. And it turned out, he wasn't. Because he hugged Kane goodbye, then waddled across the street to get into an old, beat-up car.
"One of your regulars?" Clarke asked as she ambled up the steps.
"Oh, yeah," Kane said. "His home life's pretty tough."
"Good thing he has this place then," she said. "I'm sure he likes it here."
"I think so. He doesn't always like that I make him do his homework, though."
That sounded like every tutoring session Bellamy had ever had with Monty. "But he'll look back on it and thank you," she assured him.
"I know," Kane said. "Now did you come by just to boost my ego, or is there another reason?"
"I just wanted to check in, see how things have been lately . . ." she said, quietly adding, ". . . with my mom," as they headed inside.
"Funny," Kane said, pulling the curtain closed on the front window to signal that they were closed for the day. "She asked me to find out how you've been doing, too."
So they had him playing the middle man then. Poor guy. "Well, classes started back up," she told him, "so I'm miserable."
Kane chuckled. "Well, I'm glad you're still finishing your degree."
"Yeah, it was never like I planned on dropping out," she said as she followed him into the computer lab, where, judging by the amount of trash that had accumulated on the floor, a lot of kids had been working today. "I just don't plan on continuing my education after this. Oh, and when I told her, Kane, you would've thought I was telling her the world was ending."
"Look," he said, bending down to pick up a discarded candy wrapper, "I know she can be a bit . . ."
"Insane?" she filled in.
"Dramatic. But try to look at things from her perspective. For your whole life, she's envisioned that you'll follow in her footsteps. It's an adjustment for her to entertain any other option."
"So she's still pissed at me," Clarke surmised. "Or is she pissed at Bellamy? Is she ever not pissed at him?"
"She . . . needs a few more days to cool down." Kane handed her a trash can and motioned for her to follow him around as he cleaned up.
"Can you just propose to her already so she gets in a good mood?" Clarke implored him.
"Well, I'd like her to be in a good mood before I propose to her," he joked around, "maximize the chances of her saying yes."
"Oh, she'll say yes no matter what kind of mood she's in." Clarke felt like his proposal kept getting pushed back because of . . . drama. Either drama involving her and Bellamy or Jake and Alyssa.
"So is that why you're here," he said, "to drop some hints about me putting a ring on it?"
"No," she denied. "And Kane, you're cool and everything, but you are way too old to be quoting Beyoncé."
He didn't take offense with her teasing. Never did. Instead, he just laughed and nodded in agreement.
"No, I'm—I'm here to ask you about something, actually," she said. "Something important."
He dumped a handful of trash into the can and simply said, "Okay." Like he was used to young people coming to him with important things to talk about.
"Well, I know that you work with a lot of kids who are from . . . um, non-traditional families, I guess you could say," she started in.
"A lot of them, yes."
She set the trashcan down since they'd stopped cleaning for the moment. "Sometimes it's probably hard to keep track of whose kid is whose, and which kids are siblings, and stuff like that," she said, trying to gently segue into what was really on her mind. "Because so many of them have different last names than the actual family last name these days. You know what I mean?"
He stared at her intently and said, "I think so."
"I mean, there's just a lot more variety now when it comes to families," she went on. "It used to be a mom and dad getting married and then popping out the babies. But now we have more blended families and LGBTQ families and single-parent families."
"You're not gonna be a single parent, Clarke," he assured her.
"I know." There had been a time when she'd assumed she would be, but Bellamy had put that fear to rest in a major way. "But when it comes to naming my daughter . . . what am I supposed to do? About a last name, I mean." The first name had been nothing but fun to think about.
"Well, you have options," Kane told her. "You could give her your last name, Finn's, or you could hyphenate them."
"I don't want her to have Finn's last name," she said decidedly. "His DNA's enough."
"Then give her your last name," he suggested. "Since you two aren't even together anymore, it'd be hard for him to dispute that."
She thought about it for a moment and nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I could just give her my last name. She could be a Griffin." More and more women these days were keeping their last names even if they did get married. It was like a feminism thing.
"This isn't about you and Finn, though, is it?" Kane determined. "It's about you and Bellamy."
It was. It totally was. And truthfully, she was glad her future stepdad was perceptive enough to figure that out without her actually having to tell him. "I know she's not a Blake, not technically," she said. "But he's gonna love her just like he would his own daughter. He already does."
"You wanna give her his last name?" Kane asked.
"I don't even know if it's possible." It seemed like such a slap in the face to not even consider it, though, after everything he'd done for her.
"Well, to be honest, neither do I," Kane said. "It's something you'd have to look into and discuss with him. And something you'd have to discuss with Finn. Because he'd have grounds to object to that."
"Right." Even if she could give the baby Bellamy's last name, chances were, Finn wouldn't be too thrilled about it. What if she ended up having to go to court with him to figure it all out? That'd be so stressful and sounded like way more than she could handle right now. "Probably just the simplest thing would be to give her my last name then," she decided.
"And you can always change it," Kane pointed out. "When you become a Blake someday, she can, too."
Clarke smiled, mulling that sentence over. When I become a Blake someday, she thought, letting her mind race with the possibility. How many girls in high school had tested out their first name with Bellamy's last name? How many had doodled it on their notebooks? She actually never had, just because she'd never let herself believe it was possible. But nowadays . . . it definitely seemed more possible than before.
...
Dyslexia sucked. Even as an adult, it took Bellamy twice as long to read one page out of a book as it would take a normal person. But he was trying to read more, something like a book a month, maybe. Because when the baby was born, he wanted to be able to read her bedtime stories without pausing and stumbling over all his words. If he read fluently to her, maybe it would help her develop her own reading skills. And then she wouldn't have the same problems in school he'd had.
Who am I kidding? he thought as he flipped the page, already struggling to remember what he'd just read. The kid was half Clarke. She'd inherit her mom's brains, and school would be a breeze. She'd be out-reading him by the time she was in second grade.
Clarke sat up beside him in the bed, watching some trash reality show on TV while she munched on chips. She knew how important it was for him to try to stay focused when he read, so she didn't say anything to disrupt him. But eventually, he got to the point where his eyes just needed a break, and he set the book down mid-chapter and yawned.
"Finn came into the bar today," she blurted, aiming the remote at the TV to turn down the volume.
"Oh, yeah?"
"Yep."
"Just to remind you he exists, or what?"
"No, he had a list," Clarke informed him. "Of ideas for baby names."
Bellamy tried not to react to that, but . . . fuck, it pissed him off. "You're kidding me," he grumbled. The guy never called her to ask how she was doing, never offered to go to any appointments with her, yet when it came to choosing a name, he wanted input? It seemed like he didn't want to put in any work when it came to being a father, and he wanted to do just enough to be able to claim some sort of involvement.
"Nice move telling him it's a girl, by the way," Clarke said. "I didn't know you did that."
Well, now he wished he hadn't. "He was kinda . . . loitering around outside at the gender reveal party," he told her. "I just told him so he'd go away."
"No, it's fine," she said. "It's fine for him to know. And I guess it's fine for him to suggest names, too. Not that we're gonna use any of 'em."
Good, he thought. The less Finn had to do with all of this, the better. "What'd you tell him?" he asked her.
"That we already picked out a name."
He made a face. "We did?" When did that happen?
"Yeah." She smiled at him and said, "Avery."
"What?" He smiled like an idiot. "We're going with that? With one of the names I came up with? That's what we're naming her?"
"Well, if you still want to."
"I do. Of course I do." His chest swelled with pride as he imagined telling Raven and Miller and everyone else that he'd been the one to come up with that name. And he'd get to tell Avery herself someday. Avery. "It means wise, you know," he reminded her.
"Well, I looked it up, and actually, it means ruling with elf-wisdom," she corrected. "But that's okay. I mean, who doesn't love a good elf?"
"Exactly." Excited to finally have something to call that bun in the oven, he turned onto his side and reached over to put his hand on Clarke's stomach. "Avery," he said, smiling. "We've got a name for you now."
"Still gotta come up with a middle name," she said.
"Oh, I got some ideas for that, too."
She set her hand atop his, eyes downcast for a moment when she said, "And then there's . . . the last name issue."
His smile fell. He felt it. Because . . . yeah, there was that.
"I feel like we've kind of purposefully not talked about it," she said.
He hadn't brought it up, just because he'd been waiting to see if she would. And now she had, so there was no avoiding it anymore. "Just so long as it's not Collins," he said. Anything but Finn's last name.
"Oh, it won't be," she assured him quickly. "But . . . I think it's gonna have to be Griffin."
Griffin, he registered. That was . . . that was fine. He'd pretty much anticipated that.
"Just because we don't want there to be a big conflict about it or anything," she rationalized.
"Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense." If they tried anything to go with anything else, that just opened up a whole can of worms with Finn and his last name. "Avery Griffin," he said slowly, letting the name roll over his tongue. "It sounds nice."
"Yeah," she agreed. Leaning over, she hugged him and said, "Thank you for being so understanding."
He hugged her back, totally fine with the decision. It made logical sense. And he hadn't been kidding when he said Avery Griffin sounded nice. It really did. It was a good combo. But . . .
He couldn't help but feel like Avery Blake sounded even better.
That night, once Clarke had fallen asleep on her side on her gigantic pregnancy pillow, Bellamy got his phone out and did a little research. Nothing too substantial or in-depth. Just enough to gather some basic facts, to know what options were available to them and what laws were in place.
Maryland wasn't the strictest state when it came to surnames, not by a long-shot. But they weren't as lawless as a state like Alabama, either. And there were some pretty recent reports about how more and more couples were hyphenating their last names. Like . . . Griffin-Blake. Or Blake-Griffin. But wasn't there a basketball player named Blake Griffin? Couldn't have that.
Just as he was about to go to sleep, he started reading up on something that caught his interest. Not because it pertained to him and Clarke, necessarily, but because . . . maybe someday it would. Apparently in this state, like many others, when a married couple had a child, the husband was just presumed to be the father of the child until proven otherwise. That meant the husband's name went on the birth certificate, unless the mother objected to it.
So there was a way then, a way for him to have his name on that birth certificate, to be listed as Avery's father. Of course, Finn could object to it, but . . . maybe he wouldn't. If he and Clarke were married, if their relationship was that official, then maybe Finn just wouldn't even bother.
He finally set his phone aside and lay down around midnight, a couple hours after Clarke had already dozed off. She was starting to move around a bit more, a sure sign that she'd be waking up to go to the bathroom soon, and when she did, he was going to pretend he was asleep. He didn't want her knowing he'd stayed up and been looking at all this stuff. Last name stuff. Marriage stuff.
Marriage. That was . . . probably still down the line. And when he asked her to marry him someday, it wasn't just going to be so he could be listed as Avery's father. No, when he asked her, it was going to be because he wanted to spend his life with her. And there was no rush when it came to the asking.
Still, though . . . it gave him something to think about.
