44. Claire
forty-four
“What wouldyou say to coming out with me and my friends this week?” I ask Nathan.
It’s after school, but he had a board meeting, and Penelope said she’d be out of the house anyway, and I didn’t feel like being there alone. I’m sitting in his office while he wraps up a few things for the work day.
I can’t say home. I don’t have a home—not really. Although lately, whenever I think of the word, I think about begging Nathan to come home from his conference. Home is starting to look a lot less like a four letter word and a lot more like a person, and that scares the shit out of me.
“Which friends?” he says, finishing whatever he had been typing to give me his full attention.
“Oh, you know, just your subordinates.”
He grimaces at that word, and I laugh.
“Come on, old man. You can’t be more than like, what, a few years older than them?”
“Sam, Juliet, and I are the same age. I am older than the rest of your friends.”
“By like, a year,” I scoff. “You’re nine years older than I am.”
I bat my lashes after dropping that bomb, tilting my head until he tugs at his tie like he’d rather not be reminded of that fact. I stare down at my manicure. The one he gave me that I’ve been doing my best to preserve.
“Does that make you uncomfortable?” I ask, the jest and strength gone from my voice, replaced with a mountain of insecurity.
I hear shuffling and then suddenly, his hand is beneath my chin. He has come around to my side of the desk to look me in the eye, to make sure that I can see the earnestness in his gaze when he says, “No.”
A man of few words. But I don’t need fluff as an answer. I nod, and when my chin dips down in his grasp, he runs the pad of his thumb over my cheek before returning to his desk.
“So, it will be Sam and Juliet, Lucy and Aaron, and Penelope?”
“Yeah, and some guy named Tony, I think? The guys met him at the conference?”
“Yes. He’s a math teacher and baseball coach at Meadow Ridge.” He pushes a few papers around to see the large desk calendar beneath the organized clutter. “What day?”
“Thursday. We’ll go straight from school. If it would make things less awkward, I could maybe hint to the guys that they should invite you like they did last time?”
Nathan tugs at his tie again, swallows, and nods.
“That might be a good idea.”
We’re avoiding the elephant in the room—we’re still sneaking around, and there is not an end goal in sight. But he’s painting my nails and I’m sleeping in his bed; we’re trading orgasms and missing each other in the meantime.
And then, in the same breath, I don’t know what to call him. I can’t invite him out with my friends in case they suspect something. We’re having some kind of illicit affair, and there’s a part of me that frets with how that cheapens what we have.
But if nudging the guys toward inviting him allows us to hang out in public—because I have a roommate now, and I don’t want her asking questions, but I still want to see the guy I’m casually doing something with—I’ll do it. I’ll lie and sneak around. I just wonder what it will cost me in the end.
When Thursday comes we’re all pretty ready for a teachers’ night out—even if we do have to report for duty in the morning.
“That new Jansen kid is giving me a run for my money,” Penelope says, already halfway through her beer. “This one’s for him.”
She tips her bottle back and takes another swig. I thank my lucky stars I’m no longer subbing in eighth grade as she tells a few stories about a brand new troublemaker.
Our waitress approaches the table. “Are you ready to order?”
“Would you mind circling back around? We’re just waiting on a few people,” Aaron says.
“Who else is coming?” Penelope asks.
“We invited Nate,” Sam replies.
“Like, Harding?” I ask. Stupid, desperate girl. Might as well hang a sign around your neck that says, “Hey!! We’re fucking!!!”
Aaron nods. “And we invited Tony! He should be here soon. He was working on a project or something.”
“Finishing a garage with his dad,” Sam supplies.
The ladies all blink in confusion.
“Excuse you idiots—who the fuck is Tony? Why is he building garages?” Penelope asks, pointing her glass between them.
“He’s a coach. We met him at the conference,” Sam says.
“He went straight from the conference on Saturday to help his dad finish building a garage. His dad owns a construction company, and he helps out sometimes.”
“And he gets an invite to our sacred circle after seventy-two hours of playing baseball coach?”
“He’s cool,” Sam adds.
“Oh. I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize he was cool.”
Penelope rolls her eyes and the girls and I all giggle.
“Hey, how’s the job hunt going, Claire?” Lucy asks.
“Okay. I applied for a few internships to get my clinical hours. Now we just wait and see.”
“Are they in the area?” Juliet asks.
I nod.
“I love this for you,” Lucy says. She offers me a warm smile and a squeeze on my shoulder, and my heart tingles. It’s nice to have support. It’s nice to have people on my side. I’m about to ask Lucy if she knows of any other schools in the area who are in need of a social worker when I hear three things in order: A male voice saying, Penny Lane; fancy meeting you here; the shattering of glass; and a steam engine manifesting out of Penelope Barker’s ears.
Penelope’s beer bottle has slipped from her grip and shattered, and while there isn’t actual steam coming from her ears, her face is about as red as a fire engine.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Tony!” Aaron—sweet, oblivious Aaron—chimes in.
“Tony?” Penelope snarks with disgust. “Since when are you Tony?”
“Since I decided I was too old to be called Ant,” he replies, matching her snark for snark. Which I honestly didn’t think was possible.
“Not too old to be a bug up my ass.” She shoots him a deadly grin. I wonder if the waitress can bring us popcorn for the show. “There is absolutely no way on planet Earth that you’ve matured into a Tony.”
“So uh… Is anyone going to explain what’s going on?” Lucy peeps.
Without removing her gaze from Tony-slash-Ant, Penelope’s voice drops to a timbre I can only recognize as a deadly weapon.
“Do you remember the story I told you about Christmas?”
I think back to the in-service before the first day of school, when Penelope and I had one too many drinks as she hashed out that story.
“You mean your mom’s best friend’s son?”
“Yep.”
“This is him?”
“Yep.”
“Are you kidding me, Samuel?!”
Juliet whips around on her husband, and I watch Lucy do the same to Aaron. Their faces say the same thing: You’ve heard this story before! Were you even listening?!
In the meantime, Penelope is glaring at Tony—Ant?—with such disdain that I’m afraid her eyes will spark lasers, and he is looking at her in what can only be described as remorseful longing—with a side of snark. Something tells me that if these two went toe to toe, the world as we know it would implode around them.
I feel like an awkward seventh wheel—the two actual couples are in the middle of their own hushed lover’s quarrels, while Penelope and AntMan seem on the brink of World War Three. My saving grace slides in at the exact right moment.
“Sorry I’m late. I was held up with a parent meeting. Hello, Tony. Nice to see you again?—”
“It is not nice to see him,” Penelope interjects without taking her eyes from her enemy, holding up her hand in a stop sign to her damn boss.
Nathan pauses for only a moment before sliding into the only vacant chair—the one beside me—and leans down to press his lips dangerously close to my ear. His hand rests casually on the back of my chair.
“What did I just walk into?”
“The end of the world, possibly.”
We both watch the unrestrained stare down for a few moments before I sense the slight turn of his head. When his thumb grazes a light trail up and down my spine, I understand.
He was checking to see that everyone else was preoccupied. After I do the same, I slide my hand below the table and squeeze his thigh. And then, all hell breaks loose.
“They invited me, Penny.”
“And I am uninviting you, Anthony. I’m sure you’re familiar with the concept.”
He exhales sharply through his nose, but matches her manic expression.
“My friends asked me to meet them here for dinner.”
“They were my friends first!”
“I’m not going anywhere this time, Penny Lane, so you can just?—”
“You don’t get to call me that anymore!”
She explodes. At the sound of that nickname, Penelope is up and out of her chair, tossing water all over poor Anthony-Ant-Tony. She stomps toward the bathroom, leaving a dripping wet man standing dumbfounded at the head of our table.
The rest of the restaurant watches on in silence. Poor Anthony blinks, closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath. That sad remorse washes over him in a slow wave as activity trickles back into the restaurant. The waitstaff brings over a mop and some towels, hushed whispers chirp at the surrounding tables, and three chairs scrape across the floor as the girls and I spring into action.
“I’m going to kill Sam when I get home,” Juliet says as we maneuver our way to the bathroom.
“I’ve told Aaron that story at least four times,” Lucy nods, echoing the sentiment. “Like, do men just not pay attention?”
Nathan pays attention, I think as we push the swinging door to the ladies’ room.
He buys my favorite tea and paints my nails when I can’t afford to get manicures anymore. The first time he opened his doors to me was simply because I said I wanted a quiet place to read and he gave me one.
We find Penelope hovering over one of two stand-up sinks, clutching the edges like she’ll either break it or hold onto it while she breaks down. She’s gazing at herself in the mirror, taking slow, shallow breaths, and I wonder if I should wrap myself around her like a weighted blanket to take away some of the pressure. We all stand there silently, staring at each other in the reflection, before Penelope speaks first.
“You two are cool if I shun your men for the next few weeks, right?”
“I’m glad we’re on the same page,” Juliet agrees, folding her arms over her chest.
“Aaron knows he’s sleeping in the dog house after this one.”
Penelope quirks up a smile, but the corners of her eyes droop. We’re there to catch her.
“He’s just… I can’t do it, guys. I can’t.”
Her body crumbles, but it isn’t the sink that catches her. It’s us. Her friends. Juliet catches her back while Lucy and I each take an arm. My heart breaks for her, and I’ve only heard the story of Penelope and Anthony on a surface level. I’ve never seen Penelope broken like this. But her shell has finally cracked.
“If it helps, they probably bonded over something stupid like Call of Duty,” Juliet offers, rubbing her back slowly.
“I’ll hide the power cord to Aaron’s PlayStation when we get home,” Lucy nods. “He’s grounded.”
Penelope laughs through a sniffle.
“Thanks, guys. Don’t punish them. If I fell for his stupid charm, anyone can. Especially Aaron. Sorry, Luce.”
We help our girl clean up, and Lucy and Juliet text their guys that our table had better be vacant of its unwanted guest by the time we get back. When I exit, Anthony is nowhere to be seen.
But Nathan is there. Before his eyes find mine, I notice his leg bouncing. Nervousness doesn’t suit him, but only because it’s so far from his norm, I’m not used to it. I am used to it in the quiet. In the moments with me when he’s unsure. And as soon as he finds my eyes, he exhales. The rhythmic bouncing of his knee ceases, and his lips settle into a content smile.
Like I put it there.
My heart tears.
I had planned on finding an excuse to sneak to Nathan’s tonight, but I can’t now. I’m sure he’ll understand.
Even so, the moment we’re all settled at the table and ready to order, I place my hand beneath the table, atop the knee that was bouncing, and give him a gentle squeeze.