not disguise the bizarre feeling of joy that had just appeared inside my body—like a million tiny, carbonated bubbles. I felt positively fizzy.
Duncan peered at me, reading my face.
I smiled. I couldn’t help it. Then I put my hand over my mouth.
He shook his head at me, like he couldn’t make sense of it all. “It was always casual. Sometimes I think we were really just dating because she wanted it so badly. It was easier to say yes than no. Anyway, I left Andrews the next year—got offered a job in Baltimore—and she didn’t want to leave California, and that was that.”
I didn’t know what else to do but start laughing. “Just to confirm one more time: not married?”
“Not even close.”
I shook my head. “I thought you went home every night to the wife and kids.”
“God, no. I go home every night with Chuck Norris—who has totally become the alpha, by the way—and then he bosses me into giving him half my dinner and then sleeps on my head.”
“Okay,” I said. “So—similar.”
“I’m not opposed to being married, though,” Duncan said. Then he added, “Kind of the way you feel about cats.”
Oh, my God.
Wait—what?
My mouth dropped open. “You … know that?”
“That you are neutral on cats? But more of a dog person?”
I felt like all the air had been sucked out of the sky. “Wait. You … remember me?”
“Of course. We worked together at Andrews.”
“But … have you always remembered me—or just since I started yelling at you?”
His voice sounded a little rough. “I have always remembered you.”
“But why didn’t you say anything?”
“What was there to say?”
“I don’t know. How about ‘Hello. Nice to see you again. How’ve you been?’”
Duncan’s eyes seemed softer, somehow. “Hello,” he said. “Nice to see you again. How’ve you been?”
Luckily, I remembered the third-graders nearby. I condensed my voice into a whisper-shout. “I’ve been shitty, thank you!” I said.
“Not entirely, though,” Duncan said back, and I was too mad to notice that he sounded almost human. “You love it here.” Then he added, “And it seems to love you.”
Were we going to talk about something real now? It was completely disarming. I felt dazed. “I did love it here. I loved this job, and this town, and this school. I’ve grown up, and—you know…” I wanted to say “blossomed” but that felt like a weird thing to say about myself.
“Blossomed,” Duncan supplied, when I faltered.
I blinked at him.
“But then,” I went on, “we lost Max. My hero—everybody’s hero—and the closest thing to a father, and a mentor, and frigging Santa Claus that I’ve ever known. He died right in front of me. Just as close as you are right now. And then, boom! You showed up—and I was so hopeful to see you again, and I thought maybe you could heal—” I almost said me, but then I switched to “—us all. But you were totally different. Nothing like the guy I knew. Nothing like Max, either. Nothing like this school or its values. And now I don’t know what to do because now everything that mattered to me is falling apart—and it’s not all because of you, but you are certainly not helping—and it’s so much worse now because I just used to be so totally—”
I stopped myself from saying in love with you.
I tried again. “You were just so—”
I stopped myself from saying lovable.
Finally, I said, “It’s worse than if you were just some random, ordinary, pencil-pushing, form-loving administrator. It’s worse than if you were just some run-of-the-mill douchebag. Because I know who you used to be. And he was so much better than the guy you’ve become.”
In the process of, you know, speaking my truth, I had stepped closer and closer to him, and by the time I finished, I was just inches away, and he was looking down at me.
The wind tugged at my straw hat, so I put a hand on top to hold it in place.
For a second there, I felt like I’d made a pretty good argument.
And then I realized I’d just called my boss a douchebag.
He realized it, too.
In the silence that followed, it was like he shuttered himself back up. He took a step back. He gave a single nod. Then he said, “Noted.”
We’d forgotten ourselves for a second there. His utter surprise that I’d thought he’d married the long-forgotten Chelsey and fathered a litter of kids had disarmed him. For a few minutes, he’d relaxed into his natural self. We hadn’t been fighting, or disagreeing,