Chapter 19
Theo
Istared at my empty mini fridge with the kind of despair usually reserved for discovering your car won’t start on a Monday morning. No Diet Coke. No caffeinated salvation to get me through the rest of this interminable day.
My lack of non-sugary goodness meant I’d have to venture into the teachers’ lounge.
Sweet buttery bread.
The teachers’ lounge was essentially high school all over again, except now the popular kids had tenure and the outcasts graded papers alone in their classrooms. The social hierarchies engrained from our earliest days were perfectly intact: the athletic coaches who commanded respect through sheer force of whistle-wearing personality, the teachers who quoted Shakespeare at faculty meetings and somehow made it charming instead of pretentious, and the others who formed their own little pocket of logical superiority in the corner by the ancient copy machine that worked only when the sun was high and humidity low.
Then there were the rest of us—the librarians, the art teachers, the foreign language instructors—floating around the periphery like educational satellites, occasionally pulled into orbit when someone needed to borrow supplies or couldn’t figure out how to make the coffee machine work.
The only difference between the teachers’ lounge and actual high school was that now everyone had mortgages and back problems, which somehow made the whole social dance even more pathetic.
At least the teenagers had the excuse of still-developing prefrontal cortexes; what was our excuse for caring whether the assistant football coach saved us a seat at the “good” table?
The lounge was mercifully empty when I pushed through the door, nothing but the hum of ancient vending machines and the lingering scent of reheated leftovers. No one had microwaved tuna. I took that as a victory for olfactory glands everywhere.
I swiped my card, retrieved my frosted can of Diet Coke, and claimed a corner table.
The place might’ve been empty in that moment, but I knew it wouldn’t remain so, and I didn’t want to face the awkward stares of others who wondered why I was sitting too far in the center of attention—er, the room.
I unwrapped my sad turkey sandwich that tasted vaguely like cardboard and pulled out my dog-eared copy of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.
Five minutes into my meal, the door burst open with the kind of energy that made me instinctively look for escape routes.
Mike Albert, one of the English teachers, strode in with Coach Mateo Ricci close behind.
Both were the kind of teachers who actually looked forward to lunch duty, eating in the cafeteria as often as the teachers’ lounge.
They could remember every student’s name by October.
Mike got invited to graduation parties, and Mateo’s basketball players were always hanging around his office during their free periods.
They were the cool teachers.
I braced myself for polite nods and the awkward dance of pretending we didn’t see each other while sharing the same space. Instead, Mike spotted me—and his face lit up like Christmas morning.
“Theo! Mind if we join you?”
I blinked, certain I’d misheard, and pointed at my chest with the remains of my sandwich, smearing mayo on my dark navy shirt. “Me?”
“Yeah, you.” Mateo was already pulling out a chair, his lunch bag hitting the table with a soft thud. “We’ve been wanting to catch up with you.”
“Catch up? With me?” I repeated, feeling like I was missing some crucial piece of information. “We’ve never really . . . I mean, we don’t usually . . .”
“Hang out?” Mike supplied helpfully, dropping into the chair across from me. “Yeah, well, it turns out we have a mutual friend.”
My stomach flipped. “Mutual friend?”
“Big, sexy, muscular blond guy who works for one of those delivery services and apparently has a thing for librarians?” Mateo’s grin was positively predatory. “Ring any bells?”
“Jer—” I stared at them. “You know Jeremiah?”
“Oh, we know him,” Mike said, exchanging a look—an almost maniacal grin—with Mateo. “He delivers to Shane’s workshop all the time. Tools, supplies, that kind of thing.”
“Plus,” Mateo added with a grin, “he’s been to a few of our group gatherings. Nice guy. Great sense of humor.”
“Group gatherings?” I felt like I was three steps behind in this conversation. Jeremiah had never mentioned a group of friends or gatherings or any of this. I hadn’t exactly asked. I guess I just assumed he was, well, as lonely as I was.
That thought twisted something in my chest.
I had Debbie. She was the best thing to ever—that could ever—happen to me. I didn’t need anything or anyone else. Why was I . . .
Lonely?
“Yeah, we’ve got this little crew that hangs out sometimes.
It’s nothing formal, just a bunch of misfits who enjoy culinary torture at the hands of a crazy woman.
Shane, me, Mike, Sisi—she’s our token straight girl—Matty and Omar .
. . and now Jeremiah. Dane and Patrick show up sometimes, but they’re crazy busy.
Then there’s Mrs. H, the crazy woman. She’s in a category all her own. ”
Mike snorted. “Mrs. H loves to twist Jeremiah’s undies more than any of the rest of us. Poor guy never sees it coming.”
“He’s hot and sweet, but man, that boy is blond,” Mateo said through a chuckle.
“Who is Mrs. H?” I asked, though something about the way they said it made me slightly nervous.
“Keep Jeremiah around and you’ll meet her eventually,” Mateo said ominously. “She has . . . opinions . . . and she’s not shy about sharing them.”
“Especially about people’s love lives,” Mike added with obvious relish.
“And she tries to cook,” Mateo added.
“Bless her not-so-Scottish heart.” Mike shook his head.
I felt a chill run up my spine. “She sounds terrifying.”
Mateo laughed and shared a quick glance with Mike. “She’s harmless . . . mostly.”
“Anyway,” Mike continued, “we’ve all heard about the pasta maker incident.”
Heat flooded my face. “The what now?”
Mike was trying very hard not to laugh. “Dude, the whole story. The five-year-old, the vibrator, the rotini explanation. It’s pure comedy gold. You should go on the road with that one. You’d make a killing.”
“I’m going to kill him,” I muttered. “Knife through the heart, maybe across the throat. One slash. It’ll be done.”
“Don’t kill him yet,” Mateo said, unwrapping what looked like an elaborate sandwich with meatballs slathered in tomato sauce and coated in white cheese that put my cardboard turkey to shame. “We need to know what your intentions are first.”
“My . . . intentions?”
“With Jer. Are you serious about him, or are you just playing around?” Mike’s tone was casual, but there was something protective underneath it that made me sit up straighter. “Playing is good, but our boy is . . . special. He deserves someone who won’t toy with him.”
I looked between them, these two men I barely knew who were apparently conducting some kind of romantic intervention on behalf of their friend. A wave of defensive energy prickled my skin as I tossed my sandwich into the nearby garbage. “I . . . that’s really none of your business.”
“Maybe not,” Mateo agreed. “But Jer’s been through some shit with guys who couldn’t handle him.
Maybe they just wanted to sleep with the hottie with the bulging arms, or they might’ve grown tired of explaining why five-syllable words don’t always mean what we think they mean.
Either way, Jer got his expectations up, then dashed, over and over.
He may look tough and strong, but he’s a softie on the inside—the best kind, really.
And not to spoil the plot, but he’s into you.
Really into you. We don’t want to see him get his hopes up if you’re not planning to stick around when things get messy. ”
I blinked. Jeremiah was really into me? I mean, I kind of knew that, the way he showed up and stayed and kept coming back.
Still, we’d only known each other a couple of weeks.
He hadn’t experienced the hard days of parenting, when Debbie was unmanageable or irrationally angry or whatever mood hit a five-year-old when the planets weren’t perfectly aligned.
Would he still be sweet and patient and kind on those days?
Would he want to be a father when she needed him most? Would he still stick around?
There were so many questions and doubts rummaging around in my head I could barely see the concerned expressions on the men’s faces before me.
I couldn’t see or think or anything. All I could do was feel .
. . feel the warmth of Jeremiah’s touch, the way his lips parted and quirked when he saw me, the way his eyes made my insides turn to strawberry jam on a summer’s day.
Jesus, I was a disaster.
“Things are already messy,” I said, my gaze faltering and voice fading. “I’ve had to cancel on him twice because of babysitter issues.”
“And?” Mike leaned forward. “How’s he handling it?”
Despite everything, I found myself relaxing slightly.
Mike and Mateo seemed genuinely interested.
They were concerned for their friend, but I got the sense they wanted me to be okay, too.
No one worried over me. No one asked how I was holding up.
Why were Mike and Mateo reaching out? Were they really just good guys looking out for those around them?
Did they want me to be part of their pack?
Could I even become part of something like . . . a group of friends?
“Better than I expected. Better than . . . well, better than most guys would.”
“That’s because he’s not most guys, not by a long shot,” Mateo said, his Italian accent making the words sound like menu items slathered in garlic. “The question is, are you most guys?”
I stared down at my hands, now folded on the tabletop before me, trying to figure out how this conversation had gotten so intense so quickly. I mumbled, “I don’t know what you want me to say.”