Chapter 14
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
CLAY
N ormally, I loved Sundays. Not being much of a churchgoer, I had ample time in the mornings to hike or go out for a run when fewer people were out on the roads.
But yesterday, despite running a cleansing ten-miler, I had loved Sunday a bit less. I wanted it to be Monday. I wanted to go back to school. I told myself I was eager for the typical Monday morning gossip and chitchat in the teachers’ lounge, but I just wanted to see Ally and make sure we were good.
I’d almost kissed her, for fuck’s sake, and I couldn’t decide if I’d ruined a perfectly good work relationship or opened a potentially dangerous door, because I didn’t know what lay on the other side.
Certainly, hearing about her date and seeing the lengths she went to ensure we weren’t alone together sent a message. It felt like an emotional gut punch, but it told my brain what it needed to hear. We were friends. Nothing more.
That night, I’d stood outside Ally’s tent for a long time, listening for any sign she was awake. I’d intended to apologize right then and there, but the last thing I wanted to do was wake her to do it. Eventually, I cleaned up the campsite, making sure there were no food scraps around to attract animals, and crawled into my own tent. It felt really goddamn cold.
The next morning, I’d felt a glimmer of hope when she jerked her hand away. The crackle of electricity when our fingers brushed hit me like a meteor. If she felt even a fraction of the surge of heat in my veins, it was something worth knowing.
Even if I wasn’t a fairy-tale prince, if she felt the same way about me as I felt about her, maybe I could be someone halfway worthy. Maybe it was worth trying again.
But after the way she darted from my house, I felt certain I’d come to work and hear she would no longer be my co-chaperone. If she wanted to badly enough, she’d make an excuse to Pindich for why she couldn’t go on the retreat.
If she did, so be it. That would make my life all that much easier. I could go back to darting around campus like the greyhound she thought I was and spending minimal time around her. My heart would eventually give up on the possibility of anything more with her, just as it had done in the past.
After she left, I’d plunked myself down into one of the camp chairs, sipped at my coffee, and allowed myself to entertain the wild thought that maybe the intense attraction I felt just being near to Ally might not be one-sided. And what if that were the case?
Well . . . it would change everything.
On Monday morning, just for good measure, I ran a few miles before school, even though I barely had time. My hair was still damp when I arrived, so I combed it into place with my fingers. I’d grabbed a cherry muffin from home and made a quick pot of coffee instead of stopping at Donner Bakery like I usually did. The coffee needed reheating by now, and the muffin was too dry to eat.
Walking down the hallway of the main building, I headed for the teachers’ lounge. Had to do something about the lukewarm coffee. Before I reached the door, Principal Pindich intercepted me.
“Clay, how are you?” He smiled a little too brightly. He only did that when he wanted something.
“I’m okay. You?”
“Good, good. Listen, I know plans are underway for the carnival and I wanted you to know I’ve got your back. Just like I imagine you have mine.”
“Meaning?”
“You and I go way back—you may not know this, but I worked on your grandmother’s estate plan back at the law firm, so I consider you a friend. Your vote in there counts, is all I’m saying.”
He clapped me on the shoulder without my making sense of anything he’d just said. I watched him disappear into his office and made my way to the lounge. A peal of laughter rang out from the room, followed by a breathless admission. “Half the women in Green Valley would line up at the kissing booth for him—you don’t need to ask twice.”
As I got to the doorway, the conversation stopped, and several pairs of eyes turned to me. “Hey, guys. What’s up?”
After some throat clearing and mumbling, Witty filled me in. “Spring carnival. Students want to have a kissing booth.”
The spring carnival had been a source of debate for months, with half of us agreeing that the students should be free to plan it as they wanted—within reason—and the other half wanting to give them strict guidelines. I was of a mind to let the students’ imaginations run wild and tame them only when things crossed lines of decorum or safety. This was their event, after all, and most years there were few variations on the theme of game booths, a mechanical bull, and a dance-off.
I rolled my eyes. “Of course they do. Lemme guess—the quarterback and head cheerleader are the ones fetching top dollar?” It’s how it had been in the past. Every senior class came in brimming with “new” ideas, and every few years, we ended up with a dunk tank and a kissing booth manned by the homecoming queen or some version thereof. They generated the most income for the school and proved to be harmless fun, so I never objected.
“No, you are.”
Now it was my turn to be silent. A dozen pairs of eyes watched my reaction, which so far was befuddlement. Were we talking about the same thing?
“Come again?” I asked, my voice cracking on the second word. A sheen of sweat gathered on the back of my neck, and I itched to take off the chambray button-up shirt I had on over my T-shirt.
“The student council wanted to shake things up this year, so they proposed having teachers in the kissing booth instead of students. Same with the dunk tank and all the other games.”
“Um, why?” The whole point of the carnival was that it was an event run by the high schoolers for the high schoolers. Teachers were only there for supervision, if that.
I looked from face to face, finally landing on Ally. I initially hadn’t noticed she was here, and just catching a glimpse of her wide blue eyes calmed me and rattled me at the same time.
The amusement on her face told me I’d missed an important part of the discussion. As if that wasn’t becoming dangerously clear.
“This year, we have a bigger mandate,” Nick said. “The carnival is supposed to bring in double what it did last year, which means we need to expand our reach and get more people to come.”
I still wasn’t understanding. Running a hand through my hair, I entered the room and shoved my coffee into the microwave. Maybe if I finished the cup, my brain fog would clear.
While I watched the mug spin on the carousel inside, I tried again for an explanation. “Where are we getting these people? The school is only so large.”
“Exactly. The kids figured that having adults running the carnival games would attract other adults,” Witty explained, hands out like he was offering me alms. “So, you in the kissing booth, Principal Pin Dick in the dunk tank...”
“Well, that’s reason enough right there,” I said. “Did Pin Dick agree?”
“Not exactly,” Witty admitted. “But he won’t have a choice. It was a big hit having him in the dunk tank at the Harvest Festival. He was the one who said we needed to make more money. He can’t exactly refuse now that the kids have come up with a way.”
“So I’m gathering you all think this is a good idea, teachers in the kissing booth?” I asked the group as the microwave beeped.
There was some general nodding and agreeing.
I shook my head. “Pretty sure that’s not ethical. We can’t be kissing students, even if it is for a good cause.”
“Of course not,” Nick said. “There would be a separate line for adults. The students would only be able to kiss the homecoming king or whoever. This just adds another income stream. So...you’ll do it?” he asked tentatively. People were still looking at me like an odd specimen, some kind of science experiment egg they were waiting to see hatch in captivity.
Oddly, it didn’t bother me. I was always being offered up as someone’s blind date. At least this way, the school would make money from it.
I shrugged. “Sure. Doesn’t bother me.” I snuck a look at Ally to see what she thought of the idea, but she was smiling down at her phone, tapping with her thumbs. I wondered if she was texting the date she mentioned when we were in the tent the other night.
Either way, I needed to get over it.
The only saving grace to the whole plan was the idea of seeing Principal Pindich in the dunk tank. I’d throw a dozen balls at the target myself. He’d always been a thorn in my side, trying to cut the track-and-field program every year and making me fundraise on my own to keep it. He pulled the same crap with the cheer squad and the fine arts program. Most of us secretly believed the programs weren’t in danger of being cut, but Principal Pindich knew that threatening was a way to get us to raise money for the school.
Just one of the many reasons no one could stand the weasel of a man. He resorted to sneaky tactics instead of straight up asking for what he wanted. Seeing him swimming in the dunk tank would only be partial revenge for all the suffering he’d put the faculty through, but it was a good start.
The bell rang before too much more discussion could be had about the carnival, and the air filled with the sounds of chairs scraping against the floor and the resigned groans from my colleagues about whatever the first class of the day would unleash upon us.
With my coffee now appropriately heated, I gathered my books and moved back down the main hallway. Moments later, Ally caught up with me, matching my long stride with her short one, which meant she was walking awfully fast. I slowed my pace slightly and tipped my head in her direction. “Hey there.”
“How was the rest of your weekend?”
“Good. It was good.”
We walked past students slamming their locker doors and rushing to classes on another floor. I felt certain that Ally didn’t teach her first block class in the building where I was headed, but she stayed glued to my side.
“Glad to hear it.”
“Thanks.” We strode along in silence after that. When we got halfway down the next hallway, Ally stopped. Even though we hadn’t been mid-conversation, I stopped too. It felt like the lack of motion was conversation itself.
“I meant, thanks for Saturday night. I feel like I didn’t sufficiently express how much I appreciated everything you did to make me comfortable in the wilderness.”
I nodded. “You did.”
“Sorry?”
“You thanked me yesterday. Don’t worry.”
Her brow furrowed. “I sort of ran off. I’ve been feeling badly about it ever since.”
“It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”
“Good.” She extended her hand. “Friends?”
I gestured to my full hands with a sheepish grin and a half-hearted shrug, playing it off as the reason why I couldn’t shake hers. But in reality, I didn’t want to risk touching her and feeling things when she was drawing a clear line for us as colleagues and nothing more. “Yes. Friends. Definitely.”
Then I allowed myself to look at her fully, rather than in the stolen glances I’d cast her way in the teachers’ lounge. Yeah, no. The way I reacted to her had nothing to do with fucking friendship. There was a reason I moved quickly through campus, and this was it. Stopping to gaze at Alexandra Dalbotten was hazardous to my mental well-being. It made it hard to be happy looking anywhere else.
She had her hair piled in its usual bun. Tendrils fell loose as they always did. Her eyes, wide and blue, seemed primed to swallow me up. Like Jonah and the whale. If I thought I had a chance with her, I’d go into battle without a second thought.