Teacher's Pet

“Hey now,” Jack said. “I think people are allowed to go to whatever bar it is they want.”

I picked up my glass and downed the rest of my beer. “I’m not disputing that,” I said. I pulled my wallet out of my pocket and left some cash on the bar. “Anyway. I’ve got to get going. Papers to grade, all that sort of shit,” I said. “See you guys.”

I left them, thinking that tonight would be as good a night as any for them to realize they were actually a better match together than Colette and I ever were, but I had only made it a few steps down the sidewalk when I heard Colette yelling my name.

I stopped and turned. “You really should go back in there with Jack,” I said. “Don’t leave him all alone like that.”

“You’re the one that got up and left so abruptly.” She tucked a strand of her short blonde hair behind her ear. “Listen, though. You’re right. I didn’t just come down here because this bar is so great or anything. I know you and Jack usually come here a couple times a week, and I was hoping to run into you.”

“Why?” I asked. “Why would you be hoping to run into me? We’re not together anymore, and I think the last conversation we had, we decided that we weren’t going to try to do the friends thing because we both know that doesn’t work.”

“Well . . . I wanted to know how you would feel about giving it another shot. The two of us. I know we didn’t see eye to eye on everything in the past, but I really just don’t want to think about living the rest of my life and not have you a part of it. I don’t care if you’re traveling the globe or living in the same apartment, working at the same job, year after year.”

I shuddered.

“None of that matters to me,” she said.

She took a step closer; I took a step back. I wasn’t going to be fool enough to go down this path again.

“Listen, Colette,” I said, “even if I wanted to get back together with you, I’m just too busy right now. I’ve got some other stuff going on, and now just wouldn’t be the right time to get into a relationship. Why don’t you go back to the bar and talk to Jack? He was literally just asking me about you before you showed up—I think it might be a sign.”

To my surprise, she was nodding. “Sure,” she said. “I can do that. And yeah, I can give you all the time you need, to sort whatever out that you’ve got going on. But I mean it, Leo. I wasn’t just with you because we got to travel to a bunch of neat places. That’s not what this was about.”

I couldn’t stand to hear her make another reference to working the same job, living in the same place, so I just waved her off and started jogging in the other direction. I glanced back over my shoulder, though, right before I turned the corner, just in time to see her step back inside the bar.

5.

Tessa

My parents lived in Palo Alto, in a two-story house that combined modern and traditional features, with lots of glass, wood, and marble. I parked in the driveway, behind my mother’s Range Rover, and got out and walked up the winding brick pathway that threaded its way through the perfectly manicured lawn.

The house was gorgeous but huge, way too big for two people to live in. We’d moved to this house when I’d been in middle school, and even though a part of me had been excited to get a new bedroom that was twice the size of my old one and overlooked the backyard with the in-ground pool, another part of me knew that our family of three could have been just as happy living in a house a third this size. Well, I could have, anyway. But my father had been doing very well as a property developer, and in the past decade, he’d done exceedingly well. And though I did benefit greatly from his success, it also made him adamant that I be as successful as he was.

I found my mother in the kitchen, standing at the marble-topped island, arranging flowers into a big square vase. My mother didn’t work and was always trying out new

hobbies; the latest being flower arranging. These hobbies sometimes last a year, sometimes a month, but nothing ever really seemed to captivate her.

“Tessa!” she said, looking up as I walked into the kitchen. She put down the flowers she was holding and came over to give me a hug. She always acted as though it had been months since we’d last seen each other, not weeks, or sometimes, even, days.

“Hi, Mom,” I said, returning the hug. “What are you up to?”

“Oh, I’m just trying out some new arrangements,” she said. “We weren’t expecting a visit from you today! Not that we’re complaining. Does your father know you’re here?”

“No, I just walked in; I haven’t seen Dad yet.”

“Well, you came at the perfect time, because he’s going to play golf soon with his friends. Then it’ll just be me here, so maybe you’d like to go out to lunch?”

“Um, sure, maybe, but first there’s—”

“Tessa! I thought that was you.” I turned as my father walked into the kitchen. He was wearing a navy blue polo shirt with a lightweight argyle sweater vest over it, and khaki shorts. Definitely ready to head out to the golf course. He gave me a quick hug and kissed my cheek. He was always in a good mood before he went golfing, so maybe that would help with what I was about to tell them.

“Oh, Tessa, do you know who I was just talking with?” Mom said.

I shook my head. “No, I don’t.”

“Marjorie! And she was asking about you. She said Brynn’s doing so well at Brown. She’s really loving it. We all knew she would.”

I tried not to roll my eyes. Marjorie was my mother’s best friend, they’d been best friends forever, and they often liked to say how they had planned their whole lives out when they’d been younger and that it had mostly come to fruition. Especially the part about marrying handsome men and being rich and having successful daughters. Except lately, I was feeling less and less like a successful daughter and more and more like a complete failure.