Page 6 of Beautiful Place By the Sea

“So, what do you want to do tonight?” Laurel sips her Americano tentatively. The drinks are still pretty hot.

I shrug. “We could grab takeout on the way home, if you want. I think that new pizza place on Shore Road is supposed to be pretty good.”

“Pizza would be lovely,” she agrees. “I’ve been subsisting on ramen noodles for what feels like an eternity at this point.”

“And just how is your dissertation going?” I grin teasingly.

“Oh, well, you know.” She sighs. “It’s certainly going.”

I snort. “Sounds like a blast. But, hey! Only one more year and you’ll be done!”

Laurel nods in mock seriousness. “At least I have something to look forward to.” Her green eyes dance at the joke. “And what about you?”

“What about me?” I take a big gulp of my latte, which I immediately regret, because it scalds my throat all the way down.

Laurel gives me a look like “you couldn’t possibly not know what I’m talking about, Ivy,” but she asks casually, “What’s on the horizon for you?”

I cast my eyes downward, shaking my head. “I’m not really sure anymore, I guess.”

She touches my hand gently. “I know things have been tough. I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to bring up a sore subject.”

“No, it’s okay,” I start.

“But it isn’t,” she returns. “You’ve had a hellish year. I want to make sure you’re okay.”

I consider her words. The year was, indeed, hellish. Though it didn’t start off that way.

Last summer at this time, I was preparing for another standard school year, filled with excuses about lost library books and seminars about how to use the ChromeBooks in the lab.

And it was like that at first. Fall hit Boston, everything was adorably orange and pumpkin-spiced, and I hung out with my friends, all teachers at Farnsworth Middle School.

And Kyle. My boyfriend of just over two years, at that point. Kyle was a math teacher I’d met shortly after starting my job. He was everything I’d dreamed of in a man—intelligent, charming, and considerate. He seemed to love his job, especially the students.

We hit it off right away after our meet-cute in the teacher’s lounge. I’d dropped my orange on the floor, mid-peel, and it rolled all the way under his table. He’d brought it over to me, making a truly terrible joke about runaway fruit, then gave me the orange he’d packed for his own lunch. We ate together that day, and that was it for me. We started dating two weeks later.

In the time that followed, all of my work friends became his, and vice versa. Even though I was living just two towns over from where I grew up in the Boston suburbs, I didn’t have many friends left in the area. Laurel was busy with grad school in the city, and all of my high school crew had scattered across New England, chasing better jobs (or, in the case of my best friend, Amie, a string of increasingly flawed men). Because my work friends, and Kyle’s, were the only people in my orbit, it mattered to me tremendously that I keep them.

My coworker Alex, whom I’d been close with since day one at Farnsworth, was the only one not thrilled with the Kyle pairing. Alex knew Kyle already from working together on the same seventh-grade teaching team, and while he liked my boyfriend just fine, he insisted that things were going to end poorly.

“You can’t date Kyle,” Alex had told me when things started.

“Why not?” I’d been annoyed, but Alex was often sassy and opinionated, so I’d entertained the conversation.

Alex had sighed deeply. “You’re going to ruin the friend group,” he’d explained.

“You mean the friend group that Kyle and I have just created by starting to date, and introducing our friends to each other?”

He smirked. “Yes, that one. But it’s going to end, and when it does, they’re all going to pick him.”

My jaw had dropped. “Excuse you?”

Alex threw his arm around my shoulders. “Of course, being your work bestie, I’m always going to pick you. But Kyle is charismatic, and he’s been here longer than you. He’s on committees; he knows everyone. He’s hot. People are going to choose him, mark my words.”

“Okay, please stop lusting after my boyfriend,” I’d snapped at Alex, throwing his arm off of me. A silly little thrill went through me at the word “boyfriend,” because the relationship was new, and I was still lost in that butterflies-in-your-stomach era. “And I think it will be fine. Not to mention, who’s to say it’s going to end?”

I’ll never forget the look on Alex’s face, somewhere between “Come on, Ivy, you idiot” and “I feel bad for you, you pathetic fool.” But, to his credit, all he’d said was, “I’ll be here for you no matter what. Just be careful.”

As it turned out, when things went south, Alex was right. Everyone else did pick Kyle, as evidenced by the pitying yet awkward looks I started getting in the teacher’s lounge and the whispers that haunted me when I walked down the hallway. The ghosting from friends I’d thought were mine for life; the suddenly-too-busy-to-hang-out group that I’d seen almost daily before the breakup.