Chapter 30
Shay
Students will be able to doubt everything and drive themselves crazy in the process.
I felt like I was made of paper-thin glass. One wrong move, one faltering smile and I’d crack. I’d shatter. But that couldn’t happen. I’d already shattered once. I didn’t think I could do it again and live to tell the tale.
More than that, I didn’t want to shatter. I didn’t want Xavier’s words to matter enough to make me shatter. He didn’t have the right to break me twice.
Noah didn’t leave my side for hours. He stayed with me as I chatted with all my friends from school, always quick to refill my drink or push a small plate of snacks into my hand or stroke my back.
He was quiet, perhaps a bit more quiet than his usual, but he was pleasant to all my friends.
He asked about their grade levels and how long they’d lived in Boston, and he indulged everyone’s desire to know more about the idyllic town of Friendship.
Aside from questions about our storybook small town—which it was not, regardless of what Emme said—they all wanted to know if I was coming back next year. I had a really hard time answering that with Noah’s hand in my back pocket.
Honestly, I was having a hard time answering anything while Xavier’s words echoed in my head.
I couldn’t stop hearing them and I couldn’t stop thinking of all the times I had forced it.
I’d been convenient, as he’d put it, and I’d cranked up the intensity on that convenience until the only next step was an engagement.
I remembered not wanting to waste my time dating people who weren’t looking for a serious commitment, and making my priorities clear from the start, but looking back, I realized I’d basically put him in a marriage headlock until he tapped out.
If I’d just dated him without all that frantic energy, I probably wouldn’t be fighting to keep myself from falling apart right now. I wouldn’t be examining every single moment of the past few years and wondering which were organic and which I’d dragged into existence.
If I’d just dated the ex, I wouldn’t be standing here with Noah now.
I wouldn’t be married to Noah now.
I wouldn’t be in love with a man who’d only signed on for one year and access to my step-grandmother’s land.
I wouldn’t have a little family with him, wonky and patched together as we were, and I wouldn’t feel as though I’d gone to Rhode Island searching for the remnants of home and I’d found precisely that.
Jaime waved to me as she approached with another woman.
“This is your replacement,” Jaime announced.
“Aurora Lura, meet Shay Zucconi. And we can’t forget the Daddy Bread Baker, Noah Barden.
I told her she wasn’t allowed to be that girl who left the city for a small town only to run off with the first farmer she met but no one listens to me. ”
“I thought we were on the same side now,” Noah said to Jaime.
“We are,” she drawled. “But you took my bestie. I’m still allowed to be salty.”
The first thing I noticed about Aurora was her funky glasses. They were an oversized cat’s eye style in dark, sparkly green. They were gorgeously excessive.
“I feel like I already know you just from inheriting your classroom,” she said.
“And I feel like I know you from everything Jaime has told me,” I replied. “Thank you for keeping her sane, by the way. I don’t know what I would’ve done if her new neighbor wasn’t someone who could hang with her brand of nutty.”
“Don’t worry,” Aurora said with a laugh. Her long, dark hair spilled over her shoulders. “I mean, she’s nutty. There’s no two ways about that. But she always has food in her classroom. I don’t mind the nutty when I get a cheese stick and some crackers with it. Cold seltzer too.”
“The snacks do help,” I agreed.
“Oh, this is cute,” Jaime mused. “It’s like an ex-wives’ club over here.”
“You know we love you,” Aurora sang.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m going to leave before one of you smothers me with all this love.”
As Jaime drifted to another group, Aurora said, “I know everyone here has been hounding you about whether you’re coming back next year.
I don’t want to be another person doing that, especially since the next school year is approximately twenty years away.
” She glanced at the beer bottle in her hand.
“But please don’t worry about me while you make that decision.
I’ve heard there might be a fourth grade opening next year if Audrey decides to loop up with her class and I really don’t mind bouncing around to different grade levels if I’m in a good school. I’ll be fine either way.”
Noah stiffened beside me and that subtle move shifted my glass facade. On a different day, I would’ve been able to bluster through this conversation. I would’ve been able to put Aurora at ease and avoid answering anything. But I didn’t think I could do that today.
“I assumed you were coming back anyway,” she went on, “since you left all your materials in the classroom.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “About the stuff. In the classroom.”
Aurora’s forehead creased. “But your decorations and posters and books—”
“I’ll find new ones,” I said. Maybe it was cavalier to walk away from the supplies I’d spent years amassing.
Maybe it was as destructive as running away to Rhode Island without any form of plan or future for myself.
And maybe I was just too busy holding the patched up pieces of myself together to worry about storybooks and thematic decorations.
Aurora didn’t seem convinced. “There are a lot of anchor charts too. Those must’ve taken ages to create.”
“It’s okay. Really. I’ll make new ones. This guy can’t stop ordering markers so I have to make use of them somehow.
” I smiled up at Noah. “Maybe you could order some flip charts next. We have a lot of markers and sticky notes.” He pinched my backside in response.
“I might need you to remind me which books I used for the gingerbread unit or to send me a pic of some of the posters I made but it’s your classroom now.
Don’t worry about me coming back to collect anything.
I knew what I was leaving behind when I went. ”
“Here. I’ll send you a text so you have my number.” She pulled out her phone and keyed in the digits as I rattled them off. “Would it be okay if I called you sometime to talk about kindergarten stuff?”
“Kindergarten is my favorite topic in the whole world. Call me anytime.”
“Thank you. So much,” she said. “Everyone always talks about how great you are and how nothing is the same without you. To be very transparent with you, I was getting a little tired of it.” She belted out a deep laugh.
“It was like, ‘Okay, I’ll never measure up to the wonderful and magical Shay. Cool. Awesome. Great to be on board.’” She gestured to me.
“And now I meet you and discover that you’re exactly as great as they said. ”
“She’s really annoying like that,” Noah said.
I shifted to face him. “What?”
Still looking at Aurora, he said, “It would help if she wasn’t completely perfect. I know. Trust me, I know all about it.”
With a grin, Aurora said, “It was really good to see you tonight. Stay in touch. Call me, text me. Tell Jaime to come into my room and poke me. Whatever.”
When Aurora stepped away, I asked Noah, “What was that all about?”
“You heard what I said.” He shrugged. “What do you say we wrap this up and head out? I’ll tell you all about the ways you’re annoyingly perfect while I get your clothes off.
But I’m warning you right now, wife. My heart rate hasn’t gone back to normal since this morning and I’m not sure it ever will.
I might just snuggle you all night. I might keep you in my bed and hold you until you’re sick of me. Even on school nights.”
Was I forcing this? I couldn’t be. There was no way. Right? “I’m not going to get sick of you.”
He swung his arm around my shoulders and tucked me close to his chest. “Let me take you home.”
“Yeah,” I whispered. “Take me home.”
* * *
We were quiet on the drive back to Friendship.
It was a comfortable sort of quiet, the kind that came from knowing we didn’t have to swerve around awkward silences or entertain each other.
It had always been this way with us. All those early mornings driving to school together, when we were bleary-eyed and half awake, we’d barely managed more than a few words.
By the time we turned up Old Windmill Hill, I’d stopped tossing the ex’s words over and over in my mind.
They were still there but I could think around them now.
I had to keep telling myself he was wrong, but more importantly, I didn’t care what he said.
He didn’t matter to me. There was no reason to live or die by his words.
Convincing myself not to care when I suspected he was right was a lot like standing on the shore and trying to stay dry. Even when I thought I had a handle on it, the surf licked at my toes or a goddamn riptide curled up and crashed over me.
The real problem was that Xavier was wrong about the things that didn’t matter and he’d cut me right down to the bone on the things that mattered all too much.
He could hit me on my weight because he knew I struggled just enough for it to hurt but the shape and dimension of my body was nothing compared to the suggestion that I talked myself into believing people loved and wanted me.
It was one thing to hear those thoughts in my head when I was alone and mean to myself but it was another to hear them spoken directly to me.
I’d barely been able to look at Noah and my friends tonight without tucking in for a lengthy internal debate as to whether I was forcing them to play along in my sad little games too.
Huh. I guess I couldn’t think around Xavier’s words after all.
I’d almost convinced myself of one more pathetic thing.
“What the hell?” Noah muttered when we pulled onto the gravel drive leading to his house. Several trucks were parked along the lane and Gail stood at the base of the steps, a coat clutched around her shoulders while members of the farm crew surrounded her. “Something’s wrong.”
He parked the truck and we rushed to join the group. When Gail caught sight of Noah, she pressed her palm to her mouth. I grabbed Noah’s hand between both of mine. It was time to focus on him now. I’d fall apart over my issues later. They’d wait for me. They always did.
“What happened, Gail?” he asked.
“Gennie’s missing,” she said.