Susan studies me with a frown on her weathered face. Maybe she does know. She opens her mouth to say something, but I stop her. “Do you need help packing up your things?”
“No. I can do it.” She throws me a sad smile. “I’ll go then. Good night.” She leans over, kisses Nicky on the cheek and leaves.
I let out a relieved breath. Finally, I am alone. I welcome the solitude after the roller coaster of tonight.
Nicky has calmed down and is drooling over my shoulder. I lay him down in the crib and watch him sleep. I trace the curves of his cheeks, the soft, cute chin with my eyes. His hair is dark and mussed, his fists lifted up by his face. He jerks and his blue onesie-covered feet twitch. I pat his chest, run my palm in circles, hoping to soothe him. Soon, his breathing goes back to normal as his mouth falls open slightly.
The words tumble out of my mouth on a whisper. “I love you. I’ll always love you.”
And I love your mom.
The thought pulsates like an ache in my skull and a churn in my gut. I’m restless again.
I need to remind Hadley how much I love her. I need to remind her that we share a child. We are a family. You never turn your back on your family. I have learned that in the worst of ways.
But how do you remind someone who doesn’t want to remember?
Monday morning, the start of another week of school. Emma and I walk to class together and sit side by side, in the middle of the semicircle. Dylan enters a few minutes later and walks straight to Emma, smiles, and takes a seat by her. They begin talking and I look at my notebook, grinning.
Who would’ve thought my life would entirely spin around in a week? A week ago I didn’t even have friends, and now I have three, and I’ve got the Labyrinth too—or at least, I can hang out here until they realize I don’t belong.
My heart thumps in my chest as I flip pages of my notebook and come upon the very last page filled with my squiggly handwriting. I’m scared to look at the words I wrote. They seem childish, inadequate, unworthy of the dynamic man to whom they are dedicated.
I snap the notebook close and stare ahead.
Before long, Thomas enters the class, carrying a bundle of papers in one hand and running the other through his hair. My body tingles, goosebumps erupting over my skin.
He takes off his jacket, throws it on the chair with a tight, jerky flick of his arm. Fiddling with the cuffs of his shirt, he opens the button and folds the sleeves up to his elbows. I watch his hands cradling the papers, flicking through them, and picture him cradling Nicky’s fragile neck, soothing him.
Thomas Abrams is magic. He’s a wordsmith, a baby whisperer, a blue-eyed asshole, but most of all, he’s like me: brokenhearted.
“Miss Robinson.” Thomas’ voice lashes through the room, and I wince. He looks at me—glares, actually—and my stomach is filled with terrified butterflies.
“Do you have some work for us?”
“W-Work?”
“Yes. Do you have any?”
“Uh, I don’t…I don’t remember you giving us any homework last class.”
He throws the papers on the desk and folds his arms. “It’s a writing class, Miss Robinson. It requires you to write, to hold the pen and put it on paper—sound familiar?”
I gulp, twisting the pages of my notebook. Yup, a major asshole—but why does his anger turn me on so much? I’m a fucking masochist.
“Read us a poem you’ve written.”
Fuck. Fuck!
The butterflies inside my stomach freeze and die, dropping to the bottom like dead weight. The silence is so thick that I hear the rustle of clothes as people shift in their chairs. All eyes are staring at me and I hate that, hate the stabbing gazes.
“Do you think you’re special, Miss Robinson? Do you think I should completely ignore the fact that you’ve failed to turn in your assignment from last week? Or maybe you think your fellow students are fucking idiots for following the rules. Which is it?”
I grit my teeth against the onslaught of emotions that seem eerily similar to betrayal and choke out, “I have some work.”
He looks surprised, and that gives me a teeny sense of pleasure. “Let’s hear it.” Thomas leans against the desk and crosses his ankles.
Okay, I’m not so turned on right now as I feel the class watching me with pity. This must be so natural for them, reading their ‘work’, and here I am quaking in my boots.
I clear my throat and begin.
“The day we met you watched the moon
While I watched you.
Tall and alone. Dark and lonely.
You looked like my mirror.
Cracked and empty.
Dried up and chewed out.
I could have been yours.
If only you had looked at me.”
My voice is scratchy, and words sound garbled and thick to my ears. I’m afraid to look up and see Thomas’ reaction. I keep dog-earing the page and shifting restlessly in my seat. Even though I’m not looking, I know the exact moment he is about to say something.
“Well, an A for the effort and courage to read it out loud. No, actually…” He scratches his jaw with his thumb. “I’d say A+ for the courage. You must have a lot of it to read something this choppy and unpolished. Tell me, Miss Robinson, how many times did you revise your work?”
I almost open my mouth and blurt out, Was I supposed to? but I control myself and manage to lie. “Once?”
“Once,” he clips.
“Uh, twice.” I hold up two fingers; they are shivering, barely able to stand on their own, so I lower them.
I can see Thomas doesn’t buy it. “It shows. The structure is choppy. It’s abrupt. And your word choice is horrendous.”
My body heats up in shame, his words hitting me like fire darts. I poured out every fucking emotion I had into this stupid poem and that’s all he has to say to me? Is he even the same person from yesterday? Is he even capable of vulnerability? Is it all in my head?
“Isn’t a poem supposed to be a snapshot of a moment?” I ask with clenched teeth.
“If I have to tell you what a poem is, I think you’re in the wrong class.”
With one flick of his gaze, he dismisses me, and I’m left seething. I feel Emma squeezing my hand on the desk and I want to snap it away and shrink in my seat. I’m happy being the weird loner. I don’t need pity.
Thomas calls out other names, asking them to read. He is impatient with his comments, snappy and rude, but not as rude or condescending as he was to me. I think by the time the class is over, he’s enjoying the back and forth, the healthy debate over his precious ‘word choice,’ though he would never admit it. Fucking egomaniac.
The only person to get a fraction of positivity from him is Emma. Thomas said her poem has potential. Potential. I’m so jealous, and it’s so ridiculous that my breaths are coming in pants.
And it has nothing to do with being turned on.
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