Theo
Istared at my empty mini fridge with the kind of despair usually reserved for discovering your car won’t start on a Monday morning. No Diet Coke. No caffeinated salvation to get me through the rest of this interminable day.
My lack of non-sugary goodness meant I’d have to venture into the teachers’ lounge.
Sweet buttery bread.
The teachers’ lounge was essentially high school all over again, except now the popular kids had tenure and the outcasts graded papers alone in their classrooms. The social hierarchies engrained from our earliest days were perfectly intact: the athletic coaches who commanded respect through sheer force of whistle-wearing personality, the teachers who quoted Shakespeare at faculty meetings and somehow made it charming instead of pretentious, and the others who formed their own little pocket of logical superiority in the corner by the ancient copy machine that worked only when the sun was high and humidity low.
Then there were the rest of us—the librarians, the art teachers, the foreign language instructors—floating around the periphery like educational satellites, occasionally pulled into orbit when someone needed to borrow supplies or couldn’t figure out how to make the coffee machine work.
The only difference between the teachers’ lounge and actual high school was that now everyone had mortgages and back problems, which somehow made the whole social dance even more pathetic. At least the teenagers had the excuse of still-developing prefrontal cortexes; what was our excuse for caring whether the assistant football coach saved us a seat at the “good” table?
The lounge was mercifully empty when I pushed through the door, nothing but the hum of ancient vending machines and the lingering scent of reheated leftovers. No one had microwaved tuna. I took that as a victory for olfactory glands everywhere.
I swiped my card, retrieved my frosted can of Diet Coke, and claimed a corner table. The place might’ve been empty in that moment, but I knew it wouldn’t remain so, and I didn’t want to face the awkward stares of others who wondered why I was sitting too far in the center of attention—er, the room. I unwrapped my sad turkey sandwich that tasted vaguely like cardboard and pulled out my dog-eared copy ofThe Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.
Five minutes into my meal, the door burst open with the kind of energy that made me instinctively look for escape routes. Mike Albert, one of the English teachers, strode in with Coach Mateo Ricci close behind. Both were the kind of teachers who actually looked forward to lunch duty, eating in the cafeteria as often as the teachers’ lounge. They could remember every student’s name by October. Mike got invited to graduation parties, and Mateo’s basketball players were always hanging around his office during their free periods.
They were the cool teachers.
I braced myself for polite nods and the awkward dance of pretending we didn’t see each other while sharing the same space. Instead, Mike spotted me—and his face lit up like Christmas morning.
“Theo! Mind if we join you?”
I blinked, certain I’d misheard, and pointed at my chest with the remains of my sandwich, smearing mayo on my dark navy shirt. “Me?”
“Yeah, you.” Mateo was already pulling out a chair, his lunch bag hitting the table with a soft thud. “We’ve been wanting to catch up with you.”
“Catch up? With me?” I repeated, feeling like I was missing some crucial piece of information. “We’ve never really . . . I mean, we don’t usually . . .”
“Hang out?” Mike supplied helpfully, dropping into the chair across from me. “Yeah, well, it turns out we have a mutual friend.”
My stomach flipped. “Mutual friend?”
“Big, sexy, muscular blond guy who works for one of those delivery services and apparently has a thing for librarians?” Mateo’s grin was positively predatory. “Ring any bells?”
“Jer—” I stared at them. “You know Jeremiah?”
“Oh, we know him,” Mike said, exchanging a look—an almost maniacal grin—with Mateo. “He delivers to Shane’s workshop all the time. Tools, supplies, that kind of thing.”
“Plus,” Mateo added with a grin, “he’s been to a few of our group gatherings. Nice guy. Great sense of humor.”
“Group gatherings?” I felt like I was three steps behind in this conversation. Jeremiah had never mentioned a group of friends or gatherings or any of this. I hadn’t exactly asked. I guess I just assumed he was, well, as lonely as I was.
That thought twisted something in my chest.
I had Debbie. She was the best thing to ever—that could ever—happen to me. I didn’t need anything or anyone else. Why was I . . .
Lonely?
“Yeah, we’ve got this little crew that hangs out sometimes. It’s nothing formal, just a bunch of misfits who enjoy culinary torture at the hands of a crazy woman. Shane, me, Mike, Sisi—she’s our token straight girl—Matty and Omar . . . and now Jeremiah. Dane and Patrick show up sometimes, but they’re crazy busy. Then there’s Mrs. H, the crazy woman. She’s in a category all her own.”
Mike snorted. “Mrs. H loves to twist Jeremiah’s undies more than any of the rest of us. Poor guy never sees it coming.”
“He’s hot and sweet, but man, that boy is blond,” Mateo said through a chuckle.
“Who is Mrs. H?” I asked, though something about the way they said it made me slightly nervous.
