Page 7 of The Love You Win

“If your temperature isn’t above one hundred degrees, you’re going, missy.” She ignores the sputtering sounds I make around the thermometer. Turning to Jess, she rolls her eyes. “Told you she’d pull a stunt like this.”

“That you did,” Jess says. “Dinner’s on me tonight.”

Did they make a bet on me? “Not cool,” I mumble.

“No talking, or I’ll have to take your temperature again, young lady.” Nevaeh has the mom-glare down. I swear, she’s even more terrifying than my mother sometimes.

When the thermometer beeps, it’s no surprise it reads 98.5. Damn. It’s hard to spin that. So I cough a few more times. “I don’t have a fever, but my throat… I think I have strep.”

Jessica grabs me by my shoulders and gives me a little shake. “You. Are. Going. You’re going to get all glammed-up, have a free fancy dinner, ogle a hot hockey player, and at the end, you’ll take a selfie which you can post on social media.”

“Why?”

She rolls her eyes. “To rub how great you’re doing in Alex’s face. He’s going to see you looking hot on the arm of a broody hockey god and think, man, I done fucked up.”

I look down at myself. There’s a coffee stain on my right boob in the shape of Ohio, my sweatpants have holes in them, and I definitely have a wedgie. “Yeah. I’m doing so great.”

“He doesn’t need to know the truth,” Nevaeh says. “This is for social media. Nothing on there is true. He just needs to think you’ve moved on to greener pastures and bigger dicks.”

“Wouldn’t be hard,” I grumble.

“Honestly,” Jess says, tugging me toward my bathroom and starting the shower, “I know you thought you were in love with Alex, but did you ever orgasm during sex with him?”

“Only if I helped myself along.”

“He couldn’t even lend a helping hand to make up for his pinkie-sized manhood?” Jess shakes her head, and the two of them start to undress me like I’m some errant toddler who’ll fight them on getting into the shower. I mean, I will, but can’t they even give me a chance to prove them wrong?

“Nope.” Alex was all quick, frantic thrusts and weird, animalistic grunts. And when he’d come, he always made this high-pitched noise that sounded like a bad impersonation of Michael Jackson singing ‘hee-hee.’ A real two-pump chump. For him to lend a hand, he would have had to last longer than two minutes.

Jess looks wistfully into the distance. “I bet Maddox Graves has a dick the size of my forearm.”

I wrinkle my nose as they shove me into the shower. “Would he be able to skate with something like that shoved in his pants?”

Jess shrugs. “Probably not. Now wash your hair twice before you condition it. You don’t want stringy hair on your date.”

“Rude,” I grunt, but do as she says.

“Did you leave the house this week?” Nevaeh asks, hopping on my vanity where she sits guard. Are they seriously not going to let me shower alone?

“Yes, actually. I checked in on one of my students. He lost his dad toward the end of last school year.” It had been a heavy week. One that will always be burned into my brain. “I don’t know if I ever told you guys about it. They called him into the guidance counselor’s office in the middle of the day to tell him. I could hear his sobs from down the hall.”

“Oh, god.” Nevaeh covers her mouth. “Do they know what happened?”

I nod. “He worked at a warehouse, and there was a forklift accident. The driver was rushing and bumped into a tower of pallets stacked way too high, and it crushed him. Apparently, he survived until they took the last palette off. It had been staunching the worst of his internal bleeding.” My voice catches. I’ll never forget the sound of my student’s cries as they echoed down the empty hallways.

“Jesus. I can’t even imagine.” Jess’s eyes are glassy. She knows some of the struggles my kids go through. Like any city school, we have kids that span a wide spectrum of affluence and situations. Some live in nice, big houses in the older part of town. Some live in cramped little apartments where they share a room with two other siblings. A few even live in shelters. But no matter what their home lives might be like, my students are amazing.

They’re the reason I get out of bed in the morning. And, as trite as it sounds, after Alex and I broke up, I used to remind myself that if my kids who live in a shelter could get up, take public transit to school at an ungodly hour of the morning, and still show up every day and do their best, then so could I.

They keep me going, and I want to be the person who encourages them to keep going, too. I just wish there was more I could do to bring some encouragement to their lives. It’s why I’ve checked in on my student and his mom a few times this summer. I’ve brought them groceries, given hugs, and just tried to be there for them. Even though anything I do feels utterly inadequate.

It makes going on this date feel icky. I don’t know how much Nevaeh and Jess spent on winning this dinner, but it was probably enough to buy groceries for a week for half of my students and their families.

“Hey,” Nevaeh says, tapping on the glass shower door. “Just because some of your students are struggling doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to have fun and do something extravagant.”

“I know.”

“Do you? Because you’re always looking out for everyone else, Isla. You put the people you care about before yourself—and that can be great and all—but who puts you first? Not Alex. He was happy to let you support him throughout law school, but did he support you in the same way when you took a job in the city making less money?”

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