Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Wait a second.” Bex’s voice has gone serious. “I didn’t mean to chase you away. It is okay if you’re interested in someone outside of our little gang of misfits, Win. You know that, don’t you? It’s a good thing. A healthy thing. You’re allowed.”
“I know that.”
“I’m not sure you do. I’m not sure any of you do. These last two months have been wonderful. Like all those secret sleepovers we had at Val’s house when we were kids who didn’t have anywhere else to go. But it got me thinking about things.”
Here we go. “Are you thinking you have too many male friends and you’re outnumbered again?”
“No. I’m thinking that nothing has changed in years.
I could almost say decades at this point.
You and Connor still live together. I’m still living and working with my uncle.
Val is still taking us in but not letting us…
What I’m saying is that none of us have other people in our lives.
Not really. Not people we’d be willing to invite over for dinners and game nights. ”
“Who would we invite?” Those are our dinners. Our game nights. “I think you’ve been holed up in that house for too long and you’re bored. Don’t break up with us because you’re bored,” I tease, mostly to hide the knots of panic currently forming in my stomach.
“Shut up. I love you and that’s the one thing I promise will never change. Whenever you hold out your hand?—”
“I’ll be there to grab it,” I finish the old phrase automatically.
“Exactly. You three are always going to be my guys. But I want more for all of us. I want us to take more chances. I want you to be willing to take a chance. With your work. With a person.”
“First of all, I already took this sabbatical. That’s very new and chance-y for me. But you know why I don’t date. At this point, I wouldn’t even know how.”
I might be willing to learn for Michael.
Pretend you didn’t see that.
“Believe me, I understand. The last time I tried to date, it was for a job and I ended up in the hospital.” She laughs but I don’t.
“Too soon, Bex.”
“I know. I’m sorry. But even though I got hurt, I’m still glad I left the safe monotony of my night shift and tried something new.”
I bite my lip, hesitating before asking, “Have you responded to any of her calls yet?”
“No. Kate just wants to make herself feel better. I told you about the conversation we had right before those assholes showed up. She was clear about her feelings then. Or lack thereof. Changing her mind once I was injured isn’t allowed.”
“But you’re still telling me to take a chance.”
“I’m not guaranteeing that everything will work out if you do.”
“Like the spying mission you sent me on,” I joke. “That didn’t work out the way I thought it would at all.”
“I’m just saying it might be good for us to try new things at this point in our lives. Get a few new hobbies. Kiss a few frogs.”
“Yes, that worked so well for my mother.”
My mother was the frog-kissing champion, though the last time I saw her, she still hadn’t found her prince.
She was a serial monogamist, married three times and shacked up five before I was fifteen.
They never lasted and she always blamed me.
Because I was gay and God was punishing her for it.
Because I had devil eyes. Because I was “too pretty” and one or two of her loser boyfriends tried to put the moves on me, and I had to make a big deal about it.
When our landlord told me she’d left town with the last one and that my things were in a garbage bag by his desk, all I felt was pity for the woman who’d only read one book in her life and never seemed to get to the parts about unconditional love, kindness and not throwing stones.
But she left a few lessons behind with my clothes. One of them was to never rely on a man for my happiness. That one took.
“Lucky for us, we’re not our parents,” Bex says gently.
“You’re one of the best men I know, in spite of her, Win.
You stick with your friends in good times and bad.
You care about every crop of kids that enters your classroom or comes to our summer camp.
You change lives for the better every day.
Why shouldn’t you want the same thing for yourself? ”
The dogs are playing at my feet and I drop to the floor to pet them.
Congratulations Mims and Mad, you’re my new therapy dogs.
“I think I might be too damaged to be in a relationship. I’m just not wired for it.
Connor is. Val is. Maybe I’m supposed to be the hot-and-happy single uncle that buys their kids beer while sneakily teaching them about the Bill of Rights.
A walking, talking, much cooler version of Schoolhouse Rock . ”
“You wouldn’t have taken this sabbatical if you were truly happy. And don’t tell me it was only because of that vice principal whose demise I’m still planning as we speak.”
I told her about him too. We were in each other’s pockets for weeks and she is a master interrogator.
“Not just about him, no, but he was a big catalyst.” He was also the moment I realized that, at some point, I’d given up on really making things better. If I hadn’t, I would have reported him.
“All I’m saying is you’ve kept yourself so busy for so long, that you haven’t taken a moment to look around to see if what you want in your life is different from what it was ten or fifteen years ago.
Maybe subconsciously you knew that, so you took a break from being Super-Educator.
Now you’re with the one man you couldn’t get out of your head.
The man you yearned for like a sad horny puppy because he was completely out of reach.
Only he’s right in front of you. I think you should give it a chance and see what happens. ”
She really did know me too well. “He might not be interested.”
“You’re too pretty for your own good and too smart for anyone else’s.
I’m willing to bet anything that he’s interested.
Trust me and trust yourself. We got ourselves out of some shitty situations and banded together to make something better out of our lives.
We survived, but life is about more than survival.
It’s about growing and thriving. About being happy. You deserve to be happy.”
A half hour after we say our goodbyes and hang up, I’m shoving myself into Michael’s extra pair of too-large boots and wrapping a scarf around my face because he hasn’t come back in yet and I’m sick of being alone with my thoughts.
“You deserve to be happy.”
The morning after is turning into the afternoon after, and I can’t even start thinking about maybe possibly putting myself out there if he’s planning to avoid me until the snow melts.
“Wish me luck, girls,” I say to the dogs before bracing myself and heading out into the snow again.
As I shove my hands into my pockets and follow the trail Michael made through the thigh-high snow, it occurs to me that I’ve missed the Valentine’s Day madness that always descends on my school during the month of February.
Paper hearts and candied hearts and broken hearts—requiring heart-to-hearts from yours truly—after some mean girl or oblivious boy scoffs at true love.
It’s a time of sugar highs and emotional lows, and I’m oddly okay that I’m missing it this year.
I was never big on the holiday, for obvious reasons.
My Valentine’s Day is in September on Val’s birthday, and my favorite thing about it is how embarrassed he gets when we call it that.
Anyway, there are better things than bad poetry and boxes of chocolate for my students to focus on in February, imho.
Like the alliance with France, which we signed in 1778 so we could come together, win independence and stick it to England.
That’s the kind of commitment I can get behind.
Have I mentioned I’ve never been tempted to actually date someone before?
I didn’t go steady in middle school, I always went to high school dances with a pack of friends, and in college I avoided all two-person study groups that could be misinterpreted as a date.
Unless it was with a guy who obviously didn’t want to open his textbook or stick around for cuddling after.
Now instead of being grateful he isn’t in my space and asking for more than I’m willing to give, I’m voluntarily heading toward a red barn that could contain either an untold number of eldritch horrors or a solitary man hiding out from his one-night stand.
I’m pursuing him, while he’s probably out there hoping that the breakfast he left has cushioned his rejection.
It was a damn good breakfast. I’ll give him that. And I can understand not wanting a confrontation you have no legitimate way to escape without hurting someone’s feelings.
I’ve been guilty of what I call the Hover of Shame before.
It’s like the Walk of Shame, only there is no actual place to walk—because you’re waiting a stupidly long time for your ride—so you have to linger in a bathroom or on a balcony for hours until the body in the bed either heads back to the party you both attended or passes out.
The Hover usually only happens when you have regrets but no obvious escape route. The sex wasn’t that good, or it was horrible, but his friends are in the living room. You flirted hard with one guy, but you went upstairs with someone else and you’d like to leave before things get awkward.
Or Mother Nature decided to trap you with a man you wanted to hook up with once, but it still hasn’t stopped snowing the next day so you’re stuck with him. For example.
I freeze indecisively outside of the barn door.
I can do this. And I need to do this. If he’s regretting my continued presence or my potential expectations, I’ll handle it. I’ll tell him what I told Bex. I don’t do dating or relationships. It’s not my thing.
He’ll be relieved. We’ll laugh about it. And then we can go back inside and play Scrabble and hopefully get another orgasm in before some plow guy comes to free us from the one-night stand that won’t end.
With anyone else, I wouldn’t be lying. But with Michael? Yeah, pretty sure the only person I’m fooling is myself. But he never needs to know that.
When I see him, he’s digging through his rental car and swearing at himself. This time in English. “Where the hell is it?”
“Anything I can help you with?”
He hits his head on the interior roof before finding me with his gaze. “What are you doing out here in the cold?”
“Looking for the guy who went out for wood and never came back.” I give him a quirky grin, inwardly cheering when his expression warms. He doesn’t look unhappy to see me. “It’s still snowing, and I was worried I might have to rescue you this time.”
He runs a hand through his short hair, wincing at the tender spot he just gave himself. “I thought I’d give you a little breathing room to have breakfast and talk to your friends. When I finished chopping firewood, I decided to come in here. I can’t find the DVDs.”
“What DVDs?”
“The show you like.” He makes a face. “The weather channel says this won’t let up until tonight, and I worried it might upset you to be stuck here for that long. I thought if I could find them, you could show me your favorite episodes, and I could teach you a few words in Turkish.”
Is this guy even for real? He wasn’t lingering outside because he was regretting last night.
He was worrying I’d wake up regretting it and trying to find a way to make me more comfortable.
Giving me time to vent to my friends. Shivering in this barn while he tried to find a show I’d randomly mentioned once.
Or twice. What is he even doing with a copy?
Did I just have a revelation? Is the dragon a not-so-secret cinnamon roll, with his tiny dogs, his fancy cookies and his kindness? Have I temporarily shacked up with a closet romantic?
On a normal day I avoid that particular species like the plague. But nothing about any of this is normal.
“Sounds good to me,” I tell him, enjoying the surprise on his handsome face as I walk over.
“The company is stimulating and I did promise to be a taste tester today. And if you have a computer with internet access and don’t mind being on a watch list or dealing with weird commercials, we don’t need the DVDs.
I know exactly where to find the show online. ”
He gathers the ends of my scarf in his hands and tugs me closer. “Stimulating?”
“You didn’t hear the part about the watchlist did you?” When he doesn’t respond, I nod and lick my dry, chilly lips. “Highly stimulating. Exceeding all expectations. If I had my gold-star stickers handy, you’d be getting one.”
He raises a brow. “Only one? I’ll need to work on that.”
This morning-after kiss doesn’t taste perfunctory or feel like a goodbye. It’s more a “The smashing is about to commence” early warning system that wakes up all the relevant parts of me when he presses me against his car.
I moan in reaction. Hot damn, neither one of us is ready for this to be over yet. Am I really considering what Bex suggested? Just giving this a chance and seeing what happens? No CYA? No Hover of Shame in sight?
Michael’s hand is working on my sweatpants when I grip his wrist.
He raises his head. “You want me to stop?”
Not even a little bit. “I want us to hit pause long enough for me to get a bath or a shower. I can barely stand to be around me at the moment and I wouldn’t mind being clean for…whatever comes next. Would you mind joining me back inside and helping me up the stairs?”
I’m not an eyelash-batting kind of guy—unless I’ve put on actual eyelashes meant for batting—but I give it a shot, and my payback is his broad, brilliant smile.
“I can do better than that,” he tells me.
I bet he can.