Mr. Principal

by Summer Cooper

  It was Carter.

  “Hey, you,” he said, walking towards with me with a friend of his that I didn’t know well. I instantly felt self-conscious.

  I must have looked a mess because his face darkened in concern.

  “What’s wrong, Dana? Tell me what happened. Who do I need to kill?” he said, waving for his friend to go on without him.

  “I can’t—Tom—oh God.” And then I slumped forward and began to sob on Carter’s chest as he held me.

  “Come on,” he said to me. “I can’t have you crying in the middle of the night on the green. What type of monster would that make me?”

  “Not a monster at all in comparison to Tom.”

  He silently took my hand and didn’t say a word about my last comment. He had never badmouthed Tom, but he’d never praised him either. Their hate for each other was almost tangible.

  I understood Carter now because suddenly I hated Tom with a passion too.

  We went back to Carter’s dorm room and he’d given me a cup of hot chocolate that he found in the kitchenette. He also handed me a washcloth and helped me clean my face, while I warmed my hands on the cup of chocolate.

  I’d smiled up at him with a wobbly grin, trying to keep it together, telling myself not to cry.

  “You don’t have to put on a brave front for me,” he’d said. “If you want to cry, then feel free to cry.”

  I took in a shaky breath. “I don’t think Tom is right for me,” was all I could say. It humiliated me to admit that he was cheating on me. It just meant that all this time I truly hadn’t been good enough for him.

  To my surprise, Carter said, “I’m glad you finally came to your senses. Because he’s not right for you. He never was, and he never will be.”

  “I think he’s cheating on me,” I said, feeling safe suddenly with sharing my secret.

  Carter growled, “If he’s too stupid to be faithful to you, what’s the point of even being with him?

  I looked down at my hands and sighed. “Maybe there’s more to the story. Maybe I should go back and talk to him… actually listen to his side.”

  I stood up and Carter reached out his hand to stop me. “Wait… he doesn’t deserve you, Dana. He doesn’t. Even if he isn’t a cheat, he’s all wrong for you.”

  “You always hated him.”

  “I don’t hate him… I hate that he has you.”

  I was stunned. I didn’t know Carter felt that way.

  “If Tom isn’t right for me, Carter, then who is?”

  “Me,” he said, standing up now and tugging me gently toward him.

  “Carter, I—”

  He kissed me then, stopping me from saying anything at all, and it was as if that kiss was what my body—no my entire being—was waiting for. I kissed him back, not caring about the consequences.

  It felt right. Everything about touching Carter felt right.

  When he had finally broken the kiss, I just stood there not knowing what to say or what to do.

  “I love you, Dana. Give me a chance to make you happy,” he said, tucking a hair behind my ear.

  “Carter,” I said hesitantly, feeling so many emotions and not able to deal with even one. I was overwhelmed. “We’re friends. I don’t want to ruin that.”

  “I love you too much to let that happen,” he said before kissing me again. This time he ran his hands down my arms and pulled me up against him so that his crotch was pressing against my thigh.

  Against my better judgment, I moved against it. I wanted him. I wanted him more than I’d ever wanted a man.

  Slowly, we undressed each other, and I’d welcomed Carter inside me that night again and again.

  My mind snapped back to the present and I realized Carter was staring at me. I think he was also recalling that night and he slowly stroked my hand. The soft, innocent touch, sent goosebumps up my hands.

  “I can’t talk about this now,” I said softly, avoiding his last question about love.

  “When are you going to stop running from me, Dana?”

  I took my hand away. “I’m not running, I just want to be sure. I’m tired of making the same mistakes, of choosing wrong, I need to make better decisions, not just for me, but for Meredith too.”

  He was silent for a long time and he just studied me. His eyes were hard to read. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking now. He was closed off.

  “I respect that,” he finally said. “Here, let me carry Meredith to your car for you.”

  I hadn’t expected that change of subject. A lot had been left unsaid, but I was glad for a minor reprieve.

  He effortlessly carried Meredith to my car and buckled her in. She slept through the entire process like I knew she would.

  I stood outside of my car and Carter stood in front of me.

  “Thanks for helping me out tonight.”

  “No problem. I’ll do anything for you. Did you get the job?” he asked. I knew he was attempting to keep things light and I appreciated that.

  I nodded. I’d aced the interview. I’d completely knocked it out the park. “It’s just temporary,” I said. “With the possibility of going full-time eventually.”

  “That’s great,” he said genuinely looking happy for me. “What will you be doing?”

  “I’m going to be an administrative assistant for a local government office.”

  “Cool,” he said looking surprised. “Maybe they’ll let you put that marketing degree to some use.”

  I smiled because he remembered my major. What didn’t he remember about me?

  “It turns out that they need someone to work on their social media presence, so that’s going to be part of my new job, so I’ll get to learn a little bit about maybe digital marketing… I don’t know, at least I’ll learn how to use Twitter.”

  “I don’t even have a Twitter account.”

  “Nor do I,” I confessed and we both laughed.

  Meredith stirred, and I looked at Carter apologetically.

  “Let’s continue this conversation later, okay? I should get her home so she can eat and binge watch Netflix with me.”

  “Good parenting right there.”

  “I’m the best,” I said facetiously, and he laughed.

  He then leaned forward and placed a chaste kiss on my forehead.

  “Be safe.”

  He walked back in then, not even waiting for my response and I climbed into the car wondering if I’d done the right thing all those years back. I couldn’t undo the past, but God did I have regrets.

  I drove home, deep in my own thoughts when I heard a little voice say, “He likes you, you know.”

  “Hey, you, what are you doing awake?” I said, caught off guard and not ready to have THAT conversation with her.

  “Principal K really likes you or he wouldn’t have kissed you.”

  I blushed. “You saw that?”

  “Yep. And he always asks about you. He asks every day how you’re doing.”

  “Well, he’s my friend…”

  “He wants to be your boyfriend,” she said with a deep sigh. “And I think you should let him. If my mom dates the principal then I can do whatever I want.”

  I laughed. “Hush up, you little stinker.”

  She shrugged playfully. “I’m just saying…”

  We pulled up into the driveway shortly after and my phone beeped as I parked. I reached for it and checked my text messages.

  “How about dinner next week?” was the short and simple text from Carter.

  I didn’t even get a chance to think about it as Meredith said from near my shoulder. “Say yes! Say yes!”

  I hadn’t even heard her unbuckle herself.

  I turned to argue with her when she snatched the phone from me, typed something and then jumped out the car and ran.

  “Get back here, you little troublemaker! What did you send?” I yelled reaching for my phone which she had flung in the back seat.

  I snatched it up and saw that she had typed yes.

  I na
rrowed my eyes and she looked at me innocently from the front door as I gathered her bags and made my way to our porch.

  “I should ground you for like a million years.”

  “But you won’t,” she said. “I’m just helping you. Trust me,” she said sounding older than her age. “You’ll thank me later.”

  I ruffled her hair and sighed, what had Meredith gotten me into?

  Chapter Seven

  “You know, we could have gone bowling or something.”

  “Nope,” Carter said as he held the car door open for me. “This is our first date and I’m determined to make it as romantic and impressive as possible.”

  What wasn’t said was that I was already impressed. He had texted me back that same night and between Meredith’s ribbings, I’d found myself agreeing to dinner and a movie with Carter.

  I’d been nervous all week. I hadn’t known what to wear or how to dress. I didn’t know if I should wear makeup and perfume.

  I’d decided on both at the last minute and I think Carter approved. Who was I kidding? I knew he approved. He couldn’t stop looking at how long my legs were in my mini-dress.

  I’d gotten it shortly after my divorce. It had been an impulse buy once I’d heard from my very innocent daughter that she now had two mommies. If I hadn’t needed to be a functional adult that weekend Meredith had told me her dad had remarried, I would have certainly gotten drunk and woken up in my own vomit in an alley. But because I was a mom, I’d just bought some expensive clothes that I could no longer afford.

  I’d returned almost all of them when I’d returned to my senses, but I’d kept this one as a token of perseverance. That’s what it had meant to me. And now I was actually wearing it on a date. A date with my best friend.

  Who would have thought the day would come when that would happen?

  “Well, I’m impressed so far.” I shyly cast a glance in his direction. “You look amazing.”

  He laughed.

  I bit my lip. “Sorry, if that doesn’t sound like a very masculine compliment. I could say that you look handsome, but that sounds ways too tame.”

  “Amazing sounds good to me. A woman has never described me as amazing before.” He then winked dramatically at me. “At least not outside of bed.”

  I couldn’t help myself. I laughed so hard my sides began to hurt. “You’re ridiculous.”

  He smiled. “Of course, I am. And if that’s what it takes to get you to go on date number two with me, then ridiculous it is.”

  “Date number two, huh? What makes you think you’ll get a second date?”

  “I don’t know, I just have a feeling.”

  I smiled to myself as I leaned back against the headrest. Ensconced in the darkness of the car, I let myself relax. It was sort of nice being courted, going on a date, having someone genuinely interested in me, and I was lucky that it was someone that was also a friend. Maybe this would work out after all.

  We chatted about his experiences abroad and my new job. I told him how nice the people were and how being fired had actually been a good thing, it seemed.

  “Yeah, sometimes you have to be forced to make a change, you know? Like your life has to be disrupted first before you wake up and realize you can do better.”

  I considered his words and thought of where I would be if Tom hadn’t divorced me. I would still be sitting at home, hungry for love, overweight, and unhappy. I could admit that now. I’d been unhappy. And maybe so had Tom.

  But I wasn’t going to focus on my divorce tonight. I wasn’t going to dwell in the past, especially when my future looked so promising.

  I looked over at Carter then. He paused at a stop light and looked back at me.

  “What?” he said with a small smile.

  I shrugged. “Oh, nothing. I’m just thinking about how much things have changed.”

  “Sometimes change is good,” he said as he pulled off.

  I nodded. “But I’m a Capricorn, so I’m not a big fan of change and I have the bad habit of self-sabotaging.”

  Oh, I’d just admitted more to him in the last few seconds than I’d admitted to myself in the last ten years.

  “I think most people, more or less, are afraid to embrace change,” he said kindly. “If you think about it, the familiar is safe. Change is scary. Sometimes it’s important to be a little scared though, not everything in life should be easy.”

  “Ha! I wholeheartedly disagree,” I said as we pulled up to a funky looking restaurant. I could hear music already and it sounded like reggae.

  He stopped the car and said, “I hope you like Jamaican food.”

  “Never tried it.”

  “You’re going to love it.”

  He quickly got out the car and made his way around to open the door for me. As I stepped out, I felt a little out of my element.

  Almost everyone else was dressed casually, while I looked like I was dressed to go to a club.

  I tugged at my hemline self-consciously.

  Carter noticed and hooked an arm around my waist. “Stop. You look great.”

  “Everyone else is dressed so casually.”

  “They’re probably going to the outdoor or bar section.”

  He led me inside and I could see that the building was deceptively large. We walked past an area with a bar and a live band and headed up a flight of stairs.

  It was then that I saw other people dressed a lot like me. The top floor had a hostess who greeted us warmly.

  She had caramel colored skin and dreadlocks that extended down her back.

  “I see you have a date tonight, Carter. Who’s the lucky girl?” Her accented English held a slightly British hint.

  He smiled down at me as we followed behind her. “This is Dana.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “The Dana? Dana from college?”

  “One and only.”

  I didn’t know what to say as we settled down at our table and she handed us a menu, giving us a big smile. “Enjoy yourselves.”

  “So the hostess at this restaurant knows me by name?”

  He tried to look nonchalant but I knew him too well.

  “Come on, spill it.”

  “She’s the bartender on Friday nights and I might have mentioned you a time or two.”

  “Oh really?”

  “I mean, briefly, in passing. I don’t sit at the bar every night and sob into my beer pining after you.”

  I tried to hold back a smile. “So, is crying into your beer and sobbing over me just your Saturday activity?”

  “Yeah, weekends and holidays. And maybe every other Monday,” he joked.

  I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face as I looked at him. It felt good to be around him. It felt good to be wanted. More than that, it felt good to be loved. But that’s how he felt about me. How did I feel about him?

  I’d always loved Carter as a friend. And I’d thought my crush on him had faded after I began to date Tom, but maybe it hadn’t faded. Maybe I’d just buried it and what happened between us back in college had been a result of all those emotions bubbling up and spilling over the surface. I’d thought that Carter had been making love to me while I’d only been having sex with him, but maybe for both of us, that act had been an act of love.

  It was too much to consider thinking that I, or rather, we’d wasted so much time, time that we could have had together. But we had the present. And he was sitting across from me now, so it was time to do something different.

  Maybe the divorce had been the push I’d needed to find myself. And maybe I would find myself much in love with Carter. I didn’t believe in happily ever after. With Tom, I’d thought just ‘content ever after’ was good enough, but with Carter, I felt anything was possible… even a fairy tale where things worked out in my favor. Maybe tonight I would stop feeling broken, useless, and sad.

  My morose thoughts didn’t last long as Carter reached for my hand and said, “What do you think of the restaurant?”

  It had a Caribbean vibe to it, but it w
as subtle. The lighting was low and soft sounds of reggae filtered through the air.

  “It feels sort of magical, like one of those high-class restaurants at those Caribbean resorts.”

  I’d only been to one and that had been during spring break my senior year in college. I wondered if Carter remembered it as fondly as I did.

  “Do you remember our senior class trip during spring break?”

  He nodded. “Now that was a good time. It was my first taste of the Caribbean and it was how I became addicted to reggae.”

  “Addicted to reggae?”

  He nodded. “I even joined a band.”

  “You did not.”

  “I did,” he said with a sigh and then shook his head. “Now, to be honest, we weren’t very good.”

  I muffled a laugh. “Who else was in the band?”

  “Well there was me… and well, just me.”

  I couldn’t hold back any longer. “A one-man band?” My sides hurt as I tried to contain my laughter.

  “I had high aspirations for myself.”

  “More like delusions.”

  He reached for his phone and started looking for something. I thought my teasing had offended him and I rushed to apologize when he handed me his phone.

  It was an Amazon link and on it was a picture of a reggae album for sale. “What is this?”

  “I made an album.” The cover of the album was so cheesy. There were palm trees, a beach, and a silhouette of a man looking towards the setting sun. Holding back a grin was becoming impossible.

  I looked at the number of stars. “Hey! You have four stars! That’s impressive.”

  He laughed, “Not really. As soon as I released it, I had my mom, dad, stepdad, and stepmom review it under different accounts.”

  I chuckled. “Hey, maybe they’re honest reviews.”

  Carter patted my hand. “You’re sweet. I know it sucked but I was young and dumb.”

  “Well, at least you wasted your youth creating bad music. The only thing I have to show for myself is a failed marriage.”

  “You’re too hard on yourself.”

  “No. I think it’s the opposite. I haven’t been hard enough.” I sat back and took a sip of my water that had appeared without me noticing. “I feel like I’ve been asleep at the wheel for years, just crashing and burning, never opening my eyes to actually figure out what I was doing or where I was going. Being here with you tonight, I don’t know. Makes me feel like I used to feel, like I was able to do anything, be anybody… more than just a failed housewife.”