Page 82 of Fall From Grace

“You’re really cool,” she told me and I beamed from the compliments all these fourth and fifth graders were giving me.

After the last class ended, Mr. Collins walked up to me with a smile. “So, you’re not going to take the job they’ve offered you?” He went straight for the kill.

I picked up my purse from the desk. “I don’t know…”

“Sounds like you do know,” he said with a grin. He offered his hand out to me and I took it. “It was a pleasure having you with us this semester if I don’t see you back in the fall.”

“I’m glad I was able to student-teach under you,” I replied. “You made it easy for me.”

He chuckled and walked out of the school building with me. “You’re a natural,” he told me. “You said your mom was a teacher, didn’t you?”

I nodded. “She was.”

There was a thumping sound coming from someone’s speakers as we stepped into the heat, and my eyes scanned the parking lot and hardened on my Escape. I waited until Mr. Collins said goodbye and left before I headed down the steps to my vehicle that wasn’t going to have any speakers left in it if Dustin didn’t stop headbanging in the driver’s seat. He saw me coming and grinned as he turned it down.

“Well, hello, Ms. Harper,” he chirped as I climbed in the passenger. “Any love notes on the last day?” he asked.

“Could you be any more embarrassing?” I huffed as I buckled up. “Even though this was my last day student-teaching, I still don’t want to leave a bad impression.” He laughed as he pulled out of the parking lot. “Do you work today too?” He nodded. We both worked at Applebee’s together. “Rachel drive your truck to work today?” Another nod from him.

Rachel was Dustin’s girlfriend and our third roommate but I guess she wasn’t really a roommate since she slept in the same room as Dustin. Yes, Dustin moved in with me a few days after showing up at my door. Turned out, he was going to this college as well and only found out that I was here too by Tiffany. We built an unlikely friendship over the last few years. It was just me and him until last year when he met Rachel. I’d never seen him so smitten and it made me happy to see the growth in his character since him and I dated.

After work, I let Dustin drive us home because my feet were killing me from waiting tables but the hundred and fifty dollars in tips had been worth it. I normally didn’t get this much unless it was the weekend. “How much did you make?” I asked him.

“Eighty-seven,” he told me.

“One-fifty for me,” I bragged, sticking my tongue out.

“Must be nice to have tits,” he muttered and I laughed. “Grace.” I looked over at him when he spoke. “Are you going back home now?” My stomach knotted at his words.

“Why are you asking?” I tucked my hair behind my ear.

“When is the last time you’ve talked to your dad? How about Noah?” I looked ahead to ignore him. “And no, stalking his Facebook is not talking to him.” I felt the red splash my cheeks. “You’re finished with college now, it’s over for you. What are you going to do now? You look happy again, why aren’t you going back?” He kept bombarding me with questions I didn’t know how to answer.

“What about you? When are you going back?” I dodged the questions.

He shook his head as he stared at the road. “I’m different… But if you want to know, I’m thinking about asking Rachel if she’d come back home with me after she finishes up school.”

Wow, that was huge. “She’d faint if she heard you talking about your future with her in it.”

He smiled like a person in love. “Yeah, I know.”

“You’re stupidly good at making her think that you don’t care as much as you do… When in fact you’re totally in love with her.”

He looked over at me with a cheesy grin. “I’ll let her know one day, that she’s got me wrapped around her finger, unlike Noah who spilled his heart out only to have you run from him.”

I stopped smiling. “Stop. You know how I feel and why I made the choice to break up with him.”

He nodded. “That burden you feel, I can imagine it’s heavy but from an outsider’s point of view, it’s total bullshit. Your mom wouldn’t want you unhappy. She loved you and it wasn’t just you I saw her look after in school. She looked after him too.”

I knew he was right about Mom wanting me to be happy, and I also knew she cared for Noah… at this point, the guilt I felt didn’t really feel like guilt, it just left me with this confused, dull feeling inside me. I thought about what it might be like to go back home and see Noah, but that meant facing Dad again and also dealing with the possibility that Noah and I might really be over.

I didn’t miss him as much as I used to. Even my obsession with checking on him through Facebook felt like a habit. He never posted anything about his life so I didn’t know if he was seeing anyone. I did know that he created a Facebook page for all his wood carvings, only these days he kept to the big stuff that he made from logs. I left all mine at Dad’s when I left.

“If Noah feels the way I do lately, then maybe we’ve truly grown apart and we can move on from each other,” I mumbled softly.

He burst out laughing and I glared at him. “You’re not serious, are you? Then why haven’t you dated?”

“I did go out with that Matt guy,” I told him.