16. Penelope
sixteen
penelope
Fire alarms are a teacher’s worst nightmare. Once one of those bad boys goes off, there’s no reining your class back in. Usually, the rest of the lesson being interrupted leaves little room for recovery—especially in a middle school, where time with each class is limited as it is. Typically, it’s a one class period thing. Bell goes off, take class outside, come back in, play crowd control for the rest of the class period until you can start anew.
And then, today happened.
Not only did a fire alarm derail second hour, but it wasn’t just your average, run of the mill drill. No. Someone pulled it. And because the alarm was pulled rather than planned, we have been standing on the sidewalk for a full hour in the blazing late-September sun, while the authorities check every nook and cranny of the building, and our admin checks the cameras.
Luckily, my class is lined up near Juliet’s. We’ve given the students free rein to chit chat as long as they stay nearby.
“At least you look cute for firefighter day,” Juliet says, gesturing to the outfit I threw on because it was the first thing I saw in my closet when I woke up late after the Ant-dinner-fiasco.
“Yeah, but are they even the cute firefighters? This is like, the mid-morning shift.”
“I’ll text Lucy. She’s with them right now checking the cameras.”
“I feel bad for her. She did not sign up to be a part-time administrator in all of this chaos.”
“But Ant did,” she says softly, tucking her phone back into the pocket of her dress. Her side eye tells me that she’s trying to bait me, so I batten down the hatches with White House level security. I will not cry to my friend that I made him dinner last night and he got home late.
Instead, I press up on my tiptoes and scout out the firemen.
“Ms. Barker.”
I turn and see a gaggle of female students with wide eyes. They beckon me over.
“We’ve already done inventory. There’s eight total firefighters. Four police officers. Seven have rings, two are girls, two are uggos, and one is Macie’s grandpa.”
The aforementioned granddaughter waves. I lift my brow, impressed but also scared.
“And what, exactly, am I supposed to be doing with this information?”
“Getting yourself wifed up. Duh. We saw you looking.”
Brynlee, the ring leader, matches my pose, arm cross for arm cross, right down to my deadpanned, lifted brow. I forget sometimes how intuitive middle schoolers can be.
“Touché. But who says I’m looking to be wifed up?”
“We took my dad’s phone during a sleepover to play on his dating apps this summer and found you,” Macie pipes up, then winces. “Sorry.”
Hey, Siri? Remind me to delete ALL dating apps from existence, and toss my phone off the back of the Boston Tea Party Museum ship.
“Ladies, while I appreciate the help, I am perfectly fine with not being married.”
Liar .
“You aren’t married yet . Growth mindset.” My eyes widen, and Sarah, the third girl in the trio, shrugs. “What? Ms. Lucy taught us. Figured I’d put it into practice.”
“Hey, Lucy texted back. Said the guy who just came outside is ringless and hot—a nice looking young man.”
Juliet tones down what I’m sure was meant to be hot as hell when she sees me talking to students.
“You can call him hot, Mrs. Ford. especially if that’s the guy Ms. Lucy was talking about, because dang! ”
Naturally, it would be the guy from the day my house exploded. The very ringless man who didn’t think I’d notice the sun tan that his wedding band left behind. The one I’m sure he told his wife he “doesn’t wear on shift” because he “doesn’t want to lose something so precious.” I wonder how many defenseless women he’s fooled because of it.
He approaches us when he recognizes me, and I stand a little bit taller, crossing my arms a little tighter. He tilts his head and tosses me a Hey! Oh my God, what are you doing here?! type of bullshit look that bullshit men like to use. I lift my brow.
“How’s the house situation?” he asks.
“Good. How’s the wife situation?”
He swallows thickly, but nods.
“Good. Good,” he repeats, as if to maybe convince himself, and rubs the back of his neck.
“Are we going back inside anytime soon?” one of the students asks him, interrupting. “I left my phone in my locker and I am mad bored.”
Juliet and I smirk.
“They’re just finishing up the walk-through. Actually,” he says, lowering his voice as he moves closer to Juliet and me so that the kids don’t hear. “Word is, they caught the kid on camera, so you guys should be back inside any minute now.”
As if on cue, the outside speakers crackle to life, announcing that we can all return to our classrooms. It’s going to be one hell of a day in the office. All the more to keep Anthony and I apart.
By the time we’re back inside, it’s already time for lunch. We all step into the hall to deal with crowd control, and then send out a group text—to keep Claire in the loop, and to tell Lucy to get her butt to Juliet’s classroom as soon as she’s available.
“I’m going to need an explanation on what happened with the fireman,” Juliet says before her lunch is even unpacked. I sigh.
“Same thing that happens with every man who has ever shown interest in me: He’s already taken, and wanted a little side action.”
“Excuse me, what? ” Lucy says as she enters the room. “I thought he was a good one!”
“So did I, when he tried to ‘comfort me’ outside my flooded house with a tan line from his wedding band.”
“Are we sure he’s not divorced? Widowed?”
“His last name is on his uniform, so I Facebook stalked him. His wife just posted that they’re pregnant with their third child,” I deadpan.
My friends shake their heads, and as we spread out our lunches, Lucy says, “That’s… this is why you write, isn’t it?”
“Hmm?”
Her brows furrow in deep concentration, staring into space before her eyes meet mine.
“PJ Layne—well, you —dedicate all of your books to men who have wronged you. It’s how you process and heal.”
I’d say I never really thought about it that way, but she not only hit the nail on the head, she drilled right through the wall on this one. If I can’t have the happily ever after, at least I can write the one I never got to see.
I slump in my chair like a cooked spaghetti noodle.
“I knew having a counselor for a friend would land me in the hot water of my secrets one day,” I grumble.
“Hey, I never said it was a bad thing. Look what it’s brought you.”
“Can I… Can I ask about them?” Juliet asks. “I know they just make cameos in your books most of the time, but like, what exactly does your dating history look like?”
“Where do you want me to start?” I chuckle humorlessly, ticking them off on my fingers as I go. “I’ve been cheated on, I’ve been ‘the other woman,’ I’ve been led on, gaslit, and one time on a dating app, a guy said he had been stalking me, intentionally narrowed his search to match with me, and asked if I would ‘fulfill his fantasy of having detention sex with a real teacher.’”
“No.”
“He did not! ”
“He sure did,” I say, blinking through my tight lipped smile, then shaking that thought from my head. “Ugh. I almost forgot about that one.”
“Did you tell her about the drug lord?” Lucy—who has heard my entire dating history forwards and backwards by now—smiles.
I tell Juliet the story of how I went on what looked to be a promising blind date, only to find out that the guy had pending charges of drug possession, and said he’d pay me if I gave him an alibi in court.
“Girl, I’d say write these in a book, but you’ve already got that covered,” Juliet says, stabbing her salad with a fork while shaking her head.
“I just wish I could find a guy that didn’t try so hard to ruin me,” I groan, tilting my head back to stare at the popcorn tiles on the ceiling.
“And Anthony is still trying to ruin you, how, exactly?”
My head snaps back toward my friends, and I can tell by the looks in their eyes that I look way angrier at the sound of his name than I have any right to be. Sheepishly, I tell them what happened last night.
“Claire suggested that I…maybe go easier on him. That living and working together might be better if we make amends. She oh so kindly pointed out that I’m not allowing him to do so, and that I’m getting in the way of myself, so I decided to make him dinner. Only, I didn’t exactly tell him that I would be making us dinner, and when he got home late, I…”
My heart stutters. I hate admitting my faults out loud.
“I was sad, okay? It felt just like when he stood me up the first time.”
“Woah, wait, he did what now?”
In all of the Swiss cheese versions of Anthony and I that I’ve shared, this is the last little detail that I’ve kept to myself.
“When we got back home after the trip, we texted non-stop. He was in the middle of getting baseball season started, and I was finishing a book, so we put a date on the calendar. I double—triple—checked, even, that we were still on. I got myself all dolled up—new dress, got my hair blown out, actually did my makeup for once. And then, I waited. An hour. After two had passed, I finally gave up. The waitress at the bar comped my drinks because she felt bad.”
I say it all to the table, reliving the embarrassment that had consumed me over every other emotion. To be duped into loving someone only for them to pull the whole foundation out from under you can leave an irreparable sting.
“ That is why it has been so hard to let him talk.” It comes out softly, on the tail of reliving those emotions that had wrung out my heart like a wet sponge. “Because the last time I put myself out there, he didn’t show up. He wouldn’t even answer his phone. I ended up calling his mother to make sure he wasn’t dead in a ditch somewhere, but no. He was alive and well. Pretending like I didn’t exist, letting what we had disappear as quickly as popping a bubble.”
I shrug. Sniffle. Gather all of the garbage on the table in an attempt to disperse the creepy crawlies that are suddenly all over my skin.
“And you have every right to protect your heart,” Lucy says. “You’ll talk to him when you’re ready.”
“Or,” Juliet says, staring off inquisitively, “you just write all of his bad deeds into a book. He gave you a whole plot, girl. Take it as a gift and run with it. You don’t owe him anything.”
I can’t say I haven’t thought about it—putting my own personal heartbreak on the page under different names. Granted, the last time I considered it, I’d had an entire bottle of wine after ramming my head repeatedly into a cinderblock wall of writer’s block. It was also when my heart was raw. When I couldn’t even fathom putting us to the page without the shreds of my heart disintegrating. Now though, it’s not necessarily a bad idea. Especially with Finn and Delilah seemingly suspended in time on the page, staring at a giant pause button. A plot map pops into my head, disappearing as soon as a calendar reminder pops up on my phone.
Apparently “talking to Ant when I’m ready” could come sooner than I’d anticipated.
Because we have detention duty together today.