Page 37 of Falling for Roxanne

The diner was close to campus, but it was Colin’s favorite place to go for a special breakfast so I brought him here instead of someplace closer to home. It was his turn to plan a special day for us and he picked pancakes and the aquarium. We finished eating and played one last round of tic-tac-toe on my paper placemat with a green crayon. I was paying at the cashier’s stand when I saw Roxanne walk in.

We locked eyes, and the impact of seeing her there struck me in the chest. Her smile was open and warm, seeing me with Colin.

“Hey,” she said, smiling. I gave a slight shake of my head and looked away. I didn’t want Colin to be privy to anything that might or might not be going on between Roxanne and myself. I wanted to protect him from the mess I’d made. If there were going to be bad repercussions, if jobs or reputations took a hit, I didn’t want him to know anything about it. So I turned away from Roxanne.

“Daddy, who’s that?” he asked.

“No one, buddy,” I lied, and ushered him out. It felt terrible to say that, to avoid her like that. I could have said she worked at my office, that she was in my class, that she was going to be a lawyer too. But instead, I said she was no one.

When we got to the aquarium, we went straight for the sharks and watched their pointed, boneless forms twist and curve as they swam in the big tank. We saw the whales and the eels and all the crabs and rays. I carried Colin on my shoulders when he got tired, and we stayed a long time in the dark room where the tanks displayed animals that glow in the dark.

“I love the ones that glow. They look so SHI—NAY!” he said, bellowing part of the song from Moana. I laughed.

“They do remind me of that glam rock crab, buddy,” I said.

He told me what he knew about jellies and how the biggest one was in Australia, and it was like twenty or thirty feet long. “The box jelly is super deadly. You’d be super dead if one got you and zap!” he said.

I poked his leg and went, “zzzzzt!” and he pretended to collapse on my head. We zapped each other a few more times on the way out. He fell asleep in the car, tired from running around the aquarium for hours.

I kept flashing on Roxanne’s face, though, the stunned hurt in her expression when I shook my head and told my son she was nobody. I hated that I’d done that to her, to us, but I was going to protect my son no matter what. I wasn’t that different from Pansy Lestrade in that way—maybe I was willing to hurt people and do what I knew was unkind or unethical just to serve my own self-interest.

I didn’t like the way that made me feel, or the way it felt true. I had done something wrong to avoid being uncomfortable. If Colin did that to someone important to him, acted like he didn’t know them to keep from having to have a slightly embarrassing conversation, I’d tell him as his dad that he should treat people the way he wanted to be treated. A stab of remorse struck me as I pictured her face again and knew how wrong I’d been to shun her.

When we got home, Colin and I did our homemade pizza night and watched Moana instead of Wall-E, which was a nice change for me. Except that despite my best efforts to keep focused on the present, anytime my son was quiet, absorbed in the movie, my conscience reminded me of how I’d treated Roxanne at the diner, how I turned from her and acted like we were strangers.

By the time Colin was asleep, I knew I had to quit beating myself up and move forward. We had decided we couldn’t be anything to each other. I had to stick to that and quit obsessing over her feelings and the kiss in my car and everything else I’d done that was a complete mistake. Maybe I needed to leave the past behind and make myself think of her as no one in particular, a student, an intern. Not a friend or a lover, just no one at all. Maybe I had enough willpower to make that feel true eventually.

CHAPTER 20

ROXANNE

The case was progressing quickly now that we had Pansy’s deposition on file. I’d been able to get some copies of incriminating texts from Cheavers’ ex-wife that she’d used in their divorce proceedings. The evidence was mounting that could make Daniel Garza a free man. I should have been ecstatic. Instead, I was moping around, feeling sad and wounded.

I’d never admit it to Hamilton, but I heard him tell his son I was no one when I ran into them at the diner. He could’ve said I was in his class or something and just said hi, but he’d completely cut me out. The truth is, if he were just my professor, I wouldn’t be bothered if he didn’t want to greet me in public and kept his personal life separate. But he wasn’t only a teacher or boss to me. He was something so much more intimate, and to be called no one by a man who had the terrifying potential to be everything to me was really hurtful.

Not that I could fault him for it. Maybe he didn’t want his son being confused and asking a lot of questions, or maybe they were in a hurry to get somewhere. Or perhaps it was the fact that we’d agreed time and again that it was a mistake to get involved and we had to stop; we had to back off and just have a professional relationship. He could’ve been acting normal, and I was feeling needy, or it could be that he was acting like a stupid ass, and I was acting justifiably mad. I couldn’t really puzzle it out. Whatever it was made the atmosphere at the office nearly unbearable.

The entire last week, I’ve barely seen him. Instead of collaborating on the case and getting celebration sushi and perplexing makeout sessions in his car, I was gathering paperwork and filing, and Syd gave me some calls to make because she was going through applications for a new paralegal. Devon was finally being replaced, which made sense. I was sure Hamilton was busy with his other cases and with interviewing for the paralegal position, but he didn’t go out of his way to say so much as good morning to me or, oh, sorry I acted like you were freaking gum on my shoe at the diner last weekend, that was my son by the way.

It was time to face the music, or at least face my boss. Not with some kind of dramatic confrontation about seeing him at a cash register, but with the stack of files I was finished with, which had to go back to his office. I picked them up and headed out to the hallway when a wave of nausea hit me.

I leaned on the doorway and tried to steady myself, but all I could do was crash through the door of the employee bathroom and fall to my knees puking in the toilet. I got the files safely to the floor beside me, so they didn’t get dirty, but I didn’t even manage to close the door. I coughed and retched and finally sat back against the wall for a second. I wouldn’t try the cranberry orange muffins at the coffee place ever again. Yuck.

I struggled to my feet, flushed, rinsed my mouth and took the files with me. I saw Hamilton standing just outside the bathroom door.

“Are you okay?” he asked, looking concerned.

“I’m fine. I think I just got a bad muffin at breakfast. It came on suddenly. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. Take the rest of the day off to feel better, I insist.”

“It’s not necessary. I have a lot of work to do and—”

“I insist. I’m sending you home. Are you all right to drive?”

“Yeah. I am. My car came back from the shop on Tuesday, so I can drive just fine.”

“Feel better,” he said, and I dumped the files in his arms and retrieved my purse.

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