Lessons in Love

by Belinda Missen

  Chapter 7

  Part of me expected Marcus to come racing out his front door, six-pack on display and towel wrapped around his waist, that finely carved V-shape shown off perfectly. The other part hoped like hell I made it home before he realised what had happened.

  Reality had other plans.

  I’d barely rounded the corner before I was on my knees in someone’s gutter, depositing my dinner and adding a whiff of lemon meringue martini into the local storm-water system. I had to wait for my stomach to stop heaving before I could pick gravel from tender kneecaps and limp home. My walk of shame was complemented by shoes dangling from fingers, and a sweaty sour mess of hair.

  None of this was going down in my list of life achievements I was proud of.

  I was relieved when I arrived home to find the house empty. It gave me just enough time to shower myself back into human form, and a modicum of privacy to freak out on my own. As my head hit the pillow, I hoped to wake up the next morning and find everything had been some multidimensional Marvel universe style dream.

  It didn’t. It wasn’t. This was not Doctor Strange and his mirror dimension. Or, maybe it could be if I made sure not to tell anyone of my late-night escapades. Hiding from daylight the next morning, I made a very snap decision that I was not telling a soul about my night. What strange magic had been there was not being put up for public consumption. I pulled on some comfortable clothes and shuffled out into the kitchen, and the new morning.

  I switched on the kettle and searched for a mug through barely open eyes.

  ‘And a very good morning to you,’ Penny said through burbled laughter. She had a frying pan in one hand and a fat old spatula in the other. ‘Are you of the genus grease this morning, or the genus carbo-starchy-coma?’

  ‘Both. Both is good.’ I slipped onto a stool by the counter and held my head in my hands. Even though I’d showered and double washed myself last night, I could still smell lemon meringue. My stomach lurched.

  ‘Big fat fluffy pancakes?’ Penny presented me with a plate stacked high. ‘We have not particularly authentic maple syrup, lemon and sugar, or whipped butter.’

  ‘Butter,’ I groaned. Something rose in my throat at the idea of going anywhere near lemon. ‘And maple syrup. All of it.’

  ‘Alrighty then.’

  A leaning tower of pancakes appeared before me, along with butter and syrup, which I poured until I had a small moat on my plate. I shuffled across to the dining table and hugged my coffee cup. I’d have closed my eyes again if it weren’t for the fact I got a frame-by-frame replay of my not so best moments from the last twenty-four hours.

  ‘How are you feeling this morning?’ Penny stood back from the pan while bacon sizzled and spat at her.

  ‘I feel like I’m never drinking again.’ I held my face. While I felt like death, Penny looked like she was enjoying every minute of this. For once, it was me on the wrong end of the bar tab and not her.

  ‘And, where, pray tell, did you disappear to last night?’ she asked.

  ‘Uhhhh.’ I tucked my napkin under my plate and chewed ultra-slowly. Not even Penny was exempt from my decision not to tell anyone. ‘I went for a walk.’

  Her brows disappeared beneath her fringe. ‘For a walk?’

  ‘I was so drunk,’ I tried, fingers fanning out from my temples. ‘And I thought the cold air would do me good. All I ended up doing was throwing up in the gutter.’

  Her jaw dropped. ‘You?’

  ‘Me.’ I pouted. ‘What a waste of good martini, right?’

  ‘Jesus, Eleanor. If you’re not careful, you’ll be having random cheap sex.’

  Pancake stuck in my throat. I coughed.

  ‘And herein, you are shooketh,’ she chuckled. ‘Ellie, you crack me up.’

  I grinned. ‘Glad to help.’

  After breakfast, I beat a hasty retreat to bed, where my only companion was going to be Harry Potter and his magic wand. He was going to be far less trouble. Plus, it was my tenth read through of the series, and he was at least a known quantity.

  Still, there was only so many magic spells that would keep reality at bay. My hangover tapered off with a thumper of a headache, which was soon replaced by waves of embarrassed realisation. It arrived slowly at first, but then rushed in like a high tide in a monsoon. My life had an egg timer in the top right-hand corner. Less than forty-eight hours until I had to deal with Marcus again.

  Penny suggested a day of shopping, but I couldn’t process the idea of perhaps running into him on the street. I didn’t want that awkward ‘How about that, huh?’ one-two shuffle on a street corner while neither of us knew what to say. So, I opted for a weekend inside. The couch and a DVD box set were calling my name. I needed to recharge, I argued, and disappeared into a pile of cushions with half the confectionary aisle and another set of What Ifs to be anxious about. I powered through a box of Lindt balls, balls, and broke apart a block of Cadbury Fruit and Nut … nuts.

  Chocolate! Marcus was the chocolate bar I stole from the milk bar when I was fourteen. While the shopkeeper was busy stacking fruit and veg, I slipped a single-serve Cadbury Snack bar into my pocket and raced out the door. Only, this time, I’d been caught. And what did we learn from that episode? There was not thrill in getting away with the crime, and it wasn’t ever going to happen again. There, brain. Sorted. Illicit. Illegal. Not happening. Never again.

  By the time my alarm went off on Monday morning, bright red and screaming like a banshee, I was well prepared. I’d been awake for hours, pondering what exactly it was I was going to say during the inevitable discussion. I’d rationalised how I was going to get my point across without sounding like a clingy girlfriend. To him, whatever may have only been a word. To me, it was a matter of respect. How the ever-perceptive Penny hadn’t picked up on my agitation was beyond me.

  I kept my head down and thoughts to myself as I walked through the school gates. If I couldn’t see the looks in people’s eyes, then they didn’t know, and I could sleep easier. We slipped into the reception area together, where Penny opened the safe and booted her computer, and I checked my pigeonhole as per my shiny new routine.

  My heart thumped in time with my footsteps and my stomach was stuck on spin cycle. They dropped it down a notch as I ventured into an empty tea room. It was one hurdle I’d cleared. It all felt a little like Mario trying to get to the castle to save Princess Peach, except I was the Princess trying to avoid Mario, so maybe that wasn’t the best analogy.

  I shouldered my office door as it swung open.

  ‘And it’s a very good morning to Usain Bolt!’

  As it turned out, I was not prepared.

  Marcus sat, legs dangling from the desk, bearing coffee and a greasy bag that I took cautiously and with minimal eye contact. Inside the bag, a Florentine – only my favourite biscuit ever. With its sweet chocolate base, crunchy nuts and candied fruit, Penny and I would walk laps of town as teenagers, fuelled only by idle high school gossip and the sugar in these biscuits.

  ‘I thought, seeing as I didn’t get my morning after breakfast that I’d improvise,’ he continued.

  ‘How’d you know these were my favourite?’ I asked.

  He shrugged and lifted his feet onto the seat of a chair. ‘A little bird told me.’

  ‘A little bird in a tiki dress?’ I asked.

  ‘Is that what it is today?’ He smirked. ‘I can never keep up.’

  My gaze shifted from the contents of the bag to him. Panic drummed a beat in my ears.

  ‘Relax, I didn’t tell her,’ he assured me. ‘She certainly seemed completely oblivious to it when I rang for some insider information, so why feed the gossip train?’

  ‘What’d you tell her?’ I asked.

  He shrugged. ‘I told her I wanted to do something nice for you for breakfast. Something about welcoming you into your first proper week on the job.’

  I placed his offering beside my computer, twisted my hair up into a bun and shoved a pencil through the middle. Until
then, I hadn’t noticed I’d left it loose this morning.

  ‘Can I … I need to know what happened,’ he said, hesitant.

  Our eye contact was brief. Marcus picked at the edge of my bench, and he swallowed more often than a drowning rat. This wasn’t helping me. My heart sank under the weight of guilt and embarrassment, and all the words I’d prepared over the weekend marched out the door two by two. I grappled for them, but they were gone.

  I pressed the door closed with a quiet click, keen to sort this out and move on for the day. I crossed my arms, fearing that if I rubbed my hands against my hips one more time I’d tear my skin clean off. Pressing at an invisible spot on my forehead didn’t seem to work either. As I paced about, Marcus sat on the edge of my desk and waited patiently.

  ‘I’m not here to argue with you,’ he ventured. ‘I just want to know what happened. Everything was going great, at least I thought it was. I got out of the shower, and you were gone.’

  ‘You don’t think that might have something to do with you at all?’ I asked. ‘Let’s not call it anything? Whatever?’

  His head dipped back slightly, frustration lining his face as his words came back to haunt him. He rubbed a hand across his mouth. ‘I did say that, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, you did.’

  ‘What if I said I wanted more?’ He clasped his hands in his lap. ‘What if I’d spent all weekend thinking about that night and thought maybe we should do that again, and soon?’

  I pursed my lips and I shook my head.

  ‘No?’ he asked. ‘What, so, you’re upset because I said “whatever” and, now, you’re upset because I want to take it back?’

  ‘I’m not upset about you wanting to take it back.’ I smiled softly. ‘I’m upset that I was stupid enough to go home with you in the first place. That I put myself in that position again when I promised myself I wouldn’t, that I’d be more careful.’

  Eyes wide, his mouth formed a shocked ‘O’. ‘Christ, okay. There’s a spare spot on my back if you want to dig the knife in again?’

  ‘And how do I know you don’t try this on with all the girls?’ I asked. ‘Maybe I’m just flavour of the month.’

  ‘It may surprise you, but our school is not exactly the Baskin Robbins of the dating world.’ He stood straighter. ‘What happens now?’

  ‘What do you mean what happens now?’ I asked. ‘You’ve got a job to do, go and do it.’

  ‘Are you usually this cold?’ he asked.

  ‘Cold? How is this a me issue?’ I laughed. ‘I asked you to define it, and you blew me off with little more than a “whatever”. Realistically, it was never going to be more than a one-night stand because we need to work together, and I’m not dragging a relationship around the office like a petulant toddler, but “whatever”? Do you understand how devaluing that is?’

  ‘That’s certainly not how I intended it to sound,’ he said. ‘Not at all. I simply expressing that I didn’t think we needed to label anything, that it could just be one fantastic night as it was.’

  I glanced up over my shoulder. ‘Look, we need to be in class in about five minutes. You need to leave.’

  ‘So that’s it?’ he asked again. ‘I use one wrong word, and I’ve blown my chance?’

  ‘Do you teach your students to choose their words carefully?’ I opened my office door and swept my arm towards the outside world. ‘As far as I’m concerned, it didn’t happen, and it’s not happening again.’

  ‘So, what you’re saying is just rewind to four o’clock Friday?’

  ‘Exactly. None of it happened. Whatever, right?’

  ‘All right then.’ Marcus backed out of my office slowly. ‘Onion.’

  ‘Smug bastard.’ I reached for my lesson plans.

  So, that didn’t exactly play out how I’d hoped. For all the imaginary arguments I’d won over the weekend, I suddenly had about as much bite as sweet tomato relish. But I didn’t have time to worry. In fact, I didn’t even want to worry about it. The bell had barely rung when Jemima appeared at the door of the library.

  ‘Everybody say good morning to Miss Manning.’ Jemima held the door open for her small army as they raced through the door, elbows akimbo, already fragile friendships teetering on the fall of seating arrangements. They sang a sweet greeting and, before I could grab her, she’d vanished. Fair call, I thought.

  ‘All right.’ I clapped my hands and looked out at the faces before me. Kids. They were so readable I could tell their level of disinterest a mile off. ‘Today, we’re going to be reading one of my favourite books. Then, I want you to use the tools in front of you to retell the story of that book back to me.’

  They looked bored stiff. Great.

  ‘Miss Manning, are you going to take the roll?’

  Fuck.

  ‘Just testing.’ I grinned and shook a finger. ‘Good pick-up.’

  Thankfully, things got better. I remembered roll call at the beginning of classes, worked through retellings with younger students, character profiles with some of the older ones, and word associations with the ones in between. I pushed my return cart around at lunchtime and, on Wednesday, Penny and the Prep teachers (that really should be a band name) took me for lunch at the closest sandwich shop we could find, where I avoided any and all questions about my love life. I did not have one, no matter what secrets the universe was keeping for me.

  On my way back, I walked into the library with a fist-sized blueberry muffin in tow to find Phil waiting for me. He looked deep in discussion with Mick, both wearing expressions that told me they were plotting someone’s demise; likely mine. I hoped like hell Marcus hadn’t said anything. Surely, he wouldn’t.

  ‘Eleanor.’ Phil held out a hand to stop me before I could disappear too far into my office.

  ‘Phil.’ I backtracked cautiously. All I wanted right now was to destroy this muffin and ride the sugar wave out for the afternoon. I peeled back the paper patty case and nibbled as I waited for him to finish mumbling at Mick.

  ‘How’s everything going?’ he asked. ‘All under control? Settling in well?’

  I nodded slowly. ‘I think so, yes.’

  ‘No problems at all?’ he asked. ‘Getting along all right with everyone?’

  I froze. Throat, meet vomit. Vomit, sit back down. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘It’s just, I’ve got you in mind for a project. I was just wondering if there were any issues I wasn’t yet aware of?’

  I shook my head and glanced at Mick, who offered nothing but a nervous smile. ‘No, everyone’s been great. Very supportive. Thank you.’

  ‘And you’re ready for the Book Fair coming up? That’s always a huge day.’

  Not really. It was still weeks away. ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Excellent. Good.’ Phil rubbed his hands together, surveying the library like he was looking for something out of place, then disappeared with Mick in tow.

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what they were planning.

  Chapter 8

  If anyone were to ask me to sum up my first two weeks at Apollo Bay Primary School, I’d probably tell them it had been a bag of Allen’s Party Mix. Friendships with most colleagues came easily, helped by shared stories of class tantrums and breakdowns over the death of fictional characters. As a book lover, I could sympathise with that far too easily.

  We bemoaned workloads that held hands with a lack of funding and, just when I thought I’d climbed to the top of my To Do List, I’d received so many boxes of books for this upcoming book fair that I wished I’d seen them being delivered. Watching them arrive would have looked like that meme with the Amazon truck; oh, look, my book order has arrived!

  When it came to Marcus, we had no need to see each other. Like a clip from Yellow Submarine, he’d walk in one door, I’d leave from another. I might have thought keeping him out of sight was the key to keeping him out of my mind, but it was only going to last for so long before I had to deal with him, and his class.

  On Friday afternoon, with his Grade
Six students in tow, he walked into the library. His navy suit and grey tie brought my winning streak to an end. I sighed so heavily my fringe tickled and left me scratching my forehead.

  ‘Good afternoon, Miss Manning.’ He grinned so hard, so smugly, that I thought his head might tip back and reveal he was secretly a PEZ dispenser. If he then proceeded to spit out a couple of chill pills, I’d be more than happy to deal with him for the afternoon. Instead, he left nothing more than large handprints on my freshly Windex’d door, because using door handles was so 2005.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Blair. So positively wonderful to see your face again.’ I smiled coquettishly and turned away.

  His class stampeded past him like wild brumbies, dispersing in every direction known to woman and proceeding to tear up the landscape. They were way too boisterous a bunch for a Friday afternoon. I don’t ever remember being so intense when I was their age. My friends and I were more likely to be dragging knuckles and yawning out the last of our jam sandwiches but, here they were, raucous and large as life.

  ‘All right, remember what I said.’ Marcus strode across the learning zone. ‘Let’s mix up our reading style a bit and step out of our comfort zones. Max, that means something other than comics for you and, Sarah, get off the Sweet Valley High.’

  ‘Nothing wrong with Sweet Valley High,’ I grumbled.

  ‘And I’d like to see a few of you in the non-fiction section. Caroline, I know you’ll just love to read about French revolutionary history. Napoleon is not just an ice-cream flavour.’

  He wasn’t even that. What on earth was he teaching these kids?

  I cringed. ‘What?’

  ‘That’s it, every corner. Spread on out. That way, when Miss Manning puts all these books back tonight, she gets to familiarise herself with the library, and we do want to help her get acquainted with Mr Dewey and his system.’

  I glanced up from the small piles of books forming on the returns trolley. ‘I’ll have you know I’m very familiar with Mr Dewey and his system. We’re old friends, dinner on Friday nights.’