The room gets very quiet in a way that has nothing to do with sound.
Gabriel is her ex-husband.
I set down the spray bottle. Keep my face arranged.
Amber is Gabriel's ex-wife. Amber who left him. Amber who Rhiannon said he navigated painfully, the divorce Natasha mentioned once in passing with a careful look on her face that I didn't push on because it wasn't my business yet.
I look at Everly on the floor, still absorbed in her book, and do the math automatically, the way you do when something doesn't add up and your brain needs to confirm it. Six years old. Amber and Gabriel divorced ten years ago. A differenthusband. A family she built after. Everly is definitely not Gabriel’s secret child he didn’t know he had.
I let out a breath of relief.
I need to examine why I did that.
"Things ended between us after his parents passed," Amber says, her voice still light, more informational than emotional. Like she's sharing old weather. "It was a difficult time for everyone. But I've heard he's doing well now. He was always… you know, such a good man."
I think about Gabriel in the kitchen at Rhiannon's, the arm around his sister's shoulder, the way he moved through that house like someone who knows where he belongs. I think about the things he said the night we were together, the way he held space for my silence and pain. The way he didn’t rush me to calm down when the tears wouldn’t stop falling. How he just let me feel it and sit in my pain.
He lost his parents and then his marriage immediately after. He’d mentioned those things in passing, the raising of his younger sister and becoming her guardian, but he never said it with anger or bitterness.
Amber’s right. He’s always been a good man.
"I wouldn't know," I say quietly, and the words have too much in them, but Amber isn't looking for subtext, so they land flat and thankfully, she doesn't notice.
She calls Everly back from the reading corner and Everly comes reluctantly, tucking the book back into the shelf with exaggerated care. At the door, Amber turns back with a smile.
"Any Valentine's Day plans?"
"Actually, yes." I pick up the broom again. "First date in a while. Someone I matched with online."
She smiles and laughs as she tucks Everly into her side. "That's exciting. I don't miss the apps, but first dates are still kind offun. Good luck."
"Thank you."
I watch them go. Everly waves at me from under her mother's arm, big and enthusiastic, and I wave back and hold the smile until they've rounded the corner and I'm alone in the quiet of the classroom again. Then I lean the broom against the wall and just stand there for a second.
Gabriel lost his parents. And whatever broke between him and Amber broke during that, in the devastating way that grief can pull a marriage apart at the seams if both people aren't pulling in the same direction. I know something about that kind of fracture, about the way pain can make you incompatible with the person standing right next to you, about surviving something that should have brought you closer but didn't.
I wonder if he knows she's back in town. She said she reached out, so he must.
I wonder how that felt for him to hear from her. This time because she needs help with a house she purchased with her new husband. If he accepted the job, he’ll have to see the child she had that isn’t his. The family she built without him.
I wonder if that’ll hurt for him.
I wonder if he's spending Valentine's Day alone.
I grab my phone and fire off a quick email to Amber with my office hours, then tuck it back into my bag next to the construction paper heart with the backwards E.
I do not text Gabriel. That was not the arrangement. Two weeks ago, was always just about the sex. About letting my walls down and putting myself back out there.
I collect my things, turn off the lights, and lock the classroom door shut behind me.
Tonight, I have a date with a nice, normal man who has no idea who I am or what I've been through or how much work it'staken me to get to the point of even agreeing to this. Chris from the construction company with the good smile and a hard career won’t know about the way I cried in the shower with Gabriel when he helped me orgasm. When he showed me that my mind and heart might still be a little broken, but my body isn’t.
It should be fine.
It's going to be fine.
I walk to my car telling myself this with the conviction of someone who almost believes it.
