“The divorce was my idea,” I reminded her. “I’m the reason we ended it.” The words felt like stones on my tongue. I felt their gritty, dirty wrongness and I wanted to spit them out and wash my mouth out with something cleansing.

Something like bleach.

Or battery acid.

“Yeah, maybe,” she sighed. “But he should never have let you get away with it.”

Something sharp sliced against my chest. I felt the same way too. If he had really loved me, he wouldn’t have let me go through with it. Right? If he really wanted things to work out between us, he wouldn’t have moved out.

He wouldn’t have stopped talking to me.

He wouldn’t have left.

Desperate to change the topic, I pushed through a back door and blinked against the bright fall sunlight. “So, lunch?”

“Yes!” She smiled at me. I could see the concern floating all over her face, but she held her tongue in an effort to keep me together. “Garmans has the freaking best pastrami on the planet.”

I would never understand how Kara could eat so much and stay so thin. She didn’t have to do what the rest of us did, which was an insane amount of cardio and a universal ban on sugar. She could eat whatever she wanted.

I looked at a piece of chocolate and my thighs started jiggling.

It was like an alarm system for my flab.

Well, until recently.

We hurried across the lengthy parking lot and busy Chicago street until we reached the tiny corner deli that boasted whole pickles with every purchase and sandwiches the size of my head. It was a favorite spot for everyone that worked on this block, but especially for the teachers at Hamilton. When given the choice of bad cafeteria food, a quickly packed lunch from home or a thickly-meated, moist-breaded, delicious deli sandwich from Garmans, the choice was obvious.

But after an incident last spring, in which a group of students had left school to corner and threaten a teacher off school grounds, our administrator had banned teachers from leaving campus during the school day and so technically we were sneaking out and breaking rules.

Hamilton was located in one of the under-privileged sections of Chicago. We were firmly in the city proper, not skirting the affluent suburbs or near a wealthier area of downtown. No, Hamilton was directly in the middle of gang violence, low-income housing and race wars.

I’d been offered jobs at some of the more stable schools in the city and even one at a prestigious private school in a well-off suburb. But when I chose Hamilton, it was with my heart. I had examined all of my options, and I knew that taking this job was a risk professionally, but I couldn’t deny that I felt something meaningful for these kids.

I wanted to make a difference. Not the kind that you see on TV or that moves you in a heart-warming movie, but a real difference. I wanted to empower these kids with knowledge that would never leave them and tools for a future that was beyond this neighborhood. I wanted to inspire something inside of these neglected teenagers that had all of the odds stacked against them and had to fight to just show up on a daily basis.

I fought a losing battle every day and I was exhausted. But it was worth it.

I could feel it in my bones.

Kara’s heels clicked against the broken sidewalk as we hurried to Garmans, mingling with the sounds of angry traffic and city melee. The warm sun heated my exposed arms and face and I lifted my closed eyes to soak it in.

There was healing in this industrial chaos. There was a beautiful surrender to the noisy madness that felt cleansing and therapeutic. It wouldn’t last. I would pay for my sandwich, go back to my desk and the reality of my broken life would come crashing down on me.

But for a few seconds, I had the flirtatious smile of an attractive man in my memory and a minute of reprieve from the demands of my life. I sucked in a full breath, taking in the exhaust and grit from the city. And yet, my lungs felt full for the first time in as long as I could remember.

“It’s going to get better,” Kara said so softly I barely heard her.

I opened my eyes to keep from tripping and they immediately fell to the cracked sidewalk and patchy grass on either side. “I’m not sure it is,” I told her honestly.

She dropped her hand on my shoulder and squeezed, pulling me into a side hug. “There’s more to life than Nick, babe. I promise you. And it won’t take you long to figure it out. You just need to get the divorce finalized so you can move on.” Her laugh vibrated through her. “And Eli would be a very good place to start.”

“Maybe,” fell from my lips, but I didn’t feel any sentiment behind it. More sickness roiled through me and a cold sweat broke out on my neck. I swallowed against rising nausea and convinced myself not to throw up.

I was getting a divorce, but even the thought of another man still felt like adultery. Whatever our faults, Nick and I had always been faithful to each other. Moving on seemed impossible when I had dedicated my entire life to one man.

To the one man that had let me down and stomped on whatever remained of my happiness.

Nick and I were over, I promised myself.

I would move on eventually.

And Nick would too.

We grabbed our sandwiches, but I let Kara drop Eli’s off. I had lost any desire to communicate with other people. I practically crawled back to my classroom and sunk into my chair. My deli sandwich went uneaten, just like my one from home, because I couldn’t bring myself to feel good enough to eat.

Kara had meant to encourage me, but she’d done the opposite.

I realized that she was right. That one day I would move on.

But that I was right too. Nick would move on as well.

I knew I could find someone better for me. I knew my life would be better off without him.

I just couldn’t swallow the hard pill that his life would be better off without me too.

That he would find someone better than me.

Chapter Two

9. He hates my mother.

Sunday rolled around with a crashing finality that made my legs lock up and my eyes instinctively roll of their own accord.

The apocalypse had arrived.

Also known as family dinner.

It had been a tradition in my household as long as I could remember. It was cemented into place when my older brother, Josh, left for college; written in blood from all members of my family when he got married twelve years ago; and cursed to damn those members of the family that did not show up straight to the fiery pits of hell when I got married seven years ago.

My mother was nothing if not intolerant of our absences. My father was the same way. He wasn’t the most amorous man alive; in fact, some might take his stoic demeanor and lack of affection to mean that he didn’t love us- or at least he didn’t like us very much. But the opposite was true. He did love us. More than he cared to tell us. He just showed us his love with high expectations that were both everlasting and time-oriented.

Translation: Don’t ever be late. Never ever.

Like I said, Sunday meant lunch with my parents. Neither of them could be bothered to pick up a phone during the week to check in with me, but by God, if I didn’t show up on Sunday, I’d better be dead.

Nick had always found my family stand-offish at best. He loathed any time spent with them, but most of all Sunday lunches. My father, a successful plumber and notorious hard worker, didn’t and wouldn’t try to understand Nick’s aspirations to be a professional musician. And my mother, who had been both emotionally neglected all of her marriage and also completely spoiled by my father who only expected her to cook, clean, iron his shirts and go to bed with him at nine pm every night, refused to respect a man that would choose an unstable career and could therefore impose upon his family to support him.