Chapter 32
THIRTY-TWO
Love is a feeling of deep affection.
“Good news,” I said as I walked out of the attached master bathroom. It wasn’t especially master-like but it was functional and clean. Well, clean enough after months of disuse. “There’s plenty of toilet paper.”
“What are we going to do?” Gil stalked back and forth across the room.
Yawning, I flopped down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. “I’m going to take away every dinosaur toy and book that kid owns for the rest of his life.”
Or a week. Probably just a week.
“What time is it?” I asked, feeling that 4a.m. wake-up coming back to haunt me.
“A little after nine.”
I groaned and buried my face in a pillow. “I’m so tired. Can you stop pacing?”
“No.”
I sat up. “Why not?”
“Because.”
“Would it kill you to say more than one word at a time?”
“Yes.”
I sat up and hiked a throw pillow at his head. It hit the target; I was impressed. Gil wasn’t. But he did sit on the other side of the bed, all silent and brooding and grumpy and annoyed.
“Your anxiety is going to make my anxiety start and then we’ll just be two anxious people trapped in a room together and we might get desperate. We might, I don’t know, seek comfort in each other’s arms.”
“What?” he said, his voice strangled.
“See? It could be worse.”
“This is because you read those romance novels.”
“Excuse me?”
“They’re all over the house. Found one in the bathroom, on the couch. Even found one next to the milk in the refrigerator. I don’t want to see a half-naked man mauling a woman when I’m trying to make breakfast.”
I laid back down and crossed my arms. “Whatever.”
“Although the pirate thing surprised me.”
“Okay. Okay. I got it.”
“Actually, the romance novels in general. You really into that?” The bed dipped and groaned as he stretched out on it.
“Mae and Ali are making me read them.”
“Why?”
I nibbled my bottom lip before I flipped on my side to face him. He was lying on his back, hands folded behind his head at the very edge of the bed, as though he wanted to be as far away from me as humanly possible. I almost laughed out loud. Sometimes I wondered if he was afraid of me.
“I have a broken man picker.”
Slowly he turned his head. “A broken what?”
“Man picker. I can’t pick out the good ones.
They’re always deadbeats, losers, bums, weirdos, emotionally unavailable, jerks or a combination of any and all of the above.
My therapist Sunny says I attract them because I need to love myself first before I find a partner who will love me like I deserve. I’m working on that.”
He was quiet for a moment before asking, “So then Oliver’s dad…”
“Ah, yes. Oliver’s dad has seen him exactly twice his whole life. Sometimes he sends a birthday card. Occasionally a present that’s completely inappropriate. Last Christmas, he sent him a pocketknife.”
“Sounds like a nice guy.”
“If there’s a jerk anywhere in a ten-mile radius, he will find me. I will fall for him, and it will end badly for me.” I stared at the stitching on the blue floral quilt covering Ollie’s bed. “I’m oversharing. Sorry.”
“I asked.” He paused and then, “So, the pirates are supposed to teach you about romance?”
“To remind me romance exists. I don’t believe in all that stuff. Or maybe I did once upon a time but not anymore. Sometimes I wish it were true. I’d love the grand gesture and the flowers and chocolates and hand-holding and asking my dad to marry me, a meet-cute.”
Gil’s brow wrinkled. “What is a meet-cute?”
“It’s the first time you meet The One. Like you’re both hailing the same cab or she bumps into you and spills her coffee all over you and you’re on your way to the biggest meeting of your life. The story you’ll tell your grandkids one day.”
“Ah.” He turned on his side. We were facing each other, which felt strangely intimate despite the three feet between us. This was an absurdly large bed for a guy who’d been as compact as Ollie has been.
“I’ve always thought maybe one day I’d be in a bookstore, looking at?—”
“Pirate romances.” His grin was quick and lethal. Boy, oh, boy, when he smiled, it made my stomach flutter in the most delicious way.
I laughed. “A good book about a serial killer.”
“How romantic.”
“Yeah, well. Maybe if I ever get a happily ever after, I’ll become a romantic.” I shook my head. “You did it again.”
“Did what?”
“You got information out of me, and I still know so little about you.”
He shifted onto his back. “Not much about me to tell.”
“Really?” I tapped my chin with a finger as though I was thinking about what to ask him when, in fact, I had a list of questions so long, it riveled a CVS receipt.
“Because I have a huge list of questions. Do you iron your underwear? Why did you break up with your last girlfriend? Have you ever been arrested? What are your hopes and dreams? What’s your brother like? ”
He didn’t answer right away, and I thought maybe he wouldn’t at all. I could all but see the gears working overtime in his head.
“No, I do not iron my underwear. Who does that?”
“Not even one time?”
“No.”
I hummed in disbelief.
He closed his eyes. “Once, but I recognized the final product was not worth the effort.”
“I knew it.”
“Okay, and what about you? Do you ever fold your clothes?”
“Hey, now, Oliver’s clothes are always folded and put away.”
Principal Gil raised a brow in reply. A piece of dark hair fell across his forehead in rebellion. I itched to push it back in place, so I shoved my hands under my cheek to stop myself.
“I have a very advanced clothing system,” I said. “A clean pile, a dirty pile, and a I-wore-this-once-and-I-can-wear-it-again pile. It works out pretty well for me.”
He laughed softly. “Question number two. My last girlfriend and I broke up because I moved back home with my stepdad and brother. It was a very mature, adult break-up. We discussed it over coffee and then parted ways.”
“Whoa. I can feel the passion. Did you break up or change phone carriers?”
“She was great, really.” He paused, searching for his words. His glasses were a little crooked from laying on his side. It was adorable. “I think I was the problem. Life got complicated. What about you? Last break-up?”
“Oophf.” I sat up and curled my legs under me. Better to put distance between us. “That would have been back in LA. Oliver was about two? He broke up with me because he thought the universe was telling him it was time. Turns out the universe was also telling him to get back with his ex-girlfriend.”
“Ouch.” He sat up and scooted a little closer. “Sounds like an idiot.”
“Broken man picker, remember?”
“No other relationships since?”
I shrugged and hugged a pillow to my chest. “Lots of first dates, a few lasted for a month or so but no one serious and no one I wanted to introduce to Oliver. That kid only gets the best of the best and that hasn’t happened yet.”
He looked at me from the corner of his eye for a long moment.
“Yes to the arrest question. The first time, I was thirteen. It was the year my mom died, and I started to act out a lot. Some neighborhood kids found a bunch of spray paint in their garage, and we started daring each other to tag things. I was the one who got caught.”
“You rebel.”
“The police officer didn’t really arrest me. He did put handcuffs on me, put me in the back of the patrol car, and drove me home to make an example out of me. I got a lecture the whole drive, too. It didn’t help. I was determined to ruin my life.” He shook his head.
“Sounds like you were a handful.”
“More like a kid who couldn’t deal with his feelings.
I can see that now but being that age is hard and losing my mom…
I didn’t know how to cope. Unfortunately, it lasted for a few years.
I’m not sure how my stepdad didn’t kick me out.
I skipped school constantly, got into fights, snuck out of the house.
When I was seventeen, I got caught driving around in a stolen car with friends. ”
“What happened?”
“I got lucky. The judge decided to give me one last chance. I had to do a lot of community service and pay restitution. I ended up volunteering at an afterschool program for kids and something sort of clicked.”
“What do you mean?”
“I like helping—kids, animals, people with special needs. It made me feel good and stopped me from thinking of my own problems. No, that’s not right. It made me feel like I was making a difference, even if it was something small.”
“So, you became a teacher.”
“So, I became a special education teacher. I taught elementary school for a few years while I got my master’s in social work, then I moved on to the community center. I worked with a lot of at-risk kids until my program was cut at the beginning of the school year.”
I was a little giddy he was answering all my questions. “What are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know exactly. I’ve been offered a teaching position for the fall in Austin.”
For reasons I would examine later (or never), a wave of sadness washed over me. He had plans in place already. I knew he’d be leaving at the end of the six months. Of course I knew that. It shouldn’t hit me quite so hard. Shake it off, Ellie.
I smiled. “That’s great.”
“But if we’re talking about my hopes and dreams…
” He shifted a little closer, not on purpose but I noticed.
Boy, did I notice. “I’d want to open a day program or group home, maybe both, for kids and adults with special needs.
I’d love to have a place where I could create a little community.
I visited a place like that once. It was residential with a café and a shop.
The clients who lived there made the items they sold, worked in the café, led productive, happy lives.
They went on field trips and were out in the community but surrounded by so much support, you know? ”
“That’s a big dream,” I said quietly. “You know, you could always move to a small town like, oh, I don’t know, Two Harts, where you already own part of a house and a business and twenty acres of land.”
With a grunt, he laid back and stared at the ceiling, his mouth pressed in a thin line. A mouth I was having a hard time not looking at. Absently I wondered what it would be like to kiss it—would his lips be firm and demanding, soft and coaxing, somewhere in between? Would?—
“All of that is just a dream, one I have no way of accomplishing any time soon.” He gave me a hard look. “Besides, I can’t just move to Two Harts, especially since I won’t own any property or business once it gets sold.”
Or he could open his mouth and say something like that, and all thoughts of kissing would go right down the toilet.
I shot off of the bed. “Why are you so set on selling? Is it money? You can see this is the only home Oliver has ever known. You can see how much this means to me.” I paused in front of the bed, my hands on my hips. “Tell me what it is that’s this important to you. Make me understand why.”
“Do you know how selfish you sound? You aren’t the only one who has responsibilities.” Selfish? Was I? I opened my mouth to argue but he kept going. “I get that all of it is important to you. Find a way to buy me out, then.”
“I can’t afford that.”
He sat up and removed his glasses. When he spoke, his voice was quiet but no less intense. “I need the money.”
I sat on the edge of the bed. “Why? If I knew, maybe we could figure out a way to make this all work.”
He hesitated, avoided eye contact.
“Okay, then. How about something else? For example, why do you go to Austin every weekend?”
After sliding his glasses on, he crossed his arms. Stern, Principal Gil expression clicked into place. Except for a second, his gaze hit my eyes, and it wasn’t anger or annoyance there; it was confusion, a sadness that was unexpected. Then he looked away.
But it was enough. Enough to make me wonder if stern Gil was just a cover for the real Gil. That Gil was a little uncertain, the one who didn’t have all the answers.
“You aren’t going to tell me, are you?”
Maybe it was unreasonable to expect that from him. Just like it was unreasonable to think my problems, my dreams, were bigger than his. It seemed an impossible decision. In the end, one of us would win. And that meant the other person would lose.
“I’m going to try to get some sleep,” I said, suddenly very tired. My head on the pillow, I curled up and closed my eyes. I was asleep within minutes. Gil never said a word.