16 | Behind Closed Doors

A WHOLE WEEK PASSED during which Jen managed to think surprisingly little about Robert Caruso. He was coming up less and less in conversations with her friends. The beginning of March brought warmer weather in its wake, allowing her to finally pull her old bicycle out and ride it to work without sliding on black ice or enduring wind so cold it made her teeth chatter. Work was easier now that she'd had two months to learn all the ins and outs of the job and settle into her routine, and she started to believe that things were finally shifting to a normal, predictable state.

Naturally, the universe had to remind her that she was wrong.

Jen was usually one of the first people to arrive at St. Catherine's in the mornings – she had to get there slightly before the teachers – but on this particular Monday, she happened to show up even earlier than usual. It never hurt to have a few extra minutes to enjoy the silence before the teenagers raided the building, and since the only other people around were probably Nora and Elliot – both of whom were likely locked in their offices with their heads already buried in work for the day – she decided to slip into the teachers' lounge and see if they had any tea or coffee or hot chocolate packets.

Her miscalculation was assuming that no one else would be roaming the halls. She walked down them idly, not paying enough attention to her immediate surroundings until she was turning a blind corner where two of the halls intersected and very ungracefully slamming into Robert.

Or, to be more precise, his coffee cup, the contents of which proceeded to spill all down the front of her light blouse.

The hot, sticky liquid oozed through her shirt, gluing the fabric to her skin and abruptly filling her nose with its overwhelmingly strong scent. A look of pure horror had already made its way to his face by the time her brain had time to process what just happened.

The only two coherent thoughts that came to her were oh my God, what am I supposed to wear now?! and at least I wore a nude bra, or else it would all be on display right now.

Her face was burning with warmth, but his looked even worse. His cheeks – his whole face, really – had flamed redder than she'd ever seen it.

He tried to speak, which resulted in a lot of stumbling over words, but he eventually managed to splutter something out. "I...God, Jen, I'm so sorry, what can I...I think I have a shirt in my room?"

It had not occurred to her that she could be more mortified than she already was, but the sensation doubled over. She most definitely could not wear one of his shirts, she thought indignantly—someone was bound to notice! But what other options did she have? There wasn't quite enough time to go home...

She opened her mouth to protest, but no sound came out. It wasn't exactly like she had a lot of time to mull her choices over, either. Her shirt was soaked and ruined and she had to get out of the middle of the hallway before other teachers started showing up and saw her, so she found herself giving the tiniest nod of affirmation and rushing off with Robert.

Jen had to practically jog to keep up with his pace as they hurried to his classroom, which she hadn't actually been inside of before. Were it not for the current, tragic circumstances, she would have taken her time glancing around at all the posters and art he had hanging on the walls. But as it was, she kind of wanted to curl up under the desk and simply die there.

Her shirt felt disgustingly soggy, yet she couldn't stop herself from crossing her arms over her torso as if she could conceal the mess. She was nervously pacing as he scoured through his belongings.

"Why do you even have spare clothes at school?" she asked a bit too sharply, wishing that he could hurry up and find what he was looking for.

His head popped up from behind the desk, where he'd been kneeling down and searching through some sort of box. "In case something happens..." She didn't think it was possible, but he sounded even more embarrassed than before. "Like...if I spill coffee on myself, for instance."

Jen pressed her lips together and tried to appear unaffected as he tossed one of his button-down shirts to her, but the faint smell of cologne that clung to it sent a cascade of conflicting sensations through her body. Her heart was beating a little too fast and her fingers gripping the fabric a little too tightly as she poked her head out the door to check that no one was coming before she booked it across the hall to the women's bathroom. She yanked the handle to fling the door open–

And it didn't budge. It was locked.

"You've got to be kidding me," she hissed under her breath as she tried again to no avail. She tugged and tugged and tugged, but it refused to move. Why was the freaking bathroom locked? Were the janitors not even here yet?

Her heart jumped up to her throat as she whirled back around towards Robert, wide-eyed. He'd gone a little pale upon realizing that they had yet another predicament on their hands—she had nowhere to change. His lips were parted slightly, like he wanted words to come out but didn't know which ones.

"The copier room," he blurted suddenly, though not too loudly. "There aren't any windows-"

Jen's voice jumped higher. "Are you crazy?!" she seethed. "I cannot just change in the copier room! What if someone else comes?"

"Do you have any better ideas?" While he didn't sound irritated, he was getting increasingly panicky, which was only making her more anxious. "I'll keep watch."

Unfortunately, she didn't, and the copier room wasn't very far from where they were currently standing. She stayed behind him on the way there, using his body as a shield from any eyes that might see the giant mess on the front of her shirt.

An unsteady breath whistled out between her teeth once she finally closed herself into the copier room. She couldn't hear Robert outside the door, though she knew he was there, and she quickly reached into her bag to pull out the (now very rumpled) shirt he had lent her.

Her fingers were trembling as she undid the buttons on her own top. It's 8 a.m. on a Monday and I'm stripping down to my bra in a closet. Her bra itself was vaguely sticky, but she was mildly relieved to observe that her shirt had absorbed the majority of the moisture.

The absolute last thing she needed right now was to entertain the thought that she might enjoy the sensation of wearing his clothes, so she forced herself to think about how poor of a fit it was, how loose it was on her shapeless frame. She used her blazer, which was dark enough to hide the considerable coffee splatter on it, to try to conceal some of the bagginess, but a tight knot formed in her stomach as she realized that it was still incredibly obvious that the shirt she was wearing wasn't her own.

Everyone was going to notice. If they got close enough, they were going to smell men's cologne on her and anyone who spent a lot of time around Robert might catch that it was his. What if any of the students noticed? And if there was one rule Nora was strict about, it was the dress code. She wanted everyone looking their best. Jen couldn't get on her bad side–

"I'm done," she squeaked, well-aware of the fact that Robert couldn't guard the door all day.

She shrank into the corner of the copier room and knelt down to retrieve a box of staples from the tiny set of drawers that lived there. She'd meant to grab some for her desk and fortunately already had her satchel on her, though it was now bulging from the ruined shirt that she'd just shoved into it.

She wasn't even sure if she was going to be able to salvage her top. Great. Her eyes began to well up with frustrated tears. And her freaking bra was going to be sticky all day. She was probably going to get weird boob coffee stains on his white shirt. Just great.

The door creaked open, and though she didn't look towards it, the fact that no one greeted her told her that it was Robert who had just slipped inside. It clicked shut behind him, and the two of them were alone together once again.

"I'm really sorry," his voice said abashedly, gently.

"It's okay," she told him, but her own voice sounded hollow. "It was an accident."

She wasn't mad at him. She wasn't sure if she was even capable of being truly mad at him. She was just irritated that the situation had happened at all, embarrassed that he was the one it had to happen with, and stressed that she was going to be worrying about her outfit all day.

Her voice gave away that she was upset. Her muscles stiffened as she heard his quiet footsteps approaching, and then he was crouched down next to her, the corners of his mouth turning downwards when he saw her tear-streaked cheeks.

She tried to turn away from him, but he lifted a hand to brush at her tears. "Hey, it's okay," he murmured, his voice soft and uncertain as the first drops of rain before a storm.

She hated the butterflies she felt as his fingers trailed along her cheekbone. She hated that she could possibly feel that way right now. But she missed this closeness, missed that voice that was sweet like honey and rich like music. "Shh, it's okay."

Jen closed her eyes for a long moment to blink away the crystal droplets on her eyelashes. His fingers, surprisingly steady considering how frantic of a morning the two of them were having, continued along their path on her cheeks. Oh, how she wished he could stay with her–

It escaped her in an unplanned, miserable rush of breath as she opened her eyes. "I miss you."

His eyes widened, but he did not pull away from her, and after swallowing down a shaky breath, his lips turned upward into what was almost a smile. His thumb was rubbing her cheek, and his voice was soft and wistful as he said, "Sei così bella."

That got her to smile a little bit. "You said something like that before," she recalled with a tiny hiccup, and she was blushing, but she was always blushing around him, so they would both just have to get used to it. "Tell me what it means."

"Nothing you shouldn't already know," he told her quietly, and she was about to be annoyed with him, but then he finished his thought. "I was telling you that you're beautiful. I miss you, too."

Jen's heart turned over in her chest, so full of tenderness for him. She certainly didn't feel beautiful, especially not now, but when Robert Caruso told you something, you believed it.

A voice in the back of her head was screaming at her to stop, but she still found herself leaning into him and feeling pleased when his movements mirrored her own. Their foreheads were nearly touching, their breaths uncertain, their hearts wanting. She swallowed down her nervousness, but she didn't run, and he didn't run, either, and his lips were skimming against her own.

Her hands grasped his shoulders. "We can't," she whispered against him, against her desire to run her fingers into his hair instead of push him away.

"Maybe we can make this work." His lips brushed against the corner of her mouth, but his voice was innocently, pitifully hopeful. "Maybe no one would have to know."

No one would have to know.

Jen was suddenly gripped with panic, thinking not at all of herself but of her mother, who had once believed a very similar lie. Secrets always came out of the dark eventually, and when they did, dreams turned into nightmares.

She placed a forceful hand on his chest, over his heart. "Look at me." She scooted herself backward, away from him, and it took him visible effort to conceal his disappointment. That didn't make putting her foot down any easier. "Maybe you can do this, but I can't. If anyone found out about this, I'd take all the blame for it-"

"I'd never let that happen to you-" he interrupted.

"It's not about you letting it." Disappointment had wriggled into her heart, the same disappointment she always felt when she remembered who exactly she was in this world and how unimportant she was to it. "I'm expendable, you're not. I'm just here because someone else had a baby and I'm the woman-"

He was lost. "What does that have to do with-"

"It means that in their eyes, you're just gonna be the poor guy who got carried away because I looked just a little too good in your clothes," she snapped, bursting out more heatedly than she intended but feeling unable to contain it. "And I'm gonna be the whore who led you astray. Don't you get it? I can't afford to be tossed out, I can't. I don't have anywhere else to go right now."

He blanched, and it occurred to Jen that she perhaps lashed out at him a little too harshly for giving her what she wanted. "I didn't-"

"I know you didn't," she amended, smoothing out her voice very intentionally. "I just don't want to get in trouble with Nora."

It definitely wasn't a lie.

Robert relaxed a little bit, but just barely. "If she says anything to you about the shirt, you can blame me, okay?"

Jen shook her head. "We're not on great terms, anyway," she sighed, nervously running a hand through her hair. "I might as well keep you on her good side."

"What exactly happened between you tw-"

The door abruptly opened, causing them to scramble as far back from each other as possible as quickly as possible. A tidal wave of panic rose up inside of her–

–and then crashed as soon as she realized that the silhouette in the doorway was just Jude. He was mustering every ounce of self-control he had to keep his mouth shut, but Jen was well-acquainted with his many expressions and could see in his eyes that he was startled and mildly flustered.

"Uh...I'll just, uh–"

The door shut loudly.

Robert looked stunned and stricken, like he'd been punched in the gut. Jen clambered to her feet, silently cursing herself for how careless they'd just been but also thanking God that if someone had to walk in on them, it was Jude.

"He's my friend." She broke the silence, fully aware of why Robert was so paralyzed. "We can trust him."

He curtly nodded, and despite her relief that the outcome hadn't been worse, a seed of despair was also burying itself in her core. The momentary look of real terror she saw on his face when he thought they'd been caught told her everything she needed to know, everything she told herself she had already known but had wanted to be proven wrong about.

No matter how hard they tried to be happy together, they were destined to fail.

____________________

A/N:

this one goes out to ohlee, who kept commenting, "they finna be wildin at work"