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“Jesse,” Marcus calls as the door slams behind him; the metal stairs shake and clang as he runs down them. Crickets chirrup in the field of scrub grass behind the station and he rubs the back of his neck. He’s showered, changed in the few minutes I took to say goodbye to everyone. When Marcus wears the uniform hewearsit, and even though I’m in civvies, I don’t feel the wave of regret and loss I’ve gotten so used to. Once upon a time, I knew how to wear the shit out of that uniform, too.
“I just wanted to let you know,” he says. “That I meant what I said in the gym. Come back anytime and we miss you and...”
“I know,” I say. I feel proud, but also sad. The two people I want to tell most about these accomplishments, the squats and the socializing, are Pop and Lulu. OK, and George, too. He’d want to be included in this. But still. I used to work out with Pop when I was a kid. I’d do endless biceps curls with his smallest weights while he bench-pressed in our garage.
Weightlifting isn’t the most attractive pastime. People make weird faces when they’re lifting weight heavier than they are. Lulu would love it. She would approach it the same way she does everything: with a willingness to try, her eyes open and bright and smiling, a laugh ready on her lips, and questions, questions, questions.
“You know, if you’ve got your strength back, you could...” He shrugs. “Maybe you could come back to work. Especially if you’re thinking about playing rugby again.”
“Yeah. I was thinking.” I swallow down my nerves at making this admission out loud. “Of going to school for nursing.”
He leans back, brows raised. He looks me up and down and with a slow smile says, “Nurse Jesse. I like the sound of that.”
“Me, too.” And it’s true. Even though it might be hard, it feels right to say it. Much like it feels right when I have Lulu in my house, my bed. My life.
Our conversation is cut short by the sharp sound of the alarm in the station. “Shit.” He starts jogging back. “Let’s have dinner this weekend,” he says over his shoulder. “I want to hear more about it.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Lulu
The unread email taunts me, highlighted at the top of my inbox. “Just open it,” I whisper. “You already know what it’s going to say.”
Jay rolls his chair toward my desk. “Did you say something?”
“No.”Not to you, at least.
“Ready for this meeting?” he asks.
“Also no.”
He laughs, big and booming, like “oh Lulu, you’re so silly,” and I cringe at the volume.
“I’ll meet you there,” I say. “Stop stalling,” I mutter as Jay leaves. Even if they offer me the job, I don’t have to take it. I don’twantto take it. But it’s still hard to ignore the draw of getting my gloved hands on the archives in Lancaster. Maybe I should set up a shrine to Clio so that the muse of history can guide me. I make a mental note to touch base with the professors in Classical Civilizations. They tend to be about as old as their field of study, and one of them has to have a shrine starter kit. But even Clio can’t change the fact that if I don’t get it, Audrey likely did, and that leaves my dreams of co-teaching dead in the water.
Closing my eyes, taking a deep breath like I’m about to take a polar bear dive into Lake Erie, I open the email.
It’s about what I expected. Cecelia thanks me for the referral and promises to keep me apprised of any new opportunities in the future. She invites me to a conference in Lancaster at the end of the summer. Something that normally I’d feel excited about but now just feels like a consolation prize. With a sigh, I make my way to the meeting. The room falls silent when I walk in. “Sorry I’m late,” I say, my voice thin and reedy at the sudden attention. For a moment, I stall, like the weight of every history professor’s combined stare is too heavy to walk out from under. I wave, and even though I tell myself not to, I cross my eyes, stick out my tongue. “Just got stuck in my inbox again,” I say with forced laughter.
Someone clears their throat. Miranda smiles at the front of the room. Dad is reading and has not registered my entrance in the least. Audrey stares, mouth agape. Of course, the only chair available is beside her, so I slink into it and discussion resumes. These meetings are like most meetings in that they’re a bit dull and much of it could be an email, but today we’re reviewing our course offerings for the upcoming year, which is usually exciting at least.
“In the winter semester we’re going to continue offering the History of Magic class in the early modern era but I’d like to discuss the possibility of Dr. Banks leading the course and including more content on the intersection of gender politics and witchcraft.”
I look up from the spirals I’d been doodling into my notebook to gape at Miranda.
“Oh,” I say with all of the accumulated intelligence of my decades’ worth of schooling. “Cool.”
“I really enjoyed the idea you pitched, Lulu,” Miranda says, her voice warm and imbued with Miranda-level respect, the kind she doesn’t pass out easily. The kind you must earn.
Frank and Jeff erupt in a flurry of whispers, but they’re easy to ignore. I blink and blink and blink at Audrey. “Lancaster?” I mouth.
She nods once. Looks down. Then, “Sorry.”
“No.” I shake my head. I’m the last person she should be apologizing to.
At the sound of our shared name, Dad finally pried his attention away from his book. He looks at me with the same pride that he had on the day I graduated, and defended my thesis, and my chest feels warm, like my heart is wrapped in a cozy itch-less sweater, and it’s an awkward juxtaposition of all thesefeelings: excitement at this new opportunity; sadness that the super-cool idea I had won’t be possible.
“I...can pull together a draft syllabus,” I say, jotting the note down next to the spirals in the notebook.
