Teacher's Pet

by Briar Lane

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  As she spoke, tears welled up in her eyes. “It’s just been so long since I had someone like you in my life. Someone who is nice to me, supportive of me, who loves my daughter… Actually, I’ve never had someone like that in my life. I was getting really excited about having someone there for me.”

  “Katie…” I said softly as I went to rub her back.

  She wiped the tears out of her eyes and forced a laugh. “No, it’s totally fine. I’m being a baby. I shouldn’t… I’m being such a weirdo right now.”

  “You’re not, at all,” I reassured her.

  “It’s just, like, I barely know you and for some reason you mean so much to me.”

  “I get it,” I told her. “I really do. That’s exactly the reason I’m walking away. I’m already like… so into you.”

  Katie nodded. “Yeah, I get it. If you were a man, I’d probably be head over heels by now.” She laughed out awkwardly. “Sure you don’t have a brother?” she teased.

  “Pretty sure,” I told her. “Look, I’m really sorry.”

  She stood up. “Don’t be. Really, it’s okay.” She turned to the playground and yelled out Alex’s name. “Time to go home, honey.”

  It was funny, I was the one who was experiencing unrequited love but it was Katie that seemed more hurt. I felt bad for being the one to hurt her, even though I was technically the rejected party.

  Alex ran to her and I tried drastically to think of something I could say. But there was nothing.

  This was just going to suck for all of us.

  “I’m sorry,” I said softly as Katie started to walk away with Alex in tow.

  “Don’t worry about it. You’ve done nothing wrong. In fact, thanks for everything you did do for me. I still really, really appreciate it.”

  “Yeah, of course,” I told her. “Take care of yourself?”

  She smiled. “I always have.”

  Right, I guess that was part of the problem to begin with.

  11

  Katie

  I looked at my watch and realized I should’ve left for my lunch date twenty minutes ago.

  Shit.

  I didn’t even bother to get ready. I was already dressed and had my hair in a ponytail, and while that wasn’t usually how I’d go out and look for a date, to be honest, I wasn’t motivated to look particularly nice.

  I should’ve cared. I should’ve been excited. But I wasn’t in the slightest.

  I’d only gotten back on my dating app a few days ago. I had waited weeks after the situation with Lana to die down before I got back into it.

  I couldn’t explain why, other than the fact that Lana having ended our friendship had me really depressed. I just didn’t care about dating. I really didn’t care about anything. I was just trying to go to work, take care of Alex, and get through my days.

  I hadn’t felt this bad since what happened with Alex’s dad. It felt very similar. This felt like a breakup, in a way.

  It was all so stupid! I barely knew Lana! It wasn’t a breakup, because I wasn’t dating her. And yet her exit from my life really hit me hard. I was just overwhelmed by it all.

  But I had to move forward. I needed to realize that she was not my partner, I was not going to get what I needed from her, and once again my only hope of getting support would be through finding a man who was good for me. Which meant I need to take dating more seriously again, even if I really didn’t want to.

  And I really didn’t want to.

  I grabbed my keys and purse and headed out the door. My date and I were meeting at a little sandwich shop that was just down the street. I was hungry, so my only motivation to go through with the date at all was actually getting to eat.

  When I arrived, he was already there. Not surprising since I was a few minutes late.

  He seemed nice enough. He put on a huge smile and extended his hand to me when I walked in the door. “You must be Katie.”

  “Yes, and you’re…” I froze on the name for a second before it came to me. “Johnathon?”

  He grinned. “That’s right. Here, sit.”

  I forced a smile and sat across from him, but I was already dreading this entire date. I was once again feeling that familiar discomfort when you have to force conversation with a perfect stranger.

  “So, you said you work an office job?”

  “Oh, yeah.” I shrugged. “I am an office administrator for a small insurance company.”

  “Fantastic! Your office does insurance sales?” he asked.

  “Uh, yeah, they do.” I had never been asked that specific question before.

  “But you don’t do sales?” he asked.

  “No, not really a fan of that,” I responded with a slight nod. Already our conversation was off to a brutally boring start.

  And once again, thoughts of Lana danced in my mind. I thought at least while I was physically out on a date with someone else that I wouldn’t have to think of her. The whole point of this date was to distract myself from her. But, no, she didn’t leave my mind.

  Actually, my thoughts on her intensified. As I fiddled with the bottom of my sweater and tried to force conversation with this man, I could only think about how easily conversation flowed with Lana. It never felt awkward or forced. With her, it was always perfect.

  “Well, sales aren’t for everyone,” he went on. “But, personally, I love it.”

  Ahh, that’s why his question felt so awkward. It was just him segueing into talking about his own job. God, that was annoying. I absolutely hated talking to people who only seemed to use conversation as a way to talk more about themselves.

  “You’re in sales?” I humored him.

  “A car salesman,” he said proudly.

  I almost wanted to say, ‘Well, that explains why you’re so annoying,’ but of course, I refrained.

  “Ahh… That’s cool,” I said, not sure what else I could say about it.

  “It is! I absolutely love my job. I just got top salesman at my dealership for the sixth month in a row.” He beamed.

  “That’s… awesome,” I said, looking around to try and figure out whether or not there was a waiter. Or maybe we had to go to the counter to order our sandwiches. But whatever option it was, I wanted to hurry up and order so I could be out of there as fast as possible.

  “Do you know how we put in orders for our food?” I asked him as I looked around.

  “I already did it,” he said with a smile.

  “Oh… okay,” I said. That seemed a little rude. I mean, I knew I was a few minutes late but he really couldn’t wait for me to order? Whatever, it didn’t matter. I had already written this guy off anyway. Now I just wanted to eat. “Well, how did you do it? So I can go order mine.”

  “I said I did it!” he repeated with a smile.

  I wasn’t following. “You did… what?”

  “I ordered for us!” he said, as if that was a good thing.

  I finally got it. “Wait, you ordered for me too?” I asked.

  “Yeah!” he said.

  “But… you don’t know what I want,” I responded, absolutely taken aback.

  “I love this place and I know their absolute best sandwich. Trust me, you’re going to love it. Their BLTs are to die for.”

  “I don’t eat meat,” I said suddenly.

  That actually wasn’t true at all. I totally ate meat.

  I was just so turned off by the fact that he’d ordered for me that I wanted him to consider how absolutely rude it was, and how you needed to consider other people before you just get them food! What the hell? Who does that?

  And once again, it was Lana that I thought of. She never would’ve been so rude. She was the most thoughtful person I’d ever met, and she would’ve gone out of her way to ask me exactly what I wanted before she did something like order for me.

  I thought this guy had an actual chance at being a nice, decent person. He really did seem fairly nice online, but it turned out he was a total douch
ebag. And every other guy was going to be the same.

  I was never going to find a man like Lana.

  And then the thought hit me… I wanted a man like Lana!

  It was like I was hit with a whole ton of bricks. It was an epiphany. I wanted a man like Lana. I wanted everything that she was. Her gorgeous face popped into my mind and it was absolute perfection. Everything about her was perfection.

  And it didn’t matter to me that she was a woman! It’s true that I’d never been attracted to a woman before, that was for sure. But I didn’t care that she was a woman. Because regardless, I was attracted to her. I’d had that sex dream about her and, let’s be honest, I wasn’t truly grossed out by it at all.

  It was foreign and it was new, and sure, I was a little uneasy about realizing something so dramatic about myself. Something that was the absolute opposite of what I thought the norm for me was.

  But I was attracted to her. I had liked that dream. I knew that much. I was attracted to her.

  “Hey, I’m really sorry about that,” Johnathon told me with a frown. “I’ll have them stop the order right now and—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I told him. “I’ve got to go anyway.”

  He furrowed his brow. “What?”

  “I’d better be going,” I repeated. “But thanks for, uh…” I actually couldn’t think of anything specific to thank him for. “Thanks.”

  “Thanks for what?” he asked. He wasn’t going to make this easy on me. “Did I do something wrong?”

  ‘Yeah, you did. As soon as I walked in the door you figured out how to talk about yourself, and you actually ordered me food that I never indicated I wanted. You have perfectly proven exactly how you would be a downright awful partner and I had completely lost interest,’ I wanted to say.

  But that wasn’t even why I was leaving, so I saw no reason to point all of that out. I was leaving because I realized there was no point to this date or any other date. There was no point in searching for the right person for me anymore…

  Because I’d found them. I’d found everything that I was looking for, and I didn’t want to search anymore.

  I smiled at Johnathan, not caring to explain myself any further. “You have a fantastic day,” I told him.

  “Uh… you too?” he said, confused.

  I hopped toward the door with a new spring in my step. I couldn’t believe it took me weeks to figure this out. Everything I felt about Lana had been unlike anything I’d felt for a man before. At least, not since Alex’s dad.

  I was falling for her. And she had already told me that she was falling for me too. So there was no reason to wait anymore. There was no reason to put this off.

  I was suddenly filled with both anxious nerves and a sense of peace. The thing I thought was going to take me years to find was finally here. I was finally going to have everything I wanted…

  If Lana still wanted me.

  12

  Lana

  I used to love drop-off time. I enjoyed watching all the kids get super excited to see their parents, it was absolutely adorable. But now I hated it.

  I thought that after I told Katie the truth and slowly began to fade her out of my life that things were going to get a lot better. But that turned out not to be the case at all.

  Things got worse. I missed her the second she walked away from school that day. I was absolutely desperate to have her back in my life.

  But the fact that I was desperate at all was proof enough to me that I didn’t need to have her around. It wasn’t going to be good for me. I was in love with her and she could never reciprocate those feelings.

  I was treating it kind of like a breakup. You know, go no contact, give yourself time to heal, and all that. That’s what I was trying to do.

  But no contact was kind of impossible with our situation. There was going to be some contact whether we wanted it or not. And seeing Katie after school every day to pick up Alex was absolute torture. I hated it. My favorite time of the day was now the worst.

  I always put on a brave face though and smiled every time she arrived. She would smile back, keeping her distance, usually staying on the sidewalk and letting Alex come to her.

  Alex also made things hard. Not on purpose, of course. She was an absolute darling kid and if she was older and had the capacity to understand, it would be different.

  But she wasn’t. We couldn’t explain the complexities of our relationship to her and so everything went right over her head. She was asking me regularly when I was gonna come back over to her house to play with her and her mommy. And I had to tell her that I wasn’t able to do that anymore, but she didn’t understand at all.

  It was really rough because, in addition to fantasizing about being in a relationship with her mom, I fantasized about being her parent. Her stepparent, that is. When I pictured myself with Katie, it wasn’t just me and Katie. It was me, Katie, and Alex.

  I never put too much thought into parenthood before Katie, but now it was all I could think about. It was like I had baby fever. It was more than just baby fever though, I guess. It was like child fever, because I would have been perfectly contented to have a kid like Alex running around my house and taking up my time.

  Especially a kid like Alex. She was so sweet, so gentle, and such a good kid. I absolutely adored her. And with her and Katie, I had the perfect little life pictured in my head—just the three of us.

  But it was never going to be that way. I had to stop dreaming of it. Keeping those thoughts in my head was only going to make things harder and frustrate me. I needed to keep moving forward. I had to remember that I was going to meet my person one day, and when I did, she wouldn’t be straight. She’d want me the way I wanted her. And it would be perfect.

  Today when I walked outside with the kids after the bell rang, things somehow felt different when I saw Katie. I couldn’t explain why… I think it was a look on her face.

  All the other days, she gave me forced smiles with a rigid body that immediately showed discomfort. But today was different. Today her smile looked somehow genuine. Why was that?

  Maybe she was just having a good day. Maybe she had something fun to surprise Alex with. I couldn’t be sure. Whatever it was, I was confident the smile wasn’t for me.

  Until she started making her way to me, that is. She was grinning from ear to ear and I noticed she had something behind her back, hidden away. It reminded me of the day she brought me the bottle of wine… and I was suddenly filled with the same excitement that I had felt that day.

  Katie kept stepping toward me and a hundred thoughts were running through my mind. Why was she coming my way? Was she just coming to surprise Alex with a gift? If so, why wouldn’t she stay on the sidewalk like she usually did?

  “Hey, there.” She grinned directly at me as Alex went up to hug her.

  “H-hey,” I said with a stutter, completely caught off-guard.

  “I brought you something,” she said, pulling a beautiful bouquet of flowers out from behind her back. My jaw dropped and my confusion only increased.

  “Th-thanks?” I said, extending my hand to grab them from her. “What are they for?” I asked.

  “I just thought I owed them to you,” she said. “Can we chat for a second?”

  I nodded. “Sure… can you just give me a second to make sure everyone found their parents?” I asked. Although I was dumbstruck by this move of hers, I had still been keeping my eye on the kids and making sure they all got to the right places.

  “No problem!” she said enthusiastically. “I’ll just stand here and wait with you.”

  “Sure.” I nodded a little, hesitantly.

  The next five minutes were some of the most awkward of my life. Whatever Katie needed to say, she couldn’t even hint about it out here and my mind was racing with all the possibilities. And, really, no possibility that crossed my mind made any sense.

  I guess the idea that made the most sense to me was that she had gotten me flowers to apologize. But
what did she have to apologize for? For not liking women? That was hardly a fault of hers.

  One of the parents of a student just so happened to highlight the awkwardness when she addressed the flowers in my hand. “Oh, who gave you those?” she asked with a smile. She was the mother of one of my students, Josh. A sweet but energetic little boy.

  “Actually, Alex’s mom did,” I said, motioning to Katie who smiled.

  This got us both a raised eyebrow. “Oh, a present for being such a great teacher?” the mother asked.

  “Something like that.” Katie smiled.

  “So nice,” the woman responded before walking away.

  It was a long, awkward five minutes, but the five minutes did pass, thankfully, and I was super grateful that all my students’ parents were here to pick them up on time.

  “Okay, that’s all of them,” I said, turning to Katie. “Do you want to go to the playground again?”

  “Yes, that’s perfect.” Katie turned to Alex. “You want to be the only kid on the playground again?” she asked.

  “Yes!” Alex said enthusiastically.

  “Great, let’s go!” Katie responded. She seemed even more excited than Alex.

  Katie and I sat down on the bench. I turned to her, curious to see what she was going to say. “So, what’s up?” I asked, after Alex had run off to the monkey bars.

  “Okay, so, this is hard for me to say,” Katie began suddenly. “Please just stay with me on this, okay?”

  “Okay…” I said slowly.

  “Alright, so, I know we haven’t spoken in weeks, and that has been really hard on me. Like, I just genuinely have struggled with not having you around, and I know that seems silly when we haven’t even been friends that long, but I can’t explain it. You just… mean something to me. You really matter to me, and I just couldn’t get you out of my head. And today I realized why.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Why?” I asked, eager to hear her answer.

  “It’s because you’re supposed to be in my head. You’re supposed to be in my thoughts. I’m…” She hesitated. “You don’t get what I’m saying, do you?”