I recoil at the thought. “Absolutely not. I can’t have that conversation with him. It’s too… awkward.”
“So, what’s your plan?” Devin asks. “Just glare at him across the trailer for the entire school year?”
“My plan is to sweep it all under the rug,” I declare. “I’ll be professional. I’ll be polite. I’ll pretend that night on the beach never happened and that he didn’t completely insult my entire life’s passion this morning. It’ll be fine.”
Flick lets out a small, knowing snort. “Yeah, because that strategy always works out so well.”
I ignore her comment, choosing instead to focus on the half-finished scarf in my lap. I don’t have the energy for confrontation. I don’t have the energy to unpack the tangled mess of my feelings for Zachary. The school year hasn’t even officially started, and I’m already exhausted. And the dull, persistent throb behind my right eye tells me my migraine has no intention of leaving anytime soon.
It’s going to be a long year.
Chapter Nine
Zachary
My fingers scream as I lock them onto the final hold. It’s a nasty little sloper, barely a bump on the aggressively angled wall, and my forearms are pumped, burning with a lactic acid fire that travels all the way to my shoulders. For a second, hanging 40 feet in the air, I think I’m going to peel off. My muscles tremble, a seismic warning of imminent failure. I take a breath, press my cheek against the cool, textured surface of the wall, and adjust my grip. My feet, searching for purchase on near-invisible jibs, finally find their mark. I push, straighten my legs, and slap my palm triumphantly on the top of the wall. Done.
The relief is a tidal wave, washing away the strain. I hang there for a moment, suspended between the rafters and the ground, just breathing. Below me, the gym is a colorful chaos of ropes, harnesses, and people moving with a focused grace. It’s a world of solvable problems. You see the route, you figure out the moves, you execute. Simple. Satisfying.
I let go and the auto-belay catches me, lowering me in a slow, controlled descent. My feet touch the padded floor with a soft thud. I unclip the heavy carabiner from my harness, theadrenaline ebbing away, leaving behind the pleasant hum of exhaustion. I wander over to the bench where I dumped my stuff, pulling my water bottle from my bag and draining half of it in a few long swallows. I grab my phone, just to check the time. That’s when it buzzes.
It’s a notification from LinkedIn. A part of my brain, the part that’s still wired for the corporate world I left behind, clicks into alert mode. I swipe it open without thinking.
And there it is. A press release from my old company. A cheerful, professionally shot photo of a man named Marcus smiling in my old office, the one with the view of Venice Beach. The headline reads: “A New Era of Product Innovation: Marcus Thorne Promoted to Chief Product Officer.”
I sink onto the bench. Marcus. He was my Director of User Experience. Capable, I guess. Ambitious. He’s standing there, in front ofmywhiteboard, wearing a smug grin that feels like a personal insult. The post is littered with the jargon I used to breathe.Synergy. Scalability. Disrupting the paradigm.It feels like a language from another life. A life I willingly torched.
For the last two days, a knot of dread has been tightening in my gut, and this notification just cinched it into a stranglehold. It isn’t that I miss the job. I don’t. I remember the 80-hour weeks leading up to that disastrous systems upgrade. I remember the burnout that felt like a physical illness, the hollow feeling of climbing a ladder just because it was there. But as much as I didn’t enjoy it, I understood it. I knew the rules. I knew how to win. It was a stable, predictable world, and I was good at it.
Teaching is… not that. Teaching is a complete unknown. The classroom hours I clocked for my certification suddenly feel like a joke. A handful of days observing a seasoned professional and teaching a few pre-approved lessons feels like trying to learn to swim by reading a book about it. Now, the first day of school islooming, a concrete date on the calendar, and the closer it gets, the more I feel like an imposter.
I can picture it so clearly: a room full of kids, thirty sets of eyes, all staring at me. Expectant. Waiting for me to be the adult, the authority, the one who knows things. What if I open my mouth and nothing comes out? What if my lessons are boring? What if that one kid—there’s always one—sees right through me and decides I’m a fraud? What if this whole cross-country move, this entire career change, was a catastrophic mistake?
I think of Maya and the other teachers I’ll be working with. Even at the faculty meeting, surrounded by the groans about sharing trailers, there was an underlying current of excitement in the room, a shared energy I couldn’t quite connect with. Iwantto love teaching. I fell in love with the idea of it when I was on an afternoon walk in my neighborhood in Los Angeles. I passed by an elementary school and saw a class of kids tending to seedlings, so quiet and full of awe. I want to be that teacher who looked so genuinely proud. But I don’t feel that yet. All I feel is a rising tide of panic. And the most terrifying question of all whispers in the back of my mind:What if I never do?
“Zachary! Killing the overhang, man!”
I jolt, pulled from the downward spiral. Dave Anders, the head of the science department, walks over, dropping his bag next to mine. He grins as he bends over and pulls out a pair of worn-out sneakers. He’s tall and friendly, with an easy smile and energy that seems boundless.
“Hey, Dave. Yeah, that last route was a beast.” I try to force a smile, hoping it looks more convincing than it feels.
“You made it look easy,” he says, sitting down at the other end of the bench. “I tapped out halfway up. My grip strength is shot for the day.”
We change out of our climbing shoes, and I focus on the simple, physical task, grateful for the distraction from the toxicchurn of my own thoughts. I shove my harness and chalk bag into my pack, zipping it up with more force than necessary.
“Well,” Dave says, slinging his own bag over his shoulder. “I've earned a beer after that pitiful performance. Heading over to Get Stuffed for happy hour. You in?”
His invitation is a lifeline. A beer. A normal, social activity. A way to stop thinking. A way to feel like the person I was before I saw that picture of Marcus in my old office, living the life I so desperately wanted to escape but now can’t stop questioning.
“Yeah,” I say, the word coming out quicker than I expected. “Yeah, absolutely. I'm in.”
The smell of yeast and garlic hits me the moment Dave pushes open the door to Get Stuffed. It’s a small place, apparently it used to be just takeout and a few rickety tables, but Dave mentioned they recently knocked down a wall and expanded into the space next door. There’s even a long, polished bar that gleams under beautiful pendant lights. It looks good. A definite upgrade from the town’s only other bar, which always smells faintly of stale beer and regret.
“Success,” Dave says, clapping me on the shoulder. “Grab us a table before the post-work crowd descends. I’ll get the beers. What do you want?”
“You grab the table, I’ll get the drinks,” I offer. “My treat. It’s the least I can do for you dragging me out of my own head.”
He grins. “In that case, I’ll take whatever local IPA they’ve got on tap. I’ll find us a booth in the back.”
