Chapter 7
brIE
“I’ll be out of your hair for dinner tomorrow,” I say as I load the dishwasher as my older sister, Gia, packs up the leftovers from dinner.
Mara and her new firefighter boyfriend, Tucker, are in the living room, playing a game with Lizzie.
Gia hums her acknowledgment. The thing about Gia is . . . I can’t read her. She’s my own sister, and I don’t know what she’s thinking, ever.
While I was working the school pick-up line this afternoon, she appeared out of nowhere, leaned up to kiss my cheek, and said, “A spare bedroom’s ready for you. We eat at 5:30.”
I was too stunned, too baffled, to even respond before she was driving away with a gaggle of kids in her bubblegum pink car.
Not that I’m complaining. I had no plan when I drove down here, and I could do worse. Way worse.
If someone told me that I’d one day be staying in a house in the neighborhood of Belmont, I’d assume it was because I was a live-in maid, not because my sister lives in a six-bedroom home with her daughter here.
Gia does data entry for a living, and Mara’s pretty sure she doesn’t get child support from her ex. No matter how curious I am, I won’t ask her about it.
Dishes clink in the sink, and I bring myself back to the conversation. “We’re meeting at a place called Jolly Jalapeno,” I say.
“Is that how you pronounce it?” Gia asks, messy bun flopping to one side as she tilts her head. “I know it’s a J, but in my head, I’ve been calling it Holly Jalapeno. You know, two H sounds. Alliteration and all.”
Frowning, I say, “I have no idea. I only read it in a text.”
I reach for my phone in my back pocket to check the text Dev sent me. A deluge of notifications from the group chat I muted earlier greets me, and I scan them from where I left off.
Poor kiddo keeps asking what bad things her teacher did.
Just say she fucked around and found out!!
Life lesson, kids: don’t be a slut LOL
Bile rises in my throat. My hands shake as I remove myself from the group chat—something I should’ve done yesterday—and shove my phone into my pocket again, glancing at Gia to make sure she hasn’t noticed.
I rewind the conversation and try to keep my tone even. “How do you not know how the restaurant is pronounced?”
She shrugs. “I don’t get out much. But they have great food. We order from there sometimes.”
Even though I’m nodding, I can’t get those messages from the Everett Academy parents out of my head. Dirty little secrets I’d never want anyone to know about, least of all Gia.
I couldn’t stomach her disappointment in me if I told her why I’m here. That I’d been too flattered, too naive, too desperate to feel seen by someone like Christopher. That I’d mistaken attention for affection, mistook manipulation for intimacy.
Long story short, I dated the older, tenured teacher for five underwhelming weeks.
Five! I believed him when he said he was separated, in the middle of divorcing his estranged wife.
Instead, his very much in-the-picture wife was trying to patch things up with Christopher while he was taking me to dinners across town.
And in a fun twist, it turns out she’s one of the more powerful members of the Everett Academy school board.
I became the villain in a story I didn’t want any part of, and in the months that followed, I was painted as a jezebel, some young hussy who seduced a good man and tried to destroy his marriage.
Rumors spread. Whispers that I’d done the same with other men in the community. Administrators, teachers, fathers.
Eventually, the board called a meeting. A witch hunt, really. With raised brows and tight smiles, they asked loaded questions, implying I was some kind of sexual opportunist.
The men at the meeting might as well have pinned a scarlet A onto my blouse.
I tried to defend myself, to explain I’d thought it was real, I didn’t know the truth. That I hadn’t set out to hurt anyone. But none of it mattered, their minds were made up.
He kept his job. I was labeled as unprofessional, dramatic, and unstable. A liability.
My contract at Everett Academy wouldn’t be renewed.
And the worst part? Over the holidays, the rumors somehow compounded. Yesterday, the first day after break, parents greeted me with How dare yous and You should be ashamed of yourselfs. Even my students snuck horrible notes on the whiteboard, in my lunch, on my chair.
It’s why I was so desperate to leave.
Gia hands me the dutch oven to wash, and I clear my throat. “This was delicious, by the way. Thanks again for having me.”
She pops a top onto the Tupperware. “Don’t thank me, it’ll get old fast. We’re happy to have you, Lizzie was already complaining about you not eating with us tomorrow. I think she’s secretly hoping you’ll bring her with you.”
I smile at that. “I’m not sure she’d want to come, it kind of sounds depressing. Tomorrow’s Woeful Wednesday? Or, no, Wistful Wednesday.”
“Never been,” she says. “I think their most popular night of the week is Taco and Trivia Tursday.”
"Tursday?"
“Yeah. I’ve never been to that either. For obvious reasons.”
My eyebrows shoot to my hairline, eager for this little nugget of information from my big sis. “What reasons?”
She stops what she’s doing and turns to look at me, ticking the reasons off her fingers.
“I have a kid. Anyone I loosely keep in touch with also has kids. I’d have to leave the house after 7pm.
I’d have to get dressed” —she gestures to her sweats— “and, most compelling of all, they call it Taco Tursday.”
“None of those are good reasons,” I say.
She hums her acknowledgment again, though this time it’s laced with disagreement.
I won’t let her off that easy. “Now you have a built-in babysitter.” I point at myself with one hand as I tick my retorts off on the other.
“Your friends can also get a babysitter, or you can make new, childless friends since it’s one of, like, three bars here.
Wearing actual clothes and leaving the house after 7pm is good for you sometimes.
And ‘Taco Tursday’ is a hilarious name.”
“Agree to disagree,” she says flatly.
Through a yawn, I say, “Maybe I should have planned for next week.” At this point, I’ve been awake for thirty-six hours, and I’m pretty sure I could sleep for a week straight.
“You could reschedule,” she suggests.
“It’s tempting, but I’m really excited to see Dev.”
“Dev! You guys were the sweetest friends growing up.”
“You could come,” I say. “I’m sure Mara would babysit, and you can wear pants without a drawstring.”
“No.” She says it like it’s its own sentence. After a beat, she adds, “Though I am mildly intrigued by the idea of a forty year old hanging out with kids in their early thirties. Ripe for comedy.”
“Excuse me, first you’re in your thirties. You aren’t forty for another year. And second” —I stop what I’m doing now to look at her— “kids?!”
She grins, knowing she hit her mark.
“Ugh, you are so annoying,” I say, though I’m grinning when she hands me the last pan to wash.
So Gia has a sense of humor.
She glances casually at me. “I saw Dev at Maddy’s a few weeks ago. He’s filled out prett-y nicely,” she says. “And that voice. Hearing him talk is like swimming in the darkest molasses, silky and smooth.”
I lift my eyebrows. “When did you get so poetic?”
She shrugs. “It’s prose, not poetry.”
“Okay, when’d you get so prosaic?”
“That’s insulting.”
Chuckling, I think about Dev again. Time and distance have reduced our friendship to the kind where we might not speak for months, then randomly text each other every day for a week.
In fact, a meme popped up from him as I was getting gas outside Louisville early this morning.
It felt like a lifeline, so I let it spill that I was on my way to Blue Ridge.
Tomorrow will be the first time we’ll be in the same room in years. But growing up, I considered him my best friend. He never asked too many questions, and he was always smiling, always in a good mood.
And he was always good-looking. The selfies he’s sent me over the years tell me Gia’s right—he’s only gotten better with age.
Suddenly, going out tomorrow night sounds much better than catching up on sleep.