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I feel the familiar swell of panic rise and then I tamp it back down. It’s not a real date. If Boyd wants to dance at this wedding I’ll just tell him I don’t know what I’m doing and he’ll guide me through it. He might laugh at me, but who cares? It’s not like I’m trying to impress a fake date. Crisis averted, relax.
My class is at lunch which means I’m at lunch. Thirty-five minutes of quiet time. Otherwise known as thirty-five minutes of me sitting by myself in the teachers’ lounge. You grow up thinking lunch trauma will end with high school. It doesn’t.
I’m new. I get it. But school started six weeks ago and teacher in-service two weeks before that. So I’m not that new. Not as new as the substitute who replaced Mrs. Clark when she left on maternity leave three weeks into the school year. The substitute who went to see that new suspense movie everyone is talking about with Mrs. Hildrew last weekend. And knits with Miss Ackerley on Tuesdays. Apparently that’s a thing. Knitting Tuesdays. And fine, I don’t knit, but how is it so easy for her to fit in?
Making new friends is hard. Everly has been my best friend since forever. She’s always been there—next store, at school, in college. People gravitate towards her and I benefited from that. Because truthfully, Everly is my friend pimp. She’s the one who brought Sophie and Sandra into my life. She’s the one who organized our trick-or-treating posse in grade school. Brought the guys around in high school and made friends with every girl on our floor in college.
And now she’s gone. Fine. That might be overly dramatic. She’s not gone, she’s married. But for the first time in my entire life, Everly is living more than five hundred yards away. She’s living one mile away, if you’re counting. I could walk there in under twenty minutes. But it’s different. We’re not living in the same tiny dorm room anymore.
I just didn’t realize the transition to adulthood would be so lonely. Which is silly, but how can you really know what it’s going to feel like ahead of time? And I had no idea it would so hard to make friends at work. We’re teachers, for crying out loud. Elementary school teachers. I just gotta keep trying, that’s what I remind myself. And what I’d tell my students. I should walk the walk, right?
So when I enter the teachers’ lounge and see that I have two options—an empty table, and an empty seat at a table with a few other teachers—I plop myself down at their table. And say hello, even though I’m shaking inside because I’m so nervous. Nervous I’ll trip over my words and sound stupid. Or choke on a bread crumb and draw attention to myself. Or just be inadequate in some way. You get the idea.
But it goes okay, I think. Not great, but okay. These women are firmly entrenched in their friendship routines. They don’t need a newbie, so they’re apathetic. Still, I try. So when Miss Michaels mentions that she’s dying to try out the new coffee shop in Center City and I ask if she’d like to meet there on Sunday, I try not to take it personally when she shrugs and says she doesn’t really like to leave the house on the weekends.
Okay then.
I can always go by myself. Again.
After work I park my car in the garage and then walk over to Sophie’s. Her condo is super close to my apartment, which is a huge bonus. My studio apartment would fit into the nursery of her fancy penthouse apartment, but it’s worth living in a small space to be in a great location so it’s fine with me.
Her husband Luke greets me at the door, a burp cloth slung over his shoulder and a huge smile on his face. He takes me back to the den connected to the kitchen, where Sophie’s sitting on the couch with baby Christine swaddled up in a blanket lying on the cushion next to her.
“Can I hold her?” I question after giving Sophie a hug.
“Of course!” She beams and places the baby in my arms. “I was just staring at her for a bit.”
“Staring at her?” I question. I’m not sure why, because now I’m staring at her. I brush a fingertip across her head while she blinks at me. She’s so stinking cute.
“Yeah, I think I’m holding her too much. Like all the time. Do you think all the time’s too much?” Sophie frets from the sofa. I’m sitting diagonal to her on a cushy chair and I settle back and snuggle the baby closer.
“I think she’s five days old so it’s probably okay to hold her as much as you want.”
Sophie nods. “That’s what Luke said, but I thought maybe he was just being nice.”
“She smells so yummy,” I comment.
“Right?” Sophie exclaims. “I thought maybe it was just me since I’m a little biased but she does smell delicious, doesn’t she? Like baby powder and peaches.”
“Exactly like that. So how are you feeling?”
“Like I gave birth less than a week ago, but otherwise good,” she jokes.
“You look great,” I assure her. And she does. She’s glowing and I think motherhood is going to suit her just fine.
“She’s an easy baby so far, plus Luke seems to know what he’s doing so that helps my confidence, you know?”
I nod.
“So what are you up to this weekend? Anything fun?” she asks.
Shoot. Am I supposed to tell her that I’m dress-shopping with Boyd? Because I’m attending a wedding with him next weekend? Because I owe him a favor for keeping quiet about my date getting arrested? No. Definitely not. There’s no way I want to bring any of that up, so I focus on the baby instead and mutter something about working on lesson plans. It’s not a total lie. I’ll work on lesson plans as well as go shopping with her brother.
“So what did you think of Boyd?”
“What?” My head snaps up from the baby and I glance at Sophie. Am I that bad a liar?
“Boyd? My brother? You met him at the hospital on Monday?”
Oh, okay, whew. “He seemed nice,” I offer. I’m not sure why. ‘Nice’ isn’t really at the top of my descriptive words for Boyd Gallagher. Words like ‘gorgeous,’ ‘cocky,’ ‘nosy,’ ‘fit,’ ‘sophisticated,’ ‘chiseled’ and ‘resourceful’ come to mind. But ‘nice’ works too.
