“Don’t let that woman get a goat. Dear God, I had to hear about them all night as she baked enough to fill a store.”
I laugh at that. “She really loved that goat.”
Ana steps closer and grins. “I think she liked the man who took her more, but what do I know?”
Then she walks away, leaving me wondering how the hell I get my girl back.
twenty-three
Violet
This week has been one of those weeks. Where everything sucks, something inevitably breaks—my coffee machine, for example—and you can’t find your shoes as you’re running out the door.
However, I don’t have a first period today, so I’m popping into Prose & Perk. Otherwise, I’m going to be a really terrible teacher.
I pull the door open, both hoping Everett will and won’t be here.
I haven’t seen him since the night at the fire pit, and each night I lie in bed—the one he gifted me—I think of him.
Of how he looked at me, touched me, made me feel cherished. How we were starting to build something new and amazing, and then I pushed him away.
“Good morning, Vi,” Hazel says with a big smile.
“Good morning. Can you save me by giving me a very large coffee, light and sweet?”
“Coming right up.” She turns to the machine, hits a bunch of buttons, and talks to me from over her shoulder. “I haven’t seen you in a bit. Everything okay?”
Oh, I’m fine, just nursing my broken heart and waiting for my ex to tell me what he wants. All is great.
“Yeah, just working. It’s essay week, which means all the students had to write three-page papers on Shakespeare.”
She laughs. “I bet they loved that.”
“I see the error of my ways now,” I say with a sigh.
The kids are great—their papers, not so much. We spent two weeks going over different plays and the facts we know about Shakespeare’s life. All they needed to do was show which plays might have been based on real parts of his life and where the similarities were.
I hoped for a little better than this.
“You always loved Shakespeare,” Hazel says as she hands me the coffee.
“Yes, she did,” a deep, masculine voice that has been haunting me says from behind.
I take a moment, trying to calm my racing heart before turning to see him. “Hi.”
Everett smiles. “Hi to you. So you’re forcing the students to learn about Shakespeare?”
“Forcing?” I say with a bit of indignance.
“I don’t know many teenagers who are all that eager to sit and listen to his inflated stories.”
My jaw drops. “Inflated?”
“Are you just picking one word that you want to zero in on?”
I inhale deeply through my nose. “I’ll have you know that Shakespeare lives on to this day because his work speaks for itself. Why do you think we still see it performed? Not because they are inflated or we’re forcing it, but because the stories are beautiful, tragic, poignant, and make the reader feel something. You suffer along with the characters. You see their flaws and can relate.”
He raises one brow. “Relate to what? I’ve never considered murdering my friends in order to become king.”
