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“Don’t be ridiculous,” I whispered back. “I do not run with other people, especially not him. I found him along the trail. He tripped over a root and smacked his head. There was blood and everything. I insisted I follow him home and talked him into calling Breck. He didn’t want to shell out the deductible for urgent care.”
“I don’t blame him for that.” Tiffany had opened the pizza box and set several pieces on each plate. “Do you want to eat here at the table?”
“Um, no.” That seemed like a double date. “The living room’s fine. I’m going to go home after we eat. I have to work tomorrow.”
She raised one eyebrow but didn’t comment further. By the time we got back to the living room, Breck and Darby were sitting, talking quietly on the couch.
“Well?” I asked. “How’s the patient?”
“Just a nasty gash,” Breck said. “I’m going to get an ice pack for him and some painkillers, but he should be fine. I don’t see signs of a concussion, so there’s no fear of letting him be for the night.”
“Really? He was saying some goofy things,” I said. “No offense, Darby.”
“None taken.” He smiled at me, and my stomach did that flip-flop thing. Annoying. “But I told you, it wasn’t my head that made me goofy. I am naturally that way. Plus, I was staring up at a beautiful woman while resting on her lap.”
“That’ll do it,” Breck said. “Professionally speaking.”
Tiffany giggled. “I didn’t know you could diagnose that kind of thing.”
“They don’t call me the love doctor for nothing,” Breck said.
“No one calls you that,” Tiffany said, laughing.
Love doctor? Good grief. What did they think was going on here?
“Are you sure someone shouldn’t stay with him?” I asked.
“Yes, good question,” Tiffany said. “Maybe one of us should stay overnight to look after him.” She widened her light blue eyes a little too innocently. I knew better. That gleam meant only one thing. She was scheming. Tiffany thought Darby and I should go on a real date, one that didn’t involve nighttime antics but rather some old-fashioned courtship. She’d even claimed to see a glow between us, as if there were some magical spell drawing us together.
She wasn’t the only one. Stormi had said denying our attraction was a sure path to loneliness and regret. She added that she should know, given what had recently transpired between her and Huck. Once enemies, they were now in love and rarely out of each other’s sight. It was sweet. I mean, if you’re a romantic. I was not. My feet were firmly planted in the pragmatic, hardworking ground. Working hard was my romance. Building my dreams. No time for entanglements that would ultimately lead to heartbreak. Men left women like me. It might take two decades, as it had with my mother and father, but eventually, betrayal would come. My mother was now in her fifties, single, and forced to start over after giving her whole life to her marriage and children. I would rather be alone than risk the same fate.
“I’m fine,” Darby said. “Really. No one needs to stay and babysit me. Let’s have some pizza, and then I have to kick you all out. I have papers to grade.”
He must be on the same page as me. Good. That’s the way I wanted it. Right?
3
DARBY
When I first took the position at the high school, the principal told me several stories about Quinn Cooper Barnes, including her passion for teaching adult immigrants English. The first winter she lived here, in addition to teaching at the one-room schoolhouse, she taught adults during the evenings. That act of service had fostered a commitment to provide immigrants a safe place to learn or improve their English language skills that had carried on for decades. My principal had asked if I would be willing to teach one evening a week. I knew what volunteer meant. Working for no money.
Still, I was happy to do it. Every Wednesday evening in my classroom, I spent time with whoever showed up to practice their reading and writing. Instead of a lecture or lesson, I taught them individually.
Tonight, I had only two students, Mrs. Lin and Mr. Rodriguez. Both in their fifties, her native tongue was Chinese and his Spanish. Among the three of us, we communicated as well as we could. As a matter of fact, I suspected the two of them were talking outside of class, too. They were both single, and I’d heard Mr. Rodriguez ask in his best English if she’d like to have a cup of coffee or a drink after class. She’d agreed, beaming and giving me a small wave before ducking out the door to accompany him into the parking lot.
This evening, I had them working on writing a letter in English to someone they needed to communicate with for practical reasons. I wanted our time to be useful as well as a learning opportunity. Often, they had a reason for needing to communicate with a company or person. I’d begun to see that this was one of the primary stressors about living in a country where you didn’t speak the language fluently. They couldn’t ask their doctors specific questions, for example. Mrs. Lin was writing a list of things she wanted to discuss with her physician at her upcoming appointment. Mr. Rodriguez was working on a letter to his granddaughter who had moved away last year and was coming to visit soon. “I’ll tell her about all of things we will do when she comes here,” he said to me as he picked up his pencil. I had them use pencil so I could give them corrections and they could rewrite whatever they needed to.
They were working away, so I went back to my desk and pulled out a stack of essays from my tenth-grade class. I chose the first one, an essay by Jerome, one of my favorite students. He was a talented musician as well as a mathlete, but he also had a gift for understanding complex literary themes. Small and shy, he sat in the front with the rest of the serious students and shot furtive glances at Shelley Stevens, who had no idea of his giant crush.
From my vantage point at the front of the room, on any given day of the week, my students revealed themselves to me. They didn’t think so. My hormonally challenged students thought they kept their thoughts and emotions hidden, but I could see it all. The crushes, the feuds, the mean girls, and the jocks who pretended they didn’t care for fiction but sometimes grew misty-eyed when we were reading together from a story or novel. They were good at hiding things, but not from me. I’d been them not so long ago. The boy with the crush on a girl way out of his league or swallowing a knot in my throat while reading something particularly moving.
Now, Mrs. Lin asked me if I could help her figure out the word for what sounded like gee-aye-sing to my English-speaking ears. However, I could see from her writing that she’d translated the Chinese spelling from symbols tojuéjing.
“The time of life when it ends,” Mrs. Lin said.
“What ends?” I asked.
“The…blood…you know…woman blood…no more.”
