“Layken.”

She pauses when she gets to the door, but doesn’t turn around to face me.

“Your mom works Thursday nights,” I say. “I always get a sitter for Thursdays since I go to the slams. Just send Kel over before you leave. You know, before your date.”

She doesn’t turn around. She doesn’t yell. She doesn’t throw anything at me. She simply walks out the door, leaving me feeling as though I’m every single one of those names she just yelled in my classroom.

After fourth period, I sit at my desk and stare at nothing at all, wondering what the hell has gotten into me. I usually go to the teachers’ lounge for lunch, but I know I can’t eat right now. My stomach is in knots thinking about the last two hours. Actually, the last twenty-four hours.

Why would I say that to her? I know her poem stirred something in me unlike anything I’ve ever felt. It was a mixture of embarrassment, anger, hurt, and heartache. But that wasn’t enough for her—she had to go and add jealousy on top of all that. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about today, it’s that I don’t handle jealousy well. At all.

I know I thought the best way to help her get over me was to make sure she hated me, but I just can’t do it. If I want to keep my own sanity, I can’t let her hate me. I can’t let her love me, though, either. Shit! This is so screwed up. How the hell am I going to make this right?

WHEN I REACH their table in the lunchroom, she’s not even joined in on the conversation taking place around her. She’s staring down at her tray, oblivious to the world. Oblivious to me. Eddie and I both try to get her attention. When she finally snaps out of her trance and looks up at me, the color runs from her face. She slowly rises from the table and follows me to the classroom. When we’re safely inside I close the door and walk past her to my desk.

“We need to talk,” I say. My head is spinning and I have no idea what I even want to say to her. I know I want to apologize for the way I reacted earlier in class, but the words aren’t coming. I’m a grown man acting like a blubbering fourteen-year-old boy.

“Then talk,” she snaps. She’s standing across the room glaring at me. Her current attitude coupled with the fact that she just agreed to go out on a date with another guy right in front of me infuriates me. I know everything about our situation is my fault, but she’s not doing anything to help it.

“Dammit, Lake!” I spin away from her, frustrated. I run my hands through my hair and take a deep breath, then turn back to face her. “I’m not your enemy. Stop hating me.”

I swear she chuckles under her breath right before her eyes fill with fury. “Stop hating you?” she says, rushing toward me. “Make up your freaking mind, Will! Last night, you told me to stop loving you, now you’re telling me to stop hating you? You tell me you don’t want me to wait on you, yet you act like an immature little boy when I agree to go out with Nick! You want me to act like I don’t know you, but then you pull me out of the lunchroom in front of everyone! We’ve got this whole façade between us, like we’re different people all the time, and it’s exhausting! I never know when you’re Will or Mr. Cooper and I really don’t know when I’m supposed to be Layken or Lake.”

She throws herself into a chair and folds her arms across her chest, letting out a rush of frustrated breath. She’s eyeing me sharply, waiting for me to say or do something. There isn’t anything to say. I can’t refute a single word she just said, because it’s the truth. The fact that I haven’t been able to keep my own feelings in check have done more damage to her than I ever imagined.

I slowly walk around her desk and sit in the seat behind her. I’m exhausted. Emotionally, physically, mentally. I never imagined it would turn into this. If I had the slightest clue that the decision to keep my job over her would have this kind of effect on me, I would have picked her, despite whatever is going on with Julia. I should have picked her. I still should pick her.

I lean forward until I’m close to her ear. “I didn’t think it would be this hard,” I whisper. And that’s the truth. Never in a million years did I think something as trivial as a first date could turn into something so incredibly complicated. “I’m sorry I said that to you earlier, about Thursday,” I say. “I was being sincere—for the most part. I know you’ll need someone to watch Kel and I did make the slam a required assignment. But I shouldn’t have reacted like that. That’s why I asked you to come here; I just needed to apologize. It won’t happen again, I swear.”

I hear her sniff, which only means she’s crying. Jesus. I keep making this worse for her when all I want to do is fix it. I lift my hand to stroke the back of her hair in reassurance when the door to my classroom opens. I immediately pull my hand back and stand up, a hasty move that reeks of guilt. Eddie is standing in the doorway to the classroom holding Lake’s backpack. She glances at me, then we both simultaneously look at Lake. Turning her head away from Eddie and toward me, I finally see the tears streaming down Lake’s cheeks. The tears I put there.

Eddie sets the backpack in a desk and holds her palms up, backing out of the doorway. “My bad. Continue,” she says.

As soon as the door is closed behind her, I begin to panic. Whatever Eddie just witnessed, it obviously wasn’t a conversation between a teacher and his student. I’ve just added yet another shit-tastic thing to my list of screw-ups.

“That’s just great,” I mumble. How the hell do I even begin to fix all of this?

Lake rises out of her seat and begins walking toward the door. “Let it go, Will. If she asks me about it, I’ll just tell her you were upset because I said asshole. And jackass. And dickhead. And bastar—”

“I get your point,” I say, interrupting her before she can finish her stream of insults. She picks up her backpack and reaches the door.

“Layken?” I say cautiously. “I also want to say I’m sorry . . . about last night.”

She slowly turns toward me. The tears have stopped but the residual effects of her mood are still written across her face. “Are you sorry it happened? Or sorry about the way you stopped it?”

I don’t really understand what the difference is. I shrug my shoulders. “All of it. It never should have happened.”

She turns her back to me and opens the door. “Bastard.”

The insult cuts straight to my heart, right where she intended for it to hit.

As soon as the door closes behind her, I kick the desk over. “Shit!” I yell, squeezing the tension out of my neck with my hands. I let out a steady stream of cusswords as I pace the classroom. Not only have I screwed this up even worse with Lake, I’ve also screwed it up by making Eddie suspicious. I feel like I’ve somehow made this entire situation ten times worse. God, what I wouldn’t give for my father’s advice right now.

MRS. ALEX AND her pointless questions once again make me late for third period. I don’t really mind being late today, though. After the interaction in my classroom yesterday with Lake, I’m still not ready to face her.

The hallways have cleared out and I’m nearing my classroom when I pass by the windows that look out over the courtyard. I stop in my tracks and step closer to the window and I see Lake. She’s sitting on one of the benches, looking down at her hands. I’m a little confused, since she should be sitting in my classroom right now. She looks up at the sky and lets out a deep sigh, like she’s trying not to cry. It’s apparent that the last place she can be right now is two feet from me in a classroom. Seeing her out there, choosing the bitter Michigan air over my classroom, makes me hurt for her.

“She’s something else, huh?”

I spin around and Eddie is standing behind me with her arms crossed, smiling.

“What?” I say, undoubtedly trying to recover from the fact that she just caught me staring at Lake.

“You heard me,” she says, walking past me toward the courtyard entry. “And you agree with me, too.” She walks out into the courtyard without turning back. When Lake looks up at her and smiles, I walk away.

It’s not a big deal. Lake is a student skipping my class and I was looking at her. That’s all. There wasn’t anything happening there that Eddie could report. Despite my failed attempts at reassuring myself, I spend the rest of the day a nervous wreck.

12.

the honeymoon

“LET ME GET this straight,” Lake says, glaring at me. “You were being an idiot, staring at me through the courtyard window. Eddie sees you staring at me, which only piques her curiosity at this point. But then the next weekend in your living room when Eddie figured it all out, you get mad at me?”

“I wasn’t mad at you,” I say.

“Will, you were pissed! You kicked me out of your house!”

I roll over and think back to that night. “I guess I did, huh?”

“Yes, you did,” she says. “And on the worst day of my life at that.” She rolls over on top of me and interlocks her fingers with mine, bringing them over my head. “I think you owe me an apology. After all, I did clean your entire house that day.”

I look her in the eyes and she’s grinning. I know she’s not upset, but I actually do want to give her a sincere apology. The way I acted at the end of that day was purely selfish, and I’ve always regretted how I just kicked her out at one of the lowest points of her life. I bring my hands to her cheeks and pull her to the pillow next to me while we change positions. I lay her on her back and rest my head on my propped-up hand, stroking her face with my other hand. I run my fingers up her cheek, over her forehead, and down her nose until my fingers come to rest on her lips. “I’m sorry for the way I treated you that night,” I whisper, bringing my lips to hers. I kiss her slowly at first, but the sincerity in my apology is apparently quite attractive to her, because she pushes my arm away and pulls me to her, then whispers, “You’re forgiven.”

“WHAT ARE YOU doing?” I ask, waking up from a nap induced by pure exhaustion. Lake has her shirt on and is pulling her jeans up.

“I need some fresh air. Wanna come?” she says. “They’ve got a really nice pool area and it doesn’t close for another hour or so. We can sit on the patio and have coffee.”

“Yeah, sure.” I roll out of bed and search for my clothes.

Once we’re outside, the courtyard is empty, as is the pool, even though it’s heated. There are several lounge chairs, but Lake takes a seat at a table with bench-style chairs so we can sit together. She curls up next to me and rests her head against my arm, holding her coffee cup between her hands.

“I hope the boys are having fun,” she says.

“You know they are. Grandpaul took them geocaching today.”

“Good,” she says. “Kel loves that.” She brings her coffee cup to her lips and sips from it. We watch the moon’s reflection on the surface of the water, listening to the sounds of the night. It’s peaceful.