by Claire Adams
“You seem to care greatly about her,” Miles commented, rocking slightly in his chair as he looked up at me curiously. “For years, I read about your exploits in the papers. People looked away because of your raw talent on the field. Then, you were hurt, and it happened again to you and another player. Why is everything different for you now?”
“It’s none of your business why it is,” I snapped out. “I’m not here to rehash the past with you because it’s said and done and over with.”
“Fine. Here’s my offer to you, then: I will triple your pay to be head coach, and you won’t have to teach any classes. You just show up and coach and win championships the way you won them before.”
“I didn’t win all of those games honestly,” I said. “You know that, too.”
“I don’t care. I just want more championships under PHU’s belt, is all.”
“And what about Iris?” I demanded. “I won’t accept the job if she isn’t allowed to come back here.”
“I will not reinstate her,” he said firmly. “There are a lot of female students on this campus, Noah. I have to make a loud example out of this situation.”
“I’m not-”
“Listen to me,” Miles cut in loudly. “You have feelings for this student? Great. Go for it. I don’t care. She is no longer a student here on my campus, but you are the one who has to live with this decision. You’re going to need a paycheck to keep afloat, and her, too.
“You don’t think I have an idea where Iris comes from?” He laughed shortly. “Her mother’s a fall down drunk. She showed up with Iris her freshman year reeking and slurring. All of the funds that Iris has are scholarships directly through this school. Without any of it, she’s out on the streets.”
My heart pounded furiously in my chest. Clasping his hands together, Miles leaned forward to look at me directly.
“So, what’s it going to be, Noah?” he asked, quietly. “Triple the pay you make now. If you win championships, a bonus will be tacked on there. Think about it long and hard for a moment, then let me know what you want to do.”
I lowered my eyes to the ground. I had no other choice. I had to do the right thing even if it screwed Iris and I both over.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Iris
“Don’t be a coward,” I said, looking down at my phone. “Answer my texts and come face me. You owe me that much.”
Two nights in a row, Bailey had refused to show up to the apartment, let alone answer any of my calls and texts demanding an answer what the hell her problem was.
Anger simmered in my belly as I finished packing up the rest of my clothes in a bag. I had no idea where I would go, but living with my mother was a better option than dealing with the aftermath of Bailey.
I set the last bag on the ground next to my bedroom door. I ran over a mental checklist of things I needed to do before moving out.
By miracle, our landlord had been surprisingly understanding of the situation and promised to stick the fine on Bailey for breaking the terms of our lease. That gave me a twang of pleasure knowing she was stuck with a $500 fee, even though in reality, it wasn’t chunk change to her. She’d just call her parents for the money, and they would send it without question.
My phone finally vibrated for the first time in two days. My fingers trembled as I pulled it out to read Bailey’s text. Omw.
“Really?” I scoffed. “After everything, you use shorthand to say something to me.”
I didn’t bother replying. Let her sweat the car ride to our apartment from wherever she had been staying for the past two days. I wasn’t even sure if seeing her would be a good idea. It was far too tempting to punch her in the face – or even the vagina – for betraying the rules of friendship. Then, again, I wasn’t even sure if we had been friends to begin with.
My phone vibrated again. I looked down to see Noah calling for the first time since Monday. I hadn’t even thought of texting him, or even trying to reach out besides trying to warn him on Monday. I needed the time to think about what I was going to do. I had assumed that he’d needed to think, too.
“Hello?”
“I was afraid you weren’t going to pick up,” Noah said. “How are you feeling?”
“Peachy,” I replied sarcastically. “I got expelled from school, and now I’m waiting for ex-friend to get back to the apartment so I can tell her that she’s stuck with the lease. How do you think I feel?”
“Obviously not peachy.”
I sagged in relief when a laugh escaped my lips. To hear Noah’s voice for the first time since seeing him on Monday soothed the anger brewing inside of me. Even if I had no idea how what was going on between us, it was still nice to hear his voice.
“Where’s your apartment?”
I could hear what sounded like traffic on the other end of the line. “Where are you?”
“I’m driving to you. Where is your apartment?”
“Why?”
He sighed in exasperation on the other end of the line. “Just tell me where you are, Iris. We’ll figure this out together, and I’m obviously not going to let you go be with your mom.”
“I’m staying with you, then?” I asked, unsure of where this conversation was going to go. I didn’t even know what had happened to Noah yet. “I mean, I don’t expect you to do anything for me or-”
“Don’t start on that. Just tell me the address, and I’ll be there as soon as possible to help you move things.”
He hung up after I rattled off the apartment address. I stared down at the phone for a long time trying to discern if I had heard that conversation right. Did Noah honestly expect me to move in with him after everything that had happened?
The apartment door opened a second later. Bailey stepped inside after a moment of hesitating in the doorway, unsure of my reaction. The anger simmering in my stomach raged to a boil at the sight of her standing in front of me.
While it felt incredibly tempting to rush her for ruining everything I had worked for, I kept myself on the other side of the living room. The last thing I needed to deal with was an assault charge from the police.
“Why?” I asked, quietly. I fixed her with intense stare. “Why, Bailey? Help me understand it.”
She shifted uncomfortably under the weight of my gaze. “I don’t know,” she finally said, shaking her head at me.
“I was just upset, you know? All of a sudden you were spending all your time with that freshman chick, and you had this hot teacher after you. I just… I…” She paused to take in a deep breath. “I was just jealous of everything going on in your life, and I was scared that I was going to lose you as a friend.”
“So you told the dean about me and Noah because you were afraid to lose me as a friend?”
She winced at that. “I know. It sounds fucked up. You have to believe me when I say that I regretted it the instant I sent off that email. I still regret it.”
Tears filled her eyes. I stared at her distantly as she cried and wiped at her mascara-smudged cheeks. Four years of dealing with Bailey, and she still had the nerve to play the victim, even though she knew exactly what she had done.
“People like you start fires and then pretend to be the victim,” I said in disgust as I grabbed my purse from the couch. “I’m done with it, Bailey. Four years of you pretending to be my friend, and I’m just over it. I’m moving out. The landlord already knows. I’ll get the rest of my things later.”
I grabbed my duffle bag and slipped the strap over my shoulder. Ignoring Bailey’s pointed sniffling, I managed to grab another few bags to lug down to the parking lot. The more I took tonight, the less I would have to deal with her later. I pushed by her in the doorway, not sparing her a glance, and walked down to the parking lot.
The night air felt chilly, but enough to cool my hot skin down the second I stepped out. I spotted Noah leaning casually up against the bumper of an SUV. Relief swarmed through me as I took in his chiseled face with a light shadow of a dark beard covering his jaw. His d
ark locks of hair were pushed back messily, and my fingers longed to bury themselves there just to distract myself from the exhaustion.
“You ready?” he asked, taking a hold of my bags. “How did everything go up there?”
I didn’t even argue with him when he placed my bags in the back of his SUV. I had nowhere to go besides my mother’s house, and spending time with Noah sounded far better than dealing with her. I had enough to figure out, and taking on my mother’s problems wasn’t on the top of my list.
“Horrible,” I said, running an irritated hand through my hair. “She admitted to sending that email to the dean about us. Then, she had the nerve to cry about it and basically try to make excuses for why she did it.”
I looked at Noah in distress. “I don’t feel like I can ever trust another person again after this. Bailey knows me. She knows all my secrets, and this one she spilled because she was jealous.”
“People do horrible things out of spite,” he said sagely. “I can tell you that from personal experience over the years.”
The tone of his voice indicated there was something more to the statement, but I didn’t question it further. He closed the trunk door and then turned to wrap his arms around me tightly. I let out a trembling breath. It felt so good to feel strong arms holding me tightly and to hear a steady heartbeat beneath my ear.
“I missed you today,” he whispered, running a hand down the back of my head. “I marked you down for missing class today. Pretty stupid now in hindsight.”
I stiffened at those words. Untangling myself from his arms, I looked up at Noah who stared back at me in confusion. “You still have your job?”
“Well, sort of. I-”
I tore myself away from him angrily. “What do you mean ‘sort of?’ I was expelled on Monday, and you were at class today? What the fuck?”
“Iris, listen to me. I-”
“No,” I shouted, tears blinding me as I reached for the latch to open the trunk. “I see how it is with you. I lose everything within a matter of days, and you get to keep your job because you’re some ex-rugby player who secretly writes erotic thrillers.”
I batted his hands away when he tried to reach for me. “No. Don’t touch me. If you honestly gave a shit, Noah, you would’ve tried to fight for me. Instead, you’ve been going to classes like everything is normal. You ruined my life and everything I worked hard for. What the hell is wrong with you?”
Silence.
Noah’s eyes slipped closed while I gathered my bags from the back of his SUV and slammed the door shut. Tears stung my cheeks as I pushed past him in the direction of my own car.
For the first time in my life, I knew what drove my mother to drink: indescribable and wordless and excruciating heartbreak. That was how I felt when I shoved my bags into my car and drove away, despite Noah calling out my name.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Noah
Hunter’s shop was cluttered as usual with various engine parts when I stepped into the back portion of the shop the following morning.
He looked up when he heard my footsteps. A confused frown settled on his face when I collapsed with an exhausted sigh in a small spinning chair across from him.
“Why are you here?” he asked, glancing up at the clock on the wall. “Don’t you have classes to teach today, or you ditching like some of your students are?”
I had no idea how to tell Hunter what happened, but I had to tell him. I lost my job. I lost Iris. I lost everything within a matter of moments.
The weight of it hooked itself into my heart and tugged viciously when I thought of Iris’ anger yesterday. You ruined my life. That was the second time I had heard that phrase, and it still brought a killer punch to my gut.
“I resigned from my job yesterday morning,” I said.
Hunter stopped wrenching to look up at me in surprise. He sat back on his own spinning chair and wiped his hands free of oil on a pant leg.
“What happened?” he asked. “Did it have something to do with that student named Iris you had over at your house during spring break?”
“Her roommate found out about us and sent the dean an email over it. He expelled Iris.”
“And, he confronted you about it, too?”
I rubbed at my face tiredly. Two hours of sleep was not enough for me to function properly, but no matter how hard I’d tried to turn my brain off, I tossed and turned all night hoping Iris would show up.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “The son of a bitch offered me triple pay and job security if I coached that damn rugby team.”
Hunter’s eyes widened. “No shit? And, you turned that down?”
“I turned it down because he wouldn’t reinstate Iris,” I said. “That was my only condition in accepting that position, but he told me that he had to make an example out of her to the other students. So, I told him that I was resigning, and that was the end of it.”
“It sounds like you did the right thing by stepping away,” he said. “I hate to say it, man, but I warned you that this wasn’t going to end well for you or her.”
“I know. I shouldn’t have done it.”
“There’s nothing you can do it about it now,” he said, picking up a wrench again. “All you can do is let things fall into place where they need to go.”
I nodded my head as I took in the scattered nuts and bolts in the oil pan beneath the lawn mower engine. I didn’t even know what the right thing was when it came to fixing what happened. Iris refused to return any of my calls and texts, and she had every right to want distance from me.
“You’re going to need a job until you get back on your feet,” Hunter commented, looking up at me with a small smile. “I know you’re mechanically inept to a degree, but many of the jobs that come through here are pretty basic and simple.”
“Are you offering me a job getting my hands dirty?” I asked and smiled when Hunter rolled his eyes at those words.
“Just get your hands dirty from working on engines,” he said, “but, yes. I am offering you a job to help me out until you figure out what you want to do.”
“Thanks, man,” I said, appreciatively. “How did I end up with such a good friend out of all the fucked up shit I did in my life?”
He let out a sarcastic laugh.
“Pretty sure we did a lot of those fucked up things together,” he said, winking at me. “Now, go home and get some sleep. I’m not going to pay you to fall asleep in that chair.”
I rose from the chair when he shooed me away by waving a wrench at me. I left the shop in better spirits as I always did whenever I spoke to Hunter. He was very much like Iris in several ways: neither one of them judged me for the screwed-up decisions I made.
Thinking of bad decisions, I drove to PHU for what I hoped was the last time. I had packed up my things the previous night, but I still had unattended business there to take care of. Mindful that school was still in session, I used the back pathways to slip into the English Department without anyone noticing. It still felt both surreal and normal to be back in the brightly lit hallways as I found Kale’s classroom on the first floor.
I peered through the glass of the window to see him reading from a literature textbook with students scribbling down on their notepads. A student in the front caught sight of me and called out to Kale before pointing to the door window. He turned around with his textbook still in hand before turning to face the curious gazes of his students.
Excited cheers filled the room before Kale closed his book and motioned for me to come into the classroom while everyone gathered their things. He waited until everyone had exited the classroom before locking the door behind the last group of students.
“You’ve got some serious balls for showing up here,” he said, shaking his head with a tiny grin. “Especially after basically telling Miles to stick his offer where the sun don’t shine.”
I shrugged my shoulders indifferently. “I tried to tell him that I would never coach, and even triple pay won’t ever persuade m
e over.”
“Obviously,” Kale said.
He motioned for me to sit down in one of the desks, but I remained standing. I couldn’t afford to stick around for much longer in case Miles came by to make sure I had moved out all of my personal possessions.
“I just wanted to come by and say that I was sorry for being a dick to you the other day,” I said. “You’ve been nothing, but a good friend to me, and you were trying to warn me about what was about to happen.”
“I just didn’t want to see you blindsided…or Iris,” Kale said, shrugging his shoulders. “Miles is furious over you leaving. He came to the building this morning to make sure that your office was cleaned out, and he asked me why I thought you resigned.”
“What did you tell him?” I asked curiously.
“I said that it probably had something to do with him being a jerk toward an innocent student.” He grinned at me. “And by jerk, I mean something else. I’m just using a nicer word to describe it.”
“Either way, thanks for having my back,” I said. “I better go before I attract too much attention and get your ass fired, too.”
He laughed shortly. “Yeah, he won’t fire me. He’d have to explain why there is two resigned positions in the English Department to the board.”
We shook hands before he unlocked the classroom door. He clasped my shoulder before I could step out.
“Look, you’ve got a gift in teaching,” he said, seriously. “Don’t give up on that. I have a friend at the University of Utah that I can call in a favor with. They’d probably take you in a heartbeat because the dean there hates Miles.”
I smiled in appreciation. “Thanks, Kale. I’d appreciate that. I’m working with a buddy at his local engine repair shop, but I have a feeling he’ll fire me because I can’t fix anything mechanical.”
“I’ll make the call then,” he said, nodding. “Take care, Noah. Keep in touch with whatever you decide to do.”
“Likewise.”
I stepped out of the classroom to head out the back way again. A new job would ever replace or fix the damage of what had happened, but it was a start. I just had to think of a way to give Iris a new shot, as well. I just needed to get her to talk to me again.