Six
Rilee
Friday, glorious Friday. High schools are their own organisms, and they have their own moods.
Just walking through the halls, you can tell it’s Friday.
A carefree giggle, the tone of the teenage chatter, even the crash of a locker has a particular Friday sound.
Then there is the squirreliness of students, that anticipation of freedom percolating just under the surface.
I’d missed Fiona and Mia at morning break because Janice from fourth period really needed to explain why her lab proofs didn’t need the required experiment steps.
First Mia and then Fiona poked their heads in my classroom door and retreated once they saw I was busy.
Which, frankly, was a good thing. I did not really want to pre-hash my date–my coffee, just a coffee–with either one of them.
Maybe avoiding my friends was how I let Janice talk me into accepting a redo on Monday.
Over the lunch hour Fiona supervised a club meeting, and Mia proctored a makeup exam, so I did my nails.
Probably not the most professional thing to do at your desk, but quiet Tina Charters in the third row had these inspiring green nails speckled with daisies.
Just the thing to brush off the overcast weather we’d been having.
When the bell rang for our last class period, I rushed the kids out and began tidying up and responding to parent emails.
Nothing makes a parent angrier than waiting until Sunday night for a response to a Friday email.
University should have a class on how to respond to parent emails because sometimes I do that more than teach. It’s ridiculous.
While I wanted to bolt, to make sure that Mia and Fiona couldn’t psych me out over this afternoon, it would have been useless and reckless.
Trying to exit the parking lot during student rush hour was taking your life in your own hands.
At least one half of a teenager’s car insurance premium must be due to school parking lots.
By four it was cleared out enough that I felt comfortable ignoring the last of the emails and grabbing my keys.
First Avenue Coffee was a glass fronted locally owned shop on the ground floor of a four-story building in the south side of Spokane’s downtown.
It faced a blank back entrance and uninteresting south wall of the Fox performing arts theater.
Even though the narrow street was wedged between a row of four story attached buildings, the lighted interior, low winter sun and long afternoon shadows gave even the front entrance a cozy feel.
First Avenue Coffee reminded me of the coffee shops in much larger cities.
But with only a few blocks of downtown wedged between the river park and the train tracks, it’s what we had.
It also made coffee like a bar makes cocktails.
Pushing through the door I saw the loft was mostly empty.
A long open floored single room made up the coffee shop, and Craig was already sitting at a small table near the back.
He held a mug in his scarred hands and a distant and clouded look on his face, wrinkles rippling above his fine but naturally shaped eyebrows.
Lifting the white ceramic cup to his lips he looked up and saw me.
Whatever storm was brewing blew away and he set the cup back down on the wood table and stood up, one hand still on the table.
He wore a pair of khakis and a blue button-up shirt.
His solid looking shoes, more boots really, were worn, but the shirt was ironed.
The sleeves were rolled up revealing powerful forearms. Not watching my step, I stumbled on the rug near the bar in the center of the room.
Sticking my hand out I caught myself before going down.
By the time I’d recovered Craig was beside me.
“Are you okay?” Craig asked. Hot embarrassment flushed through me.
Those dark eyes that haunted my nights were soft and warm, and the weathered lines around them were chasms that I was falling into.
Looking away, I nodded. The shirt, the pants, he’d dressed up for our coffee!
I was just in my work clothes. The black slacks and dark floral top weren’t jeans and a t-shirt, but I’d been in them for hours, and worn them last week too.
“Yea, I’m fine,” I managed a smile. Turning to the bar and the lanky barista trying to ignore us both, I added, “Let’s order.”
“Sure, I could use another,” he said, clearly not certain I really was fine but going along with me.
Leaning against the bar to catch my breath, I talked briefly to the barista and ordered something he recommended. Craig ordered an “America, black.”
Of course he drank his coffee black. The leather toes of his boots were scuffed and even though he’d shaved, his whiskers were already darkening his cheeks. Settle down Rilee, this is just coffee.
The barista poured my espresso out of a shaker into a cocktail glass before setting a mug of black coffee beside it.
Yea this wasn’t just a coffee. Catching sight of our reflection in a glass display full of donuts, a stab of hunger sucker punched me.
It was too early for dinner but I was starving. “And one of those,” I pointed.
“These?” The barista motioned to a purple frosted donut.
From this distance I couldn’t tell the difference and just agreed. Placing the pastry on a white plate the barista set it next to my coffee and before I could get my wallet out of my purse Craig pushed a twenty across the bar.
He smiled, “I got this.”
So not just a coffee, he was paying. I picked up my drink by the glass’s stem and claimed the plate before Craig could grab it. Walking to his table I looked at the floor, not trusting my eyes while my hands were full.
Craig didn’t pull out my chair which I was grateful for.
With him paying the tab and dressing up, I needed something to remind me of the distance I should be keeping.
He was Jackie’s uncle after all. When he pulled out his own chair I noticed a brown cloth jacket, not the sheepskin fleece from my dream.
That was both troubling and reassuring, my dream could be wrong.
He waited until I sat down to take his seat.
He fingered the handle of his cup and spoke first, breaking the silence threatening like an afternoon thunderstorm, “So do you teach and coach?”
I took a sip of my coffee. The espresso was fruity with a hint of something tart and sweet.
“Biology,” I answered clumsily, thinking about the physicality the word implied.
The thoughts drove a hot rush that I couldn’t hide from my cheeks.
Biology indeed. I should have majored in something boring like math.
Instead of elaborating I picked up the donut to hide my face behind.
Before I could take a bite he spoke again, “Do you like it? I mean what made you choose teaching?”
I couldn’t chew and answer that question so I set the donut down.
The purple glaze was shiny and speckled with peculiar violet bits.
“Ms. Montague. She’s why I started teaching.
She was my high school chemistry teacher.
We were either afraid of her or made fun of her.
Kids are horrible. She had a malformed left arm, and was as dry as a desert, but super smart.
She gave me an F on our first exam. Right under the F she wrote, ‘you are smarter than this.’ And she was right.
That note turned my whole high school experience around. ”
It all just spilled out from a place I hadn’t dredged in years.
“My parents were splitting up and fighting, like throwing plates fighting, and I guess I was just trying to not be seen. But this slight woman who probably didn’t really want to really be noticed by a school full of teenagers saw me, and did something.
That made all the difference to me and I guess I just wanted to do that for someone else. ”
I stopped the verbal vomit and took a bite of the donut before anything else could come out. The little bits on top were odd, almost floral. I studied them, looking anywhere but his eyes.
“That’s a good reason,” he nodded.
Looking up from my donut I met his dark eyes. They were sad despite the soft smile on his face and my gaze slid off them settling into the comfortable lines of his face. “Well, that’s me, what about you, where do you work?”
He let out a soft grunt at the question and took another sip of his coffee, holding it in both hands. “Kind of in between things right now.”
Of course. My first drink with a guy in years and the guy was unemployed, great catch.
Then a sobering splash of realization woke me.
The guy who won’t leave my dreams is unemployed.
What does that say about me? Did it matter to me?
I was happy in my dream. Really happy. But this was real life.
Guys without paychecks were pains. Flashing back to the twenty he’d handed to the barista I felt the heat of my emotions drain away.
What had that twenty been to him? Was that going to be dinner for the next three days?
“Usually I drive truck.” He kept talking as my mind rolled away from me, “Logging trucks mostly, but—” His pause brought me back to what he was saying.
It stretched out and those fine weathered lines around his eyes twitched as he struggled with something.
“I can’t do that anymore.” He shifted in his chair as he said it.
Can’t do his job anymore? Did he get fired?
Is he a drunk and lost his license, is he a serial killer and on the run?
That’s not how you end a statement on a first date.
Even if he clearly didn’t want to talk about it he’d brought it up, so for no reason other than to assure myself of my own personal safety I had to ask, “What happened?”