Loving a Man Who Forgot Me Novel Chapter 59
I eyed my phone on the nightstand, half expecting it to light up.
I don’t know why I expected Abel to text me, but a part of me just thought he would. That he’d have so many more things to say about today.
My phone never buzzed or lit up and I lay awake wondering if we both really were going to be okay at the end of all this.
For the first time in a long time I felt confident I would be okay. Would he? I fell asleep praying that he would. That somehow, he would find his way again.
Because I knew, in the deepest part of my soul, that no matter how happy I was with Jason, it would never truly be complete if Abel couldn’t find his own happiness. We were too connected, too bound together, for it to be any other way.
I woke to another Monday morning, and it was almost like the weekend had never happened, like it was a weird dream.
Jason and I made breakfast together, and went to school, and everyone else went back to their lives too. Addie and Jesse, and Abel and Katya returned to New York. Jaime was flying home with his family, and life for all of us carried on.
Aiden was in third period, and my chest ached a little, but it was so familiar I hardly noticed it. I gave them independent study time while I read through their first papers of the semester.
I’d asked them to write two pages on how history affected us, individually and as a nation, today. Some of them I could tell had just Googled and regurgitated what they read, not having any real clear focus or point.
But I hadn’t assigned the topic because I expected them all to write papers brimming with profound wisdom.
They weren’t going to get these papers back with a grade. They were all receiving credit for completing the assignment. I wanted to honestly know how they felt about history. At the end of the year I would assign the same paper.
If I did my job, I would be reading very different papers. That was the hope anyway. I came to Aiden’s paper. It was well written, and thoughtful, though it had some of the same impersonal and generic responses the other students had given.
I looked up at him, nose in his book, doing the reading assignment. Jessica Walters, a pretty, blonde cheerleader a few seats behind him, passed a note forward. It landed on Aiden’s desk and I observed as he discreetly unfolded and read it.
I was sent spiraling into the past. Some things never changed. In a day when cell phones were predominant, girls and boys still passed hand written notes in class.
On the top shelf of the closet in my teenage bedroom at my parents’ house was a shoebox full of such notes that had been passed between me and Abel.
We used to sit in this very same classroom, him at the desk behind me, until Mrs. Weber, the history teacher I replaced upon her retirement, separated us. But even sticking us on opposite ends of the classroom hadn’t stopped the notes.
I returned to the papers on my desk, hiding the faintest smile when I thought of all the secrets and laughs and other memories contained within that shoebox. There were so many good times. So much besides tears and heartbreak.
It seemed lately though, that the bad times colored it all, but that wasn’t fair. There was a lot to regret, but there was so much more not to.
Homecoming was just around the corner and the girls and boys at Darlington were already setting their sights on dates, working and flirting to lure in their desired one. I’d never once had to worry about whether or not I was going to get asked.
From the very first one, when Abel staked his claim freshman year, I’d never had a single doubt that we would go to every school dance together. Was it ironic or fitting that our relationship began over our first high school dance and fell apart over the last?
And it was while chaperoning homecoming last year, my first year of teaching, that the handsome gym teacher and football coach convinced me to let him have a dance and then a date. What was with me and high school dances?
The rest of the school day passed uneventfully, and Monday turned into Tuesday, Tuesday into Wednesday, and before I knew it, the school week was ending.
Addie was swept up in Fashion Week, as evidenced by the ridiculous number of picture messages I’d received of all the glamour and chaos. Her parents had driven down to New York for it all, and to attend Abel’s concert over the weekend, the kickoff for Rebel Cry’s fall tour.
Jason had previously mentioned wanting to catch the show when they came to Boston in a couple weeks. Abel even offered him backstage passes the night we all went out, but I didn’t know how much of a Rebel Cry fan Jason still was these days.
“Abbi! I mean Ms. Cross!” I turned in the parking lot to see Aiden in his football practice gear jogging toward me. “What’s up, Aid?”