She turns on her heel.
He catches my stare real quick, and a twinkle glimmers in his eye. “Oh, and Ingrid?”
I choke on a laugh as she scurries back over, apron tied high on her waist, because I know exactly what he’s doing.
“Could we get some more cream when you have a chance?”
She raises her non-coffee-wielding hand and bobs her head somewhere between How could she not have noticed and How brilliant is this man who thought to put cream in the coffee. Nothing would make this meal more complete.
“Aaaaabzuhlootly. You got it.” Pivot. And she’s off.
His hearty laugh warms me from across the table. He’s winning our little game so far this morning.
“Oh, like she wasn’t going to say it that time.” I toss a limp wrist.
“Not impressed, eh?” He cocks his head, his dark stare intense.
“Not with that,” I say, all sassypants. “It’s impressive I have you the entire weekend, though.”
He glances back at his breakfast, a big ol’ pile of crabmeat and poached eggs plated to perfection. The sweet hint of the crab entwined with the warm smell of butter curls in the space between us.
His tone is suddenly serious. “I know you’ve been worried.”
“That’s not the word for it—”
“Stressed then.” He meets my gaze. “There you are at your sister’s, and here I am, still living at home.”
My eyes start to well. I massage the tightness from my throat when he puts down his fork and reaches his big, tanned hand across the table for mine.
“Hey,” he says, his voice liquid. “We’re in this together. That’s how we fell in love in the first place. Right when we were both going through such a difficult thing. I don’t know how I’d survive this divorce without you.”
I let him touch me, but I’m careful not to look at him because I don’t want any tears to fall.
Instead, I offer a laugh.
“I know it’s not exactly the same situation for you,” I say. I break away as he begins to smooth his thumb across my knuckles but continue the thought. “Jonah’s only four. It’s—complicated.”
He grunts. Takes a moment.
“You know what isn’t complicated, Rae?”
I hear the smile return to his voice before I’m able to glance up to confirm. I know what he’s going to say.
“You and me.”
Yep.
“You know where my heart is. Where I want to be. What I’m working toward.”
They’re just words, but they make me all toasty inside. And it’s been a long time since I’ve had toasty. Or even room-temperature bread, to be honest.
“A year from now?” he continues. “It won’t be this hard. You won’t be at Bridget’s anymore…we’ll buy that little place in Myers Park…”
I’m silent. I focus on the clink of silverware on elegant china. The plink of jazz standards spilling in from the Colonel Sanders–looking guy playing the baby grand in the lobby.
“Honey. Look at me.”
I oblige.
A part of me knows it, even now as I watch his eyes swim.
Fuck this guy. Seriously.
But I want so much for this to be real. Need for it to be—
“Soon,” he says. And every part of me but that little pebble of worry in my gut believes him.
Ingrid’s back just in time for me to blink away the last of the moisture in my own eyes.
“Thank you,” I say to her.
“Oh, aaaaabzuhlootly, miss. Aaaaabzuhlootly.”
And we erupt into merriment once again.
* * *
Chapter 5
That stupid dream impedes my ability to make myself not look like I went thirty-four seconds with Ronda Rousey last night. It takes all of what little energy I can muster to shower and dress, to do my hair, and I have to wait for some of the puffiness under my eyes to go down before I can even think about performing a makeup miracle.
I’m forced to be one of those people I hate—pumping the last remnants of mascara gunk onto the wand and working some magic on my eyelashes at red lights. I’m just finishing up when I catch a glimpse of a blue hair next to me sipping from a travel mug. She scowls in my direction.
“Why, yes, I am doing makeup in my car,” I say to her but really to my reflection. “Why don’t you take a bite right out of my ass?”
However, instead of staring her down, I smooth on a smile as warm as the forecast for this afternoon and pull into Dunkin’ Donuts. #namaste
When I get to school and I’m through potpourriing the teachers’ lounge with my morning score, the smell of fried dough and yeast—and coffee—permeates the air and lulls me into what I hope isn’t a false sense that today is going to be a good day. I stand back and admire my masterpiece.
“What’s the occasion?” Valerie flits in, flutters her fingers over the boxes.
Scoff. “Um—hello? Maybe I’m just a nice person?”
All the trolls in the room offer laughs.
“Hey!” I curl a lip and shove three chocolate-glazed Munchkins in my face hole.
“So did you find anybody good last night?” she asks.
“‘NOPE,’” I quote my favorite new app and throw my head back in a mouth-full guffaw.
“You’re being too picky.” She wipes her hands on her khaki skirt. It’s already got dry-erase marker smudges on it. “At lunch, Quinn and I will find someone who is swipe-Right material.”
“If you say so, but my research last night caused me to develop some rules.”
“Such as?”
I’m ripping into a chocolate éclair, and I begin gesturing wildly with the pieces. “For example, if they say they like music.” I slip into Dude Voice. “‘Music saved my life.’” I throw her an eye roll.
“So?”
“Hear me out. Like, if there’s any picture of the guy near a microphone…with a drum set…holding a guitar…anything of that nature?” I sweep my forearms, mangled éclair carcass and all, into an X.
“No music lovers. Got it. You’re holding out for someone who hates all joy.” She gives me one of her signature frowns.
“It’s not that.”
With my clean hand, I grab hold of her pink argyle sweater a bit more intensely than I meant, and she yanks back and laughs. “How much sugar have you had this morning?”
“Not important. Look. You have the documentation right there in your creepy-stalker—I mean really sweet—Rae’s Love Life notebook. I’ve done the musician thing, right? A couple of times, in fact…”
My gaze blurs into middle space, and I get lost in a college memory. Zachary Willis’s calloused fingers plucking me all over like a—
Valerie boops me on the nose with a napkin.
“Right!” A couple of blinks. “I’m just saying. If you’re in your thirties and you’re still in a band? You probably also still live with your mother. And if your band is actually good? And, like, touring? Then you’re probably letting lots of chicks play your instrument. No, thanks—I’m good.”
Her face goes through a whole metamorphosis in three seconds. From grimace to glower to—snorting with laughter. “Dammit—you’re right. So what else is on—or off—the list, for that matter?” She fishes in her giant purse and produces the sad tome right there.
“That was the most obvious one I came up with last night because there were so many offenders. How about…” I drum my fingers on my chin a minute. “Shirtless selfies?”
“They post shirtless selfies?” Her eyes become the size of French crullers, and the hue of her cheeks begins to match her sweater.
I laugh. “Only about every other freaking one. Wanna see?”
It feels just like we’re sixteen again, paging through our yearbooks and judging our classmates, as we’re giggling over profiles. NOPE. NOPE. Maybe? NOPE.
And then Quinn enters. She’s a hurricane of fall fabulousness in leggings and a plaid flannel shirt.
“Thank the Lord fo
r fried dough.” Her razor-sharp pumps cut across the carpet, and she drops her bags to the floor with a huff.
“What’s the matter?” I ask, pouring her some joe.
“Don’t even ask.” She blows her side bangs out of her eyes as she roots through what’s left in the DD boxes.
Val and I exchange shrugs.
“And no more Spark until we can all do it.” Quinn points a plastic knife my way before she obliterates a sesame-seed bagel with the strawberry schmear. “And since we have play rehearsal today”—she seems to remember we’re at work because she does the guilty glance around, smiles at the math tutor, and lowers her voice a tick—“I say we grab drinks afterward and do it then.”
“I’m in,” I say and slam-dunk my napkin. Launch my arms straight toward the fluorescents and rock out on air guitar. Kick!
“No guitars, remember?” Valerie teases, and I continue my victory dance backward out the door.
When I get to my room, my line o’ kids already stands patiently outside.
“Gooooood morning, dears.”
Maybe I have had too much sugar.
But I don’t have time to ponder my caffeine-to-doughnut ratio because the handshake processional begins. Deborah says she likes us to perform this morning ritual so that the students can feel more “official” and “professional” when they get to school—It’s like they’re little businessmen and -women!
“How many cups of coffee do you drink a day, Miss Wallace?” Emmaline Johnson looks up at me through her cruelly ginormous but totes adorbs glasses, her hands clammy.
“Never enough, my love. Never enough.”
Once the Pledge of Allegiance and the announcements are through, it’s time for reading.
“Today, guys, we’re going to read a book.”
And the wiggling begins. The hands.
“Yes?”
“What book will it be?” They all want to know in twenty different ways.
I smile. “It’s one of my favorites. It’s called The Giving Tree.”
Discussion rolls its way through the class like the wave at a Rays game. I chuckle and grab Shel Silverstein’s classic off the top of my filing cabinet.
They love when I read aloud, and I love it too. They’re so quiet. Mesmerized. And although the words I write are very—very—different from the kinds of things I read the kids, it’s seeing this magic at work that makes me ravenous to finish my manuscript. The bond that forms between us when I read to them. The way the words, no matter whose, have them spellbound.
I walk to the stool at the front of the room. “I want you to listen as best you can and then, when we’re done, we’ll talk about it and do a short assignment, okay?”
This idea is met with an uproar of enthusiasm, which never fails to surprise me. Prior to the divorce, I taught junior high, and there was no getting those kids excited about anything. With first graders, they are so thrilled about learning; it’s a totally different ball game every day.
I begin. “‘Once there was a tree, and she loved a little boy—’”
Just as I’m about to get lost in my own excitement in sharing this with them, my e-mail notification dings, and everyone flinches.
“Are you going to get that, Miss Wallace?”
“I don’t know, Benji. Don’t you want to—”
Dammit. They know me so well.
I put up the one-minute finger, hop off the stool, and scoot on over to my desk to see what fresh hell this is.
Dear Author,
And there it is. I didn’t think I had any query letters left floating out there with agents.
“Anything good?” Marcus asks.
I laugh. “What did I say about minding your own business, guys?”
They singsong: “Do it!”
I shake my head and take a breath. A rejection, first thing in the morning. Beautiful.
Thank you for considering the Wright Agency for your work.
Unfortunately, with fiction, we have to really love something in order to take it on—it has to really be “wright” for our list—and this does not quite fit.
That said, your writing is strong, and we encourage you to query us with future projects or consider other agents for this piece, as their tastes may align better with your work.
Have a great day!
Joseph Wright
I chew at the insides of my cheeks. Press my lips into a line.
This is one of those times I wish I had the balls to actually have a flask in my desk.
But I don’t.
So I dig in my front pocket for a couple of Tylenols and knock ’em back with a sip of java.
Breathe. You can do this.
I turn off the volume on my laptop, check my phone to make sure it’s on silent as well—delete the e-mail from my app on there too—and mosey back to the stool by the white-board.
“Where were we?” I say, bright. Wave a wand like it never happened.
Soft giggles popcorn around the room, and it only makes the pit in my stomach deepen.
“The tree loves the boy,” they answer.
“Right.”
And so I read. Choking back emotion, my throat suddenly raw, I read.
I’ve read this story a handful of times to previous classes. And although the words never change, it’s never quite hit me like this. No matter how much the tree gives and the boy takes.
But I have to press on and keep my voice on an even keel.
Teaching is like that. People expect you to be Maria in The Sound of Music or Mary freaking Poppins—or, really, any form of Julie Andrews where she’s singing to children and enriching their lives. Any whiff of being a regular person pops the idealized teacher bubble that folks have and ruins everything for them for some reason.
So I press on. Spoonful of sugar.
And, really, someone should call the Academy for my performance, because the tree keeps giving and giving and the boy keeps taking and taking, but not one of my kids would ever be able to guess how broken I feel inside because my voice doesn’t break at all.
Not even as my mind drifts to the e-mail, to the months I spent on that stupid manuscript. Not once.
I’m mouthing the words and turning the pages, and I’m getting hot in the face. And pissed at Shel Silverstein, come to think of it.
But my tone stays focused.
“‘Come, Boy, come and climb up my trunk and swing from my branches and eat apples and play in my shade and be happy’…”
But now this miscreant is too busy to climb trees. He’s asking for money. What in the actual—
Have some self-respect, tree. This boy is shitting all over you!
When we get to the part where he chops down her trunk, I concede my Oscar because my vision does begin to blur. But I press on, wishing I’d chosen the other option—Love You Forever—and then I realize books suck and maybe I need to be writing picture books or chapter books for first graders that don’t make you want to blow your brains out at the end.
“‘I have nothing left. I am just an old stump. I am sorry.’”
The kids laugh at the word stump—are they even getting this?—and it takes everything I have not to chuck this book out the window and peace out.
But I don’t.
Instead, I suck in a breath, close the book, and push a smile across my face.
“So what did you think?” I ask, folding my arms across my silk top.
“Can we read another one?”
I chuckle. “Not right now.” I stand and start my teacher pace through their worktables, weaving in and out of the Vera Bradley bags and trying not to trip. Or to marvel at the fact that their parents buy them Vera Bradley bags.
“So,” I begin, “why do you think the tree kept giving and the boy kept taking? Take a minute and think.” I glance at the clock and watch the second hand tick away. Something in the repetition soothes me, and I zone out for a moment, but All the Feels are back when the minute’s up.
Stupid Wright Agency.
“Now. Turn to your table partners and tell them what you came up with. Why did the tree keep giving?”
Their excited conversations buzz in my ear, and a sense of calm washes over me.
“Because it loved the boy, like you said at the beginning,” Maisy says over the hum.
“Good—let’s build on that.” I cross to the bookshelf and straighten the jagged stacks of thin easy readers. “Do you think the boy loved the tree?”
They take a minute to discuss and then come up with the idea that, no, the boy did not, in fact, love the tree. This is not right and it’s not wrong, and it’s lessons like this that make me drift back to my college English classes.
I just smirk and indulge them and go on. “Interesting. Do you think the tree knew this?”
“No,” most of them chant.
“I do,” Ashley pipes up.
“Yes?”
“I think the tree knew, but it didn’t care. It was true love.”
Bless her little heart.
I press my lips taut and cross to the window. Look out at the cluster of cypress trees right outside. All at once, I wonder if Silverstein’s tree was in the cypress family.
“I like that,” I say, returning my attention to Ashley’s platinum pigtails. “And you know what? There’s another name for that. Unconditional love. Have you ever heard of that?”
This is met with an uproar of confusion, little faces scrunching this way and that, but I explain further.
“Unconditional love is when you love someone—or something, really—no matter what. No matter what he or she—or it—does to you.”
“You mean like how you love your family?”
Ashley’s on fire today.
“Exactly.” I punctuate her correctness with a point of a finger. “But you can even love a thing—have a dream or something—and love it, no matter how hard it is to do sometimes. You ever do that? Try and try at something—a sport, maybe—and you’re not that great at first, but you keep going and you keep practicing because you love it and you get closer to your goal, and you get better?”
I know the parallel I’m drawing and I’m not sure if it’s Great Teaching or Incredibly Narcissistic and Making Everything All About Me. But I suppose no one will know either way, and that’s the beauty of being the queen of your classroom, so what’s the difference?
Mr. Right-Swipe Page 5