Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Friday afternoon came with twenty-three students who had spent the week learning about weather systems and were now self-proclaimed experts.
Marcus had spent the last ten minutes of class explaining the Coriolis effect to the girl next to him with the confident authority of a preteen who would graduate to middle management mansplaining.
Alisson, who unlike Marcus had aced the pop quiz, nodded along, wincing at the parts of the explanation he got wrong but did not once correct him.
Dalene made a mental note to pull the young girl aside and encourage her to speak her mind even when she might have a crush on a boy.
Silence in the face of a man who was feeding her falsehoods would do her no good in this life. Dalene knew that first hand.
The bell rang. They children filed out in the cheerful, slightly chaotic way of horses released onto a race track to run round and round in circles. Backpacks swung over shoulders. Phones appeared from pockets. The cacophony of twenty-three people becoming their weekend selves.
"Ms. Austen." Alisson stopped at the door. "What's actually happening with this storm? My dad says it's going to be bad. The radio says it'll miss us. Channel 4 says light showers."
"What does your weather journal tell you?"
The young girl looked at her bag, where the journal was, and scrunched up her nose and chewed at her lower lip for a second before answering. "The pressure's been dropping since Wednesday. The wind shifted this morning."
"So what does that tell you?"
Alisson thought about it. "That my dad is probably right."
"Your data is right," Dalene said. "Your dad agrees with your data. That's two points of confirmation."
A sly looked crossed Alisson's face. "What does your weatherman think?"
Your weatherman.
"I'll ask him when we talk," she said.
Alisson sauntered out the door where Marcus was waiting for her. Likely to regale her with more incorrect assumptions about the weather or the mystery meat in the cafeteria hamburgers. Dalene envied the two. At least they could talk face to face.
Eliot had gone to D.C. for his interview.
They hadn't broken up, but they hadn't figured out what this was going to be either.
They'd texted each night he'd been away, but it wasn't the same.
She didn't want to call and be the woman who couldn't give a man forty-eight hours to attend a job interview without needing to hear his voice.
She was not that woman. She was also very much thinking about calling him.
She sat at her desk in the quiet of a classroom that had just emptied and looked at the weather data she'd pulled up on her laptop.
Alisson's question about the incoming system had been the third one this afternoon from a student or faculty member.
The conflicting reports coming from the news were, professionally speaking, bothering her.
"You look terrible," Lila said from her door.
"Thank you."
"Not terrible. Just—" She tilted her head. "Where are you?"
"Here. I'm right here."
Lila looked at her with the clear, patient attention of six years of friendship and saw right through the lie.
"I'm fine," Dalene said.
"You've said that before."
"I was fine then too."
"You were not fine then." Lila shifted the book stack to her other arm. "You're thinking about him."
"He's at his interview. He's settling in. He's looking at the job he's wanted his whole career and I'm not going to be the woman who calls him every five minutes because she misses—" She stopped. "I'm fine."
Lila set her book stack down on the nearest surface and turned to face her fully. "Can I say something?"
"You're going to say it with or without my permission."
"When Tristan left. When he told you about Brooke and said he needed to go after her. Did you fight for him?"
The honest answer was that Dalene had simply sat in her living room and listened to Tristan explain what he needed.
Some part of her, underneath the hurt, had known.
Had already understood that what they had was something she'd been tending carefully and he'd been tolerating comfortably.
The effort in that relationship had been almost entirely in one direction.
"You didn't fight because something in you knew he wasn't worth the fight. But it's different with Eliot, isn't it?"
"Yes," Dalene said. "It's different."
"Then fight for it. Fight for him because he is worth fighting for. Everyone can see it, Dalene. Everyone who has watched the two of you together can see it."
"We didn't break up."
"But you're not together either."
"He asked me to go with him."
Lila sighed. "I would hate that. Everyone here would hate it if you left. But we'd hate it even more if you stayed here and were not fine."
Dalene closed her eyes and squeezed her best friend's hands.
She couldn't imagine not having Lila by her side.
Couldn't imagine not walking into Betty Ann's and smelling all the sugary baked goods.
Couldn't imagine not planning next year's cloud festival.
Couldn't imagine not managing this rowdy classroom of eager minds.
When she opened her eyes, all the comfort of being in this small town flooded into her. But a gaping hole still remained. The hole was Eliot sized.
"I'm going to D.C.," she said.
Lila blinked. "Now?"
"I'm going to go home and pack a bag and book a flight and go to Washington D.C.
and tell him to his face. I'm going to tell him that I know the job is what he's worked for and I know it matters and I'm not asking him to give it up.
" She felt the words arriving as she said them, true and certain, like sunshine always came around after a cloudy day.
"I'm just going to tell him that I'm not fine without him.
That I sleep when he's near me and I don't when he's not.
That I think about calling him seventeen times a day and I don't because I don't want to be too much.
That I want to be enough for him. That I am so tired of making myself smaller so I don't scare people off. "
Lila was smiling. "There she is."
"He's a Willoughby."
"No, he sounds like a Darcy."
"I think he's a bit of both."
"You deserve a leading man. Now go do a dramatic running through the airport montage and get your man!"