Chapter Three
Noah
Having breakfast with Spencer wasn’t nearly as awkward as I thought it would be. Instead, it was fun and cosy, and despite my initial thoughts that food would make me feel worse, the bacon, brie, and avocado sandwich on thick-sliced white bread Spencer made me lessened my nausea considerably.
I’d have happily stayed there all day with him, talking about everything and nothing in his charming, quirky little house and trying not to blush when he recounted some of the chemistry facts I’d apparently spewed at him last night.
But unfortunately, time didn’t work like that.
It was closing in on noon when we’d finished eating, and Spencer had to get to Novel Tea to help Mina while I had the delightful prospect of marking a stack of my year nines’ books ahead of me.
Spencer walked me down the road until we had to go in opposite directions, and I found myself standing on the street watching him until he disappeared from view.
I knew it was stupid to still have a crush on him after all these years when I logically knew nothing was ever going to happen between us, but I was too hungover to care.
Spending the morning with Spencer had only added fuel to the fire of my intense longing, especially now that I knew what his bed smelt like and how good he was at making enormous breakfast sandwiches.
I’d seen the sunny smile on his face when I’d come downstairs, and if my head hadn’t still been pounding, I’d have sworn I saw a pleased spark in his eyes when he realised I was wearing his clothes.
That sort of thing didn’t have a friendly explanation, but it also didn’t make sense. Spencer was, to the extent of our collective knowledge, straight.
I shook my head and stuffed my hands into the front pocket of the oversized Greenwich Athletic hoodie Spencer had lent me to walk home in.
The early-October wind coming off the bay was bitter despite the blue skies and autumn sunshine overhead.
In normal circumstances, it was the sort of weather that would make me want to wrap up warm and go for a brisk walk along the beach.
But currently, the idea made me shudder, and I wanted nothing more than to lie on the sofa all afternoon and take a nap.
It didn’t take me long to walk back to the flat I shared with Alex.
We lived in a tall, Victorian townhouse that had once been just one residence but had been bought and split into two double-level flats some time ago.
We lived on the top two floors, which gave us a nice view out over the street below and, if you looked through the right window, all the way down to the sea.
Alex was already on the sofa when I arrived, half-asleep with an old action movie playing on the TV.
“There you are,” he said, glancing across at me with a scowl. “You’re alive, then?”
“Just about.” I walked around the sofa and pushed his legs off the end so I could flop down.
Alex put his legs in my lap, his grey eyes roaming over me.
He was buried in an old Metallica hoodie and a holey pair of black joggers, looking not much worse for wear apart from the dark circles around his eyes, but that might just have been where he hadn’t taken his eyeliner off properly.
“You look fucking terrible. And is that Spencer’s hoodie?”
“Er, yeah. He took me back to his last night to crash, then made me breakfast this morning,” I said.
I’d never told Alex how much I fancied his brother, even though he was my best friend.
I’d always thought it was a line I shouldn’t cross, and I knew Alex would just tell me it was pointless because Spencer didn’t like men.
I loved Alex to a fault, but he wasn’t tactful.
He possessed a certain level of realism that came across as blunt and uncaring, but underneath, he was a man who cared incredibly deeply.
He just didn’t let many people see it for reasons I still hadn’t figured out.
“Why didn’t he bring you back here?” Alex asked. “Seems bloody stupid to take you all the way back to his when we’re closer to Lane’s.”
“He didn’t want to leave me alone and wasn’t sure when you’d be back.” I smiled to myself at Spencer’s slightly flawed but sweet logic.
Alex sighed. “He’s a bloody banana. Has he gone to work now, then?”
“Yeah, he’s gone to help Mina.”
Alex nodded but didn’t say anything. Sometimes it was hard to believe he and Spencer, with their opposite personalities and constant bickering, ran one of Heather Bay’s most successful independent coffee shops, but their differences seemed to be the reason it worked.
“Have you got marking to do?” Alex asked as something exploded on-screen. I realised he was watching Predator when Arnold Schwarzenegger appeared on-screen and screamed about the chopper.
“Yeah.” I rubbed my face because the prospect wasn’t a fun one, but it had to be done. I loved teaching, but the sheer volume of admin and paperwork that went with it was hell.
Alex nudged me with his foot. “Go and get it then. Or you’ll sit there all fucking afternoon, then panic later when it’s not done.”
I rolled my eyes and pushed his legs off me again. “Are you going to help?”
“No, I’m not a bloody teacher.” He grinned at me. “But I’ll make you some tea. Will that help?”
“It would be a lifesaver.”
Alex swung himself off the sofa and sloped off to the kitchen. “Yeah, yeah. I’m a fucking miracle maker.”
I felt human again by Monday morning as I took my seat in the staff room for the start of the weekly briefing. There were already quite a few people milling around despite the early hour, and someone had had the foresight to leave a large packet of chocolate biscuits open on the coffee table.
Heather Bay had two secondary schools—Hareford Grammar and St. Robert’s—because although the town was small, it served a lot of the local villages.
Neither school was massive, both having just under nine hundred students aged eleven to eighteen, although we shared a Sixth Form, so the last two years could choose where they wanted to have classes unless they wanted to go down to Scarborough College.
My friends and I had all gone to St. Robert’s, which had just been the local comprehensive, but somehow, I’d ended up teaching at Hareford Grammar. Maybe it was because I didn’t think I’d be able to look some of my old teachers in the eye considering some of my friends’ antics.
Both Lane and Alex had been troublemakers despite mine and Oliver’s attempts to keep them in line. They’d both mellowed out by the end, which had helped, but I was pretty sure the four of us had gained a reputation.
“Morning, Noah,” said Katie, one of my fellow science teachers, as she sat down next to me, clutching an enormous mug of coffee. “Good weekend?”
“Not too bad,” I said, taking a sip of the tea I’d made as soon as I’d arrived. “Just went to a housewarming for some friends. What about you?”
“Napped, read, and played endless hours of Animal Crossing.” She grinned at me. “It was awesome.”
I chuckled. Katie and I had started at the same time, and we’d become good friends over the years. “You’ve got year seven first this morning, right?” I asked as more people filed in and the room filled with the low hum of chatter.
“Yeah,” Katie said. “I’ve got 7C. They’re actually not too bad. Still in that period where they’re not quite used to being here so they’re a bit quieter.” She sighed. “They’ll be totally different in three weeks after half-term.”
I nodded and opened my mouth to reply when Helen Rice, the headteacher, bustled in. “Morning, all,” she said. “Everyone all right?” There was a murmur of assent and a few actual answers. Helen chuckled. “Nice and awake then I see. Don’t worry, just a brief one this morning.”
She rolled quickly through the briefing for the week, listing off a few memos and events as well as a few notes about administrative points.
I listened quietly, making a mental note of everything that applied to me.
As the briefing began to wind down, Helen grinned and looked towards where Katie and I and a few of the other science staff had gathered.
“Don’t forget that the Friday before half-term—that’s next Friday, not this one—is the science department’s turn to do the bake-off,” Helen said. I felt my heart sink like a stone.
The bake-offs were supposed to be a fun staff engagement initiative, where every month a different department would run a little baking competition in the staff room.
The entries were judged blind by the rest of the staff, and the winners of each month went forward to a final that we ran in the summer.
Every teacher from each department was expected to bring something when it was their turn, and some people got quite competitive about it.
I, on the other hand, hated the staff bake-offs. I couldn’t bake for toffee and found the whole debacle to be a stress-inducing nightmare.
They’d run the bake-offs for the past three years, and every year I’d come last in science’s month.
Baking was apparently meant to be about chemistry, something that should have come easy to me considering I was a chemist, but I’d never managed to get it right.
Last year, I’d just ended up getting two boxes of brownie mix and making those, and even following the instructions, I’d still managed to burn the edges.
Alex had taken pity on me and helped me make them presentable.
Katie had sweetly said it was my most edible entry yet, but that hadn’t done much to raise my spirits.
Although, I had noticed that even though the brownies hadn’t been that good, there hadn’t been many left. Free food was free food, no matter how edible it was.
“So,” said Katie as we left the staff room and headed through the packed corridors to the science block at the other end of the building. “What are you going to make this year?”
“I have no clue,” I said, pulling open a door and nearly running smack bang into one of my year eights. “Whoops. Sorry, Melissa.”
“Just get a box mix again,” Katie said. “And take it out like five minutes before you think you need to. You were nearly there with your brownies last year. Just get them again and chuck some extra butter and chocolate chips in or something.”
“Yeah, I’ll probably just do that.” I sighed. Baking some brownies should not fill me with so much dread. If I was happy to demonstrate the effects of alkali metals in water or let my year twelves make esters, then I should be able to make some bloody chocolate brownies.
I said goodbye to Katie and headed towards my classroom, where my form would be waiting for registration. As I did, I wondered if there was a way I could bribe Alex to make them for me, although he didn’t do a lot of baking for Novel Tea.
That was Mina.
And Spencer…