Nash Brothers Box Set - Carrie Aarons Page 0,208

because I’ve already given you countless orgasms. So, you let me know which night next week is best for you, and I’ll pick you up.”

All I can do is manage a slight nod, my stomach in knots, my heart fluttering as if I’m a schoolgirl just getting noticed by her crush for the first time.

25

Penelope

“I still have a headache.”

The girl, a junior who I’d heard was in the midst of a breakup with her boyfriend was currently lying on a cot in my office.

“Well, you don’t have a fever, and I can’t reach your mother, so you’re going to have to go back to class,” I tell her.

“Can’t I just lie here another period?” She bites her lip, a worried, sad expression marking her young face.

I sympathize with her, but my job is to take care of ill students. Or nurse them, no pun intended, through the emotional sicknesses of teenage-hood.

“I’m afraid not since you don’t seem that sick. But … if there is something you’d like to talk about, we can do that, too.”

Her green eyes shift, and she reminds me of myself not so long ago.

The girl, Maisy was the name she’d written on my sign-in sheet, sits up. “I just … I don’t feel like going to next period. And I didn’t want to eat in the cafeteria either.”

I sit on the cot across from her, putting my elbows on my knees in a relaxed position. “And why is that?”

She hangs her head, sniffling. “My boyfriend broke up with me.”

My right hand goes to her shoulder, providing a comforting pat. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

It was important not to ask too many questions because that’s when the students spooked or lashed out. Let them tell their own story, in their own time. They just want an ear that won’t judge them.

“He is a jerk!” she bursts, more tears pouring down her face. “He dumped me because he likes one of the girls in my friend group. She said she didn’t mean for it to happen, but how do you do that to a couple who has been dating for four months?”

A four-month relationship is a lifetime in these halls. “Someone who isn’t your friend. And not everyone will be. But do you know what else this means? That he isn’t the one for you, either.”

She sniffles and rolls her eyes. “That’s just something people say.”

Smart girl … she knows how to sniff out bullshit.

I nod. “It is, but in this case, I mean it. No man worthy of your time would ever leave you, regardless of a crush or not. A good guy, he keeps all his attention on you. And when you meet the right one, you won’t even worry about the stability of your relationship. You’ll know he loves you and only you.”

A little deeper than I planned to go with a teenage broken heart, but I hope she takes the advice.

I wish I could tell them that none of this would matter someday. That the lost relationships, the drama, the social anxiety and worrying about who wore what … that it was all just a stepping stone to something greater. That when they became husbands or wives, or parents, that they’d transform into bigger people than the ones fighting over the jock douchebag who Maisey was trying to avoid in the lunch line.

But making Maisey, and the girls like her, feel heard … that’s my job. Curing their emotional hurts just as much as their physical ones, is also my job.

Eventually, she does leave the nurse’s office to rejoin the uphill swim to survive high school.

I’m struck though, hours after she leaves, at how different my life might have been if Travis and I had never fallen in love. If anything had gone differently at any point in my existence, I could be living a completely different life.

As it was, I was beginning a new chapter that I never envisioned tackling again.

Dating.

Specifically, dating Forrest Nash.

And now that I’m officially back on the dating market, I’m going to have to tell one important person.

Marion.

Until I know what this is between Forrest and me, I don’t want to spill the tea to my mother or Lily. They’ll just get up in my business, give me their opinions, want the download after every date or sleepover. I don’t want the headache right now, or the added pressure to a situation I’m not even sure about.

But I do know that I have to tell Travis’ mother.

Part of me