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WORSER-ER

Sarah

“Bernard is the worst , Sarah! C’mon, he really said that to you?”

Kensy wasn’t wrong, Bernard really was the worst, but it felt like a judgment on me when she said it like that. I mean, I’d chosen to go out with him, so what did that make me? Worser-er? Lamer-er?

“Oh, he said it alright,” I put my glasses on and played awkwardly with the frame, stuttering in my best Bernard impression, “ I… I… Just don’t think… Women should be… In… In politics. The… The… Hormones.

“My God, that man!”

“Right!? I mean, who even thinks that, yet alone says it out loud to his date?”

“Uh huh,” Kensy agreed, nodding and splashing a few drops of wine on my kitchen floor at the same time. “Good riddance!”

Okay, so Kensy, she’s my best friend. I’ve known her for over four years now, ever since I joined Parkford Junior Primary School. I hadn’t meant to be a first-grade teacher, it certainly wasn’t where I’d ever seen myself, but it wasn’t the worst job I’d ever had either and, honestly, I’d been thankful for it at a time when I’d been… Well, let’s just say, lost, for now.

Things hadn’t been going too well for me in the year building up to all that, and that’s a wild understatement. Coming back to my hometown as a complete emotional wreck was not what I’d seen in my future. Neither was living a small-town life in the suburban backwaters of America, alone and going nowhere, but that was how life had worked out. In truth, I was half-relieved. After all that trouble in California.

I’d needed something to keep me moving, not forward exactly, but at least not falling backward into a bleak black hole of miserable nothingness. So, I sleepwalked my way into taking my teaching exams. It was, at the very least, a welcome distraction and something to focus on that wasn’t the nightmare that had put me there.

Then, before I knew it, I ended up subbing at Parkford, where I met Kensy. A neurotic, funny, and warm-hearted woman my own age, who wore improbably loud and out-of-fashion dresses (more often than not with 80s shoulder pads), laughed like an unhinged hyena, and shared my love of cheap gas station wine and both moaning or laughing about the lives we were living out.

Eventually, when Helen Potts had a full-blown seismic meltdown in class and left Parkford mid-term, I was there to slot neatly into her shadow. That had been four years ago. Somehow, the time had passed, and I felt like I’d never woken up.

Kensy, on the other hand, had already been there a year before I arrived and she came along when I desperately needed a friend. I hadn’t told her about why I was back in Merryville at first - not about Jake, not about the immense swell of pain and all that agony I had brought back with me - but eventually it came out. You can’t hide that much sadness for too long. It always finds a way to the surface.

Now, I was making it work. Getting on with life again. And I barely thought about it much more than that. I was just glad to have not sunk without a trace. To have narrowly avoided being swallowed up and then slowly and painfully digested in the cavernous stomach of events that had put me there.

But if Parkford Junior had saved me, it had also smothered me. I just couldn’t see beyond it. If I’m honest, I had hoped that by that point in my life, someone would have come along, swept me off my feet, and saved me from the small life I’d willingly trapped myself in. But no one had come. And so there I was, fading away slowly with each passing day. Oh, and going on lame dates with guys like fucking Bernard .

I’d once aspired to more greatness than teaching kids how to not kill each other. Now, it gave me some safety, some security, all of which I needed. The kids also made me laugh more than they made me want to scream. It was only the parents who were the real downer.

Although I didn’t say it out loud, the highlight of my week was mine and Kensy’s Friday night wine and gossip nights. There wasn’t a whole lot of gossip in truth, but we managed with what we had.

“…Into the last minute of the last game of the season and Hayden Raynor—The Hellraiser!—takes out Sampson with a HUGE hit to the boards…”

Kensy and I looked over to the television screen as we heard Hayden’s name and I felt a familiar flutter of buttery excitement inside. 230lbs and 6’ 8” of muscle, sex, and sweat on skates. He did something to me, that man, and I liked it. God, what would it be like to have someone like that in your life? A raging protector, willing to destroy everything and everyone for you.

“…And Sampson has dropped the gloves! They’re going at it in the last minute here! The Hellraiser and the Stallion trading blows…”

“So, we’re going, right?” Kensy said, her eyes still glued to the TV screen with mine. I smiled to myself at the thought and let those feelings flutter again.

“I mean look at that Kensy! We’ve got to!” I replied, as we watched Hayden now skating like a bloodied but victorious gladiator toward the penalty box. Every inch of him oozing masculine and rugged, raw power as the crowd went wild.

Hockey was a big thing in Merryville, and the Ice-Hawks had been the surprise hit of the league this year. Now it was the last game of the season, and that meant this coming Wednesday would be the end-of-season hockey charity ball. Normally, I wouldn’t care too much about it, but not this year.

Kensy was actually going to get us in through her cousin, an events manager at the Glass House Arena. And then there was the real kicker… Hayden Raynor—all of that wild, rugged, violent man—would be up for grabs in this year’s charity auction. A night with the Hellraiser . I sighed to myself dreamily.

“Hope you saved up some of that teacher’s salary,” Kensy said with a big grin on her face.

I sighed at the reality. “I could never afford him, Kensy. But my God! Could you imagine?”

It was true, I didn’t have the kind of money it would take to live out my vivid fantasies of a date with the “ Hellraiser”. Still, it made me giddy to think about, and who knows? Maybe what Hayden was really looking for in his superstar life was a broken-hearted first-grade teacher, hurtling toward her thirties, in old clothes, living in a cheap one-bed rental in the bad end of town, with barely any life to speak of other than the teacher’s quiz night every Wednesday.

“ Fuck . Yes, Sarah! Yes, I can. And I will again when I get home tonight too!”

We laughed, but even so, I wanted to know what it would be like. Even just seeing him up close at the ball would be a thrill in itself.

The great thing about a celebrity crush is that it’s a safe fantasy. They can be whoever who want them to be in your imagination, without ever having to face the stark reality. The perfect man. In all honesty, my fantasies of Hayden had become a bit of an obsession of late, but a girl needed some excitement, even if it was just something I dreamed up. A warm feeling rushed through my blood as my brain rewarded me with a tantalizing fantasy…

“Wow, that dress! Sarah, I’m so glad it was you who won the auction.”

“I guess I don’t scrub up so bad for a primary school teacher.”

“Crazy idea babe, but how about we skip the restaurant and order room service instead?”

“You have a wicked look in your eye, Hayden. I like that.”

“Well, you bought me, so I’m at your every command. Anything you want, Sarah. I’m all yours, all night…”

“Okay,” I shrilled, shutting down my escalating daydream, turning off the television, and draining my glass in one swift movement. “It’s a school night, so I’m calling an end to this and throwing you out.”

“Fair enough,” Kensy said as she hopped off the countertop. “ See you tomorrow. Who knows? Hicks might even wear a new entertaining tie to cheer us all up.”

I rolled my eyes with a smile. “Yeah. What a thrill.”

It was a sparkling spring day as I pulled up to the school the next morning. The parking lot was full, as always. It was never smart to arrive late, or you ended up in the overflow, which was a good five-minute walk from the main doors of Parkford Junior. This morning I was late, because my fantasy-man, Hayden Raynor, had unexpectedly pulled back my shower curtain, climbed in, scrubbed me down oh-so tenderly and sexily with his giant soapy paws, then turned me against the wall and taken me like a wild beast until I had come like a howling steam train. These shower fantasies were really starting to get out of hand, and they had only increased in intensity now that the hockey ball was coming up.

“Those goddamn parents taking up the teaching spots. Someone should do something about it,” John Princeton huffed from behind me, already out of breath.

“Maybe we should set their cars on fire before we go in, as a warning,” I joked.

John didn’t get the joke and squinted at me, trying to tell if I’d gone over the edge and was actually about to descend into violence and disorder. Yes! The revolution was here and we were taking our parking spaces back!

“You going to the teacher quiz tomorrow night?” He asked.

“Nope,” I told him with a delighted smile on my face. “Me and Kensy are hitting up the hockey ball.”

“Oh, very nice! ”

“I plan on buying myself a hockey player and then living the high life, John.”

“Sure you will. Hey, and then you can bring them to the quiz! We need someone who’s good for the sports round.”

A pang of annoyance seared through my bubble of excitement, popping it painfully with the stark reality that what I’d said would never actually happen. Growing up, I’d always believed that I’d get whisked away by some movie star, pop star, maybe a cowboy, or a German gymnast (okay, maybe that’s just me. But I developed a strange and very unhealthy fixation with Johan Greiger after the 2020 Olympics). Even after I’d lowered my expectations to settle for a stage actor, author, pilot, or a plumber (hey, it’s a practical choice and they’re literally never out of work, okay?), it still turned out no one was coming to save me.

But that’s not really love, is it? They’re just fantasies. Now those I had in abundance, although they had seemed to dim recently. Except for perhaps one… Hayden.