“Yep.”
“Oliver.” She narrows her eyes at me. “I’m about to go in there and see your mother.”
Wincing, I wipe her face down.
“I love you,” she whispers.
“I love you more,” I answer.
“Impossible.”
“Nope.”
“No way in hell.”
“Yep,” I tell her, taking her hand and bringing her back into the bar.
“SURPRISE!” screams my family, my friends, old co-workers, Lina, and the third grade team. Someone starts scream singing ‘Happy Birthday’, the Flores way, and the whole room chimes in. Tito Rick provides guitar accompaniment.
“Happy birthday,” the love of my life whispers into my ear, and I am complete.
Epilogue
“ONE, TWO, THREE,”Oliver shouts.
“EYES ON ME,” the bar responds.
“THREE, TWO, ONE,” Oliver yells.
“DOWN AND DONE!” the bar screams back.
It’s the last day of school, so there are approximately forty-five-ish teachers at Tim’s this time. But I lost track after the fourth shot of bottom shelf tequila.
Plus a few more people.
Emmanuel’s partner Nick is here, an extremely handsome (gasp) finance bro. It’s irritating how good looking they are together.
Eloise is here because she was hot and wanted a margarita. She ended up staying for all the shots, and is now talking to Nick about something annoyingly finance related, like what a hedge fund is, and how it is not a gardening budget.
Oliver is here because teachers don’t want to drink with their administrators. So he’s not with his school, he’s with ours. Because he is no longer our administrator.
Which he fully capitalizes on, by the way, as he downs thefourth shot of tequila with the rest of us, slamming it down on the bar after he takes it.
And oh boy, is he a fun drunk.
He grins at me and the rest of the third grade team. “Let’s play a game!” he shouts, the corners of his eyes crinkling, a huge grin on his face.
We groan.
“Is this going to be like one of your annoying icebreakers?” asks Tamika.
“If I have to share what my ‘why’ is one more time…” Emmanuel threatens.
“Let’s do roses and thorns of this school year,” Oliver says, cheerfully ignoring them. “I’ll start. My thorn is when Max’s dad attacked the PS 2 community at the Fall Festival,” he says, kissing my hair. “My rose was finding out that PS 2’s state test scores improved by five percent this year.”
“My turn,” Emmanuel says. “My thorn was… that day when I had to cover Georgia’s class and leave Chaya alone, because Georgia was late.” He pauses for dramatic effect. “…because she had just gotten fucked into a coma by myboss.” He smirks. “But I kind of was living for that, too.”
“I paid you back for that!” I scream at him, Oliver smirking behind me.
