Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle(95)

“The re-caulking”—re-cocking—“went better.”

She was sure it had. Heh.

“And when you’re not lying in tubs covered in grime and swearing? I saw on Facebook that you’re the executive director of a nonprofit getting kids access to meals? Pretty cool.”

“I’m taking some leave right now.” Something tight in his voice alerted her that this was not his favorite topic.

“Needed a break?”

“You could say that.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

“Maybe. Not right this second. It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time.”

Silence. She could feel it stretched out, too taut, between them. “What about you? Where do you work?”

Okay, she got it; they wouldn’t go there. Not now, not yet. But it was hard, because she wanted it all, every gory detail: the moldy caulk, the sweat and effort, the dust in his eyebrows, what he ate for dinner before he put the dishes in the balky dishwasher, every emotion that had led to his uneasy decision to take time off from his job. She wanted all of him, poured into her ear in his low voice, into the quiet closeness of this moment, so different from the rowdiness of the party. And yet not so different, because somehow even then they’d been insulated in their intimacy, the noise far away, outside them.

“I teach,” she said.

“What grade and subject?”

“Sixth-grade science. Middle school.”

“Jesus. You’re hard-core. Going where no ordinary teacher will go.”

“No, I love it. Love science, love that age group.”

“What’s your favorite project?”

“What?”

“Your favorite science project you do with them.”

It was such a real question. Once most people found out she was a science teacher, it was all they needed to know. They had a frame of reference for what a science teacher did, they all remembered their own awful science teachers, and they weren’t interested in finding out what it was like from her perspective. That was the thing about most people. They were happy to stay up at ground level, where things were safe and clean. They didn’t want to know you.

“You can’t beat Elephant’s Toothpaste for sheer fun.” She smiled, thinking about it. “You mix it in a giant test tube, and it foams up and shoots out like toothpaste from a tube. Hydrogen peroxide, yeast, and dish soap, and if you get some food coloring involved, you can make it look like Aquafresh. I like to do it when the fifth-grade parents come to school for information night, at the end of the year before they have to send their babies off to middle school. They’re all worried, tight-faced, and then I do this experiment and whoosh! Bright colors, and fun, and instantly reassured parents.”

He was quiet, so she filled the empty space. “In general, I like anything that gets the kids excited. I like them to leave class and go tell the other kids what they did. I know I did my job right if they’re talking about it in the hallway afterward, and not in a ‘Ms. Hart sucks’ way.”

“I can see that. I can picture it. I don’t know you that well, but—”

But I want you to, she wished she could tell him. What do you want to know? I’ll tell you anything. Everything.

“—it makes sense you’d be good at that. You have so much energy, and you’re funny and warm.”

It was like a gift. He couldn’t have said anything that pleased her more. It was who she wanted to be, how she wanted to see herself. The person she was always trying to send out in public. The person who’d been unable to get out of bed for days and days after Henry’s assault on her confidence, even though she’d sent a ghost of her former self out to do her job and function in the world.

“Are you the best teacher in the school?”

Oddly, she blushed. “I do get good evaluations.”

“You’re modest. They love you, right?”

“Most of the time, except when we do the personal-health unit—aka sex ed. Then I get the riled-up parents who think we should stick with abstinence education. But even with the parents getting ticked off, I really enjoy that section. We do it co-ed, and all the other science teachers hate it. The dread builds up all fall—the kids get squirrelly, the parents bitch. But I like it. We have great discussions, and by the end they’ve mostly stopped acting like Beavis and Butt-Head.”

Unlike me. I will apparently never outgrow that streak.

“Co-ed, huh? And you cover all the usual stuff with them?”

“What factors go into choosing birth control. The advantages of abstinence. When and why you should sleep with someone.”

“Huh.” He chuckled. “Out of curiosity, since I have the expert on hand, when should you sleep with someone?”

You should have slept with me on New Year’s Eve. But now you are a thousand miles away.

She felt the pivot point in the conversation, a moment of opportunity, a chance to ask questions and outline next steps and swing things, hard, toward where she wanted them to be.

But she wanted other things, too. She wanted to know what he’d been thinking on New Year’s Eve. What he’d thought about that night after he’d gone home. Whether he’d thought of her as he’d lain in bed, and whether he’d done anything about it. Whether he’d wanted to get in touch with her, whether he’d tried to get in touch. Whether he’d wanted to talk to her in the months since New Year’s, or whether he’d accepted with perfect equanimity that those fifteen minutes would always stand alone, like a column of light, in his history.