Chapter 24 Monday
Monday
(Nine Days Left)
Jonathan had to have some hard conversations over the weekend.
The first of them took place on Saturday night, when he came out to our friends. Their reactions were pretty much in line with what I had anticipated. Meg said all the right things. Nora wasted no time asking for sexually explicit details. Alex needed to be consoled.
“It’s gonna be okay.” Jonathan patted his back.
“It’s not,” Alex moaned like he was in pain. “All the guys at gay poker are going to want you. Hot Craig, Dante, Regular Craig.” He threw his head into his hands in resignation. “Just when I thought I had a shot with Regular Craig.”
“I’m not going to join gay poker,” Jonathan assured him.
“WHAT?” Alex’s head shot up. “You have to join gay poker!”
Jonathan managed to deflect all of Nora’s inappropriate questions by feeding me to the wolves. “Phoebe is seeing someone!” he said.
“Hey!” I hadn’t planned on telling anyone about Matthew until I was sure that Jonathan had his moment. Three pairs of confused eyes blinked at me, waiting for an explanation.
“Did something finally happen with Finn?” Meg asked, blissfully unaware.
Jonathan and I exchanged a look. “Turns out he wasn’t the one for me,” I said, and I left it at that. At Jonathan’s insistence, I ended up telling them all about my night with Matthew.
By the time I finished, Alex was folded over himself with his head hanging between his knees. “I really am so happy for everyone,” he insisted, his voice so high-pitched I was worried it would break my wineglass.
“Oh, by the way, Alex. Jerry asked if you were single.” This at least managed to get him upright again.
Once everyone cleared out, Jonathan went over to Finn’s. I expected him to be out for the night, but he came back only an hour after leaving, looking defeated.
“Finn’s not coming out anytime soon,” he said with a sigh, running his hand through his hair and pulling at the ends.
“So what are you gonna do?” I asked.
“Take some space, I think.”
I frowned. “I’m sorry, J. I know that’s not what you wanted.” After giving him a sympathetic hug, I walked over to the TV and queued up the only movie I own on demand: Grease.
“Don’t be,” he said. “At least I got some clarity. And I feel sadder for him than I do for me; I’m glad he’ll have you at work. Speaking of…” He grimaced slightly. “He knows you know everything. He freaked out just a little.”
“Oh, good,” I deadpanned. “Monday should be fun.”
—
Monday has not been fun.
Finn is avoiding me, and he couldn’t be any more obvious about it. He won’t make eye contact. Every time I start in his direction, he quickly moves to the opposite end of the playground.
Please! I want to yell from across the way, but I know I should let him be.
At lunchtime, Finn collects his class and leads them up the hill to their classroom. I try waving as he passes. Nothing.
“Trouble in paradise?” Cheryl teases, sneaking up behind me.
“Something like that,” I mumble.
—
I’ve just finished setting up the classroom for tomorrow and I’m about to pack up my tote bag for the day when I hear a knock on the classroom door.
“Hi.” Finn leans against the doorway with a nervous expression on his face. It’s hard to believe that the first time I ever saw him, standing in that very same spot, wasn’t even a month ago.
“Finn.” I rush toward him anxiously, coming to an abrupt stop when I reach him at the doorway. “Hi.”
He walks past me into the classroom, circling the four small tables that make up our lunch area until he chooses one to sit on. He runs his palm down the length of his face as he looks at me apologetically. “I’m sorry for being a dick today.”
“You weren’t a dick.”
“Yes, I was,” he insists. “You didn’t deserve that. You’ve never been anything but kind and helpful to me.”
I sit down on the table next to him. “It’s really okay,” I tell him. “I completely understand.”
We sit there in uncomfortable silence.
“You know.” I clear my throat, preparing to say something that I’ll probably regret. “This whole time I had convinced myself that we”—I gesture between the two of us with my pointer finger—“had something going on.”
“Oh” is all he says.
“Yeah,” I respond. “You can’t go around being so nice to people while also looking like you do.
” I elbow him, and I think he cracks the tiniest of smiles.
“You’re a great guy, Finn. And a great teacher.
Not to mention an excellent woodworker.” He huffs a laugh under his breath. “And you deserve to be happy.”
Finn looks down at his feet. “I don’t know what to do,” he mutters.
“You don’t have to,” I tell him. “You have plenty of time to figure that out. I just started figuring stuff out, like, three days ago.”
“That makes me feel a little better.” He breathes a sigh of relief. “I would have assumed you had everything figured out.”
“You have no idea how wrong you’d be.” I stand and offer him my hand to pull him up from the table. We walk outside together to our respective cars.
“We should really be carpooling,” I say once we get to the parking lot. “We live five minutes from each other.”
“That could be fun,” he agrees. “I can pick you up. Just text me.”
“Okay,” I reply with a smirk. “You just have to promise to respond this time.”
“Huh?” His forehead creases. I watch as he pulls out his phone and types in my name, pulling up our texts. He shows me his screen, and I guffaw at the lone It’s Phoebe:) message. “Look.” He gestures to the exchange. “I responded.”
“No you didn’t,” I argue.
“I liked your message!” he retorts.
“That’s not a response. It doesn’t count.”
He types something briefly, smirking as he slips his phone back into his pocket.
I feel a faint buzzing in my tote bag. A text.
Finn:
Hey
I sigh as a small smile breaks out across my face. “We’ll work on it.”
—
“I can’t say I saw any of that coming,” Sandy confesses, looking at me wide-eyed from across the coffee table.
I’ve lived an entire life since I was here last week, and I’ve spent the better part of our session filling Sandy in on everything that’s transpired.
She had to pick her jaw up from the floor when I got to the part about Jonathan and Finn.
“I can’t say I did, either,” I agree.
She exhales. “So it seems like your list is working after all. It was only a few weeks ago that the thought of a date with Matthew seemed impossible, and now…” She looks at me intently, and I notice her eyes start to glisten. “Look how far you’ve come.”
“Actually, Sandy…” I let go of a deep breath.
“I think you were right. The list had nothing to do with my progress. It wasn’t until I threw the list away that I finally started thinking straight and had my epiphany.
” I only wish the epiphany had come before I gave away all my books.
I’ve made a lot of mistakes over the past few weeks, and tossing them is one I don’t know if I’ll ever recover from.
“And what exactly was the epiphany?” She asks.
“…I don’t know.” I struggle to translate my thoughts into words.
“This whole time, I really did think there was something wrong with me, Sandy. And the more I told myself that, the more I believed it. And who would want someone like that? I think it was easier to push people away before they could see how broken I was, even if I wasn’t doing it on purpose.
” She closes her eyes and nods. “But then Jonathan helped me realize…I might not be a freak. There may actually not be anything fundamentally wrong with me. And the thought was so freeing…it made me want to stop getting in my own way right then and there.” I shrug, scratching my head. “That didn’t make any sense, did it?”
“It made a lot of sense.” The corner of Sandy’s eyes wrinkle with her smile. “You should be so proud. And so should Jonathan.”
I acknowledge her with a quick nod. “Now it’s officially time for the hard part.”
“And what would that part be?”
I can’t tell if I’m grinning, if I’m cringing, or if I’ve created an entirely new expression that’s an unsettling combination of the two. I force myself to unclench my teeth so I can tell Sandy what’s next.
“Dating. I am officially dating.”