The ache in him becomes an ache in me, and I feel the true essence of empathy. Physically taking on someone else’s emotion and holding it in your heart exactly as it is, without changing or reshaping it.
It’s not as heavy a sensation I expected. There’s a certain sweetness in the sadness. Even in pain, his heart is still so pure.
My first impulse is to go over and wrap him in a hug. To bury my head in his chest, and breathe in his wholesome, homey scent and tell him everything will be okay.
I refrain because I don’t think he’d appreciate that, not in a school setting. So I just stow my hands in my coat pockets as he keeps tidying up his desk. He’s onto the pens now, making sure all the caps are on as tightly as can be and that they’re all stashed the same way in the wicker cup.
“How about you?” Rory asks, as if there’s nothing more to talk about. As if I’m not bursting with a million follow-up questions. “Any rom-com princes swept you off your feet?”
I let out a gritty chortle at the irony of it. “Hardly,” I say. “I don’t think princes are my type.”
“I thought they were every girl’s type.”
“Apparently not.”
We don’t say anything for a moment, just stare at each other. His golden eyes finally hold mine again, like they used to, with that cozy texture that makes me want to snuggle up on the couch and take a nap together.
A bell rings. It’s a short, high-pitched thing that cuts the moment short and takes me back to my own school days—the feeling of coming in from playing soccer at recess, sweaty and grass stained and brimming with life. Little did I know Rory was doingthe same thing the next school over (though probably without the grass stains).
“The kids will be going into lunch now,” Rory says, standing up from his desk and smoothing the nonexistent wrinkles out of his button-down shirt. “Want to see Mala?”
So I follow him out of the classroom and down the hall. His loafers drag on the rubber tile floor rather than bouncing to their usual beat. Again, I feel like a terrible friend for not being there for him in his lows.
The circular cafeteria is stacked with long tables with bench seating. I always used to like lunch tables with benches versus the ones with individual seats, because it was easier to just slide onto the end of a bench and pretend like I belonged. Benches made it less obvious if there wasn’t a seat for me.
Rory tracks down Mala, who’s unpacking a pink lunchbox at the middle of a window table. I’m glad to see she has a few friends to sit with.
She leaps out of her seat when she sees me, and it makes me feel all filled up inside. “Miss Kat!” she exclaims. “Mummy packs the best sandwiches—look here,” she says, when I sit down to join her at the table, and Rory heads to the teachers’ lounge. “Even though she never gives me chocolate biscuits like I ask for. Chocolate biscuits are my very favorite thing in the world.”
Opening up her Tupperware, she takes out a stack of chutney and cheese sandwiches, all cut out in different shapes—a star, a rainbow, a smiley face. My maternal instinct is triggered in an uplifting sort of way, and I feel it in my veins, that I do want to be a mom someday. The kind who packs my kids’ lunches and cuts their sandwiches into festive shapes.
I think back to the time that Rory said he wanted Emily to be able to stay home and not have to work. It had felt insultingly anti-feminist of them both. But maybe the only way you can be anti-feminist is if you force a certain path upon a woman or judge her for not living how you think she should. And right now, the prospect of being a fully present mom makes me feel I’d be more successful than by being a famous CEO. It’s just a fleeting thought that passes quickly, but the aftertaste lingers and is alarmingly palatable.
“You can have the heart-shaped one, Miss Kat,” Mala says, doling out a sandwich. “Say, do you have a Valentine, Miss Kat?” she wants to know.
“No,” I say, trying not to sound too glum about it, though I’ve seen all the red-and-pink-heart decor filling up the shops. I’d been hoping that Valentine’s Day was just an American holiday, but no such luck. “Not this year.”
“Me neither,” Mala says. “Mummy and Daddy reckon I’m too young, but I quite disagree.” She makes a sad little sigh that’s far beyond her years, and it makes me wonder what she’ll be like as a teenager. “Why don’t you have one, Miss Kat? Aren’t you in love? You’re rather old not to be in love, wouldn’t you say?”
“Um,” I say, and it’s impossible to get offended by the innocent way she’s asking and the soft intonation of her accent. “It’s complicated.”
Mala’s shoulders slump. “Grown-ups always say it’s complicated,” she laments. “It’s like they think I won’t understand. I’m seven and ahalfnow, did you know?” She squirms importantly in her seat.
“It’s not that I don’t think you’ll understand. It’s just—” I pause, trying to find the right words. “I’m in love with someone who doesn’t love me back. Does that make sense?”
“Indeed, it does,” she says very solemnly. “I’m in the same situation, see.” And then she proceeds to spill her heart out to me, says that she’s in love with a boy in her class. His full name is Jeremiah Bartholomew, but that takes too long to say so everyone calls him JB. But he doesn’t like Mala at all, he’s always stealing her Percy Pig candies at snack time and tripping her on the playground.
“Sometimes boys tease the girls they like,” I say.
“No, that doesn’t make sense,” Mala decides. “He just doesn’t fancy me, that’s all.” She sighs heavily, then starts peppering me with questions. “Say, who are you in love with, Miss Kat? Is it someone from America?”
I nod.
“Reckon Mr. Cooper knows them?” She looks excited by the prospect.
“I think he might.”
Then an idea lands on me in that stubborn sort of way that makes it clear it won’t be rid of me until I see it through. I know it’s completely ridiculous to let a seven-year-old be leading my love life. But I also know that I have to tell Rory how I feel now that he’s not with Emily. And I want Mala to get the answers her young heart needs too.
