by Larry Brill
“About what?”
“I thought Tiff told you. Didn’t she tell you yet? I got that promotion. Crockett gave me the news yesterday.”
Julie followed him into the kitchen and turned her back on Joe as she slid the glass door shut. “The new shop in Texas? Your own shop. That’s wonderful,” she said. “I don’t know what to say.”
Actually, Julie knew exactly what to say. She wanted to tell him to turn the job down and that he couldn’t possibly consider uprooting her family and moving them a million miles away from her. Texas, no less. First her youngest, Daniel, went off to college in Oregon and decided to stay. He had a great job as a graphic designer for a cemetery headstone company, but it didn’t pay enough for frequent trips back home. Now Tiffany was leaving, taking Joe and the boys and little Morgan away?
“I’m happy for you, Joe. You certainly deserve it.” Julie suddenly felt very cold.
Talk over dinner rarely strayed far from the excitement of Joe’s new job and the impending move. It was a life-changing one for Tiffany and the kids and, to Julie’s way of thinking, for the family being left behind. She got teary as she wiped applesauce from little Morgan’s face, her big brown eyes twinkling at Julie. The darling was going to grow up without her.
Her eyes went from moist to weepy as she sat in her car outside Tiffany’s house before leaving. She felt abandoned. Damn. They weren’t even gone yet, and she already missed her family so much. Julie took out her phone and dialed Russell’s number. His voice, recorded and telling her to leave a message, was no comfort.
“Call me as soon as you get this message,” she told the phone. Thinking that sounded too foreboding she added, “It’s not an emergency, but call me just the same. It doesn’t matter how late. I’ll be up.”
She had sent him a text message earlier in the evening, before she got the good news about Joe’s promotion that depressed her so. No response. Now he wasn’t answering his home phone. Nate had promised to get Russell home safely. He probably went straight to bed. Julie left the neighborhood and headed for Russell’s house. He might grump at her for waking him up, but she really needed a hug right now and a warm body to snuggle with and comfort her through the night.
But somewhere on the drive an irrational irritation steered her away. It was unfair that he wasn’t there when she needed him, even if he didn’t know it. That wasn’t his fault, but she told herself if he had been at the dinner to begin with, she wouldn’t have to show up at his door unexpectedly. Now she was lonely and miffed. Instead of driving to Russell’s, she pulled into the parking lot of the Happy Yen Mini Mart and Texas Barbecue. She sat in the car and watched Mr. Nguyen through the storefront windows, feeling heavy, as if she had gained two hundred pounds and it was all pressing her into the seat of her little Ford. Tears trickled onto her cheeks.
Julie dried her eyes, steeled herself and went into the Happy Yen. It barely registered when Mr. Nyguen told her it was too late to buy a lottery ticket; the drawing had been an hour earlier. She walked out of the store with a pint of ice cream. At least she wouldn’t have to share it with anyone, but then, that was the problem.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Carla Weighs In
“So is Nate your Plan B now?” Carla wanted to know.
“More like Plan Z, I would think.”
Carla poshed that idea. “He’s nice-looking. He seems smart enough and funny as all get-out. I like him. If you ask me, he’s interested in you. If he wasn’t in the running for Plan B, why did you kiss him?”
“Carla! I did no such thing.”
“You thought about it.”
“Not even. How many times do I have to say it?”
“Okay, you flirted a little.”
That was closer to the truth. She hadn’t meant it as a flirt when she asked Nate about their first kiss. It just came out, unchecked. It was childish, actually, and so unlike her. Carla made it sound as if the exchange was something to be embarrassed about. But when it came to blowing things out of proportion, Carla was Mount Vesuvius. If she was honest, she had asked the question without knowing the answer herself. She simply hadn’t thought about it enough. She was shocked that Nate had so easily called up a kiss long forgotten even if she was convinced it wasn’t the right answer.
It was Wednesday afternoon, and they walked along Los Gatos Creek late in the day. She wanted to think. She wanted to clear her head. The problem was every time she cleared it, Carla would fill her head with something else. It wasn’t until the subject of her chat with Nate came up that she found herself marching and working up a sweat.
“I’m starting to understand why you were in love with him back in high school.”
“I was never ‘in love’ with Nate Evans.” She scratched quotation marks on the air with her free hand, then used a corner of the towel hanging around her neck to dab her cheek. They were only a mile down the trail. The way she was huffing and puffing, she was glad Carla was walking with her; it meant she’d have a good excuse to stop and turn at the park ahead. “Maybe I sort of had a crush on him, just typical teenage stuff.”
“Right. Well, I like my version better. Can we slow down a little, please?” Carla wheezed. Julie pulled a water bottle from the small of her back, where she had tucked it into a waist pack, and took a slow, measured sip. Carla pulled even with her, asking exactly why they were there. “You asked if I wanted to go for a walk, but this isn’t a walk. This is work.”
“We haven’t been getting much exercise. I think it may be time to start getting out on a regular basis again.”
“Okay. But warn me next time. I’ll buy some running shoes and wait in the car.”
Julie stopped and toed a rock from the middle of the path. “I wish you’d let it go. We don’t need to talk about him.”
“Have it your way, Miss Snippy Pants. It’s more fun needling you about Nate than watching you torture yourself over Tiffany moving away. I’m trying to take your mind off the worse of two evils. If you want to call flirting with him evil. I don’t think it’s so bad. No disrespect to Russell, of course.”
“Well, Nate probably thought so. I think he respects Russell and the relationship we have.” But she was having doubts. She worried he was avoiding her since the weekend. When their paths did cross, there was something she couldn’t identify in his eyes, like a mixture of disappointment and pity. Maybe he thought her a silly fool. Maybe she deserved it. But if anybody would have had fun with the way she teased him that Saturday in the parking lot, it would be Nate Evans. Go figure.
He had apologized for letting her down and not keeping a closer eye on Russell to make sure he got home safely. But that wasn’t it. Anyway, Russell had explained that away. He didn’t drive himself home; he got a ride from one of the other players.
They started walking again and said little until they reached the park and stopped to rest on a picnic bench before heading back. She sat there and didn’t listen to whatever Carla had to say. Then she asked, “Have you ever wished you could freeze time? Stop life right where you are so that nothing changes, and you don’t have to worry about what’s coming?”
“I might if I ever find myself lounging in a hot tub filled with chocolate and Brad Pitt right beside me with his hand on my knee.”
“Ever since Tiffany said they were moving away…” She left it at that. The future had become unsettled. Nate Peter Pan Evans had her thinking a lot about the past, but Julie wanted to stay right there in the present. Then she would always have her daughter and her darling granddaughter. And she could savor the anticipation of marrying Russell. If she could stop life in its tracks, she would keep her family nearby and enjoy the love she shared with Russell without having to deal with the overwhelming uncertainty that had gotten its grips on her. “I wonder if it will last.”
“What will?”
“Things.”
“I hate to see you like this. But you’ll get through it. And I doubt it will be as bad as you think.”
Sometimes sh
e feared it might be worse.
They walked back down the trail in silence, keeping to the shady side under the spruce trees.
“Don’t you think it’s more than a little strange that this Nate guy from out of your past should show up where you work, the same high school you went to together?” Carla asked. “Poof. Out of thin air just like that. I think it’s an omen.”
“I think it’s a coincidence.”
“No. Coincidence is this guy you had a crush on comes back into your life at exactly the moment you suddenly want to get out and start jogging to get some exercise. Coincidence is this guy you had a crush on comes along exactly when you’ve started to worry about the way you’re dressed. Coincidence is this guy you had a crush on comes along exactly when you decide it’s been far too long since you got a new cut and color. I really like your hair this way, by the way, this shorter cut is just different enough to be different. That’s coincidence, I guess. But I think it’s an omen.”
“An omen.”
“Yeah. This guy you had a crush on in high school shows up at the exact moment you’re about to marry someone else. That’s an omen.”
“For someone who teaches science, you are the most irrational person I know.”
“So let’s get into the math of probabilities if you want to. What are the probabilities of Nate showing up right now? Probably less than your chance of winning the lottery. That’s a scientific omen.”
Julie surrendered. “If you say so. But I don’t like the way you keep emphasizing that guy you had a crush on like it was anything more than that.” Carla was starting to annoy her, even if her chatter did keep Julie from thinking about losing her family to Texas. “You’re not going to make me wish I never said anything about it, are you?”
“You know I will. It’s what I do. But never mind. I still think the timing of all this is strange.”
Exasperated, she asked, “What are you getting at, Carla?”
“Maybe it really is an omen. Wait. Today’s Wednesday, right? Have you bought your lottery ticket yet?”
Julie said she planned to stop and pick up dinner and buy a ticket on the way home.
“Maybe the lotto is speaking to you. Maybe you should use numbers you know about Nate, like his birthday. You could use that for two numbers.”
“How am I supposed to know what his birthday is? Or remember it if I ever knew it in the first place?”
“You could check his personnel file.”
“Carla! I’m not going go snooping like that.”
“No. Of course not. And you shouldn’t. That’s my job. It’s February twenty-seventh.”
“You are certifiable.”
“Where’s your spirit of adventure?”
“I left it back in the eighties, remember?”
Carla told Julie she was no fun. “Isn’t buying those stupid tickets a lark anyway? I’m telling you, it could be an omen. You could use his birthday and your birthday, the month and the day. That leaves just two other numbers to pick.”
When they reached the parking lot, Carla asked, “What kept you two from becoming a thing in school?”
It was a question that tweaked Julie. “Can we stop talking about Nate?”
“Okay. If it’s a sore subject.”
“Which it isn’t.” She should have expected this when she told Carla about the kissing memory flirt—it really was unintentional, she reminded herself. “There’s not much to tell. We hung around with the same group at school. We dated a few times, nothing serious; he dated several girls. We went to the same parties and hung out with friends after the football games.”
“But you had a crush on him.”
“Like I told you, who didn’t? He was that kind of boy everybody liked. And Nate liked everybody. Especially the girls.”
“Oh. One of those. A heartbreaker, huh?”
Julie toyed with that thought. Things sure looked different now. “I don’t think it was intentional. I think Nate was having too much fun to even realize it.”
“So you’re saying he was clueless.”
Julie laughed. “Yep. Think of it this way. Nate is like a puppy that runs around being adorable and makes you laugh. He’s affectionate, and just when he gets to your heart, he piddles on your shoe and goes off chasing after a rabbit. That’s why he can’t possibly be Plan B.”
“Because he piddles on shoes.”
“Because he won’t stay around. One week we’d have a date and I’d get my hopes up, then I’d be mad at him a few days later because he would be taking some other girl out. I’d have a good cry and get over it just in time for him to ask me out again. Date. Rinse. Repeat. Let’s go. I have some homework to do tonight. I have to find some way to spin something more positive from the test scores report. Russell wants something to show to Superintendent Fox. He’s still lobbying hard for the assistant super’s position, and the poor guy can’t seem to put together a decent proposal without me. Or so he says.”
“Yeah, and I have a lesson to prepare.” Carla paused with her hand on the car door. “It’s so disappointing, though. I was expecting some real sparks. I thought maybe you were sweethearts torn apart. Voted the cutest couple, queen and king of the prom, things like that.”
Julie didn’t answer. She wanted to get off the subject but, after another long pause, couldn’t resist. “Actually Nate talked about going to the prom, but he asked another girl instead. She was the prom queen.”
“Ah ha!”
“Oh, this is childish. I was over it like that.” She snapped her fingers.
“Good. Now I don’t have to like him. But like you said, it’s hard to not like him. Still, I say buy a lottery ticket just the same. You never know.”
Julie was still chuckling over the absurdity of Carla’s suggestion when she stopped at the Happy Yen Mini Mart and Texas Barbecue and filled in the numbered bubbles on her lottery ticket. Nate’s birthday. Her birthday. Then she looked past the naked fluorescent lights to the gritty ceiling.
“I did my part. It’s up to you now.” Then she filled in two more numbered bubbles on the lottery slip without paying attention to where the pen landed
Stupid?
Sure.
An omen?
Hardly.
But what the heck, they were as good as any other numbers. She couldn’t remember the last time the lottery had come even close to her picks. They certainly weren’t going to start now. Nate Evans couldn’t change that.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Nate de Bergerac
Kick. Push. Glide.
By the following Monday morning, Nate was more depressed than ever. Things were totally effed up.
Kick. Push. Glide. He leaned and steered his skateboard through a slight curve and a mild slope down the sidewalk. Wobbly, he had to concentrate to maintain his balance. Skateboarding used to be second nature to him once upon a time; now his reflexes were slow, his balance was bad, and, worse, he couldn’t do it fearlessly like he did as a teen. Fear and gravity were the greatest threats to competent boarding. He cruised down the street with a hand on the bandage that covered most of his chin, hiding the road rash he got from a face plant on the way home from school on Friday. Maybe it was time to buy an alternative mode of transportation. He could afford a car now. Granted, the starting teacher’s salary didn’t measure up to the allowance a couple of his students pulled down each month. But they were the exception at MHHS.
He had played two games with Festerhaven’s softball team over the weekend. Only two weak hits along with two errors, a lackluster performance at best. He couldn’t concentrate. Aaron, the husband of Festerhaven’s throat-hockey partner, was there, and the way Loretta stayed near his side, you’d never guess she had a double play going with the principal. Festerhaven, for his part, was more attentive to Julie, and it put an extra spark in her day. Worse, Aaron turned out to be a decent guy and a great teammate and didn’t deserve to have his world crushed if Nate ratted out his wife. Julie would hate him for tattling on
her fiancé. They were two hearts he didn’t want to break, even if it wasn’t his fault. More to the point, it was none of his business. Nate wished he had Carla Almeida’s brass ovaries, sex change notwithstanding. She considered everything her business, and he doubted she would find anything wrong with setting the record straight with all the parties involved.
Lean left. Lean right.
Kick. Push. Glide.
Stumble. Stop. Remount.
He rolled past two students on the sidewalk approaching the school. They were several feet apart, and he took them on like cones on a slalom course. He had his Giants cap on backwards and wore Panama Jack sunglasses and an oversized Hawaiian shirt. Somewhere in the nineties, he guessed, the dress code changed for teachers in the public schools. The fashion line separating the faculty and the students crumbled like the Berlin Wall. He had been such a dweeb showing up to class in a tie that first week. His mother approved of the laid-back look and gave him some of Charlie’s old tie-dyed shirts from the sixties to wear. If he couldn’t be the most respected teacher on campus, he would definitely be the coolest.
Kick. Push. Whoa! Steady, fella.
Nate stumbled off his skateboard as he took the corner at the end of a wall of lockers outside the English quad, pulled down by a strong hand.
“Mr. Evans. What do you think you’re doing?”
“Oh. Hey, Russ. I mean, Mr. Festerhaven.”
Two girls snickered as they stepped around the men. Nate had seen plenty of smirks from students as he wheeled each morning onto campus and the “what-the-iff#@?” looks from a couple of teachers. But a “what-the-eff#@?” look from the principal was not a good way to start the day.
“That sign over there that says no skateboarding on campus means no skateboarding,” Festerhaven said. “Don’t think you get a pass because you are faculty. You don’t. If I could, I’d have you in detention and send a note home to your parents.”
If only. Nate answered to his parents every day, and would as long as he went on living in their house, which could be forever at this rate. Sure, he could afford to move out, but that would ruin the fantasy he had crafted. He was determined to live with his parents at least through graduation in the spring to find out where this story, this life was going to take him. Another big plus, the bedroom at his parents’ place felt safe and comfortable. He could understand why moving back home was all the rage with millenials these days. If Festerhaven knew that little fact, he might try to send a note home to Mom and Dad, so his threat wasn’t entirely empty. Then again, Nate’s mother would tear it up and toss it like so many of the disciplinary tickets he had gotten for rogue but harmless behavior as a teen. Mom believed a little civil disobedience was good training for the real world.