33. Nathan
thirty-three
It has beentwo weeks since that phone call, which means it has also been two weeks since I’ve had Claire to myself. Putting the brakes on whatever we had started was the right call, but that doesn’t stop the decision from positively eating away at me. I hate the way that my muddled feelings have me acting like a teenager.
Act like a normal teenager.
At that thought, those words splice through me from decades ago. My mother, sitting at my bedside the night before returning to school after being my brother’s donor, had thought them encouraging.
Just try your best to act like a normal teenager, Nathan. Have fun with your friends. Get into a little trouble.
After my parents died and I was left as sole guardian to my brother, I had done exactly the opposite. Now though, it seems like in my quest to avoid being a typical teenager, I’m getting the experience years later.
And I positively hate it.
My heart and head are both stuffy, I have jitters for crying out loud. I can’t sit still. And my mind races with nothing but her.
In my kitchen, making me grilled cheese. Head on my chest, reading to me from my favorite book. Holding me while I slept. Waking beside me with a smile on her face.
She had been happy to be there. Happy to wake up in my arms. Had seemed sad to leave so abruptly. So what on earth are we doing?
I shake the thought from my head and set out to do the work I’m supposed to be doing: Meeting with Joe Petersen. He bounds into my office and squishes his round body into one of my chairs, making himself comfortable.
“What can I help you with today, Mr. Petersen?” I ask, pulling up the meeting request and noticing no notes indicating a reason.
“I’m taking a week off next month. Don told me to talk to you about setting up a sub.”
My brows pinch together.
“I’m not quite following,” I say, steepling my fingers together. “I am not in charge of the substitute agency.”
“Yeah, but we have end-of-semester testing, and I need a proctor. He said something about one of our long terms filling in. You know, that sweet little blonde thing?”
Joe pumps his brows up and down, and I consider stretching across my desk and gripping his throat until he turns purple.
“If you’re speaking of Ms. Benson, you’d better watch your tone, Mr. Petersen. She’s an employee in this building—a human being at that—and you will treat her with respect.”
“Oh, hoh!” he guffaws, slapping his thigh. “Seems like I struck a nerve.”
I tense, the vein in my forehead straining further as amusement sparkles in Joe’s eyes.
“Anyway. We need someone who can proctor testing. Don said she’s still floating in between placements, so I just need you to get her through training, and we’ll be all set. From the looks of it, you’ll have no problem having some one-on-one time to teach her the ropes.”
I’m torn. On the one hand, I have a reason to see her. To talk to her. One that requires me to remain professional. On the other, if I wrap my hand around Joe’s throat after that comment, I will probably lose my job.
“I will get Ms. Benson set up to proctor your class while you’re out.”
“Oh, I’m sure you will. Enjoy yourself with that, Nate.”
Joe guffaws, and that is the final straw. I push up from the desk and point my finger in his direction.
“I will not ask you again, Mr. Petersen. The insinuations about other staff members end now before I take this up with HR and file a formal report.”
He scoffs, like he’s calling me on my bluff, then shakes his head and walks out without another word.
God. Have I just made things worse?
I don’t get the time to reflect. I’m the administrator on duty for an annual IEP meeting. I enter the conference room where I find the student’s team of teachers chatting and laughing while awaiting the arrival of the parents.
“…can’t believe she’s finally doing it. Oh, hey Nate! How’s it going, my man?”
Aaron turns to me with a smile and extends a hand, to which I go in to shake. Instead, he claps his against mine, and then attempts some slick handshake that I completely fumble.
Be a normal teenager indeed.
I clear my throat, take a seat, and nod at the rest of the sixth grade team, keeping to myself as I ready my paperwork and pens in front of me. Without meaning to, I overhear the rest of Aaron’s conversation.
“She’s officially moving out?” Drake asks.
“Yeah, she had it out with her parents last night. Lucy and I are going to help her and Penelope with the move.”
My heart rate triples, and my cheeks inflame. My body goes rigid as I piece together the rest of the conversation.
“Who are you talking about?” I ask.
“Claire,” Aaron says with a curt nod. A mix of pride and sadness ring his eyes. “Benson. She uh, she’s moving in with Penelope this afternoon. I’m happy for her!”
“Yeah, good for her,” Drake adds.
My slew of questions lie in wait behind my teeth, because the parents of the sixth grader show up right on time for the meeting. My role in these meetings is twofold: I’m here so that Don doesn’t have to be, and because legally, the team needs an administrator present. I do little more than introduce myself—Nathan Harding, assistant principal—and let the special education teacher do her job. I wish I could say I handled myself professionally, but after those four words, I shut down on the outside.
Claire stood up to her parents. Claire is moving out. Claire is moving in with Penelope Barker tonight.
Despite all of my attempts to push her from my mind for the betterment of us both, I am now sick with worry. Sick in wonder about how she is.
I wish these meetings were shorter, because the urge to go to her now, to check in and make sure she’s doing okay, to ask how the conversation went with her parents, to ask why she’s moving in with Penelope—was it her choice to move out, or did her parents displace her? Because if that’s the case, I’m going to be hot for a whole other slew of reasons—and to simply be there for her like she was for me have overtaken. I am trapped in a spider web of my own unanswered questions.
The moment the meeting wraps, my already bouncing leg catapults me from the chair. I don’t even ask if anyone needs me for further questions. I barely register Aaron calling out after me. I’ll have to follow up with an email later. Right now, my sole focus is on her.
I find Claire subbing in eighth grade. I stop outside the classroom, deadened in my tracks just watching her through the window. I can tell through the glass pane that she’s tired. Her students might not—she has a smile on her face, and is animatedly teaching them a concept that she no doubt reviewed ahead of time, because she wanted to get it perfect—but even through the windowpane, I can see the heaviness in her cheeks, the purplish hue beneath her eyes that I want to erase.
Or lay claim to.
I shake my head, clear my throat, and move to take a step forward when I notice a foreign sensation in my chest.
These past two weeks, without a word from her, my heart has been stuttering. Searching. Reaching out in erratic pulses that have kept me up at night. I’d dismissed it as lingering stress. But the moment I saw her, my lungs filled generously, and my heart clicked into its right beat again.
Almost like just the sight of Claire can center my gravity.
I have no idea what to do with that.
She sees me before I have the chance to knock. Her breath catches, and it takes great strength not to nod and mouth the words, Me too.
Instead, I trace the lines of her smile, the one that perks up at the sight of me, but that still doesn’t reach her eyes. My mind immediately begins spinning with ways to fix that. She motions to her students, and they follow her direction, opening their textbooks as she approaches the door. My pulse quickens, but it isn’t irregular anymore, because it’s racing toward the woman who controls it.
When the door opens, I can only hear the sound of pencils scratching, and light piano music strumming from the classroom speakers.
Because she is so good.
“Mr. Harding? Is there something I can do for you?” she asks, her voice breathy. I don’t know if it’s because she’s surprised to see me, or because she’s so exhausted, and it pains me.
I steel my jaw and clench my fists to keep from reaching out.
“I heard from Mr. Russo that you’re moving in with Penelope Barker tonight. I just needed to check on you and make sure that you’re okay.”
Needslips out. In place of all of the other professional words I could have used. Apparently my frantic heart is getting used to speaking the truth around her. This time, when her breath catches, I know it has to do with me. Her hand comes to lay over her heart, and that’s when I notice.
Her nails aren’t painted. Or, rather, her manicure is more chipped than paint.
She’s been so stressed out by whatever is going on at home that she hasn’t done the one thing she does for herself.
I don’t even think before I grab her hand, holding it low between us as I stroke gently over her unpolished fingernails. I hear the sniffle, and when I blink up, she’s holding back tears through a huge watery grin, her shoulders scrunched up to her ears.
I exhale long and hard, the restraint to only hold her hand like this and nothing else making my blood boil. She belongs against my chest, tucked into me where I can keep her safe.
But then, the bell rings. And I remember where we are.
In our place of employment. Adolescents flooding the hall, followed by teachers—the people whom I am in charge of.
She holds up a finger to indicate that she’ll be a minute, reminds her students of their homework, and saunters back out into the hallway. With it being only third period, there are still way too many hours left in the day until we can be alone.
“I’m moving out tonight,” she says softly, arms crossed as she tucks her body into the alcove that houses the classroom door, and rests herself against the wall. “They didn’t kick me out, but they made it very clear that if I continue to live under their roof, I would be following their rules. I couldn’t stand it any longer, Nathan.”
Her voice breaks around my name, and my resolve does along with it.
I scoot to stand beside her, pressing my elbow into her forearm. It’s the most I can give her in this setting, and that tears me apart.
“What can I do?”
My gaze flicks down to her and my heart breaks.
She takes a deep inhale, and the sad smile she wears fills with hope. Her eyes close as she releases her breath, her head tilts, touching my bicep, and the world doesn’t seem to be upside down for the split second that she holds herself there.
She shakes her head, offering nothing but a sad smile, like she wants to say more, but knows she shouldn’t. The warning bell rings to signal one minute until students need to be in class, and I have another meeting at the end of this class period that I need to prep for.
I’ve never taken a fake sick day, played hooky, in my entire life. And yet, Claire Benson has me wanting to break the rules in more ways than one.
After the period begins, I have the hallways to myself, and decide to take an aimless walk around the building to clear my head. I turn the corner down the athletics hall and bump into Aaron, who is on his prep. As always, he bolsters a huge smile.
“Hey! Twice in one day, my guy! How’s it going?”
“Fine,” I say, exhaling harshly. “How are you?”
He eyes me suspiciously, then lifts a brow and says, “Good. Just trying to make the most of my prep, since the lady and I are helping Claire move tonight.”
He says his words with a calculating slowness. My face tightens when he says her name, and as his brow and lip hitch, I realize what he’s doing.
“You know, I can send you Penny’s address, if you’re looking to swing by.”
I shake my head immediately, overdoing it to keep myself from nodding.
“I don’t think Claire would want her boss intruding on her move.”
Aaron smirks.
“You know, buddy, it’s okay if you have a little crush on her.”
He chuckles. Chuckles. And while he has his laugh, my heart does a two-step.
Aaron claps a hand on my shoulder as he walks past.
“She’s only here for a few more months, man. You have my number if you want the address.”
I shake my head, forcing myself to ignore the fact that when he’d mentioned the words crush and Claire in the same sentence, something happened in my heart. Something akin to those normal teenagerfeelings my mom had encouraged all those years ago.
Is this what it feels like to have a crush?