The Grump I Despise (When In Waverly 3)

I decide it’s probably best to ignore that for now and check my watch. It’s time to start the meeting, so I call for everyone’s attention. Norah’s table is still busy talking and laughing. They don’t notice that the rest of the room has gone quiet. I step behind Norah and tap her on the shoulder.

“Ms. Sullivan, are you going to join me, or have you decided you’re going to revert back to being a student?” I ask loud enough for everyone in the room to hear. Norah’s spine straightens, and she turns to see all eyes in the room on her. Her face turns bright red as she hops up from the table. She straightens her skirt and sweater and plasters a devious smile on her face.

“So sorry. I was just telling the girls about some funny stories from when I was in high school, like that one time you barfed all over the football field in the middle of the most important game of the season. Do you remember that?” she says in an innocent voice, as if she doesn’t know what she’s doing. How does she remember all of these things? Does she have a notebook where she's recorded everything I’d rather the world forget? And gosh dang it, I can’t help it if I got food poisoning, and everything decided to come to a head in the middle of a playoff game.

The guys in the room are not even trying to hide that they’re laughing at me, and a few of the girls are starting to turn green with disgust. And rightfully so. It was a horrible mess. The entire game was delayed while it was being cleaned up. I couldn’t show my face anywhere for weeks without someone bringing it up. And here we are, fourteen years later, still talking about it. Why couldn’t my most recalled football memory involve an interception that led to the most amazing touchdown in high school history that won the game at the last minute? Why does it have to be vomit?

I instruct the club president and vice president of the club to begin their discussion on their fundraiser for prom and ask Norah to step outside with me for a minute.

“You know, I think I’m good right here. Someone should really be in here to make sure they’re staying on task,” she says, inching away from me slowly. I grab her wrist to stop her. Students around the room gasp.

“Come on.” I turn to pull her behind me. She tries to dig her heels in, but her high-heeled shoes slide across the tiled floor. She jerks her hand out of my grasp and follows behind me, grumbling the whole way. I hear something about a cave and no social skills.

As soon as we’re out of the cafeteria, I look at her square in her big brown eyes. I open my mouth to speak, but she beats me to it. She always beats me to the punch.

“Are you trying to cause a commotion?” she asks, completely baffled by my behavior. Her hands are clenched on her hips, and her eyes are spitting fire at me. I cover my mouth with my fist and chuckle under my breath. “Oh, is something funny?” She shifts her weight to one foot and juts her hip out, drawing my attention to her generous curves.

Don’t let her distract you. Stay on course.

“Yeah, it’s funny that you think I’m the one causing a commotion when you’re five seconds away from getting matching BFF bracelets with the girls and casually telling everyone in the room my most embarrassing memories.”

“Oh, come on. You’ve got to relax. They know you’re only human, as much as you try to make it seem otherwise,” she says, dismissing me with a wave of her hand.

“That’s not the point!”

“Then, please, tell me what the point is!”

I clasp my hands behind my neck and blow out a quick breath. “I don’t even know. I have no idea,” I say. I don’t know how long we stand in the hallway, not talking, not looking at each other. “You drive me crazy with all your talking and jokes and sarcasm. But it’s driving me crazy that it has all stopped. I… I just wish you would talk to me again,” I finally admit. I’ve been denying that little fact for too long. For so long, I had claimed that the sound of her voice was a disturbance in my life. When she came back to Waverly, I lived in dread at the thought of all her chatter, and for a while, I told myself that nothing had changed. But now that it’s gone, I miss it. I want it back. I want to listen to her wax poetic about the blue sky and the sound of the birds chirping outside her window when she wakes up in the morning. I’m desperate to hear her tell funny stories about her students while she nibbles on her kid food at lunch. Even if she’s only doing it to get me to roll my eyes. I’ll roll my eyes twenty times right here and now if she’ll just talk to me again.

“I’m so frustrated,” she whispers.

“Me too.”

“We fight over every little thing. Ridiculous things that don’t even matter. I don’t want to fight with you anymore, Colby.”

“I don’t either. I never wanted to fight with you.”

“Can we call a truce?” she asks, sounding utterly defeated. Call a truce. I wish it were that simple. I wish we could simply agree to not fight anymore and that be the end of it. But when have two people ever just decided to get along and suddenly you don’t get under each other's skin anymore? The little intricacies that used to make you rage are suddenly supposed to be insignificant? If it were that simple, maybe we wouldn’t have spent six years at each other’s throats growing up. But what can I say to her now?

No, sorry. That’s a dumb idea. Let’s just keep on the way we are until we’re both unemployed and ready to strangle each other.

We’re adults now. Maybe we won’t ever like each other, but we should be able to at least be civil to one another. I can set aside our differences, ignore her silly pranks, put on a straight face, if it means having peace between us. Her brown eyes plead with me to say yes.

I hold out my hand to her and say, “Truce.” She twists her mouth to the side, but then she places her hand in mine a moment later. It’s soft and warm when she gives it a tentative squeeze.

“Truce,” she says with a nod of her head. I stand, holding her hand in mine for a moment too long, watching her eyes rove over my face. I wonder what she’s thinking. I wonder if she’s thinking this truce is doomed to fail but hoping that it’s a start. The start of a tentative peace. A peace that could lead to friendship. I know that’s what I want, and I’d like to think there’s hope for us.

“I just want you to know that Sarah, one of the girls at the table, fell down the stairs in front of a lot of people earlier today, and she’s so mortified that she was crying when I walked in. I was telling her embarrassing stories about myself, too. It wasn’t just you, but yours did make her laugh the most. Other girls came in and heard us laughing and joined in,” she says.

With those words, all my doubts about this truce are gone. I give her hand that’s still clutched in mine a small squeeze and say, “Thank you for explaining.”

“Alright. No problem,” she says, pulling her hand out of my grasp. Her fingers glide across mine, leaving tingles rushing up my arm. “We should probably get back in there,” she says, pointing her thumb at the door behind her.

I follow her back into the cafeteria and begin listening to the students discussing their fundraiser. They’ve decided to sell candy-grams for Valentine’s Day. Gosh, they used to do that when I was in high school, and I always thought it was ridiculous. You can buy gross, heart-shaped candy attached to a stupid card, and they’ll deliver it to your “valentine” for you during class. Should we really be encouraging high school romance this way? And why are we interrupting lessons for this nonsense? I’m about to veto all their plans, but Norah places a hand on my arm and levels me with a look that says, Don’t even think about it. I could simply ignore her, but we just shook on a truce ten seconds ago. Even I don’t want to ruin it that fast, so I let it go. I guess I can deal with candy-gram interruptions for a few days.

They wrap up their meeting, and all the students leave in record time. I’m left alone in the cafeteria with Norah as we gather up our things. We begin walking toward the door, side by side. I’m curious to know if the truce means she’ll talk to me again and decide to test it.

“I’ve always hated those candy-grams,” I say. She looks up at me with a grin.