Maggie
FIVE
I was dressed. Dressed well. Hopefully not too well, but hopefully well enough.
The kids hadn’t even arrived yet, and I was already overthinking everything about today.
I wasn’t hungover because I hadn’t been drunk last night. I had gotten into bed with Garrison Nash while I was of fully sound mind, I’d said yes. Repeatedly.
I wanted to say yes again.
Nope. No way, Margot. Get it together.
I’d told myself I got here early because I wanted to rearrange the reading corner, which I’d done, and then un-done, and then re-done approximately the way it had been before.
I’d also reorganized the crayon bins by color, updated the attendance board, watered the plant on the windowsill that didn’t need watering, and eaten half a granola bar standing over my desk without tasting any of it.
I was thinking about my lesson plan for today, which involved a unit on community helpers — oh no — and whether I should move story time to before lunch instead of after, and whether Rosie Sullivan was going to try to eat the glitter glue again.
I was not thinking about the way Nash had looked at me over the bar with those hazel eyes like I was something worth paying attention to.
I was not thinking about his hands. I was not thinking about any of the specific things those hands had done, or the things he’d said, or the way he’d said there you go, sunshine like he had all the time in the world and intended to use every second of it.
I smoothed down my skirt.
It was a good skirt. Professional. Appropriate for a kindergarten classroom. It did not in any way suggest that I had spent the night in the apartment above Rick’s Bar doing things that were completely incompatible with my continued employment at Juniper Falls Elementary.
I heard footsteps in the hall.
My heart rate went from zero to catastrophic in about half a second.
“Knock knock,” a woman’s voice said.
My eyes shot to the door and I caught sight of the office admin—Delia Jones, who’d started here about a year ago.
She was the closest to my age of anyone else at the school, and she’d made attempts to invite me out…
but honestly, she’d always seemed like she was looking for a wingman, and I didn’t want to make Bryce worry.
Bryce.
Oh god, Bryce.
“You good?” Delia was asking, brow furrowed.
She was wearing this green wrap dress that made me feel underdressed even though I’d spent twenty minutes picking my outfit, holding two coffees and a folder and somehow making it all look effortless. Her black hair was immaculate, tied into a messy half-up
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, shaking my head. “Just…long night.”
She nodded, her eyes narrowing as she scrutinized me. “Mmhm…” she said. “Well, I just wanted to tell you we’ve got an absence today—Theo Briggs, stomach thing. Mom called it in.”
“Awesome,” I said. “That’s okay. He eats glitter glue every day anyway…honestly, that’s probably why he’s sick—”
I paused, my eyes darting up to her.
“Is there something on my face?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No, no,” she said. “You’re just—you’ve got this…glow to you or something.”
I felt my face go red immediately.
“It’s the lighting in here,” I said. “These fluorescents are—”
“They’re the same fluorescents as yesterday,” Delia said pleasantly.
“I tried a new moisturizer.”
“Uh huh.” She tilted her head. “Look—Maggie, I’m not trying to pry, but did you get laid? Is your boyfriend in town?”
I opened my mouth.
Closed it.
“My boyfriend and I broke up,” I said. “Last night, actually. Before—” I stopped. “We broke up.”
Delia’s face immediately turned mortified.
“Oh no,” she said. “Maggie. I’m so sorry, I didn’t know—“
“It’s really okay,” I said. “We’d been long distance, it wasn’t—it was coming. I’m fine.”
She looked at me for a beat, reading my face, and whatever she saw there made her believe me because she nodded and let it go.
“Okay,” she said simply. “For what it’s worth, you do look good.” She held out the second coffee. “I grabbed this from the break room. Figured you looked like someone who needed reinforcements today.”
I took it. “Thank you.”
“Anytime.” She stood, smoothed her dress, picked up the folder. Back to business, easy as that. “I’ll let you get set up. Doors open in twenty.”
She was almost to the hallway when she paused, hand on the doorframe, and looked back at me with something that might have been carefully casual.
“Hey,” she said. “If you ever want to go out, I’m available. No pressure. Just—new town’s a lot easier with someone who already knows where everything is.”
She was gone before I could answer.
I heard a car door slam maybe a minute later, heralding the arrival of the kids. This was…it was going to be fine. Apparently I was glowing and everyone could clearly see I’d had my world rocked last night, but it was fine. I was so good.
The first kids arrived.
Thankfully, I started to fall into it a little…
the organization of it, the everyday rhythm.
I knew how to be Miss Laine. Miss Laine had a lesson plan and a reading corner and a sticker chart and absolutely no complicated personal life.
Miss Laine crouched down to say good morning to every single kid who came through the door and meant it.
Caleb arrived first, like always, dragging his backpack behind him because the straps were too long and he refused to let me adjust them.
Then Priya and her twin brother Dev. Then a small parade of everyone else, backpacks and jackets and stories about what they’d had for breakfast and a very urgent report from Owen Tate about a frog he’d seen in his driveway.
“A big one?” I asked, crouching down.
“The biggest,” he confirmed, arms spread wide.
“We’ll draw it later,” I said. “Go hang up your jacket.”
I straightened up, turned to greet the next arrival, and Rosie Sullivan launched herself at my legs like a small missile.
“Miss Laine,” she announced into my kneecap. “I stayed up past nine.”
“Did you?” I said.
“We had a sleepover.” She tilted her head back to look at me. “Nellie cried.”
“Sometimes sleepovers have some crying,” I said carefully.
“And then I cried.” She seemed unbothered by this, already moving past it. “Is there glitter today?”
“Yep! Later. Go find your seat.”
Something smarted at that. Rosie, Nell’s cousin. Nell, Nash’s daughter. I felt weirdly responsible for her crying, like it was my fault she’d been at that sleepover in the first place.
Nash had higher priorities than me.
As if on cue, a tiny shape was suddenly racing toward me down the hall, flinging itself at my legs. Little arms wrapped around me and I reached down to pat her head, smiling.
“Good morning, Nellie!” I said, every insecurity erased when I got to be myself again—when I got to be Miss Laine, taking care of these kids.
Nell pulled back and looked up at me with very serious hazel eyes—Nash’s eyes, in miniature—and launched immediately into her report.
“I have dinosaur facts,” she said. “I memorized three new ones.”
“I can’t wait to hear them,” I said. “Go hang up your backpack and you can tell me at circle time.”
She nodded, beaming up at me, then barreled past me into the classroom. I straightened up and turned back to the door.
Nash was standing right outside in the hall.
He didn’t always come in; he had for the first week or so, but Nell had taken to me fast, and he’d decided she was fine to come in by herself. Now, though, he was standing in the hall with his hands in his pockets, looking…
…well, nothing like the politely hot older dad I’d said good morning to dozens of times.
Instead, he looked like you’re going to sit all naked and pretty and you’re being so good for me and I see a beautiful woman who’s been taken for granted.
My breath hitched. “Good morning, Mr. Nash. Everything okay with Nellie today?”
I knew very well everything wasn’t okay with Nell. I knew she had to be picked up from a sleepover last night after having a nightmare, because me and her dad and been naked in bed together when he’d gotten the call.
“Miss Laine,” he said, nodding and taking a couple steps closer. I could smell his aftershave. It smelled so good. “I just wanted to let you know Nell had kind of a rough night. I guess Sadie Kowalski went into some detail on her mom dying.”
“Oh,” I breathed. I hadn’t lived in town at the time, but it had rocked everyone here; Sadie, in second grade, was the youngest of the Kowalski kids, and the only one at Juniper Hills Elementary.
“For what it’s worth, Rosie told me Nell cried at the sleepover, but Nell mostly seemed interested in her dinosaur facts. ”
“We had a bit of a death talk this morning,” Nash winced, his eyes darting past me to where Nell was already sitting with Rosie, Priya, and Dev. “So if that comes up…sorry. I tried to put her at ease but you never know.”
“I’ll keep an eye on her,” I said. “If anything comes up I’ll handle it.”
There was a beat of silence. A normal, professional, parent-teacher beat of silence in which we were two adults having a perfectly appropriate conversation about a child.
“You doing okay?” he asked.
I blinked rapidly. “Um…yeah, of course I am.”
Wow. Way to seem very confident, Margot.
“Just—” He lowered his voice. “—with the breakup and…last night. Didn’t like the way I left things.”
I opened my mouth. Closed it.
There were kids three feet away. Rosie Sullivan was at her desk eating what I was pretty sure was a crayon.
I was becoming convinced that Owen Tate had brought the actual frog to class and that he didn’t just want to draw a picture.
Mrs. Petersen was going to walk past this doorway in approximately thirty seconds on her second coffee run of the morning, see this happening, and immediately clock the Nash Effect.
“I’m fine,” I said again. More firmly this time. “Really.”
Nash held my gaze for one more beat, and I could see him deciding something—whether to push it, whether to let it go, whether to acknowledge the very large elephant standing in the hallway between us wearing last night like a neon sign.
He let it go.
“Okay,” he said simply. And then: “Appreciate you keeping an eye on her.”
He turned and walked back down the hall.
That was it. Check in delivered, thanks extended, Nash disappearing around the corner back to his real life which had nothing to do with me.
I turned back to my classroom.
“Miss Laine!” Owen shrieked. “Rosie’s eating the glitter glue!”
“Rosie,” I said, walking calmly over to her and taking it out of her hands. “We don’t eat the glitter glue.”
“But Owen has a frog!” Rosie said.
I sighed.
I needed to avert a glitter glue feast and a frog crisis. I didn’t have time to think about Garrison Nash.
So I put my hands on my hips, caught my class’s attention…and got to work.