Chapter 32 Alessia
I close my planner with a quiet thud before glancing at my watch.
It’s four in the afternoon now. My students have been gone for over an hour, and I’ve finally wrapped up my notes and lesson planning for the week which means it’s time for the meeting that I’ve been dreading.
Amber. Everly’s mom. Gabriel’s ex-wife who apparently thinks he’s the greatest contractor for bathroom remodels in all of Brookhaven. Which to be fair, I think he is too. But she’s not allowed to think that anymore.
And it’s not that I don’t want to help her. It’s not that I don’t care about Everly—I do. Greatly. But Amber is a walking, breathing reminder of everything she once had and everything she threw away. Things that I would have loved to have had with my first marriage.
And the part of me that isn’t the bigger person? The part of me that wants to ask how—why—what the hell were you thinking leaving a man like Gabriel right after he lost both of his parents?—is wound so tight it might snap.
It only makes everything worse that I still haven’t seen him since my date with Travis, and I’m now just one day away from moving back in with Natasha and having no excuse to see him again.
That’s right. It’s been four freaking days since that date, and Gabriel’s been like living with the ghost in my grandma’s attic again.
Except his ghost is even worse because I never see it.
A knock sounds from outside my classroom door. “Come in!” I call out, trying to fix my posture to look relaxed and not stressed.
Amber opens the door with a smile on her face completely oblivious to the turmoil inside me this week. “Hi Ms. Martinez.”
“Hi,” I say, offering a polite smile. “It’s nice to see you again. Please come in.”
She steps inside, looking effortlessly put together in a way that always catches me off guard. How does she manage that? She’s a mother to a young child, has a career, a life in transition, and yet—she looks flawless.
I barely made it through today without spilling coffee on myself twice.
Once when my students came bursting through the door after recess screaming the lyrics to a Backstreet Boys song (who knew this generation had good music taste?) And another time when my phone beeped with a notification that I swore had to be Gabriel finally texting me back.
It wasn’t. It was Natasha asking for my opinion on two different rugs for the space underneath our new kitchen table. The table that Gabriel made us and must have brought over to our home at some point today while I was working.
I hardly had time to make it to the gym before work this morning, and even though school’s been out for over an hour, I still feel frazzled.
Maybe it’s because I’m constantly running from day to day, job to job, and barely holding onto my sanity. Or it’s because I know I need to talk to Gabriel but I’m terrified that his silence means he no longer wants to hear from me.
She takes the chair across from mine with a soft sigh.
“Is Everly joining us today?” I ask.
She shakes her heads. “No. I dropped her off at a friend’s house after school. Thanks for making time to meet with me. I’m sure you’re eager to get home.”
“It’s no problem.” I fold my hands on top my desk. “How can I help you? What concerns are you having with her?”
Amber exhales, smoothing an invisible wrinkle from her skirt. “Well, when we read her assignments before bed each night, I’ve noticed she’s starting to develop a bit of a stutter.”
I nod, making a note in the planner I just opened.
“That can be common when kids first start reading. A lot of the time, it resolves on its own. But if you’re concerned, we can put in a referral for early intervention—speech therapy, just to get ahead of it.
The speech therapist we have here at the school is wonderful from what I’ve heard. Comes highly recommended.”
She nods slowly. “I think I’d like that. But I don’t want to single her out. I don’t want her to feel different if she’s being pulled from class.”
“They’re very discreet,” I assure her. “And the earlier we start, the better the outcome. It’s completely up to you, of course.”
Amber blows out a breath, nodding. “Okay. Thank you.” A pause.
Then, softer—“I think I’m just feeling a lot of mom guilt, you know?
About moving her to Brookhaven and uprooting her life.
Pulling her from school in New York City mid-year.
I wanted to come back because this is home.
” Her voice trails off. “I missed it. But it feels like she was doing better in New York. I don’t remember her stuttering there. ”
I close my planner and nod, giving her space to work through what she’s feeling.
I know all about transitions and the way they can create problems that you never saw coming.
The way stepping into something new can shake loose parts of your life that you thought were steady.
But I also know they can change you. Stretch you.
Help you grow in ways you never would have if you’d stayed safe.
It’s developmentally appropriate for kids to sometimes develop a stutter at this age but I’m a teacher, not a therapist, and I can’t help Amber process whether she did the right thing by moving her family back to Brookhaven.
“I also feel like I’m… you know, distracted too,” she continues. “Like I’m not giving her my full attention. We just bought a house on the lake, and it needs quite a few renovations done that I’m having to manage when I finish with work and she’s home.”
My mouth goes dry. I nod carefully, forcing my expression to stay neutral.
“And well… between us,” Amber continues, lowering her voice a little, “I asked my ex-husband to come take a look at the bathroom. See if it’s something he would be able to do.”
I already knew this, technically. But Gabriel said he wasn’t going to take the job. So, did something change his mind? Or was Roman’s half-brother suddenly unavailable and Gabriel had to step in to finish the project?
She exhales, shaking her head. “I don’t know.
It was kind of strange having him in my house.
I wondered if he was looking at the life I’ve built with my husband, and you know…
feeling anything? I thought it’d be a good idea because I love his style—he’s so talented.
I mean, he’s always been so freaking good with his hands. ”
I swear I stop breathing. I might not even be blinking. I definitely feel like I’m failing at acting like a normal human being right now. I just hope Amber can’t tell.
Don’t remind me about his hands. I know how good his hands are. They’re big, strong, veined and tatted. Gabriel has the nicest hands I’ve ever seen on a man and that’s not because he can build pretty much anything with them too.
“...But instead,” she continues, “He pushed the project off to someone in his family. Said he didn’t have the time to take on another thing.
” She makes a face. “It’s probably for the best. I still care about him.
I want to be sure there’s no bad blood between us.
But I also know I can’t really do that and be fair to my husband. I shouldn’t care.”
Yikes.
I nod my head but don’t respond. This is a conversation I shouldn’t be involved in because I’m heavily biased. Young love. Old feelings. I mean… he was her husband once. I guess I can understand how it might stir something inside her.
She looks at me like she’s waiting for me to say something.
“Yeah,” I say carefully, my voice even. “I’m sure that was strange to see him again.”
She nods, completely oblivious to the war that’s raging inside my head.
“Exactly.” She exhales sharply, shaking her head like she’s trying to physically dislodge the thoughts. “You know, I never stopped caring for him.”
The admission lands in the space between us, heavy and suffocating.
My stomach twists. It’s wrong—this conversation, her confiding in me of all people even though she doesn’t know what we’ve done.
The way he’s touched me. The way that he’s held me.
Gabriel isn’t mine, I know that. I don’t have a claim on him.
But hearing her talk about him like that, like she still has some tether to him, some invisible pull she doesn’t understand, well, it makes me want to claw at my skin until I get some relief.
Is this what I’ll be reduced to when I move out of Gabriel’s house tomorrow? A decade later, married to someone else, just like Amber, wondering if he was the one that got away? Saying that I never stopped caring for him.
Fuck all that.
I force my face into something neutral, something non-committal.
“I’m sorry,” I say finally, shaking my head. “I don’t think I can offer any advice. That feels very personal.”
She laughs, a little self-deprecating, rubbing a hand over her forehead.
“You’re right. God, I’m sorry for unloading all of that on you.
I just haven’t been feeling like myself lately.
” A pause, then—“I know you’re divorced, so I wondered if you ever feel that way when you see your ex?
Does it bring up old, confusing feelings? Do you still care about him?”
I haven’t seen my ex-husband in over a year, and I prefer it that way. Last time I saw him was at our final divorce discussion and his very pregnant mistress was seated next to him, glaring at me as if I had personally offended her.
If I did see him again, I feel one hundred percent confident that I wouldn’t give two shits about him, nor would I feel anything at all. Lately, he’s stopped crossing my mind. And when he does, it isn’t good or bad.
“No,” I say simply. “I don’t. We separated for a reason. We’ve both moved on. There’s no point in rehashing the past. When something ends, there’s a reason. It’s best to accept that reason and move forward.” And I mean that. Every word.
Amber presses her lips together and nods. “Yeah. You’re right. I’m being ridiculous.”