Page 34 of Beautiful Place By the Sea

“Sorry, I got caught up at work.”

“Kyle, you’re obviously avoiding me. And lying.”

There was silence on the other end.

I took a deep breath. “Do you want to try to talk things through? Or should we just end this? Because I’m not okay with being treated this way. I don’t even understand what's going on.”

“I think we should end things.” His voice was quiet, but the wind whipping through the hole his words ripped in my chest might be the loudest thing I’ve ever heard.

It was another month before I got the full story. I was in the bathroom after a faculty meeting when Melinda came in to touch up her lip gloss. Like, who even wears lip gloss in their thirties? At work? I guess my ex’s new lover, that’s who.

“Hey,” she’d said, looking nervous as she turned toward me.

“Hi,” I’d said cautiously, knowing she had sent him inappropriate texts, but not knowing the full extent of her involvement in my breakup.

“Look, Ivy. I just wanted to say that I’m sorry.”

I turned to face her, somehow still so oblivious. “What do you mean?”

“I’m sorry about what happened with Kyle.”

My mind flashed to the night at McCreary’s and the text messages. “Oh. I mean, it seems like my relationship with Kyle was doomed to fail regardless.” I’d taken a deep breath. “But thank you.”

She shook her head. “It’s my fault it ended.”

That’s when it started to sink in. My pulse raced. “Are you two…together?”

She nodded, so slightly that I probably would have missed it if I wasn’t in full fight-or-flight mode, senses on high alert as I stared at her face.

“Shit,” I’d said, sinking back against the wall of the bathroom. A desperate attempt to support my now-floundering soul, which I never would have considered if not under duress. Bathrooms are vile, and I usually try not to touch anything. To the extent that I open the door with a paper towel, then awkwardly twist around backwards, propping it with my shoulder as I try to make a three-point shot with the paper towel into the bathroom garbage.

Melinda, to her credit, looked like she was going to cry, too. “I’m so sorry,” she’d said again. “When it started, I didn’t know he was with you. And then I found out, but I didn’t want to stop. But when you and I both chaperoned the winter dance, I felt like we hit it off.”

I remember that night, passing time with Melinda in the cafeteria because none of my other teacher friends had been at the event. I wouldn’t exactly say that we’d hit it off, but it was well before the night of the blow job text message, so I’d had no reason to hate her. She seemed pleasant enough.

“I’ve felt horrible about it ever since,” she continued. “I hope we can still be friends.”

She felt horrible, but not horrible enough to stop it. And we definitely weren’t friends. Not at the dance, and especially not here in this bathroom.

But somehow, at my core, I realized that she wasn’t really the one to blame. Even in the depths of my broken heart, I knew that it was Kyle I should be angry with.

So I’d said, “It’s okay.”

Even though it wasn’t.

And then I’d dried my hands and gone back to my office like my entire world hadn’t just been turned upside down. Again.

I’m lost in remembering how I sat in the dark and sobbed when I got home from work that night when a shadow falls over the shelf in front of me.

Turning around, I see Oliver looking expectantly at me. His hair is curling around his ears again, and his eyes are so intense, I have to shift my gaze to the side.

“Yes?” I ask, wondering what he wants. I cast a quick look toward the clock. It’s not noon yet.

“I wanted to tell you,” he says, apparently missing the memo that we aren’t doing eye contact, “I read Ella Enchanted.”

I notice that he’s got the book in his hands. “Really?” I grin in surprise. I can’t believe he actually read it. And so quickly, too.

Oliver nods. “Yep.”