Chapter 10
10
It’s Halloween and Theo is teaching the state capitals dressed as Woody from Toy Story when it happens.
He points to Wyoming.
Milo, who is Super Mario today, raises a white-gloved hand.
Milo, who ran up to Theo and Evelyn at IKEA last night twenty minutes into them debating the aesthetic merits of various kitchen tables. Milo, whose mom, Natalia, used to babysit Theo. Whose grandmother was Lori’s best friend. Who witnessed Natalia congratulate them, his face scrunched in initial confusion. Milo, who is a spoiler of Survivor . A terrible gossip.
Milo, who’s currently the only volunteer.
Theo calls on him.
He has no choice.
Milo adjusts the mustache stuck above his lip, then asks, “Why didn’t you tell us that you got married, Mr. Theodore?”
Cue his classroom exploding in commotion.
Doctor Barbie (Annabelle) gasps. “ What? ”
“Someone seriously married you ?” Miles Morales (Tyler) shouts.
“ OMG, OMG, OMG ,” Ariel (Kaia) squeals.
He can’t say he didn’t see it coming, but the separation of his professional and personal life was nice while it lasted.
“Unfortunately, ‘why didn’t you tell us that you got married, Mr. Theodore’ is not the capital of Wyoming.”
Milo rolls his eyes. “Cheyenne.”
Theo nods and Milo rises from his chair to choose a sticker. Fourth graders are incredibly motivated by stickers. Shit, Theo is still motivated by stickers. It’s not a check that signifies the completion of a task on his to-do list, it’s a sticker. Milo chooses Stitch frothing at the mouth. A respectable choice.
“Why aren’t you wearing a ring?” Wednesday Addams (Sierra) asks.
“ Because ,” Milo begins, now standing before the class. “He didn’t want us to know. Obviously.”
Annabelle scrunches her nose. “That’s really weird, Mr. Theodore.”
This whole Mr. Theodore era? It’s one thousand percent Evelyn’s fault, for calling him that at IKEA. Theodore! I had no clue that your Milo… is Natalia’s Milo! As soon as Milo giggled, Theo knew. One casual Friday, he wore red high-top Converse sneakers. Milo had the class calling him Mr. Clown for an entire week. Kids are brutal. But Mr. Clown learned a valuable lesson—their ruthlessness was heightened by a reaction and validated by the laughter of their peers. So. He doesn’t love being called Mr. Theodore, but he acts unbothered. Refers to himself as Mr. Theodore. Because if he’s in on the joke? It’s no longer funny.
“Deception!” Jeremiah, the Luigi to Milo’s Mario, yells.
Kaia nods. “I am aghast .”
“What’s her name?” Sierra asks.
“ Their name,” Annabelle corrects. “Don’t assume, Sierra.”
Theo has a choice to make. He can raise a stern eyebrow and tell his kids if they don’t get through all fifty states now, he’ll have no choice but to make up the lesson during Survivor Friday. Or he can leverage their interest that borders on entitlement to information about his personal life to get through the lesson. Survivor Friday is his favorite part of the week. He doesn’t want to reteach the capitals when they could be doing the color block puzzle.
Is it even a choice?
Theo blasts “1985” by Bowling for Soup.
Sierra covers her ears. “Mr. Cohen!”
“What did we do to deserve this ?” Kaia whines.
Jeremiah groans. “I just got this song un- stuck.”
“Here’s my offer,” Theo says, after cutting the music. “If we can name all fifty capitals before lunch, I’ll spill the details that, for whatever reason, you want to know.”
Annabelle scoffs. “ Whatever reason? ”
“This is major , Mr. Theodore!” Kaia says.
“So do we have a deal?” Theo asks.
Silence.
He restarts the music.
“Fine!”
“Deal!”
“ Whatever .”
Theo laughs. “Great. Now, who can tell me the capital of South Dakota?”
They get through the entire country with ten minutes to spare. Ten minutes is almost too much time to allot to this. It never ceases to amuse him, what motivates his students. A deal is a deal, so Theo calls on raised hands and answers any reasonable question about his so-called marriage.
Her name.
Evie .
How they met.
At Miss Stella’s dance school.
Why he didn’t tell them.
It didn’t exactly seem relevant to the curriculum.
If she watches Survivor , too.
Of course .
By lunchtime, Theo is exhausted. He Clorox wipes his desk, then collapses into his chair, removes his cowboy hat, and unwraps his avocado sandwich, more than ready for twenty blissful minutes of solitude. Until today, school has been the place where he still feels the most himself. At home, he tries to be himself. Except now he can’t fall asleep without watching an episode of Love Island with Evelyn. He wakes up to her voice either humming or singing “Here Comes the Sun” to her plants. It raises his resting heart rate, a data point that he records daily. At first, the spike concerned him. He almost made an appointment with his cardiologist. Instead, he told Brian at his next therapy session, who asked if he had any other symptoms—chest pain, shortness of breath, heartburn. No .
It’s just the song.
Evelyn singing.
So he supposes it’s still concerning, that spike.
Theo pinches the bridge of his nose, inserts earbuds, and plays “1985” to clear his head. He doesn’t even get through the entire song before there’s a knock on his door, then Ms. Connors’s head poking in. “Theo? Do you have a moment?”
He removes his earbuds, sitting up a little straighter. “Course.”
“I heard that congratulations are in order?”
Milo works fast.
Theo shrugs.
“So nonchalant.” Ms. Connors laughs, entering his classroom, and it takes his eyes a moment to adjust to the colorful chaos of her flowy rainbow pants and T-shirt that says HOCUS FOCUS . She takes a seat at the student desk closest to his and crosses her ankles. “Well, congratulations! Everyone is just thrilled for you. Though… I can’t say we’re not the tiniest bit surprised. I mean. We didn’t even know you had a girlfriend.”
He laughs. “It’s not like anyone ever asked.”
It comes off defensive.
Ms. Connors’s eyebrows crinkle.
Then soften.
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“Oh.”
It catches him off guard, the apology.
He has no idea how much he appreciates one until it happens. Because five years into his career at Foothill Elementary, Theo still isn’t seen as a colleague. He’s Mrs. Cohen’s son. The kid who was not a pleasure to have a class. He’s not an idiot. Theo knows he’s a nepo baby. Knows that Lori outed his big dream to reform education policy out of pride, but also knows that’s the reason why everyone keeps him at arm’s length. They think he has one foot out the door. They don’t see the effort Theo makes to empower his students and meet them where they are. They don’t browse his highly curated (and self-funded) library. Or believe that Theo is meant to be in the classroom.
But Theo loves his job.
He’s damn good at it, too.
“We care about you, Theo. We’re a family, here at Foothill.”
Theo nods, wondering if Ms. Connors is speaking on behalf of the entire faculty or using the royal we . Who’s to say? It doesn’t matter. If they are, in fact, a family, then he’s the baby. Not taken seriously. A nuisance. Na?ve. Fuck that. Theo doesn’t need a work family. He needs field trip proposals to be approved, smaller class sizes, and an annual supplies budget.
Of course, he’s not going to actually say that.
“Thanks, Ms. Connors.”
“Veronica.”
“Veronica.”
“I mean it. I truly am sorry if you’ve felt isolated or excluded in any way. The first few years as an educator are tough under any circumstances. Yours… I just need you to know that you’re doing great, okay? Parents are happy. The kids love you. Your mom would be so proud.”
Theo’s eyes sting. “I appreciate that.”
He swallows the emotion before any tears fall, Jacob’s voice a loop in his head.
Weak.
Weak.
Weak.
“Enjoy the rest of your lunch, Theo.” Ms. Connors stands and heads toward the door, but pauses and pivots to face him before she exits. “Out of curiosity… do you play pickleball?”
Theo doesn’t sport.
He does, however, read the monthly staff newsletter.
“I dabble,” he lies.
“We’re down a team for next weekend’s tournament,” Ms. Connors says, referring to the faculty pickleball league she runs. “Louisa is out. Sprained ankle. Such a shame. We can’t run a tournament with eleven teams.”
“That’s too bad.”
“It is.”
Theo doesn’t know what else to say, so he takes a bite of his sandwich…
“Does your wife also dabble?”
… and promptly chokes on it, coughing up a piece of crust that went down his windpipe. Wife . Theo’s smartwatch alerts him of his elevated heart rate. Ms. Connors waits for the coughing fit to end. Waits for an answer. Theo hopes she perceives his nod as enthusiastic amid his active choking. Evelyn will probably be pissed. She dabbles in pickleball as much as Theo does.
But.
An invitation to Ms. Connors’s pickleball tournament? It matters . Juniper got one last year… and now her kids are going to the zoo.
“She does,” he confirms once the coughing fit subsides.
“Remind me of her name?”
He doesn’t recall telling Ms. Connors her name. “Evie.”
“Would you and Evie have any interest in being our twelfth team?”
“I’d have to check with her, of course—”
“Excellent! You’re a lifesaver.”
“I’m—”
“Also, I’ve been thinking about your class’s field trip. Maybe you’re right about Kidspace. Let’s chat next week?”
Then Ms. Connors is gone, heels click, click, click ing down the hallway before Theo has a chance to respond. Minutes later, she sends over the roster that’s made up of eleven staff members and their spouses. Without quite meaning to, Theo committed himself and Evelyn to the Foothill Elementary Faculty Pickleball Tournament. He needs to buy… rackets? Paddles? Also, it’s not lost on him that every member of the pickleball league is married. It can’t be a coincidence that Ms. Connors only invited Theo because he’s married now, too. But as a cis white man, he isn’t exactly the demographic to scream discrimination. So he’s participating in a pickleball tournament in exchange for… a field trip? Maybe?
Is this extortion?
It’s not… not extortion.
Fuck.
Theo needs to learn how to play pickleball.
He comes home to a semiassembled bookcase.
“Shit. You’re home ?”
Theo snorts. “Hello to you, too.”
Evelyn is sitting, legs crisscrossed, in the middle of the living room floor, surrounded by screws and pegs and shelves, the assembly instructions for a Billy bookcase in her hands. She’s still in her pajamas, pink satin shorts paired with an old NYU sweatshirt. His sweatshirt. Theo swallows, then steps over a particleboard shelf and sets his thermos on the counter, narrowly avoiding being impaled by a screw in the process.
“How is it already four?” Evelyn groans, eyes lifting from the instructions to meet his. Still dressed as a toy cowboy, he braces for teasing that doesn’t come. “I meant to finish this hours ago… then got derailed.”
“What happened?”
“My old insurance was billed for my last infusion, resulting in a cute bill.”
She gestures to the statement on the coffee table and Theo’s eyes bulge at its total. “ Jesus .”
“I called the infusion center before the appointment, they scanned my new insurance card at the appointment, yet still I spent three hours on the phone with the billing department this afternoon to fix someone else’s mistake. It’s fine. The claim is being resubmitted. But dealing with this shit? It’s so exhausting.”
Theo’s nostrils flare.
He remembers the hours Lori spent on the phone, the back-and-forth between billing departments and insurance, the delay of her treatment plan because of a denial. Because you can’t just be sick in this country. You must also argue, appeal, beg for insurance to approve and cover lifesaving screenings and treatments. Lori needed a colonoscopy years before her doctor ordered one. You’re too young for cancer! It’s just IBS. Have you tried eliminating dairy? Gluten? Every major food group? By the time her symptoms progressed to the point where the scope became medically necessary… they learned that she was, in fact, not too young for cancer. And it had spread to her lymph nodes.
It’s more than exhausting.
It’s infuriating.
“It’s bullshit,” he says.
“I know. I was supposed to build a bookcase today.”
“We still can.”
Theo cannot fix the entire healthcare system, but he can build a bookcase. He removes his cow-print vest and yellow button-up, then sits on the floor next to Evelyn and starts inserting pegs into the shelves, not needing the instruction manual. In undergrad, he had a whole TaskRabbit moment. Manhattan is expensive.
Basically, Theo can build a Billy bookcase in his sleep.
Evelyn doesn’t resist the help, just passes him a screwdriver, her fingers brushing against his. Then she pushes up the sleeves of his sweatshirt, exposing the sound wave tattoo across her right forearm. It’s the intro of Peppy Bloom’s radio show. Her fourth tattoo. After Pep went on-air for the last time, Theo drove Evelyn to a tattoo shop in Santa Monica because Iris Cameron, once a student of Miss Stella’s, is the only nonmedical professional that Evelyn trusts to stab her repeatedly with a needle. Theo once called Evelyn’s tattoos etchings for the people she loves. She corrected him. Not love, Theodore. Trust. His eyes linger on the sound wave. He glitches. Fuck. This is why he tries to avoid them. The music notes on her rib cage. The lavender sprig on her left triceps for Gen. The bee on her ankle for Mo. This sound wave.
It’s safer.
To avert his eyes.
To not obsess over her tattoos.
To not feel some kind of way that there isn’t one for him.
“How was school?” she asks.
His eyes shift away from the ink on her skin. “The kids call me Mr. Theodore now.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m serious.”
She laughs. “I’m sorry, but that’s kind of incredible.”
“Evelyn.”
“What? It could be worse, Mr. Clown.”
She bumps her shoulder against his. I love you. It’s in these moments, when Evelyn is teasing him— literally calling him a clown —that the three words he’s become an expert at downplaying surface as a thought bubble in his brain. It used to scare the shit out of him, but now he accepts it. He loves her. Of course he does. Why shouldn’t he think that her silliness is adorable, want to burn down and rebuild healthcare in America for her, obsess over her tattoos?
Theo can love his best friend.
He’s not in love with her.
“Ms. Connors knows.”
Evelyn nods. “Okay.”
“I should probably start wearing the ring to school.”
Her eyebrow twitches. “Okay.”
“I… also signed us up for a couples pickleball tournament.”
“What?”
He recounts the entire interaction as he nails the back of the bookcase to the assembled frame—explains that he didn’t mean to, it sort of just happened, really he was extorted. Evelyn relocates to one of the beanbag chairs, her expression shifting from initial annoyance to amusement listening to him overexplain the simple truth that his boss asked him to do something that’s absolutely not in his job description and he couldn’t say no.
“Only if you’re up for it. Obviously.”
“Yeah. I’ll do it… if you come to breakfast on Sunday.”
His pulse spikes. “Evelyn.”
Every Sunday, she’s gone before he even wakes. On those quiet mornings, Theo laces up his sneakers, blasts the next Survivor podcast in his queue, and runs. After Lori’s diagnosis, Theo would run until it hurt, until he was bent over and retching because physical pain could be felt . Now he has Brian. Still, he runs every Sunday, a ten-mile loop that takes him right past his childhood home during Evelyn’s breakfasts with Jacob. He’s thought about stopping. Knocking. He never does. Instead, he picks up speed and doesn’t slow down until he’s home.
“That’s my offer.”
Her eye contact?
It’s challenging.
He does a cost-benefit analysis, then sighs. “Okay.”
A pickleball partnership solidified, they stand and flip their finished bookcase upright, positioning it against an empty wall in the living room, then break for dinner. Afterward, she populates the shelves with their books, semialive plants, and framed photographs. So many photos. Tiny Evelyn and Imogen in matching tutus. Theo’s bar mitzvah. Evelyn, ten or eleven, wearing giant headphones, behind a sound mixer at Pep’s recording booth. Theo, eight, and Lori on the spinning teacups at Disneyland. Evelyn and Theo, fourteen, cheesing after the tap duet that earned them first place at a regional competition. Them, seventeen, unironically practicing the Dirty Dancing lift. Evelyn, twenty-four, cheeks flushed and lips turned down in a pout post-hike. Theo, twenty-six, cheeks flushed and lips turned up at a karaoke bar in Koreatown.
“What?” Evelyn’s looking at him, nose scrunched, as if trying to decipher his reaction. “Is it too much?”
He shakes his head, any lingering feelings about their deal dissolving in real time. “No! These are awesome.”
“I thought they’d make the space more… I don’t know. Homey?”
Theo takes in these candid but curated moments of their history, ignoring any feelings about the noticeable gap in their timeline as he looks over at her in his sweatshirt, then asks, “Are there more?”
Evelyn’s smile is small. She disappears to her room, returning a moment later with a stack of prints. They spend the rest of the evening in the beanbag chairs, their shoulders pressed together, choosing the most ridiculous photos from their life to display in their apartment. Their home. Evelyn holding up a chocolate chip cookie the size of her face. Theo’s freaked-out reaction to an eagle landing on his head at the San Diego Zoo. Them, at Miss Stella’s, seeing who can hold a headstand the longest.
Theo remembers hating it, Evelyn always sticking a camera in his face.
Now?
He thinks it’s pretty awesome that these exist.
Also. Does she really not know that he used to be so in love with her? Does she not see how many times the camera caught him looking at her with goddamn hearts in his eyes? It’s just… so obvious to him. A part of him wants to acknowledge it. Laugh at it. But he stays quiet as she continues to sift through the photos, Theo looking increasingly lovesick in each one.
When Evelyn gets to the end of the stack, she stands. “Question.”
“Answer.”
Theo braces himself.
She sees it, too.
That stupid look on your face.
In the photos.
“Pickleball. Is it just, like… tennis with paddles?”
Theo laughs, ignoring a feeling that can only be described as relief, then shrugs helplessly. “I have no clue.”