Chapter 5
CHAPTER
FIVE
ALLY
C lay was quiet on the drive to my house once I gave him my address, which was just south of town. The faculty socialized outside of school on occasion, but he’d never been to my house, nor I his.
“I just realized I have no idea where you live,” I said, recalling that Clay gave Witty a ride to school when the Winstons were fixing his car a few weeks ago. Maybe they lived near each other.
I studied his profile as he stopped at the four-way stop a few blocks from my house. Clearly, we weren’t neighbors because no one who lived near me ever stopped at that stop sign. We all just slowed and rolled through it.
A muscle in his jaw flexed like he was clenching his teeth. Maybe I was being too nosy. “You don’t have to tell me. Whatever. I was just making conversation.”
“No, I don’t mind people knowing where I live. I’m up near Bandit.”
I couldn’t have heard him correctly. Surely, he didn’t mean Bandit Lake. The houses there weren’t for sale. They were sitting on private parkland that was handed down through families. Specific families. And even though I hadn’t known Clay well growing up, I was pretty sure I’d have known if his family lived on the lake.
“You live . . . on the lake?”
He tore his gaze from the road to hit me with the first smile I’d seen since I splatted in front of the track team. “You seem surprised.”
“Oh. It’s just . . . not many people do.”
He shrugged and turned back to the road, making me inexplicably sad. I didn’t realize how much I liked seeing his smile until it faded from his face, and he returned to his Teacher Clay disposition, thoughtful and serious. “I was the favorite grandkid. So I was deeded a lake house with instructions to find love and be happy there. Talk about a recipe for guilt.”
“Why would you feel guilty?”
“Because I didn’t do anything in particular to deserve it, other than having a health condition in common with my grandmother. She felt a kinship, and now I have lakefront property. And as to the love part, maybe it’s good she isn’t around to see that I haven’t made good on that.”
My brain focused on the part where he mentioned a health condition. I snuck a glance in his direction. He looked okay, as strong and fit as ever, and I chastised myself for not knowing something was wrong. A pang of worry sliced through me. Was he sick?
“Are you . . . okay? Healthwise?”
His eyes shot to mine before returning to the road. I saw my look of concern mirrored in his.
“Yeah. Basically.”
It wasn’t the reassurance I was hoping for. “Basically?”
He tipped his head from side to side as if considering whether to continue the conversation. “Yeah.”
“As in, you eat all the dessert today because of it?” I was trying to be chill, but he was freaking me out.
“No, more like I don’t do relationships because of it.”
Um, okay.
This was my longest conversation with Clay that didn’t involve students or curriculum and I found myself lapping up details like vital nutrients. So that was why none of the dating rumors ever turned into the real thing. He was staying away. Running. Like a greyhound. Like I’d always thought of him as.
And my mind was teeming with other questions. What kind of health condition? Was that the thing he was struggling with? My own malfunctioning hormone center wanted to know.
“Things you want to talk about?” I knew I was being nosy, but I was interested and he could always shut me down. I expected him to shut me down.
“Not particularly.”
I should have left it alone, but the mixture of concern for his well-being and guilt over never looking beyond the surface made me keep pushing.
“It’s just...if you’re sick, I’d, um, like to help you. I mean, if you have a condition that requires hospitals and tests and drugs, I’d want to, you know...I’d want to make things better.” I was spiraling, unsure what I could offer that would make any difference, but I needed him to know I’d try to help.
“Thank you.” His hand moved to cover mine for a brief moment of reassurance before returning to the steering wheel. But I didn’t feel reassured.
“Is it fatal?”
“No.” I was studying his profile and saw a heavy blink. A muscle in his jaw twitched. “At least, not when managed properly.”
“Clay . . . that sounds bad.”
He blinked rapidly a few times, opened his mouth, and closed it again. I sat motionless, watching him. Then he started talking, haltingly at first. “I...it’s, um, depression.”
He waited, and I nodded. “That’s . . . I’m sure that’s hard.”
“I figured you were going to say I don’t seem depressed.”
“No. Do people say that?”
He raked a hand through his hair. A piece fell over his forehead and he flicked it away. “I don’t tell many people. Or anyone, really.”
“Why not?” I wasn’t trying to be nosy, but I wanted to understand him better. I knew how so many of our high school kids were struggling with mental health issues, how it took time for them to open up about it. But hearing him say he kept it to himself broke my heart. To feel so isolated, so alone, unable to talk to people about this weight pressing in on him. What must it be like?
Eyes narrowed, Clay glanced at me as though gauging my interest. I returned his look with a wide-eyed stare, and he shrugged.
“I guess it was impressed upon me that feeling sad is no big deal. Everyone feels blue sometimes and they just handle it. You know...that depression is just someone being lazy and not trying hard enough to be happy. That it isn’t a real condition.”
I felt the need to shake my head as though that might dislodge such a crazy notion. “What? Of course it’s real. What does that even mean?”
“Nothing. Bottom line is that I struggle with it, and my therapist wants to change my dosage but I already have side effects and I don’t want more. The meds make me feel like I’m not myself. If I could, I’d stop taking them altogether.”
“That’s ridiculous. Depression is serious. If your doctor thinks you need meds, take the meds.”
“I am. I do.” He sounded exasperated, and I sensed that he was done talking. I waited for a moment, but he pressed his lips together and said nothing. I couldn’t help feeling foolish for not being more observant and somehow knowing this about Clay. And it touched me in a deep place that he trusted me enough to tell me now.
I couldn’t get over the idea that he’d struggled with his mental health under the false narrative that it wasn’t real. And he held all of it in, only letting people see his outward strength. It broke my heart. And made me want to gather him up like a baby chick and smooth his feathers until he felt loved.
My stomach chose this moment to let out a loud rumble. “Guess I should’ve eaten more than just a salad all day.”
I was so caught up in my confession, I didn’t notice Clay signaling and pulling his truck over until we’d stopped on the side of the road, right in front of Donner Bakery. He unlatched his seat belt and turned his whole body to face me. He brought one knee up, rested his elbow on it, and leaned his forehead on his hand.
“Alexandra.”
“Yes?”
“That’s not good. You should have mentioned that.”
“I just did.”
He blew out a breath and rubbed his hand over his face. “I mean before, when we were assessing your injuries. Do you need a doughnut? Or a chocolate bar? Is your blood sugar low?”
“I don’t think so. Sometimes I just forget to eat.”
“You forget...” Shaking his head, Clay tipped the back of his hand against my forehead as if checking for a fever. He really didn’t know much about first aid if he thought I had a fever from falling over a hurdle. “Alexandra, I was already concerned about leaving you alone with a possible concussion and now you’re telling me you forget to eat. Are you sure you can handle this yourself?”
“Oh, definitely. I’m fine.”
He stared at me for another few seconds, blinking at me as if in disbelief. This was the longest drive from school to a person’s house in the history of time.
Well, it wouldn’t be if he turned the car back into the lane and stepped on the gas.
“Anyway, as to the other thing, people don’t will things to their loved ones unless they want to. Unless you swindled your grandmother, I don’t know why you should feel guilty about receiving a gift.”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Did you?”
“Did I, what?”
“Scheme and plot to trick your grandmother into leaving you her house on the lake?”
“I did not. I didn’t do anything good or bad. She struggled with depression for most of her life and that was her big reason for choosing me. She wanted me to be happy, and I guess she thought Bandit Lake might be good medicine. It seemed rather random.”
His eyes passed over my face and down my chest, where my breasts were split by the seat belt, then down to where my hands fidgeted in my lap. Finally, his gaze moved back up to my face where it settled on my swollen, cracked lip before meeting my eyes again. “So your blood sugar isn’t low now,” he confirmed, as though his once-over proved it.
Plowing through my overstuffed purse, I produced a tube of Mentos and popped one in my mouth. “There. Better?”
I watched Clay chew on his bottom lip, noticing how the week’s worth of scruff highlighted his sharp jawline, how his Adam’s apple rose and fell when he swallowed. In all the years we’d known each other, I’d never spent this much time in one place with him alone. He was always moving, always had one foot out the door and a plan.
Slowly, with an exaggerated effort, Clay turned back toward the steering wheel and popped on his seat belt. “You don’t make it easy, do you?” he muttered, almost like he didn’t mean for me to hear it.
But since it was a question and I had an answer, I responded, “Guess not.”
As we drove, I wondered what his house was like. Even back when he and Jefferson spent most of high school together, I’d never been to Clay’s family home. I had no occasion to be invited. I was the little sister, not a part of their social circle. But back then, he didn’t live at Bandit Lake. That I knew for sure.
A left turn just past Daisy’s Nut House brought us to my neighborhood, and a few more turns had us heading down my street.
The truck stopped in front of my house, and Clay jumped out. Before I could take my seat belt off, he’d come around to my side and flung open the passenger door of the baby-blue truck. Without asking, he slung my purse and workout bag over his shoulder, scooped me up just as he had earlier, and carried me down the walkway to my front door.
My head whipped around to make sure none of my neighbors were around to see this. There would be questions for sure.
The coast appeared clear, and Clay deposited me on my feet at my front door, where I noticed my twin pink geraniums looked wilted and in need of water. It was strange because they’d been fine this morning, and I’d only planted them in the matching terra-cotta pots because they were extremely hardy. I regularly missed a week of watering at a time and had never seen them lose their vigor.
Clay didn’t seem inclined to hand over my purse, so I cleared my throat and gestured with a nod of my head. He stood with his arms crossed, leaning against my green-painted banister. He’d shoved the sleeves of his workout shirt up to his elbows, so the bulge of his forearms nearly assaulted me with the sudden need to purchase a block of marble and sculpt them.
“Don’t get that from running,” I said weakly, trying to harness some sass and failing. Maybe my blood sugar was low. Maybe I did have a concussion. Or maybe it was just that Clay had been exceedingly kind to me over the past hour, and I wasn’t used to it. But suddenly, the normal banter I counted on didn’t come.
“Sorry?” Clay towered over me normally, but the strange confusion I felt around him now made me slump, so he was even taller. Taller and wrapped in layers of muscle.
“Nothing. I meant thank you. For carrying me all over the place and getting me home.”
He nodded but he didn’t smile. His hazel eyes heated until they looked like twin discs of coal. The way he was studying me made me feel naked. And slightly unnerved. I glanced down to be sure I hadn’t shed my clothes without realizing it. Not that it would have mattered. Clay looked like he might incinerate anything flammable simply by looking at it. And looking at him, I wanted that superpower for myself.
“So, you deflected earlier. Why were you leaping over hurdles earlier?”
“Oh. Right. I planned to tell you Pin Dick wants me to chaperone the retreat with you.”
I waited for him to groan. Or grimace. Or look for a parachute on his back that could whisk him out of here. Instead, he looked...pleased?
“Okay, works for me.”
I waved my hands like erasers. “No, no. Not okay. I know nothing about camping. That’s the ridiculous part of the whole thing. I’m the last person you’d want in the woods, trust me.”
He pressed his lips together and I felt his eyes rake over my face. It made me blush, which had never happened in his presence in all the years we’d worked together. I shouldn’t be reacting to him that way just because he’d carried me in his muscular arms like a stray kitten.
“Let’s agree to disagree on that one. Assuming you’re healed by the weekend after next, we should figure out a time to go over things.”
He seemed so calm. So innocent.
A laugh barked from my chest. Or more like an unhinged cackle. “No. I’m not going.”
His eyes narrowed. “What?”
I gestured between us. “Me. The retreat. Not happening.”
He held up a hand and dropped down onto my porch swing. I’d been ambivalent about installing it a year ago because, although it looked cute, I couldn’t imagine anyone sitting on it. My house was small. It didn’t take me so long to come to the door that a person would need to sit and wait, take a load off. But right now I felt grateful for it because Clay looked as unsteady as I felt.
“I mustn’t have heard you right. You went to all the trouble of making a big Swan Lake entrance during my track practice in order to taunt me about chaperoning and now you’re not going?”
Pacing in front of my door, I nodded and prattled on, making sure he understood exactly why choosing another chaperone made sense. “I did it to tell you about the chaperoning and seek your help getting me out of it. This is just Pindich trying to torture us both. I’m not a wilderness girl. I’m scared and inexperienced out there. Trust me, you don’t want to be alone on the side of a mountain with me.”
“Try me.”
My mouth opened but no sound came out. The last thing I expected was that Clay Meadows might want me on the retreat. No. I must have misinterpreted him. I regained my ability to prattle. “It was a momentary case of poor judgment on behalf of Principal Pin Dick. You can convince him as much, and you and your students will be spared another great embarrassment of having to scrape me up off a mountain trail when I step on a log and trip.”
“You shouldn’t step on a log.”
Squinting at him, I took a step forward, bringing us toe to toe and stopping the swaying of the porch swing. “What?”
“You step over the log, but use a walking stick to check the other side for snakes hidden in the grass. If you step on the log, you could get hurt if it’s slippery or rotten.”
I waved my hands in his face. “See? This is what I’m talking about. This is why I don’t belong on this trip.”
“But you’re trained in wilderness first aid.”
“So what? Anyone could do that.”
“Anyone could . You did . And no one else will have time to get certified before that weekend. With half the faculty out with food poisoning, we don’t have a lot of options.”
I cursed under my breath, hoping Clay wouldn’t be able to make it out. Because it was very unladylike.
“What’s that?” The corner of his mouth tipped up into the hint of a smile. He was toying with me. That’s what this was. He didn’t want me on his rugged retreat any more than I wanted to be there.
On this, surely, we could agree.
“I’m not a wilderness girl. I don’t like bugs. Bears will want to eat me. And I don’t know anything about tents or campfires or snakes hiding beneath logs.”
“Now you know about the logs. The rest I’ll teach you.”
“Ha. Even if we had all the time in the world, it wouldn’t be enough.”
He stood up from the swing. Somehow even taller now.
Confident. Towering. Smug.
Hot.
“I can teach you in one weekend everything you’ll need to know to be a top-notch co-chaperone.”
“But why? Why would you want to do that?” I was genuinely confused by his willingness to help.
He shrugged. “Sounds like a fun challenge.”
“No, it’s an awful challenge, an impossible challenge. You could convince anyone else on the faculty to go with you. And Pin Dick would probably agree.”
“You call him that to his face. I think you’re the only one he’d let get away with it,” he observed. I wondered if he’d been wanting to ask me about this for a while.
“I’m also the only one he makes come to unnecessary after-hours meetings in his office.”
Clay’s eyes went big and his hands flexed. “He ever cross a line?”
“Nothing that would stand up as an overt hostile work environment. He’s sneaky like that.”
“I want to pound him into the asphalt.” Clay’s voice dropped an octave, deep with anger. He was usually so restrained and affable that it took me aback to see his dark expression, jaw locked and tense. His protectiveness stunned me.
I placed a hand on his forearm. “Don’t do that. Just do me a solid and ask him for another co-chaperone.” Then I let my hand linger for an extra couple of seconds because, holy hot-for-teacher, his forearms were firm and roped with muscle. Reluctantly, I let it drop and felt a shiver roll down my spine.
“He’ll never go for it. We need someone there who knows first aid. There will be a ranger with us at the campsite, so you’ll mainly be wrangling the kids, and you know all of them, so it’s actually perfect.”
“Perfect except for my whole fear-of-the-woods thing.” I was doubly glad to have a porch swing as I dropped onto the bench where Clay had sat moments before. I knew I was cooked.
He pointed at me. Decision made.
“Here’s what we’re gonna do. I have a closet full of camping supplies at my house, so we’re going to have a little dry run at camping.”
“What’s that mean?”
“We’ll camp out in my yard. Twenty feet from the house, if anything spooks you. But the terrain will be similar, so we’ll pitch some tents, build some fires, and do some hiking. By the time the retreat rolls around, you’ll know everything you need to know, and you just might enjoy yourself in the great outdoors.”
I held up a hand to push away the crazy idea, but he stepped closer at the same time, so I ended up pushing against his chest. His rock-hard chest. “Let’s not get carried away with the enjoying part,” I said, swallowing thickly.
“You can do this, Alexandra. I promise.” He held up a finger and wagged it. “But only if you’re okay. You’re not hiking anywhere until a doctor clears you. Much as I’d like you on the trip, you’re not going if you have a concussion.”
He tapped two fingers against my temple and the contact sent a zing of electricity coursing through my veins. Suddenly, the concussion escape route didn’t feel as enticing.
“I think I’m probably okay, but, yes, I’ll get checked out.”
Watching me, Clay nodded slowly. He took a couple of careful steps backward before turning to jog down my front steps toward his truck. “Take it easy tonight. And if you need anything, call me. Okay?” he called.
I nodded weakly, unaccustomed to this side of him, a side that was the polar opposite of the stoic, hurried professorial guy I knew at school. Hot heartthrob Clay Meadows was actually kind of a softie. Which made no difference whatsoever because he was staying away from relationships.
And that was just as well, because so was I.