Phoebe Berman's Gonna Lose It(56)
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he snaps.
“You called me crazy and I’m the one being ridiculous?”
“I didn’t call you crazy,” he says with a sigh. “I said you were driving me crazy.”
“That’s not much better.”
He inhales deeply, seemingly gearing up to say something.
But nothing ever comes.
Instead, he scratches his stubble in silence, narrowing his gaze on a spot on the wall behind me.
The tension in the air fades with every passing second. There’s a resigned energy between us, an unspoken agreement to stop pushing.
I decide to break the silence.
“I just…want you to be able to share things with me. And I want to be able to share things with you…without driving you crazy.”
“I’m sorry I said that.” His voice softens. “I didn’t mean it.”
“Yes, you did.” I shrug in an attempt to hide how much it hurt. “Just give me permission to be crazy for seventeen more days.”
He nods. “And for what it’s worth, I do want to hear about everything. I want to hear about what happened this weekend.”
“Deal. But that means you have to tell me about yours also. Specifics!”
He checks his watch. “Let’s catch up later.” Then he stands up and begins to walk in the direction of the stairs. “Tomorrow?”
I don’t have any fight left in me. “Sure,” I respond with a nod, curling farther into myself under my blanket. “Are we okay?”
“Definitely.” His voice sounds far away. By the time he reaches the top step, I can hardly make out his words. “We’re all good,” I think he says.
But we aren’t.
I can hear him upstairs, opening his dresser drawers and slamming them shut in a frenzy, rushing to get ready. He is itching to get out of the apartment. To get away from me. And the worst part is, for the first time ever, I want him to leave. I’m still mad. His words are still bouncing around in my head.
You’re driving me crazy.
So, no. We are not good.
Because above all, when he walks out our front door just moments later, he still hasn’t told me where he’s going.
16
Monday
(Sixteen Days Left)
Every Monday, there’s an odd stretch of time before my therapy appointment that I never know what to do with. If I brave the traffic back home, I’d barely be able to make it through the opening sequence of Law & Order before needing to leave the house again. Usually, I spend the time trying to make myself useful around the classroom. Organizing the reading nook. Changing the bulletin board. Relaminating the bent pieces of the chore chart. But today, I decide to spend the time at the beach, plopped in the sand directly under the Santa Monica Pier. Most locals hate it here, it being one of LA’s biggest tourist attractions, but that’s exactly what I like about it. I love the reminder that I live in a place where other people come to vacation.
Plus, I have a lot of fun memories here. Most of them with Jonathan.
He and I used to come to this spot all the time the summer after we graduated. We would spend the entire morning applying for jobs and then treat ourselves to an afternoon ice cream at the beach. There was one day that summer, right at the beginning of June, when my frustration with the job search was so apparent, the ice cream man gave me my Choco Taco for free. “You look like you could use a win,” he said. I hadn’t realized my turmoil was quite so apparent.
“I just don’t get it,” I had ranted to Jonathan in between bites of my ice cream. “Every school within a twenty-mile radius is looking for someone with at least five years of teaching experience. I can’t get one single interview because no one wants to hire a first-year teacher. But how am I supposed to get the experience if no one will hire a first-year teacher? Please, Jonathan, make it make sense!”
“Maybe you have to start as a classroom volunteer, or something.” He shrugged. “And then they’ll see how good you are with kids and hire you on the spot.” It was hard to take him seriously while he licked around the eyeball of his SpongeBob popsicle.
I scrunched my nose at him. “That can’t possibly taste good.”
“It’s delicious,” he said, holding SpongeBob’s melting, deformed body right up to my lips. “Try it.”
I gave it a cautious lick. It was delicious.
“It’s not horrible,” I admitted.
“Hey, look.” He pointed to an area of the beach behind me. I turned to find a group of fifteen or so children running off a school bus, buckets in hand. They looked to be about five years old—my favorite age. “I wish I got to take field trips to the beach. The only thing we ever did was visit Civil War battle sights.”
“We only ever went to art museums I was too young to appreciate. Look how much fun they’re having!” I noticed the name of the school imprinted on the side of the bus: Brentwood Friends Academy.
“I applied there,” I sighed. “They never got back to me.”
Jonathan lit up with an idea. “This is perfect! Look, there’s their teacher.” He pointed to the woman leading the pack of kids to a spot by the shoreline. She seemed to be somewhere in her mid-forties, and she led the children with a confidence that screamed experience.