Chapter 6
The following week, Emmett smothered his nerves under the mindless infinity of his Instagram feed, smoothing the edges of his excruciating wait with #weigthlossinspo, celebrity fashion ads, and jacked meatheads chasing gains to grungy EDM.
“Mr. Truesdale?” the woman behind the reception desk said, breaking his concentration. She had just returned her phone to its cradle. “Georgina’s on her way. She’ll just be a moment.”
“Thanks.” Emmett put his phone away, sat back, and massaged his pant legs with sweaty palms. His Goodfellow he had felt his shirt slide free from the waistband of his slacks, wrenched out of place by the tumult of his standing. “Georgina Hodge,” she said. “Senior director of programs.”
“Great to meet you.”
“Can I get you anything? Water?”
He was sweating buckets. “Water would be great.”
“No problem.” She craned her neck to see around Emmett, really reaching, and called out to the receptionist: “Renata, would you track down some water for the candidate?” Then she flashed him a thin smile. “Come on back.”
They walked down a hall, Emmett surreptitiously stuffing his loose shirttail back down his waistband while stuttering out replies to Georgina’s small-talk questions. “Point Loma, really,” she said, surprised. “That’s a nice area.”
They entered her office and sat on either side of the desk. The receptionist chased them inside with a bottle of water. Turning in his seat to receive it, Emmett felt his shirt yank loose again.
Fuck.
“So, Emmett,” Georgina said. “Our volunteer manager tells me you’re quite the tutor.”
“Oh—I’m glad she thinks so.”
“You were Volunteer of the Quarter, weren’t you?”
“Twice, I think.”
“Very impressive. Well, we appreciate your service.”
“Happy to do it. I really love—”
“So you think you’ve got what it takes to be an achievement coach,” Georgina cut across him. Her tone was a strange in-between, a joke but not exactly.
“I do.”
“All right. Let me tell you about the position—” She broke off, eyeing the front of Emmett’s button-down. Instinctively he held his water bottle over his stomach.
“Please.”
He could barely process her answer, obsessing over that stray look.
He was hyperaware of how his shirt pulled across his stomach, tightest between the second and third buttons.
Was his stomach peeking through the opening between them?
He’d known as soon as he put it on that it was a little too small, but he didn’t have anything else; the white check was supposed to be the one that fit.
“So you see it’s an important role,” Georgina was saying. “Our coaches are part social worker, part academic adviser, part big sibling. They probably have the single greatest impact on our students’ success, if not their lives, of anyone in the organization.”
“That does sound important,” Emmett said.
“As you can imagine, we hold our coaches to a high standard. As role models, they’re expected to be reliable, professional.” Another downward flick of her eyes. “I think you’ve come untucked.”
Emmett reached around to deal with the shirttail again, smiling through the redness of his cheeks. “Whoops.”
“Many of our kids are low-income, come from broken homes. They’re predisposed to issues like truancy, gang activity, teenage pregnancy, obesity. We expect our coaches to set a good example.”
Discomfort closed like a hand around Emmett’s throat.
“Do you—” he croaked, apologized, and paused to sip his water. He recapped the bottle and set it on the floor, pulling his shirttail out as he leaned forward.
FUCK!
“Do you find it helps for the students to see themselves reflected in their mentors? Is that something you look for?”
“Oh, of course. Diversity is one of our top priorities, especially on the achievement team.”
“That’s great to hear. I’m a huge proponent of diversity and inclusion—” He instantly regretted the adjective.
“At the same time,” Georgina said, “our coaches need to be effective leaders. We hire people we think can command respect, people who reflect positively on our mission.”
Emmett nodded, throttled.
“But that’s enough about us. I’d like to hear about you and your”—she riffled around for his résumé—“student-teaching experience, was it? You got your credential, I assume?”
“I decided to go in a different direction. It was a great experience overall. I just realized classroom teaching wasn’t for me.
” Emmett felt his confidence return by degrees.
He was used to explaining this blemish, comfortable in his practiced response.
“I prefer working with students one-on-one, forming those personal connections that are so crucial, especially for at-risk youth. That’s why I think I’d be such a great fit—”
“You know I used to weigh over two hundred pounds?”
Emmett faltered, thrown off and dreading where this was going. “Really.”
“Hard to believe, isn’t it? For years, after I had my kids.
I used to say I didn’t like vegetables, that I hated the gym.
I was a ‘cheeseburger girl.’ I loved chocolate too much.
But once I finally decided I couldn’t live like that anymore, everything changed.
I realized I actually did like fruit and vegetables and running and lifting weights.
All that ‘I don’t like it’ stuff had just been an excuse for being, well, a bit lazy and undisciplined. ”
No stray glances this time. Her eyes held Emmett’s like a crushing handshake. Painful. Unnecessary.
“Anyway. Just wanted to share that in case you ever thought about finishing your credential, or—” The insinuation flickered at the corner of her mouth, then kindly vanished.
Emmett stared, speechless. In that moment, he had no access to his thoughts or emotions, to his memories of two decades’ worth of failed diets, endless hours in the gym, having lost nearly a hundred pounds in college and, like the recurrence of a cancer, gained every ounce of it back.
All that would come later: a thousand things he could’ve said. Should’ve.
There in the room he had only the desire to make it stop: this false empathy, this force-fed advice.
Like a good boy, he swallowed it down and answered, “Thank you.”