Page 29 of Life, Love, and Other Messes

“I’m just used to it. I turn the TV on, but then I end up watching it instead of focusing. Does this bother you?”

“No, actually. I’m fine.” I got the strangest idea then: could I write with her here? I thought about it for a while, then opened up the doc I’d started the other night. I read it back to myself, stared at it for a while, then glanced up at Lisa, who was reading another one of the books in her stack, this one about a slow turtle. Veronica and my other girlfriends had read what I’d written before, but I’d never actually worked in their presence. What if this muse thing could work in person?

Nope. I couldn’t do it. It felt too intimate, I felt too naked. I closed the doc and got up. “You want something to drink?”

“Maybe just some water, please.” She stretched out and ran her hands through her hair. “It’s stupid to lesson plan most of the time. The kids kind of tangent off into their own things.”

“But you have circle time and stuff like that, right?” I pulled out two glasses and filled them with ice and water.

“Yeah. And we do have lessons. A few of them can read, at least their names, and I try to get all of them to write their first names and a few other words by the end of the year.”

I set the water on the table next to her. “Did you have a good dinner with the other teachers?”

“It was nice. It was nice to vent a bit, and I told them about Corey and me…Nothing beyond that, though.”

“That’s fine. You don’t need to drop all the bombs at once.”

“Yeah. I think they’d be cool. I mean, Michael has a husband.”

“The furry?”

Lisa laughed and whacked at me with the turtle book. It was a paperback. “Elaine is married with kids, and June…”

I waited, but she didn’t continue. I got a bit of a twinge in my stomach. “What about June?”

Lisa shook her head and looked away. “Nothing. She’s really fucking hot but she bounces from boyfriend to boyfriend.”

Damn it. “Crushing on straight girls sucks.”

She grinned. “I know it. It’s not like I want to date her, I just like to look. Anyway, she’s kind of a bitch. What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Do you date?”

“Not since I broke up with Veronica. I mean, it’s not been that long.”

“I guess.”

“Anyway, it’s not like I have all these opportunities.”

She grinned. “Come on. I bet you do.”

I thought for a moment. “Okay, there’s this woman at work who asked me out, but we don’t really have anything in common.”

Lisa’s eyes lit up. “Do you like her?”

“I don’t know her very well.”

“I think you should go out with her. You never know. She could be the one.”

“I seriously doubt that.”

Lisa nudged my foot with hers. “Can’t hurt anything to get back out there, right?”

Right. Except it wasn’t Maudie who made my heart flutter at the very sight of her.

I sat in the waiting room outside Catherine’s office that Tuesday. A poised woman in sharp business attire was messing with her phone across from me and a man was staring at the floor and silently rocking two chairs over. I wanted to know the woman’s story. I wondered if she wanted to know what I was doing there, too. I decided she couldn’t care less and picked at the pile of Psychology Today magazines on the coffee table. Some of them had been there for years, and I’d read one of them cover to cover waiting for Catherine one day.