Chapter 28 #2
“I’m so excited to have had the privilege to organize Rebecca’s”—I glance at Mom and catch her rolling her eyes—“retirement ceremony,” she continues. “I have prepared some games. We will be playing in teams.” She claps. “Students versus teachers. Obviously.”
“And,” Fletcher adds, turning toward my mom, “as a surprise, I believe Rebecca volunteered herself to get us started?”
My mom laughs, the room applauding as she joins them. I feel a familiar tightening in my chest—the mix of pride and inevitability that comes with her taking charge.
Tessa leans in, murmuring something I can’t hear, and my mom nods politely. Too politely.
“All right,” Fletcher says, stepping back. “I’ll let Rebecca and Tessa take it from here.”
She doesn’t bother with the microphone at first. She scans the room and projects her voice from the stage.
“Alright,” she says. “Students versus teachers. Right?” Boos from the alumni. Cheers from the teachers. “Y’all,” Mom says, “I didn’t hear a single thing.”
It all intensifies.
Robyn laughs quietly, her shoulder brushing mine. “She’s ruthless,” she whispers.
“You have no idea,” I murmur back.
“The rules are simple,” my mom continues. “One person holds water in their mouth.” She pauses. “The other person hits them in the face with a flour tortilla.”
The room erupts.
“If you keep the water in,” she says over the noise, “your team gets a point. If you spit it out—” She makes an exaggerated spluttering noise. “One of your points get deducted. Rotate through pairs. First team to ten wins.”
She finally picks up the microphone. “Questions?”
I look around and spot someone in the very back raising their hand.
“Not from you, Kristen, we’ll be here till tomorrow. But I think we may need a demonstration. Here on the podium, we have a teacher”—she points at herself, her eyes glinting—“and a student.” She points at Tessa.
Tessa’s gotten close to my mom, her hands holding tightly around her shoulders even when Mom tries to move around her.
It looks harmless enough, but I don’t trust Tessa.
I’m about to stand, my chair screeching with the movement, when Robyn’s hand shoots out to my wrist. I look down and then up in time to see Mom mouth Let go and Tessa reluctantly doing it.
There’s a table with a stack of tortillas on a cafeteria tray and a row of glasses of water already sloshing. Mom and Tessa, the latter much more slowly, head toward it.
Robyn leans forward, elbows on her knees, eyes bright. “Has your mom always been like this with Tessa?”
I nod. “It’s gotten worse.”
Robyn’s eyes widen. “Since when?”
I lean in. “You know.”
A dark shadow passes over her eyes, and I hate it. “Our breakup didn’t ultimately have to do with her kissing you.”
Of course it didn’t. It had everything to do with me kissing her, but just as I’m about to tell her, she taps my bicep to look at the stage. Tessa smooths her blouse before taking the water with dignity she can’t keep once her cheeks puff up. Mom grabs a tortilla.
“Ready?” my mom asks.
Tessa nods once. Mom takes a giant sip of water, and her cheeks puff. After a bit of circling each other, Mom swings, and the tortilla smacks Tessa squarely on the cheek. A thwack echoes in the room, and water explodes everywhere.
There’s a split second of stunned silence before the whole cafeteria gets swallowed by laughter.
“Rebecca!” Tessa says.
Mom swallows. “Mrs. Leighton to you, dear. But, oh my,” my mom says, eyes wide, “I guess your hand is supposed to be farther back. Are you okay?”
Tessa forces a laugh, dabbing her face with a napkin. “No worries.”
Robyn gasps, half laughing, half horrified. “Did she—”
“Accidentally?” I say, watching my mom already apologizing again. “Technically.”
Tessa’s smile is brittle now. Her gaze flicks to the crowd, then to me.
My mom lowers the tortilla slowly, water still dripping from the corner of her mouth.
“Well,” she says carefully, lips twitching, “would you look at that. I guess that’s a point for the teachers.
” She turns, scanning the room. “What do you think, students? You going to let the teachers have it? We need five of you—and of course, another five teachers. Step up.”
Tessa steps in front of my mom, annoyance in her eyes, close enough to the microphone that Mom’s voice carries.
“It’s Mrs. Leighton, dear,” she says lightly. “And it’s just a trend. No harm done, right?”
Robyn leans toward me, lips pressed together, eyes bright. “Your mother is terrifying.”
I don’t look away from the front. “Yeah.”
Tessa steps aside, flushed and clapping along like she’s enjoying herself. It’s written all over her face, though. She realized this room isn’t hers to control. She tries though.
She smiles brightly, a little too tight. “Okay. Thank you for that, Rebecca.”
“It’s Mrs. Leighton, dear,” my mom calls from her seat beside Fletcher.
“Mrs. Leighton,” Tessa corrects smoothly. “Next game. I’d love to have a volunteer to relive their high school MC’ing days.” She gestures to a row of five chairs, each with a smaller bucket resting on the seat.
“I volunteer,” Andrzej says, jogging up the stairs to the stage while holding his wineglass carefully.
“You didn’t even attend this high school!” Tessa shouts into the microphone.
Andrzej shrugs, then winks at the audience. When he tries to grab the microphone from her, his glass tilts and spills accidentally all over her front. Tessa screeches.
“Well,” he adds cheerfully, “I think you look much better now. Why don’t you go clean up and let me handle this?”
The room loses it to loud bouts of laughter. Robyn cackles beside me, full-bodied and helpless, pressing her face into my arm, fingers tugging at my jacket. I lose it with her—breath hitching, eyes burning.
Tessa’s smile doesn’t quite crack, but it goes brittle, handing the microphone off to Fletcher to moderate with Andrzej.
Before the night wraps up, Mom’s presented with a plaque for her years of service.
One for her, and one to permanently hang outside the office that’s been hers for almost twenty years.
She stands with a hand over her heart. She looks proud.
Maybe my father believed she didn’t put her family first on her way to accomplishing this, but all I see is that she thrived, and I thrived alongside her.
Something sinks low in my gut, because when it came to Robyn, the other most important person in my life, I believed the wrong lesson. Instead of standing beside her while she built her future, I turned it into something I resented and thought she chose against me.
I focus on Robyn and find her looking at me. She tips her chin and places her hand on the sliver of skin between my sleeve and my hand, the firm, grounding squeeze of her fingers around my wrist feels like an award all its own. One I am not sure I deserve.
“Well,” a voice cuts in from behind us, light and familiar, “this looks cozy.” Tessa’s back, hair damp and makeup reapplied with a heavy hand. “Did you forget he kissed me back?”
Robyn’s hand slips from my wrist.
“Your mom’s award. I can’t believe you’d let the new guy present it.”
I shake my head and stand. “That’s not what I told them.” I shove my hands in my pockets and clench my fists. Robyn stands behind me, her front to my back, but I’m done allowing Tessa’s poison to come anywhere near her. “I told them I didn’t want to present anything with you.”
She pulls her lips into a tight smile, but it looks more like a grimace. “Come on. We’re best friends,” she hisses, still smiling for anyone watching. “You cutting me out? It has to stop.”
I shake my head. “Best friends look out for each other.” My voice carries more than I intend, bouncing off the gym walls. “I don’t think we were ever friends.”
Her eyes widen a fraction.
“You saw my fears,” I continue, steadier now, “and you used them to keep me around. You sabotaged my relationship.” I swallow. “Sure—it was my bad call, but you’re not blameless.”
She opens her mouth, but I don’t let her speak.
“So no. You might need me to save face and make a point. I don’t need to do a damn thing for you ever again.”
Any response she might have is meaningless, and I’m not going to wait here for her to come up with it. Placing my hand on the small of Robyn’s back, I guide her to the entry door, where we meet Andrzej and Mom. She tells us she’s going to party with her colleagues, glancing at Fletcher.
Telling us to make ourselves at home and wait for brunch with her before we leave, she hugs Robyn, Andrzej, and me. Mom holds my gaze the way she did that Christmas, when I asked for a ring I never ended up giving.
We’re about to head out when Tessa finds us again, stomping in front of us. She turns to my mom and pats her shoulder. “Rebecca, tell—”
“Tessa, sweetie,” my mom says, “for the fifteenth time this month—it’s Mrs. Leighton to you. Only adults get to use my first name.” She tilts her head, eyes sharp. “You’re thirty-one. It’s time to grow up.”
By the time my mom finishes, Tessa’s lips are trembling. She glances at Robyn, at her palm on my shoulder, and Tessa’s eyes shift down.
I understand now the man who would want someone who needs instead of loves is the same man who would abandon his family again and again. That man may be my father, but it isn’t who I am anymore.
I’m finally a man the woman who raised me can be proud of and the kind of man someone with ambition can stand beside.
Robyn’s man.
After a few drinks—no vodka for me—and endless, affectionate arguments about Polish desserts, the house settles into sleep.
I lie awake, though, in my mom’s room, staring at the ceiling.
All evening, there’s been an undercurrent I can’t ignore.
Quick glances. Pauses that linger too long.
Robyn’s blue eyes, gold ring around her pupils, keep finding me across the room, holding, then slipping away.
She has questions I want to answer. So I slip down the hall and knock softly on my old bedroom door.