by Mariano, Sam
Regret flashes across his features, but he tempers it quickly. “Not this time. I’m sorry.”
“Please,” I say, putting myself out there even more, despite how vulnerable I know it makes me. “I really like you.”
I wait for my words to have some impact on him, but he simply bends and grabs my clothing, then brings the pile over and drops it in a heap on the bed beside me.
“Good,” he says indifferently. “Then don’t get me fired.”
I stare up at him, my heart in my eyes, but he looks back at me coolly, like he doesn’t even have one.
My heart feels so heavy with disappointment and I can’t look at him any longer. Suddenly fueled with anger and betrayal, I untangle my bra and panties from the clothing heap and quickly begin dressing. I’ve had it with this, with him. I hate how my fingers tremble as I button my shirt back up, but I tell myself it’s the rage and not the heartache.
He warned me he might hurt me, but I didn’t think he meant like this.
“I was right before. You are an asshole.”
I don’t wait for him to respond. I gather all the things I brought with me, save my pride and my hopes of a relationship. He stomped those into the ground, and it’ll take a while before I’m able to recover them on my own, but I will.
Following me out so he can hit the garage door opener, he says, “I’m sorry it went this way.”
“No, you’re not,” I snap, pausing just before I get to my car so I can spin around and look at him. “You’ve got some nerve pushing me to take chances, calling me a coward, saying I am too fond of the comfort zone. I was willing to blow right past my comfort zones for you. I thought you were worth it.”
He bows his head just slightly, shoving his hands into his pockets, accepting my anger since he knows he’s earned it.
“You’re the coward,” I tell him, in case he hasn’t put it together. “You’re the one who’s too afraid to trust someone and take a chance and see if maybe it could be something great.”
“Maybe,” he offers evenly. Since he must think he’s allowed me to cling to far too much of my pride, he adds, “Or maybe I just don’t think you’re worth it.”
My heart plummets all over again, falling through empty places inside me that weren’t empty before I came here tonight. I swallow down the lump in my throat, looking at him with pure loathing. “I hate you.”
He inclines his head. “Good.”
I can scarcely breathe, and I have nothing left to say to him, so I throw open my car door and drop into the driver’s seat. Now that he’s hurt me so badly, all I want to do is leave. He’s lucky he opened the garage door already, because I don’t check. I turn the engine on, throw the car in reverse, and fly out of his driveway, wishing I’d never come here to begin with.
Chapter Ten
Callan
Fridays are typically the best day of the week, but with only one remaining week of school until winter break, there’s more to do on this particular Friday than usual. More assignments in need of grading and general end-of-year organization, but then there are also the extracurricular activities, and the unforeseeable events which could result in those of us who stay out of them… no longer being able to stay out of them.
I do not volunteer to oversee any myself, but there are plenty of clubs and organizations for fostering student involvement that other teachers get suckered into babysitting. Oak Grove has more of these programs than most public schools despite having fewer students enrolled, because Oak Grove knows that college admissions look for students who are able to juggle extracurriculars and still manage their coursework well enough to maintain good grades.
Given how carefully I’ve avoided being just such a sucker, when Miss Styles approaches me at lunch looking like death warmed over and tells me she has to go home so she needs me to cover her biweekly Community Outreach Club meeting, I answer with a resounding no.
“You have to,” she says hoarsely, twitching her red, irritated nose. “It’s your turn.”
It probably is my turn. I’m always somewhere near the bottom of the list, but the flu has hit the faculty pretty hard this year, so it’s feasible that they’ve made it all the way to me.
“I wouldn’t even know what to do,” I insist. “Community outreach isn’t my thing.”
“My student ambassador will fill you in. She’s pretty much running the club at this point; all you have to do is show up. A teacher just has to be there, and we can’t cancel the meeting, there’s too much going on this week in the lead-up to winter break.”
So, that’s how I get suckered in to subbing as the faculty advisor in Community Outreach Club after school.
As if I needed something else to put me in a bad mood. I was already going to be surly and hard on everyone today after my evening with Noelle.
From the moment she walks into my classroom, my mood darkens. I make a point never to look at her, so it’s the longest class of my life, but finally it ends and I’m free of her.
Or so I think, until I get to the Community Outreach Club meeting and discover that the student ambassador is none other than Noelle Harper.
Of fucking course it is.
She’s already standing at the head of the meeting table with a binder open and a whiteboard set up. She’s holding an uncapped marker and transferring information from her notes to the whiteboard.
Her natural reaction is to glance in my direction when she senses movement, but she does a double take and freezes when she sees it’s me.
Looking around the otherwise empty room first, she checks to make sure nobody snuck in since she last looked. Seeing we are, in fact, alone, she scowls at me.
“What are you doing here? I’m setting up for a meeting.”
I nod, lifting my eyebrows and the folder Miss Styles gave me with attendance and information about whatever projects they’re working on. “Your advisor went home sick. Guess who had to fill in.”
Her shoulders sag with dread. “You?” she complains, even though it is obviously me.
“Afraid so.” I walk to the front of the room and take a seat. “I’m told the student ambassador runs the show anyway, so I’m gonna catch up on some emails. You do your thing.”
Noelle rolls her eyes and goes back to the whiteboard. I half expect her to lose control in under a minute and sourly ask how my date went, so despite telling her I’d be checking emails, I keep most of my attention trained on the door to watch for other students who could potentially witness her inevitable outburst.
She doesn’t have one, though. She’s focused on her work and doesn’t look my way or speak to me at all.
Once the last of the kids wander in and take their seats, I expect Noelle to take hers, too. She doesn’t. She remains at the head of the table by the whiteboard and acts as the teacher.
“All right, let’s get started,” she begins cheerfully, smiling at all her club mates. “First I wanted to say, great job on the food drive. All the food we managed to collect at the school has been donated and it will go a long way in making sure underfunded families have what they need to make this holiday season a little easier.”
If she expects any of the other kids to care, she must be pretty disappointed right now. One girl is affecting a bored pose and snapping a selfie. A guy is sprawled in his seat, eyes down, not even hiding that he’s on his phone instead of paying attention.
Unperturbed, she continues, “On that note, the toy drive ending today has been a little less impressive. I know I’ve been asking a lot of you this season, but come on, guys, it’s Christmas—the season of giving. We’re all lucky enough not to have to worry about these things, but that’s why it’s even more important to do our part to help others.”
A couple students exchange eye rolls and smirks. Someone coughs.
These little shits. Is this what every meeting is like? They put club participation on their college application and let Noelle do every bit of the work for them just because she will?
It’s one t
hing when I take advantage of her, but it pisses me right off seeing anyone else do it.
“I do have to deliver the toys we’ve already collected today,” she goes on, as if anyone cares. “Today is the day we made our appointment at the fire station so they’ll be expecting them, but I would like to vote to extend the drive through this week as well, and I’ll take the additional toys we manage to collect myself on Friday. All in favor, raise your hand.”
The other students seem to give fewer fucks than I do about this meeting. At first, no one raises their hand, but Noelle just stands there and waits for them to give in to the holiday spirit and agree.
Slowly, hands begin to rise as they seem to decide they would rather leave this meeting eventually than veto an extended toy drive.
“Great,” she says cheerfully, once she gets a majority. “The toy drive extension is approved.”
The rest of the meeting goes more or less the same way. The other kids get credit solely for showing up and Noelle runs the whole show. If I were her I’d be pissed, start demanding more participation, but Noelle keeps trucking like she doesn’t even notice the lack of enthusiastic support from anyone else in the club. Like she doesn’t need it.
Once the meeting comes to a close, I stand with the folder I never opened. I forgot I was supposed to take attendance, but it doesn’t matter. I’m only marking Noelle down as having attended this meeting. The rest may have been here in physical form, but they certainly weren’t present any other way.
She’s still at the table, straightening the new stack of flyers she printed off that announce the extended toy drive.
“You need help putting those up around campus?” I ask her.
She turns her head to look at me, then she looks away and shakes her head. “No. I’ll drop one off in the office so they announce it Monday morning, but I’ll just come early Monday to pass out the rest.”
“You could’ve assigned the job to someone else, you know.”
“I know,” she murmurs, sounding none too enthused. “I did ask for volunteers.”
“Yes, and then when none of those deadbeats offered to pull their weight, you should’ve made someone do it. If you don’t have that authority, you could’ve looked to me; I’d have had have no problem making those lazy brats perform.”
Her lips curve up faintly. “I do have the authority as the leader of the club, I just learned the hard way that if people don’t offer to help, they don’t want to help, and if they don’t want to help, they will do the job like someone who doesn’t care about it. Last year we did this shoe drive, it was the first project I was ever in charge of myself, and Miss Styles stressed the importance of delegating even if people acted like it killed them to participate. She said if I did everything myself they’d certainly let me, but I’d wear myself out. She said that in order to be a good leader, I had to delegate.”
She’s said nothing I disagree with so far, so I wait for the rest of the story.
“I tried it her way.” She looks at me. “I did my part and trusted everyone else to do theirs, and do you know what happened?”
I don’t, but I bet it won’t be good.
“Dinah posted on her Instagram about it once—but posted 35 selfies of her driving, or at Starbucks, or posing in her cheer uniform that week, naturally. I asked Lewis to take point on passing out the flyers since he’s a jock and he’s popular and I thought he would be good at that. I planned the whole thing out carefully and gave everyone tasks that played to their strengths.”
“Sounds like the right way to go about it.”
Noelle nods. “Nobody else did anything. I found all but one of the flyers in the trash. Lewis put one up on the main bulletin board but nowhere else. He didn’t even take one down to the office or give one to the school paper so they could write about it in the next edition. The project was a complete catastrophe. The entire school ended up with 10 pairs of shoes to donate, and I bought 4 of those pairs myself.”
“All right, and what did you learn from that experience? You don’t just give up the first time you fail. Take notes and correct your course next time. Ride their asses if you have to.”
“I tried, but it was exhausting. Just as exhausting as doing it all myself, but a dozen times more infuriating. I have given them all the chances in the world to help out, and I still accept help if someone wants to on a certain project, but right now no one cares, so I’ll just take care of it myself.”
I shake my head at her. “That’s why you’re so easy to take advantage of.”
Narrowing her eyes at me, she says, “I am not easy to take advantage of.”
“I believe I have enough authority on this to disagree with you.”
Noelle shakes her head, looking away from me. “I wasn’t taken advantage of. I knew what I was doing, I knew the toll it might take on me, I simply chose to do it anyway. People are allowed to have different priorities, Mr. McLaren. There’s not just one right way to be a human.”
“Maybe not, but there are right ways to be a leader, and letting those useless little monsters skate by and claim credit for all your hard work isn’t on the list. Hold them accountable; make them do the work or kick them out of the club. You have to show them you’re serious, Noelle, or they’ll do what’s easy and let you do all the work for them. They’re spoiled. Kick them out and start over with a new crop.”
She waves me off, tucking her papers into her binder. “Anyway, this is not a seminar on leadership styles, it’s a community outreach meeting, and we still have work to do, so we better get to it. It’s supposed to snow tonight, and I’d like to be back home before it starts.”
I frown at her. “What do you mean? I thought the meeting was over.”
“For the useless monsters, yes,” she says lightly. “For us? Nope. We have to go collect all the toys from the various collection boxes around campus, then we have to take them to the fire station to drop them off, and then ideally we need to drive to Marymount so we can pick up some things there. I made a couple calls myself and solicited donations from a bookstore there. A lot of the kids on my shopping lists all wanted this same book, so I wanted to see about ordering multiple copies. When I told her what it was for, the owner of the bookshop wanted to help.” Somehow flashing me a victorious smile, she adds, “See? Some people want to help.”
“What do you mean, the kids on your shopping list?” I watch as she tucks her binder into her backpack, then slings it on her shoulders. “I didn’t think the toy drive had wishlists.”
“Well… kind of. The main drive doesn’t, but you know how around this time of year certain stores and banks will have those trees set up with Christmas wishlists for kids whose parents can’t afford to buy them gifts? Some kids don’t get picked. Mainly teens. The drive and the tree wishlists are for kids up to 15, but some people want to shop for little kids, because, you know, little kids are adorable and they want cute stuff that’s fun to buy. Older kids make lists, too, though—sports balls and art supplies and books, whatever it is they want, it just tends to be less fun. Anyway, the day of the deadline for turning in presents, I went and collected as many of the unclaimed wishlists as I could and made arrangements for later fulfill-by dates. It’s sort of my Christmas side project. I use the money I make working at the North Pole to shop for them. I have to finish by this coming Thursday, though, since they need time to deliver the presents to the parents so they can set them out for the kids for Christmas.”
I cock my head, fascinated. “You got a job specifically so you could buy things for strangers? That’s insane.”
Noelle shrugs. “Not really. It’s only seasonal work, it’s not like it’s a huge commitment. Besides, I take my job as an elf very seriously; every boy and girl on the nice list has to get something for Christmas,” she says playfully.
She’s nuts, but I can’t help smiling, charmed. “What about me?”
“Oh, you’re on the naughty list,” she assures me. “No toys for you.”
“Am I?”
I murmur, my smile widening.
Noelle nods definitively. “I had Santa blacken your name out so it’s barely even legible. You might never get any presents again.”
Caught up in the playful moment, I give her an exaggerated puppy dog pout.
Something about the moment causes her gaze to dim with remembered hurt. She straightens her shoulders, looking away from me more purposefully. “Anyway, we still have a lot of work to do, so we’d better get started.”
Chapter Eleven
Callan
The car ride is peaceful, even once it starts to snow. Ordinarily no one riding in the passenger seat of my car—save for Carla—would dare mess with my radio settings, but seeing as Noelle has been underneath me naked in my bed, she has a high enough level of comfort that she fiddles with the controls until she finds Christmas music.
I guess it’s not the worst thing in the world, driving through light fluffy snow while Noelle watches out the window and hums Silver Bells along with the radio.
By the time Michael Bublé starts telling us It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas, we’re in Marymount. Noelle gives me the address for the bookstore I’m taking her to, then gets distracted when she happens upon pictures of the town’s winter festival online.
“Oh my God,” she says suddenly, causing my grip to tighten on the steering wheel. My initial thought is that she spotted something ahead of us on the road, but then she goes on, still looking at her phone. “They have carriage rides around the square! You can literally ride in a one-horse open sleigh. Why doesn’t Oak Grove have a cute winter festival like this?”
Turns out, the bookstore is right in the thick of it, too. We turn into the parking area behind the row of small-town storefronts. There’s an entrance to the bookstore back here, but Noelle is curious about the festival, so we walk around to the front entrance.
