Teagan waited until we were all the way in the first-grade pod of classrooms before she hissed, “Good lord, she’s great with the kids, but somebody save us.”
“She’s just so much happiness. I mean, for goodness’ sake, the sun isn’t even up.” Butterflies fluttered through my tummy—first day jitters. I loved teaching first grade, but now Monika had made me nervous. Was I really up for this?
My best friend since diapers squinted her eyes at me. “Don’t let her get under your skin. She hasn’t worked five days in a row all school year. She’s constantly calling in for mental health days.”
“So the kids are gremlins?”
She snorted a laugh. “No, they’re just normal kids. She makes everything harder than it needs to be.”
I took a deep breath, knowing Teagan was probably right. She wouldn’t have dragged me into something crazy without warning. Not to say she wouldn’t have totally dragged me into the seventh circle of hell, but she would have warned me before we started the journey.
“You hate Monika,” I concluded as we turned on the lights to my new classroom and explored the new digs. “Teagan Meyer. I can’t believe it.” Mostly because Teagan loved everybody.
Well, almost everybody.
She’d never liked Hudson. Towards the end, she’d stopped pretending to try.
She rolled her eyes and bent over to pick up a rogue pillow on the ground. She put it back in a pile of other soft pillows and squishies under a sign that read “Calming Corner.”
“I don’t hate her,” she insisted. “She’s just obsessed with Cooper and Sam. I mean, like obnoxious about it. She wants me to set her up with one of them, but I keep making excuses.”
Something dark and jealous twisted through me. It was a feeling I often felt when girls were interested in Cooper and Sam. I usually ignored it and chalked it up to a protective, sisterly whatever.
It was maybe a little weird that I didn’t feel the same overprotective urge with Riley and Alex—but they were older, less involved in my life. Cooper was like a brother to me. He had visited me almost as many times as Teagan had when I lived in Denver.
He had also hated Hudson, which was probably because of the same reasons I now hated Monika: brother-sister vibes.
And the same was probably true for Sam, although I was never, ever going to call it brother-sister vibes again, because that was gross and messed up, and good grief, it was time to move on with my day.
“She’s fine,” Teagan groaned when I still had yet to verbally reply. “I mean, eventually she’ll be fine. If Cooper wants to date her then whatever. I want him to be happy.”
“Do not set them up,” I warned. “Imagine him at the next rivalry game.”
She wrinkled her nose, but her gaze stayed sharp. “Maybe I’ll set her up with Sam. Then we’ll only have to deal with her half the time.”
“Do it,” I encouraged, but I didn’t recognize my own voice for some reason. “That would be hilarious.”
“Hilarious?”
I shrugged. “Or maybe they’d be good for each other. I don’t know. I just met her.”
“So you like her then? You like her for Sam?”
“I don’t know Sam anymore.” She was staring at me from across the room and it was making my skin itch beneath the collar of my sweater. “If you think she’d be good for him, do it. I don’t care.” I turned around to look at the whiteboard, hopeful itwas familiar and easy to teach. “I mean, it seems like she’d annoy the hell out of him—and us—when we’re forced to be around her. But if you think they’d be good for each other, then set them up. Don’t wait.”
“Okay, maybe I will.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder and moved toward the classroom door.
“Good,” I insisted. “Do it. I keep telling you to do it.”
“Okay, I’m going to do it,” she said decisively. “Right now.”
“Great.”
“Yay.”
“Perfect.”
“Match made in heaven.”
