The shoulder check outside Mr. Foster’s office was number ten for the day—Courtney was in rare form heading into the weekend.
Surely her shoulder is as bruised as mine.
“Jessica, come on in.”
She closed the door behind her to block out Courtney from her mind and entered into Mr. Foster’s cozy room.
“I was just about to get started with the ritual throat-slitting of a goat. Care to join?”
“Ha-ha,” she said sarcastically, trying not to laugh in earnest.
He beamed at her as she took a seat across from him. “Any big plans for the weekend?” he asked.
She had a feeling he genuinely liked her, which was quite a compliment, considering his overall feelings for humanity. It also left her with a peach pit of guilt in her stomach every time she remembered her conversation with Mrs. Thomas about how he was on his way out. Did he know yet? Would the right thing be to tell him so that he could at least start searching for another job?
But she wasn’t here to discuss all that.
“Texas State.”
His eyebrows pinched together as his brain attempted to piece together the non sequitur. “You’re going to San Marcos this weekend?”
“No. Texas State. That’s where I want to go. To college.”
He nodded slowly and then a smile crept across his face. “That’s a good school.”
“It’s four hours from Mooretown.”
“Are you worried about the distance?” he asked.
“Yeah. I’m worried it’s not far enough. But it’ll do.”
He laughed. “It’ll more than do. Do you know what you want to study yet?”
She sighed. “No, not yet.”
He folded his hands in his lap, still grinning approvingly. “Perfect. You’ll fit right in there.” After a moment’s pause, he said, “So is that your actual decision, or do you intend to leave here one-hundred percent set on Michigan State?”
She’d omitted an important detail, one that, once she was firm on it, was the reason she chose Texas State over other, more distant (and expensive) colleges that were offering her a full-ride. “I don’t want to play football.”
He sat up straight in his chair. “Oh. Ohhh.” He rubbed his hands together nervously. “Are you sure?” He cackled with laughter, then caught himself and regained his composure.
“Are you okay, Mr. Foster?”
He laughed again, this time more jubilant. “Yes, Jessica. I’m fine. I’m just … Never mind.”
She couldn’t tell if he was nervous, excited, or maybe both. Poor Mr. Foster. “Want to talk about it?” she asked.
He waved her off. “No, it’s fine. Well, I mean—” He shut his mouth and thought about it, then reconsidered. “Yes. Yes, I would like to talk about it. No one’s asked me. But since you’re my last meeting of the week, and I think you might understand, sure. Well, it’s a couple things. Mostly, I just met my quota.”
“Your quota?” she asked.
“Yeah, for athletes versus non-athletes.”
“So you had too many people going to college for sports?”
He nodded.
That seemed like a strange thing to care about. “Who says?”
He rocked his head back and forth. Was he not supposed to say? “Well, technically it’s the nebulous ‘leadership’”—he drew air quotes with his fingers—“but that just means Principal Thomas.”
“Why wouldn’t she want too many college athletes?”
He leaned over the desk. “Between you and me, I think she hates sports.” He leaned back again. “But her stated reason is that she thinks it diminishes the academic accomplishments of the school if all the college-bound students we produce are on athletic scholarships.”
“She doesn’t hate athletics,” Jessica said, feeling … she couldn’t put her finger on it. Torn? Confused? Icky? Yes, definitely icky.
Mr. Foster looked at her pityingly. “You’ve never been to a booster club meeting, have you?”
“No.” Then, “Have you?”
He nodded. “Oddly enough, yes, I have. I was told it would be … eye opening.”
She didn’t know what he meant by that or what about a stupid meeting where a bunch of parents sat around debating whose kid had better hand-eye coordination had to do with anything. What she did understand was that she didn’t like what she sensed from Mr. Foster. He’d become her first line of defense and closest ally against bullshit, even if he was a little lazy or begrudging about his job from time to time, like Mrs. Thomas had mentioned. That was all easily overlooked and understandable, considering he worked in a school where all the adults seemed overtaxed, underpaid, and constantly one paycheck away from quitting, leaving it all behind, and pursuing whatever they were passionate about as children, money be damned.
But she wasn’t sure that his hints of dislike for the principal were as excusable in her mind. And that was irritating. She didn’t want to lose Mr. Foster as an ally. He was one of the few people in her life she was convinced wasn’t the Devil.
“But don’t you hate athletics, too?” she asked, grasping at straws.
He chuckled. “Hate? No. I actually used to play soccer in high school.”
She tried not to roll her eyes. He would be a soccer player. They were a non-native breed to Mooremont High, which could never pull enough players to form a team, but she’d met a few at away games, and now that she thought about it, they were like young Mr. Fosters, with their lithe bodies and aloofness.
“If I’m being honest,” Mr. Foster continued, “I’m just not the biggest fan of football. It stops and starts too much. There’s no flow. But it doesn’t matter what I think, obviously. If you wanted to play it in college, I’d support that, no matter what Mrs. Thomas not-so-subtly implied about my future job prospects, were that to have been your decision.”
“Wait, what?” Did he know he was on the way out?
“Don’t worry, though,” he said. “I’ve been asked to leave a job for less. And between you and me, I’ll probably not be asked back next year anyway, for some other dumb reason.” But before she could ask anything else, he added, “So Texas State, eh? San Marcos is a beautiful city. Been dreaming about moving down there myself, actually. Seems to be everyone’s pick today.”
“Everyone’s?”
“Well, not everyone, but you, and just a minute ago, Courtney informed me she’d be going there, and before that—“
“The Wurst twins are going to Texas State?!” She hadn’t meant to yell, but she probably couldn’t have controlled herself if she’d had a second try at it, either.
Mr. Foster blinked dumbly against the outburst, then added, “No, not both. Just Courtney. Trent is going to Abilene Christian.”
Now it was Jessica’s turn to blink dumbly. “They’re not going to the same school?”
He pressed his lips into an apathetic half frown and shook his head. “Nope. They’re two separate people.”
She had to let that sink in. The Wurst twins are separate people. They’d always seemed like two heads of the same dragon.
Mr. Foster started in on the process involved in officially accepting the offer of one university and rejecting the others, and when it became obvious that Jessica’s mind was elsewhere, Mr. Foster interrupted himself with, “I’ll email you all this and you can look over it this weekend. That work?”
She nodded and he opened his laptop and began working. “I should have your email on file, let me just check to make sure it’s the one you want me to send it to.” A few more clicks and he had it pulled up. “So it’s mexicankicker7 at … Jesus Christ, Jessica, really? That seemed like a good idea?”
She shrugged. “At the time, yeah. I have a new one now, though. Wendy Peter— My PR rep made me get one.”
He chuckled. “Well give me that one, then, and once you leave here today, give Wendy a raise and maybe a thank-you card from me.”
Jessica waited until the very last second to wipe off the excessive makeup
that Destinee had insisted was appropriate for senior prom and wondered if her mother had ever made it to prom herself. Considering Jessica was a toddler at the time, probably not.
The lipstick had felt like butter, and the dark eye shadow made her eyes look sunken. Chris would be too nice to say anything about it, but she knew that all the primping really wasn’t necessary; he’d smelled her at her worst for three football seasons and he was still with her. As long as she didn’t smell like ass—and she was as sure as one can be that she didn’t—everything would be okay.
That didn’t make her any less nervous, though. Not only was this prom night, the lead-up to which had been full of nothing but sexual innuendos bordering on accusations from the football team, but tonight was also the night Jessica decided to let down Chris by telling him where she’d decided to go for college, knowing full well he would be going somewhere else. She’d been sitting on the decision for a week, and she couldn’t hold out any longer. Breaking the news on a big night like this, with so much else going on, seemed like an easy way to slip it in without it becoming a huge thing.
Jessica waited in her room for the sound of the F-350, and checked her Twitter as a nervous tic. She’d tweeted earlier that day, Finally decided on a university. More info soon. It was her warm-up for breaking the news to a smaller and more important audience of one, and so far she’d received three hundred and ninety-four notifications on that alone. Wendy had told her to respond to as many as she could—steady followings were built one relationship at a time.
Chris arrived in her driveway just after she rolled her eyes at one of her follower’s jokes but replied with @Jscacrst69 lol anyway, and she slipped her phone into the clutch that matched her emerald green dress, adjusted the straps on the wedges she could hardly walk in, despite ample practice, and headed out into the living room where Coach Rex and Destinee were waiting.
The way they looked at her, all toothy grins and pride, was mortifying. “I can’t wait to take this stupid dress off,” she mumbled, feeling a blush creep onto her cheeks.
“I bet Chris can’t wait for that, either.”
It was Coach Rex who said it, and six months ago, Jessica would have been surprised to hear him say something so ribald, but clearly her mother’s influence had gotten to him.
Destinee cackled and clung to his arm, and Jess hoped that they’d have worn themselves out by the time she made it home after prom; a night off from hearing the hammering of Destinee’s bedpost against the wall would be a real blessing, if she believed in such things. But she knew better. If God could have stopped Destinee from engaging in night aerobics with Rex without some terrible consequence resulting from the divine intervention, He already would have.
“Speaking of which,” Destinee said, “you didn’t take out the condoms I put in there, did you?” She nodded at the clutch in Jess’s hand, which Jessica then opened.
“You mean these?” She pulled out the long string of condoms, all twenty-four. The packaging never stopped reminding her of the long strings of lollipops she’d always asked for at the store but which Destinee had claimed would rot her teeth out. So instead, Jessica got condoms. “I already told you I’m not going to need one, let alone two dozen.”
“And I already told you if you use one, you’ll use two dozen. That boy’s been dating you for over two years now, and you still haven’t given him the goodies? If you think your first time won’t be immediately followed by your second, third and eventually twenty-fourth time, you got a lot to learn, baby.”
Chris knocked on the door and Jessica hurriedly shoved the condoms back into her clutch and pinched it shut.
She opened the door, feeling relieved that it was finally time to get going and get this awful rite of passage over with.
But when she caught sight of Chris, her blood pressure shot up like she’d just run ten suicides with no break in between.
Holy shit, he looked good.
“Damn,” said Destinee from behind her, and Jess couldn’t help but agree.
What child support money he hadn’t spent on Gordon’s burgers over the years, Chris had put into a savings account, which he never dipped into, with the exception of the tux he now wore with an emerald green bowtie to match her gown. Part of her had expected him to look silly all dressed to the nines, like how she felt herself, but he looked natural in the tailored jacket that accentuated the broadness of his shoulders, cutting in to his trim, muscular waist.
He smiled and took her in, eyeing her from head to toe then back up again, pausing at the small bit of cleavage she’d mustered, then back to her face. “You look beautiful, Jess.”
“You look like a spy.”
He grinned. “Thanks.”
“Pictures!” Destinee proclaimed, and Jessica groaned.
Chris leaned in close so only she could hear. “Gives me an excuse to put my hands on your body.”
She snorted and felt her face redden again but became much more at peace with the awkwardness of standing in the run-down McCloud home until her mother was satisfied that she must have a good picture by that point. “If not,” Destinee added, “I’ll just Photoshop it.”
Destinee had no knowledge of or access to Photoshop, but Jessica nodded along like it was a viable option, and then scooted Chris out the door and to his truck. He opened the passenger-side door for her, but before she got in, he closed the space between them and kissed her roughly. When he pulled back, he said, “I have reservations at Gordon’s for seven. We should get going.”
“You have … wait, what?” She climbed into the truck and he shut the door carefully behind her before circling around to the other side. She must not have heard that correctly. He must have meant somewhere nicer, like Texas Roadhouse or Chili’s.
Once he was back inside and started up the engine, she debated whether or not to ask him for clarification. On the one hand, she did love Gordon’s, and she didn’t want to make him feel bad about botching prom-night dinner plans. But on the other hand, what the hell?
She decided to just wait it out. Surely he’d meant another restaurant, but just had Gordon’s on the brain, like always.
She held onto that hope until they finally pulled into the parking lot of Gordon’s, at which point, she was forced to accept that, yes, Chris was taking her to a fast-food burger joint for prom dinner.
Once the initial shock of that wore off, she realized something else. “Are they even open?” The parking lot was empty, but there were dim lights on inside, and she thought she saw Jeremiah, the general manager, standing behind the counter.
“Yep, they’re open,” he said, sounding almost giddy.
He parked on the curb right in front of the doors and went around to let her out, helping her down so she didn’t break an ankle trying to climb out in her wedges. “Uhh.” Her brain still couldn’t make sense of it as he opened the first set of glass double doors. “Where is everyone? What’s going on?”
“I told you,” he said, holding open the second set of doors, “I made a reservation.”
She paused as she entered and was finally able to process the surroundings. Strings of icicle lights dipped here and there across the ceiling, replacing the usual fluorescent lighting, and in the booth where they usually sat were three long, lit candles. “You reserved the whole place?” she asked dumbly, already knowing the answer was “No shit,” but feeling the need to ask anyway.
“Yep,” he said proudly, and then he offered the crook of his arm. She paused before taking it and looked up at him. He was quite impressed with himself. Okay then.
She pushed the weirdness factor of the grand gesture to the back of her mind and took his arm, and he led her straight over to the booth.
“Shouldn’t we order?” she asked.
He looked down at her, his eyebrows scrunching together. “Oh,” he said after a second. “You’re serious. No. We don’t need to order. I—we’re the only ones here. I already have that all sorted out.”
“Ah, okay. Yeah, that m
akes sense.”
She slid into the booth, careful not to snag her dress on the cracked vinyl, and he scooted in across from her.
The large candles glowed between them, and a second later, Jeremiah brought over two wine glasses, set one in front of each of them, and then began pouring them Dr. Pepper from a one-liter bottle that he had wrapped a clean dish towel around.
That was the last straw before Jess started giggling. She couldn’t stop. She tried, and for a second she thought she’d manage it, but when she looked up at Chris and he started laughing, she was done for. She laughed until she snorted, and then she laughed harder, until tears began to form in her eyes and she worried that if she didn’t stop soon, her stupid mascara would become a problem. Vanity was just the thing she needed to calm herself down, and as she relaxed, she looked up at Chris. “I needed that,” she said. “This is amazing.”
He was still giggling. “Yeah, this is ridiculous. It seemed a lot more romantic when I came up with it.”
“And when was that?”
“Last week. While I was eating a burger here.”
That set off the laughing again, and once they were both able to control themselves, Jess knew that fun time was over, and she needed to just come out with her bad news. She’d miss in-person moments like this with Chris, once they were in a long-distance relationship, but it’d be worth staying together if they were able to meet up for burgers every so often. She wondered what town was halfway between Lubbock and San Marcos. She’d have to look it up next chance she got.
“Chris, we need to talk, and don’t worry, I’m not breaking up with you.”
He nodded determinedly. “Okay, that’s good. I’ve been meaning to tell you something, too.”
The sudden seriousness of his voice caused her hackles to bristle. “Wait, what?”
“I didn’t want to talk about it tonight, because I didn’t want to ruin anything, so maybe we can just wait until tomorrow.”
It's a Miracle! Page 18
