Page 47

I only lasted until lunchtime before I called down to Lisa and requested a sub to cover my classroom for the rest of the day.

I love to show up as my best self for my students, but that became more and more impossible as the day went on.

Between the possibility of losing my job, the reminder of my dad, and the terrible ultimatum Nora has given me, I almost burst into tears during story time.

I was worried I was liable to snap at the first fight or accident, and I never want my bad mood to touch my students.

That was two days ago.

It’s only November and I’ve used more sick leave this year than I have in all of my other years combined.

It’s actually kind of funny when you think about it. My relationship with Luke was never a problem until Nora made it so. Looks like she’s proved her point after all.

I turned my phone on do not disturb when I got home, but it’s long since died and I have no plans to charge it.

I didn’t want my mom to worry, so I sent her a text before letting her know I was turning off my phone for a week for some downtime.

If there’s an emergency, she knows to call Frederick and he’ll come get me.

Luke, on the other hand, didn’t get the warning.

He’s had Isla since Monday afternoon, so thankfully he hasn’t been able to drop by for a surprise visit.

I miss him, but it’s for the best. If he comes over, I know I’ll crack and tell him everything.

It’s already Wednesday and I’m halfway to the deadline I’m never going to meet.

Once it passes—along with my career—I’ll fill him in on everything that happened.

I hate the way time moves. It’s so slow when you need it to go fast, and it speeds by when you want it to slow down.

I know they say time’s a thief, but I think that’s bullshit.

Time can’t be a thief: all it does is give.

It’s the reflection of our lives, the marker of our wins and reminder of our losses.

Time allows us to see life for what it is, a series of fleeting, precious moments that we will never have again.

I just really wish this particular series of moments would hurry up and go by.

I’ve been googling employment law since I got home on Monday. There has to be a way I get through this with my job, boyfriend, and integrity still intact. There’s no way I can let Nora win this easily.

Episode I-have-no-idea-what of Grey’s Anatomy is playing in the background, with Meredith and Christina acting as my devoted support system while I try to find a solution I’m beginning to think will never come, when the knocking at my door begins.

I stop typing and I hold my breath, praying to Shonda Rhimes that it’s not Frederick behind my door.

I’m holding on by a string right now, and a mom-related emergency would be the frosting on a shit cake that I couldn’t handle.

The knocking stops, and I let out the breath I’ve been holding.

It doesn’t happen often, but solicitors do manage to make it into the building sometimes. This must have been one of them.

I let out a long exhale and relax back into my poor couch that’s gotten way too much use lately and close my computer.

My eyes hurt from staring at it all night and day so I decide to take a break and look at a bigger screen a little farther away.

I restart the episode and turn up the volume, hoping this is one of the sad episodes that rips my heart out so I can cry about something other than my own life for forty minutes.

Then the knocking starts again.

“Open the door, Em. I know you’re in there,” Luke’s voice booms from the other side of my door. “I saw your car outside and I just heard you turn up the TV.”

Dammit. Thwarted again!

“Go away,” I groan. “Let me wallow in peace!”

“You’ve been wallowing peacefully for two days. Let me in.”

Meredith’s in the middle of a very intense conversation with Christina when I hit pause, and I hope Luke knows how much I’m willing to sacrifice for him. I climb off of the couch, double-checking to make sure there’s no evidence of my conversation with Nora in sight before going to the door.

“You know you’re very annoying, right?” I pull open the door, quickly reminded that while he is in fact very annoying, he’s also very, very handsome.

So handsome in his button-down shirt and navy blue slacks that it reminds me I haven’t brushed my hair or teeth since Monday morning. “I’ll be right back!”

I sprint into my bathroom and turn on the shower before he can stop me.

It’s quick, but I still manage to scrub all of the important parts and, on the off chance he wants to take off my pants later to cheer me up, shave my legs.

My teeth brushed and curls refastened into a bun, I glance in the mirror one last time.

It’s not perfect, and I’m not going to win a modeling competition or anything, but it’ll do.

“Sorry about that.” I join him back in my living room and sit down on the couch beside him. “You didn’t hit play?”

I don’t know if that’s because he didn’t want to lose my spot (good) or because he doesn’t like Grey’s Anatomy and wasn’t interested (bad).

I know I don’t have a lot of ground to stand on in my current predicament, but being down bad has never stopped me from casting judgment on others, and it won’t stop me now.

“I didn’t want you to lose your spot.” He hands me the remote. “I don’t know if you’ve seen this episode yet, but it’s a good one and you don’t want to miss it.”

“You know”—I snatch the remote from his hands, annoyed by his perfectness, and hit play—“if you could stop being wonderful for a single second, that’d be super helpful.”

I’m about to be unemployed, possibly publicly shamed for sleeping with a parent, and banned from teaching for all time.

He’s probably going to win a freaking Pulitzer.

There’s no way he’s going to stick around.

It will be much easier for my heart if he does some terrible things for me to latch on to before he leaves me.

“You know I can’t help it.” He tucks me into his side. “But if it helps, I can hold you hostage on this couch until you tell me what the fuck happened at school on Monday. Then you can explain why you’ve been ignoring me ever since.”

I try to pull away from him, noticing belatedly that him pulling me close had less to do with wanting to cuddle and more to do with preventing me from running away.

He’s good.

I thought I hadn’t wanted to call him because I knew he’d want to help, and I didn’t want to lay my burdens on his shoulders.

I told myself he had enough on his plate dealing with Jacqueline, and he didn’t need to deal with my problems on top of that.

And none of that was a lie, but now that he’s sitting in front of me, asking to know, I know it wasn’t the truth either.

I love giving to others. From my time at school to volunteering at The Barkery, my life feels more complete when I’m able to be of help to those around me.

But, if I’m honest with myself, there’s something more to it.

Part of me fears that if I have nothing to give, I’m worth nothing.

That if I ever ask for more than I can give, I’ll be a dead weight people can’t wait to unload, and this situation with Nora inadvertently confirmed it.

She loved me when she had something to gain from me, but the second it ended, she was ready to throw me in the trash.

Luke has done everything to prove how much he cares, but the nasty voice deep inside my brain is worried that since I’m no longer helping him with his article—and could possibly do harm to it—I won’t be worth sticking around to him either.

I could keep everything happening to myself. I’ve done it my entire life and I’m good at it. It’s safe. But as I burrow deeper into his side, taking comfort in the feel of his strong arm wrapped around me, maybe for once the safe option isn’t the right one.

I don’t know what things are going to look like between us a year from now.

Hell, I don’t even know what this weekend is going to bring.

What I do know is I want this thing with Luke.

I want to see what a future with him by my side could bring and for that to happen, I have to be honest with him.

Even when—no, especially when—it makes me want to claw out of my skin.

“If I tell you, I need you to promise that you will just listen. Nothing else.”

“I promise I’ll listen.” He tightens his grip around me and runs his lips along the top of my head. “I promise we will talk and I promise that I won’t do anything we don’t discuss first.”

It’s not the answer I wanted to hear, but I like it all the same.

I dive headfirst into everything, starting with getting called down to the office via the PA system.

I tell him about how Nora pulled me away from Anna and how she made a giant show out of grabbing my file.

I thank him for sitting with me last weekend, that I was able to stand my ground for much longer than expected thanks to our talks.

I fall down a side tangent about how I thought she was going to demand we break up and the lies I’d already come up with so we could still date in secret.

His body tightens and his jaw clenches a few times, but he never interrupts, and by the time I get to the part where she’s issuing the ultimatum, my guards have completely lowered.

I’m so lost in the story, I’m completely oblivious to the way his laughter has stopped and how danger lingers in the air.

“She used your dad against you?” His voice is barely a whisper, but the anger comes through loud and clear. “And threatened to present you as some kind of predator if I don’t retract my article? Am I getting this right?”

“Um…yeah.” I go on high alert. I know he said he wouldn’t do anything without talking to me first, but I’ve never heard him sound like this before—not the morning after we met, not on the first day of school, not even when Jacqueline waltzed into his living room.

“But I don’t even know if she’ll really act on it.

She could’ve just been trying to scare me so I won’t do it again. ”

“She wasn’t.” He lets me go and reaches for his phone on my coffee table. “There’s no way I’m letting you lose your job over this.”

I lunge for his phone but he dodges me with ease. Terror swirls around in my gut as I imagine him retracting the article. Not only did he work tirelessly on it, but it has given so many victims of Petunia Lemon a voice and I won’t let Nora take that away from them.

“I’d rather lose my job than let that disgusting company keep getting away with this.

” I try to grab the phone again, but I’m no match for his long arms. “If you retract this, Nora will use it as ammunition to keep abusing her power and recruiting more people. I know there are other teachers who have joined under her too.”

Just thinking about how many people she’s probably taken advantage of over the years brings my blood to a boil.

I trusted her implicitly, and not only did she use me, now she’s leveraging things I told her in confidence against me.

It was so easy for her; there wasn’t an ounce of guilt on her smug face when she thought she won.

It was like she already knew the result.

“Wait…” I sit down on the couch and play the conversation between us over and over in my head. “She said she’s had people fired for less.”

“Nora did?” Luke stops typing on his phone, all of his attention focused on me. “What do you think that means?”

“I’m not sure, but she was way too calm in our meeting.” Everything felt so calculated…rehearsed. As if she’d acted out the performance more than once before. “When I walked into her office, even Lisa was looking at me weird. Like maybe she already knew what was about to happen.”

Come to think of it, when I called Lisa about a substitute taking over, one showed up within twenty minutes. I didn’t think anything of it then, but the only way a substitute could’ve gotten there that fast is if they had been called way before.

“Holy shit.” I leap off of the couch and run to my room to grab my charger and plug in my phone.

“What’s happening?”

“I don’t know yet.” Adrenaline pumps through my veins as some of the pieces start to fall into place. “But I’m going to find out.”

I’m still trying to sort through everything in my head.

I knew something happened between Nora and Anna, but Nora had no hesitation before sinking her claws in me, Chloe, and Odette.

There’s no way this behavior just started.

Really, the only question I have now is how long has this been going on and how many victims has she left in her wake.

My phone screen is still painfully black, and the suspense is starting to feel like it might kill me.

The walls seem like they’re closing in on me as I pace back and forth in my tiny room.

When I see my phone light up, I leap across the table to grab it and accidentally knock my purse over in the process.

The spare change and Dum-Dums that have been living at the bottom of my purse for months spill across my floor.

The lip gloss I’ve been trying to find for weeks rolls under my TV stand, but none of it matters.

Because as soon as it turns on, my phone lights up like a Christmas tree with message after message from Anna, Odette, Chloe, and countless numbers I don’t even recognize.

I put my phone on speaker so Luke can listen with me, and as I go to hit play, my nerves turn to static while my stomach flips around like Simone Biles.

And by the time Anna’s quiet voice blares through my speakers, a fire lacing her words like I’ve never heard from her, I know that when I’m done with Nora, Luke’s article is going to be the least of her worries.