Chapter 17 #3
The weather had taken a chilly turn, but despite the overcast skies, Kaci’s Physics Club was happy at their booth on the campus mall on Wednesday for Club Day during Spirit Week.
She approached the group from behind, bringing pizzas for her kids who were manning lunch hour.
Running out for food had been a good excuse to get off campus and run home.
Miss Higgs hadn’t touched her food today.
Or yesterday.
Not even when Kaci offered her fresh tuna.
Wanda Hamm was watching Miss Higgs again today while Tara was at class and her study group.
Thank goodness, because if Kaci had walked into her empty apartment an hour ago and seen her cat sleeping as peacefully as she was on the Hamms’ couch, she would’ve lost it.
She’d picked up the cat and snuggled her, relieved to still feel that rusty purr going, but the sympathy had shone bright in Wanda’s eyes.
She shook away the melancholy and dread and concentrated instead on the Physics Club booth.
Unlike her lectures, where she suspected a good number of the kids would rather be sleeping no matter how hard she tried to make physics interesting, these girls wanted to be here.
She had sixteen kids in the Physics Club, and she’d do everything she could to inspire their love of how things worked. Especially the twelve girls.
The boys too—she’d take any kid interested in science—but when her daddy died, she’d lost the one parent who understood how to nurture her curiosity. Momma thought her time would’ve been better spent learning how to catch a husband than in figuring out how to build a better catapult.
Kaci might have to fight harder and longer to keep her job simply because she was a woman. But she reached the students. She worked hard to make it worth their while to come to class, to make physics fun and applicable to life.
She knew how to lay a foundation that would prepare them to be astrophysicists, rocket scientists, and chemical engineers. But more importantly, she knew how to lay that foundation in a way that made her students fall in love with the beauty of it.
And she’d dang well fight with everything she had to stay here, teaching these kids until her position was secure, no matter what any of her fellow professors—Ron included—said or did.
“Hey, you want to help us make lightning?” Zada called to a high school girl on a campus tour with her parents.
Jess was demonstrating how to separate salt and pepper for several members of the football team.
Two other students were laughing with the Eta Zeta Beta girls at the next booth, and it only took Kaci a moment to realize they were telling the story of how far their pumpkin had gone when they’d launched it off Ichabod at the Gellings Fall Fest.
She knew Jess was having boyfriend troubles, and Zada had recently taken an extra four hours a week at her job in the registrar’s office because her finances were tight, but they were here.
Her kids were going places. They’d do great things one day.
There was plenty to be happy about today, even if part of her heart was breaking.
“Dr. Boudreaux, back me up here,” Jess said. “These guys don’t believe physics has anything to do with football.”
Her voice dripped with pity for the boys, and Kaci found herself stifling an unlikely smile. “There’s physics at work in every bit of football. Ever take a hit? That’s force. Toss a ball? Gravity and friction play into how far it goes.”
“You’d win more if you took Dr. Boudreaux’s Physics 101,” Jess said.
A groan went up among the boys, and several of the physics kids giggled.
“More to life than winning,” Kaci said. “Who wants pizza?”
Half her students—and the football players—attacked the boxes. She had an hour before her Wednesday afternoon lecture, and Jess and Zada seemed to have a handle on entertaining the passersby, so Kaci let herself drift into the back to watch and to be on hand for any other questions.
“Kaci,” an unfortunately familiar male voice said to her right, “nice booth.”
She refused to let the man see her twitch, and she dug deep not to be offended at his dry delivery with the barest hint of a suggestion that the Physics Club shouldn’t have a banner with flowers and hearts on it. “Ron, likewise.”
There wasn’t a chemistry club, but the chemistry honor society was down at the other end of the mall.
And she could wish all she wanted to that Ron had stayed on his half of the campus, but since he hadn’t, she truly did need to deal with her ex-husband.
She could help Lance get rid of his wedding rings, she could call people cheaters till she was blue in the face, but since the airplane incident, she’d come to realize dealing with her problems was far better than launching them out of cannons.
“What can I do for you today?” she said.
He perched against a massive oak that had been around longer than the James Robert campus and scuffed his loafers against an exposed root.
“I’ve been doing everything I can think of to show you I want you back, that I want to take care of you and be the kind of husband you deserve, but I can’t do that if we can’t talk. ”
“You’re not my husband anymore.” Keeping her voice even was easier than it should’ve been. She wasn’t mad. She was just done. And she didn’t care enough to fight. “We’re better the way we are than the way we were.”
“I’m not.”
“You are, sugar.”
“I get it, Kaci. I know you don’t want to put your research on hold to have kids right now. I know your job’s important. To you. To the world. We can fix this.”
There was nothing to fix, but instead of being angry with him, she simply felt sad. She kept her voice down and watched her kids to make sure none of them were listening in. “You need to let go, Ron.”
“If you’d come to therapy with me—”
“You ask your therapist if it’s better to be with a woman who loves you or with a woman who doesn’t. I’m not trying to be cruel, but wouldn’t it be worse for me to lie to you?”
“Is this about that kid you’re messing around with?”
Her heart slammed into her ribs.
Lance wasn’t hers. He was fun, he was smart, he was brave, and he wasn’t hers.
She suddenly had more sympathy for Ron. “It’s about me not being a good fit for you.”
He shoved away from the tree. “I knew you could hold a grudge, but this is extreme, even for you.”
That did it. A red haze spiked in her vision. “Because you know better than me what I want? What I need? Because you’re the man, and my female parts interfere with my ability to think and act rationally?”
“Now you’re being ridiculous.”
“I’m not the one who won’t take no for an answer.”
“Um, Dr. Boudreaux?” Zada squinted her dark eyes, flicking glances between Kaci and Ron. “We need another aluminum plate.”
Kaci turned her best disappointed-professor glare on Ron. She kept her voice low, but she suspected everyone was listening. “You bring up personal issues here again, I’m filing a harassment complaint with the chancellor. My job is no place to bring your emotional baggage.”
She left him standing there and forced a smile while she turned to dig through the supplies under the pizza table. Her face was hot, but she kept her voice steady and concentrated on the solid, comforting physics principles Zada demonstrated for the prospective student.
She didn’t want to be the woman who had married Ron Kelly. She didn’t want to keep fighting for professional respect. She didn’t want to have to resort to empty threats of harassment charges—which she would never file for fear of being labeled a whiner—to make her point.
She simply wanted to teach these kids, do her research, and go home to her undefined and most likely short-lived relationship with one of the best men she’d had the privilege of knowing. She wanted not to have to think about Germany next month. She wanted Miss Higgs to live forever.
Maybe Ron was right.
Maybe therapy was a good idea.