by Raquel Belle
“Well, after… the bar, I ran home.”
“What do you mean you ran home? That bar is like seven miles from your apartment.”
“Exactly. And it started raining at some point, so by the time I got home, I was dehydrated from drinking, soaked from the rain, and also pretty exhausted. I didn’t sleep that well on Thursday night, so I think it was probably a culmination of all three that did it. I woke up Saturday morning hacking up a lung and pretty much slept the rest of the weekend.”
“And, um, why were you running?” Hayley hoped, prayed, that it had nothing to do with her. That James had just suddenly fancied a ninety minute run at midnight on a Friday in what was still considered winter in Chicago. Her hopes, however, were dashed when James spoke.
“I was upset. About us. Our kiss. I don’t know if you know this, Hayley, but I’ve had a pretty big crush on you for the past few months. Even after we decided to focus on friendship, my feelings didn’t go away. Kissing you was, as cliché as it sounds, a dream come true, and when you told me it was a mistake… I just lost it. I didn’t know how to handle the rejection. So I ran. Eight miles. And in the process, gave myself pneumonia, which has allowed me to lay on the couch for four days and wallow in my idiocy.”
“Oh James, I’m so sorry,” Hayley said, reaching over to place a hand over the one he had resting in his lap. “I was so confused. I really liked you. Like you, I mean. But I’ve been cheated on by multiple ex-boyfriends, and even though Eric’s and my relationship was on the rocks at that point, I felt terrible for becoming the type of person I’d always hated. Of course, I felt a little less guilty after I came home and discovered Eric having sex with his ex-girlfriend in my bed.”
James had been taking a sip of orange juice while Hayley talked, and he nearly spit it out when he heard the last sentence come out of her mouth. “He did what?!” Fury began to darken James’ irises, and his chest puffed out as he roughly set his soup bowl on the table and stood up, the blanket falling off him. He looked like he was ready for a fight, and as much as Hayley appreciated his anger on her behalf, he looked like he couldn’t even fight a scarecrow, much less a living, breathing male human being.
“Whoa there! Sit back down! Just because you’re angry doesn’t mean you suddenly aren’t gravely ill!” she shouted, pushed James back onto the couch, where he landed with a squeak from the springs in the couch cushion. She tucked a blanket back over him and handed him his soup, scolding him and telling him not to get up again.
“Don’t worry. I’m perfectly capable of fighting my own battles.”
James looked at Hayley sheepishly. “I know, I know. Sorry. That’s just… that must’ve been awful to see. I’m so sorry for you, Hayley.”
Hayley waved him off. “Thanks, but it’s okay. I’m glad I found out sooner rather than later. Apparently, he could tell I was pulling away, and tried to test me by asking me to go to his parents’ house.”
“So that wasn’t real? He never planned to go there at all?” James asked, incredulous.
“Nope. Once I’d told him I wanted to go to the teachers’ night out, Eric decided he wasn’t going to wait around to feel loved, so he called his ex-girlfriend, who had no idea I existed. He told her my apartment was an Airbnb, and he was mid-thrust when I walked in. We broke up, he left and his ex and I got drunk on my couch and ate Oreos. She’s really nice.”
“Wow. That’s… dramatic. But good that you made a friend out of it? How did you and Eric leave things?” James asked, hastening to add, “I mean, I know you broke up, but do you think he got the message? He’s not going to try and bother you again, is he? Because if he does…”
“I will call you, and you can fulfill your obvious desire to be my knight in shining armor. But honestly, things between Eric and me are fine. I actually saw him today while I was getting your soup at the deli. It was definitely awkward, but he’s going to get the help he needs to figure out how to stop looking for love in all the wrong places.”
By this point, James had finished his soup. He set the bowl down on the table, along with the empty juice glass and turned to face Hayley. “And what are you going to do, now that you’re single?”
Hayley knew this was her chance to tell James that she wanted desperately to maintain their friendship, but that whatever was between them would have to wait, because she needed time on her own. Yet as she looked at him, she very nearly did the thing she shouldn’t. She nearly leaned into the muscular chest she knew was hiding beneath his sweatshirt, nearly pressed her lips against his, nearly wrapped her arms around him, tangling her fingers in his hair. She nearly pushed him down onto the couch until he was horizontal and climbed on top of him, their bodies flush together as they grinded against each other in tandem.
But instead, Hayley heeded the advice of Kerry, the advice she knew was said with her best intentions in mind, and told James, “I’m going to take some time for myself for a while. I need to figure out who I am and what I want, before I jump into anything else. But I really want to be your friend, James.”
James was crestfallen at this, but Hayley knew it had been the right thing to say when a moment later, he looked up into her eyes and with a small smile on his face said, “Well, let’s hope I can kick this pneumonia soon so we can go back to getting coffee before work and checking out Instagram accounts of tattoo shops.”
“The only way that’s going to happen is if you rest, James. I’ll get you some water, and you eat that bread roll, take those pills over there and go to sleep.”
“Yes Ms. Wright,” James said in a singsong voice, mimicking their kindergarteners. Hayley shook her head at him and got up, walking toward the kitchen with the tray containing the remnants of his meager dinner. She was halfway through filling up James’ water glass when she realized that she still hadn’t told him how she really felt about him. But maybe it was better that way.
***
Dan and Lucy came back just after ten o’clock that night. By then, James was asleep in their guest bedroom upstairs and had been for the last three hours. Hayley had read some of her book, called her mom, and talked about their plans for Easter, and watched the second half of a romantic comedy on the TV in the lounge. She was just starting to get restless and bored when Dan and Lucy opened the door, and Robby loafed in, taking his time getting off the couch where he’d been curled up next to Hayley.
“There’s my boy!” Dan whisper-yelled, kneeling down to scratch behind Robby’s ears. The dog moaned happily, and Lucy stepped over the two of them to hang up her coat, take off her shoes, and walk toward where Hayley was leaning on the arm of the couch.
“So, how’s the patient?” she asked.
“He’s fine. Ate all his soup and bread, took his pills and has been tucked upstairs for a few hours, presumably snoozing. I don’t think he has the energy to do much else, really.”
Dan stood up and followed Lucy into the lounge, Robby walking slowly behind him. “Thanks for this, Hayley. I know it’s late, so I’ll drive you home, and you can come in a little later than normal tomorrow if you want. I can cover your first lesson.”
“No, no, that’s so nice of you, but it’s fine. I only need a few hours of sleep anyway, and tomorrow is the day we start our Van Gogh-inspired paintings. It’s my favorite lesson.”
Dan nodded. “Commitment! That’s what we like to see!”
Lucy gave Dan a glare. “Keep your voice down, we don’t want to wake Jimmy!” To Hayley, she said, “Thank you so much for taking care of him.”
“It’s my pleasure. I’ve missed seeing him, and it was nice to catch up and let him know how all the kids are doing. They’ve really missed him.”
“I’m sure they’re missing him. He’s such a good teacher, isn’t he? I always thought he should go into that right out of school, but he loved tattooing too much to give it up. But then, with his dad…” and here, Lucy’s eyes began to tear up. At first, Hayley thought it might be fatigue, but when she took a sobering breath and wiped at her ey
es, Hayley knew it must be sadness. It must have been so hard for Lucy to lose her older brother. From what James had told Hayley over the past few months when they’d gotten coffee, his dad and Lucy had been best friends, the closest of siblings.
After a few more moments of wiping at her eyes, Lucy composed herself and said, “Anyway, Jimmy’s lucky to have such a good friend and colleague in you, Hayley. I’m going to head to bed, but I’ll see you soon, okay? Let’s have dinner or meet for drinks one day after work,” Lucy said, then gathered Hayley in for a hug.
Dan gave his wife a soft, understanding smile before helping Hayley into her coat and bringing her shoes to her. Lucy walked up the stairs, Robby close on her heels, as Hayley and Dan quietly left through the front door. Hayley couldn’t help but wonder as the door shut and they walked toward Dan’s car if Lucy was one of the relatives James had been referring to when he said that no one wanted to talk about his dad anymore. It made her sad, knowing that James and Lucy were both grieving, but couldn’t talk about it. Maybe she could be an outlet for James when he needed it. It was what friends did, didn’t they?
Chapter Eleven
James was out for the rest of the week, but he came back to school the following Monday only a little worse for wear. He was thinner and was lacking a bit of the infectious energy he usually brought to the classroom, but Hayley didn’t care—she was just happy he was back.
They quickly fell into their old rhythm of coffee, texting, and the occasional phone call and as the weeks passed and spring finally began to show its face in Chicago, Hayley was feeling happier than she could remember feeling in a very, very long time.
She’d upped her running schedule now that she didn’t have to worry about sleeping at someone else’s apartment for half the week, and she’d decided to sign up for a half marathon in late May to help her stay motivated and keep increasing her mileage. She and Kerry started having dinner regularly again, sometimes at her and Samantha’s apartment, where Kerry and Samantha made amazing feasts with the vintage cookbooks Sam collected, and sometimes at local restaurants Hayley loved but hadn’t visited in ages because of Eric’s weird aversion to any food that wasn’t Japanese or Thai. She called her mom and dad more often, planned better lessons, read more of the books her mom sent her—her life was on the up and up, and for once she was thankful that she was single and without a man.
James had only brought up the kiss they’d shared one other time during those weeks. He’d been out drinking with Billy and Billy’s girlfriend Amanda, and had had one more beer than was probably good for him. Hayley had woken up early the next morning to a slew of drunken texts with misspellings and odd emoji choices, one of which said “missing ur lips” among other less decipherable gibberish. But when Monday rolled around, James hadn’t mentioned the text, and neither had Hayley, figuring he’d either not realized he’d sent it or was too embarrassed to talk about it. Either way, she was glad to avoid the topic and pretend she hadn’t spent the rest of that weekend imagining what it would be like to kiss him again.
The week of Easter arrived and Hayley and James rushed around getting the lessons ready. Each day leading up to Good Friday, which the kids had off, was going to feature a different spring or Easter-related craft project, and James and Hayley had been hard at work making sure each project tested the kids on different skills. Some focused on numbers, others on the alphabet and still others on the artistic skills the kids had been learning throughout the year: painting, coloring, and freestyle drawing. The supply closet was stacked to the brim full of markers, crayons and glitter glue in every color, and Hayley and James had agreed to go in early on Monday of that week to set up the decorations.
They’d found most of the decorations at a local crafts store which sold their products at a discount for employees of the local schools, so they’d been able to buy fake grass, paper bunny rabbits, plastic eggs, food dye and bright, shining sunbursts for just $50. They’d had a blast going around the store and looking through everything. Hayley had always loved arts and craft stores; when she was a kid, she’d spent most of her weekly allowance on glitter pens and fun stickers, and as a teenager she’d filled her room with charcoal pencils, stamp-making supplies and Modge Podge glue. None of her other childhood friends had understood her desire to “waste” money on crafts rather than clothes or makeup, so Hayley was happy to finally be at a craft store with someone who understood her preferences. James geeked out right along with her about the interesting shades of tempera paints, the Henna kits, and the pristine, spiral-bound sketchbooks, and Hayley thought, not for the first time, how absolutely perfect they were for each other. But of course, she kept that to herself.
On the Monday of Easter week, Hayley arrived at school first, unlocking the doors and carrying her armful of decorations into the dark classroom. James had offered to get them both coffee and donuts to fortify them for the week ahead, so he wouldn’t be in for another five or ten minutes.
Hayley set her bags down in front of her desk and walked to the closet to take off her coat. The closet had a small mirror attached to the right door, and Hayley took the opportunity to check her hair. Just because she and James were friends didn’t mean she didn’t want to look good in front of him, and she wasn’t sure about her hairstyle. She’d tried a complicated braided updo she’d seen in a magazine the week before at the hair salon, and she couldn’t decide if it made her look chic or like a milkmaid. She was about to pin back an errant flyaway with the spare bobby pins she kept in the closet when she saw a dark shape scurry past her out the corner of her eye. Was that… a rat?
Hayley turned around to find that yes, indeed, it was a rat, and it was slowly nibbling its way through the plastic of the bag containing all the decorations. It was a huge, furry, grey vermin with a long tail and huge, yellow front teeth. It looked nothing like the sweet, innocent cartoon rats from Ratatouille, one of Hayley’s favorite Pixar films. This rat looked like a monster, so Hayley did the only thing that was natural to do in a situation like this: she screamed.
Her screams startled James, who at that moment was just turning the handle to open the classroom door. He rushed in, nearly spilling the coffee and dropping the donuts he was holding in his right hand as he used the other to bat away the rat with the bag of decorations he was holding. “Jesus Christ, what is that thing?” he yelled, setting the food and drinks down and watching as the rat scurried over to the reading nook on the far side of the room.
“It’s… it’s… it’s a rat,” Hayley whispered from where she was cowering behind her desk. It was a hilarious sight, and James had no choice but to laugh at a grown woman hiding from a rat roughly a tenth of her size.
“What the hell are you doing behind there?” James asked as he peered at the desk.
“Hiding, obviously!”
James snorted. “Hayley, it’s just a rat. There’s no need to be scared.”
At this, Hayley popped up from her perch. “That is absolutely not true. Rats carry all sorts of diseases. They were the ones that started the Black Plague! And now we have one in the classroom, and he nibbled the decorations, and now they’re contaminated! And we have children coming in here in half an hour! What if they get sick from it?”
“Okay, okay. I’ll catch it and release it outside and you can just stand there and continue your freak-out,” James said as he looked around for a bucket or a box to trap the rat in. Hayley saw his eyes light up with victory when he spied the bucket they kept near the closet for emergencies (i.e. vomit). Tiptoeing toward it, he grabbed the bucket and one of the donut holes he’d bought from the box on the desk.
Hayley stood at the desk, watching in a mix of amazement and fear as James crept toward the middle of the room. The rat was still gnawing its way through one of the beanbag chairs in the reading nook, and didn’t seem to notice James making his way slowly toward it. He broke the donut in two pieces, laid both on the floor and waited.
If Hayley had learned anything from Ratatouille, it was t
hat rats had amazing senses of smell, so she wasn’t surprised when the rat’s nose immediately stuck into the air, sniffing the sweet, vanilla scent of the donut hole. It slowly scampered off the beanbag chair, sending some of the stuffing sliding down onto the multi-colored carpet as it did so. Hayley watched with bated breath as it crawled toward the donut, its nose to the ground, heedless of James standing above the food.
In a flash, the rat ran toward the donut, grabbed a piece, and was just about to scamper away again when James placed the bucket on top of it, making sure not to land the rim of the bucket on its tail. He wanted to catch it, not hurt it. “Haha!” he shouted.
“Yay! My hero!” Hayley yelled, rounding the desk and leaping toward him. Without thinking, she wrapped him in a hug, which he eagerly returned. For a moment, it was like they forgot their history, their crushes on each other, and all the emotional confusion of the last few months and just relished the feel of each other, the notion that they were safe from the disease-carrying vermin. But then, of course, the rat squeaked.
And when the rat squeaked, Hayley realized something. “Wait, how are you going to pick up the bucket with the rat still inside?”
James stepped away from her, his hands still at her waist. “Good question...”
***
Thankfully, the janitor was in and had experience with these situations. He found a large sheet of flat metal in his closet, slid it under the bucket to trap the rat inside and helped James take it to safety outside in the garden, though unfortunately not before some of the kids had started arriving. Hayley quickly decorated the classroom, hiding the treats she and James had bought to give the kids at the end of the week and making like she and James had not just spent half an hour saving the kids’ lives from the terrors of Chicago city vermin.
The rest of the day was much less eventful. They taught the kids about how sunlight changes throughout the year, then had them draw what they thought the sun looked like in the sky during each season. James had had the forethought to buy extra yellow crayons, which were much needed, since some of the students didn’t understand how to color without grinding the wax crayons onto the paper until there were little bits of crayon littering their workspace. Bits which some of the children thought were snacks.