Page 9 of Sunsets & Slow Dances

I stood staring at the empty space she’d just occupied, not sure what had just happened.

“Well, son, I think that went about as bad as it could.” Buzz winked at me as he lifted his cup in cheers.

“Dad, is Chloe mad at you?” Matty asked from the table.

Before I could respond, Buzz beat me to it. “Chloe just lost her mama; she’s mad at the world. You finish up that cereal, and let’s go feed Shadow.”

At the mention of feeding the horse, Matty’s face lit up. He was easy. He was six, and even though his mom had been in and out of his life, she was still around, and he’d always had me. Chloe never knew her dad—our dad. And she’d just lost hermom. She was thirteen, which, from what I’d heard, was the hardest time for girls, no matter what the circumstances were.

I’d had temporary custody of Chloe for twenty-four hours, and I was seriously fucking this up. I felt so out of my depth, so unqualified to be my sister’s guardian. I had no clue what to do or say.

There was someone I knew could help. One person I wanted to reach out to, either by picking up the phone, or even better, getting in my car to go and find her and ask what the hell I should do. She was my best friend. She was the person I told everything to. The person I confided in, told my dreams, my fears, my goals, and my insecurities to. Unfortunately, I hadn’t spoken to her in ten years because she was also the reason why I left town and hadn’t been back.

3

NADIA

“Happy New Year!”Amos Hendrix, the music and drama teacher, announced to the entire teacher’s lounge as he entered.

Today was Monday, so Amos was rocking a red knit sweater vest. Tomorrow would be orange, Wednesday would be yellow, Thursday would be green, Friday would be blue, Saturday would be indigo, and Sunday would be violet. Every week, Amos ROY G. BIV-ed his way through his knit sweater vest game. As a Black gay man in his sixties who grew up in the South, he used his wardrobe as a subtle way of expressing his rainbow pride.

When I was a student at Firefly High, Mr. Hendrix taught at the high school and was my favorite teacher. He had since stopped teaching teenagers because he didn’t like to compete for attention with technology. As a co-worker, it took me several years and one drunken night of karaoke at a teaching conference in Atlantic City where Amos took first place in a celebrity look-alike contest before I’d been able to drop the formality of calling him by his last name. He entered as James Earl Jones, and I placed third, entering as Amanda Seyfried. I was beat out by Elvis, who took second.

Besides carrying the distinction of being my favorite teacher when I was a pupil, Amos now held the honor of being my favorite co-worker as a teacher. I often referred to him as my work husband. At least I had a husband somewhere. We commiserated, aka gossiped, during staff meetings, at drop-off and pick-up duty, yard patrol, and during lunch and recess. He and Leti Rios, a divorced, single mom of teens in her forties who worked as the school nurse, were the two people I worked with who kept me sane in this cesspool of fakeness and treachery that was the Firefly Island Unified School District. I wasn’t sure who was worse, the faculty, administration, board members, or the parents. I regularly checked my back for knives. It was cutthroat out here in these academic streets. If there was a bus, fellow teachers were quick to throw each other under it if it gained them favor in the eyes of parents, the board, or the administration. They were worse than theHousewives.

“Happy New Year!” Mr. Yates, who taught fifth grade; Mrs. Lindon, who taught third; and Mr. Wimbley, the P.E. teacher, all responded in chorus.

“Happy New Year.” I lifted my coffee mug to him as he lowered down into the seat across from me. “Did you and Bernie party it up?”

“If by party it up you mean play Scrabble until nine and then go to bed, then yes, we partied it up.” He smiled as he reached his hand across the table and covered mine. “What about you? How are you?”

I could see that there was genuine concern in his eyes. “Fine. Just a little tired.”

“Tired?”

“Yeah. Those slopes kicked my ass.” I intentionally excluded the fact that I still hadn’t recovered from being hungover from three nights ago.

“Slopes?” he repeated as if he had no clue what I was referring to.

“Yeah, my trip up to the Catskills.”

“Oh, right. Yeah. Remind me, when did you get back?”

“New Year’s Eve.”

He blinked, looking a little confused, then shook his head slightly before asking, “How did your hot date with Will the Wonderboy go?”

Amos had given Will the nickname because on his Cupid Connect profile, he described himself as a child prodigy, citing his prolific gaming skills. He’d gone as far as stating gaming and sex were his superpowers. That really should have been my first red flag. My standards had truly dropped to a dismal level. But I didn’t have to worry about that for the next year.

“It was fine, I guess.” I shrugged. I didn’t want to badmouth Will. It’s not as if he’d done anything that bad. It wasn’t his fault I’d seen a ghost of exes past and freaked out, then had to be taken home early. “I don’t really remember a lot of the night. It was pretty blurry after my fifth shot of tequila.”

Amos stared at me with a fixed expression before his left brow lifted in a perfect arch. “I heard you turned into a pumpkin as the clock struck midnight.”

“Really?” This town should be called Gossip Island, not Firefly Island.

“Word is your fairy godparents Ashley and Declan practically had to carry you out to their luxury carriage once the ball dropped and then whisk you away. Alone.”

“It wasn’t that bad.” I defended myself, although I really didn’t have a leg to stand on considering I didn’t remember getting home. “Who did you hear that from?”

---