Page 21 of Fundamentals of Being a Good Girl
“I’ll be in my office if you need to talk,” I offer. Probably pointlessly. “And we can always talk tonight after you’ve had some time to think. Or we can call your mom. I love you.”
No reply, save for more sniffles.
With a sigh, I go back downstairs, and find my office empty of panting adjuncts.
The jasmine smell, however, lingers for the rest of the day.
Chapter Seven
Maddie
Iroll down my window and poke my head out to see what the holdup is. School let out five minutes ago and the pickup line for the twins is at a standstill.
Ahhh, the culprit is indeed a dad who didn’t realize he needed to have the laminated paper in the window with the name of his child and now he’s stomping his feet about having to pull over so they can get him sorted.
The woman in the minivan next to me catches me looking and rolls her eyes at the petulant father like we are fellow comrades in arms. The rows of her back seat are stuffed with booster seats. “This is why I don’t let my husband pick up the kids. I’d be getting death threats from the room mom.”
I have to stop myself from blurting out that I’m not actually picking upmykids and that Letty and Berry’s father has their every move and routine memorized, but she’s already rolled her windows up and turned her audiobook up to max volume.
Bram gave me very specific directions on how to pick up the girls on their first day or else I’d probably have looked just as foolish as the dad holding up the line today.
As my wait continues, my mind wanders to this morning, when I’d managed to score one of the private shower rooms at the student center. The steam from the shower clung to the air while I slid my hand between my legs and let myself delight in the thought of Bram in his office. The memory of his eucalyptus and cedar scent. My back pressed against his shelves and his words tickling my ear. My fingers this morning were a pitiful replacement for his, however, and it only left me feeling more frustrated.
I don’t know how I’m going to see him again today. But I also don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t.
The line is frozen again, and I twist to see what the holdup is this time. It’s wild to me that something as innocuous-sounding as a school pickup can be thirty minutes of idling purgatory, and honestly, I’ve been thinking for the last two weeks that this horrible fucking line is designed with a cloddish attachment to theappearanceof efficiency, not actually the spirit of it, and if they’d just—
I don’t know how it happens, honestly, because I’ve spent the last three years—four, if you count the year Gentry and I were hooking up and I was whittling away pieces of myself to keep him coming back—biting my tongue until it bled when stupid shit happened in front of me. (It’s not the job of a political spouse to have any opinion whatsoever on stupid shit. We are supposed to be stupid shit agnostic.)
But I’m not engaged anymore and biting my tongue has gotten me nowhere but a rest stop parking lot and also, just—this could be better, there’s no reason for it not to be better!
And that is how I find myself with the car pulled to the side and parked. That is how I find myself walking toward the woman in charge of car purgatory.
“Hey!” I say, my face already transformed into the smile that won me second runner-up in Olathe, Kansas’s annual Sweet Six contest, my voice bothhey girland also a little conspiratorial. “Oh my god, is that aWickedlanyard? I loveWicked, I’ve actually loved Jonathan Bailey sinceChewing Gum, and have you ever thought about splitting the pickup traffic into two lines? I know it seems like it wouldn’t help, but I think if you had an extra staff member just there to radio the numbers back to the person at the door...”
Fifteen sun-soaked minutes waving cars around later, and the now-split line is rolling forward like a precision-engineered watch. Berry and Letty race toward my car and then both pile into the back seat. They sling their backpacks onto the floorboard and the moment their seat belts click, they are a tornado of conversation.
“Silas Reynolds ate a dead worm today,” Letty says.
“Only because you dared him to,” Berry adds.
I glance up to the rearview mirror. “Berry, how was music class today? Any easier?”
She nods once and then twice, her chin dipping into her chest.
“Mrs. Barrett said Berry didn’t have to play the triangle if she didn’t want to,” Letty tells me.
“She let me play the flute!” Berry says.
Berry hadn’t liked playing the triangle because the group she was assigned to included a girl who had made fun of her last year after the girls cut their own bangs, so I’d mentioned it to Bram and he’d spoken with the teacher.
I turn out of the parking lot and into the school zone. “Windows down?” I ask.
“Yes, please!” they both chime.
I turn up the volume and we sing along to a radio-edited Sabrina Carpenter song as we head in the direction of home.
We turn down one of my favorite roads in Mount Astra, a double-wide street with a canopy of oak and linden leaves and extra-long yards with well-kept Queen Annes and Tudors and a Craftsman or two.
