47
Ben
We'd all pulled into the school lot within ten minutes of each other and we were all leaning against our own vehicles like a row of men who'd been shot but were too polite to fall down about it.
Beth and Emma and Noah were running around in the strip of grass at the edge of the lot, taking turns shrieking, doing the thing kids do where they invent a game that has no rules, no point, and no clear winner, and is somehow the best game of all time. The light was that early-evening kind that makes everything orange and softer than it should be. The play meeting started in fifteen minutes. None of us had moved toward the doors.
"You look like absolute dog shit," Cole told me. It was the first thing he'd said since we got there.
"Yeah, well. You look like a man who lost a fight with a paper shredder. So."
Cole let out a breath. "I'm not used to feeling this shitty. Don't know what the fuck to do with it."
Luke didn't say anything and instead was staring at his shoes.
I exhaled and watched my breath in the October air. "Beth asked me three times yesterday why Miss Morgan keeps being sick and when she's coming back to class." I sighed. "I wonder if that means she's taken a week off to have a fling with her new beau." The acid in my own voice surprised me. "Beth said Mr. Donaldson smells like a basement, and that she just wanted her teacher back. What the fuck was I supposed to say to that?"
"Emma asked me last night if Miss Morgan was mad at her," Luke said to his shoes. "I told her no, of course not, Miss Morgan loves you. And then I lay in bed for three hours thinking about the fact that I have no idea who the woman I fell in love with is."
Cole said nothing. His jaw was doing its grindy thing.
"Daddy."
Beth had appeared at my hip without me noticing. She was looking up at me with her hands on her hips, which she'd inherited from a grandmother who had never let me get away with anything either.
"Hey, kid."
"You're doing your sad face. Uncle Cole's doing it too. Uncle Luke is the worst at it." She turned and inspected Luke. "Uncle Luke. You look like the dog in that old cartoon."
"Which dog?"
"Eeyore."
"Beth," Luke said. "Eeyore isn't a dog."
She blinked at him. "What is he, then?"
"He's a donkey."
"Oh." She frowned and then casually shot back. "Then you look like a sad old stuffed donkey."
"Yup, that's my girl," I said.
"She's not wrong though," Cole smirked for the first time since Friday.
"Yeah, thanks for that Beth. I do feel like a stuffed donkey."
She nodded firmly. "Well stop it. You're making the parking lot weird." Then she sprinted back to Emma and Noah without waiting for a reply, because her work was done.
We tried, for ten seconds, to fix our faces. We were not good at it. Beth turned around once from twenty feet away to look at us, shook her head like we were a deep disappointment, and went back to her game.
"I do not want to go in there," I said. Quieter than I meant to. "I want to see her so fucking bad I've been counting the hours since six this morning, and at the same time I am hoping she has the flu so I can have one more day before I have to stand in a room with her."
"Me too."
"Me three." Luke's voice cracked on it. "I keep thinking about her face. I keep-"
"Stop." Cole grumbled. "We go in we finish the volunteer work we signed up for and then we get the fuck out of there. End of story."
