Page 2 of Here We Go Again
“I’m sorry to do it like this,” Schaffer shouts over the sound of two dozen teachers celebrating their freedom with watered-down cocktails and half-priced apps.
“But it seems best to have a clean break before summer,” Schaffer continues at a loud volume, alerting the gossipy counseling department that something dramatic is happening within earshot. Several of her colleagues turn to watch the scene unfold.
Teaching high school is often an exercise in humiliation, but this is a bit much, even for her.
It isn’t the dumping itself she takes issue with. She’s been dumpedmany times. In fact, she’s been dumped in this exact Applebee’s at least twice.
No, she takes issue with the fact that they’re surrounded by their hetero coworkers on all sides. The social studies teachers-slash-football coaches who were distracted by a Mariners’ game playing on the flat-screens are now attuned to this conversation. Sanderson and her crew of mean girls with their Pinterest-perfect classrooms are now ignoring their shared nachos to leer at the scene. Even her principal is doing a bad job feigning disinterest as he goes to town on a chicken wing.
Not that she really cares what her coworkers think of her. Most of them made up their minds about her when she started this job eight years ago.
Hell, at least half of them made up their minds about her when she started at Vista Summit High School as a ninth gradereighteenyears ago.
But as the only openly queer teachers in their conservative small town, it would be nice if people weren’t staring at them like they’re a couple onThe Ultimatum.
“Doesn’t a clean break seem best?” Hannah Schaffer asks in response to Logan’s blank stare. At least, Logan is pretty sure her first name is Hannah.
Like,90 percent certain.
It’s definitely Hannah, and not Anna or Heather or Hayley.
Probably.
It’s not Logan’s fault she’s fuzzy on the first name of her current casual-workplace-acquaintance-with-benefits. Most teachers at Vista Summit go exclusively by their last names as a byproduct of working at a school run by dude bros who once played Vista sports and then became teacher-coaches so they could revel in those glorydays forever. At work, she’s neverLogan. She’s Maletis. And the tiny blond with the pink drink is only ever referred to asSchaffer. Except in Logan’s phone, where her contact still reads “New Science Teacher” followed by a winky face emoji.
And you can’t get dumped by a woman whose contact is still a generic descriptor. Logan has dozens of ambiguous contacts in her phone—Cute Coffee Shop GirlandEmily HingeandHot Butch from Tinder—and none of those fleeting hookups ended with a breakup. They ended therespectableway: with a mutual fizzling out and absolutely no need for a serious conversation.
She doesn’t reallydoserious.
But Probably-Hannah Definitely-Schaffer seems hell-bent on having a serious conversation in this Applebee’s. “It can’t come as a surprise that I’m ending things.”
“It really can,” she grumbles into her drink. And is Sanderson…holding up her phone?Is she recording this atrocity? Logan fights to keep her stance casual and her face impassive. You can’t be hurt over the end of a relationship you didn’t know you were in.
“I mean, we can’t keep pretending we don’t have problems,” Schaffer continues. “Things haven’t been good between us for a while now.”
A while now?Logan scans her romantic history with this science teacher and tries to find any evidence that might justify the use ofa while. From that first drunken makeout after a staff happy hour, Logan had made it clear they were keeping it casual. Late nightU up?texts and never sleeping over. It wasn’t exactly the stuff that Nora Ephron films were made of. And it started…what?A month ago? Two months, tops.
So, yeah, Logan is surprised. And confused. And quite frankly, a little nauseous from this green drink.
“Look, you’re a fun time,” Probably-Hannah says. “But I think we should end things before either of us gets hurt.”
As if she would ever let herself care enough to get hurt. “You’re probably right,” she agrees in an attempt to expedite this postmortemon a fake relationship and get back to celebrating the start of summer. “Thanks for the talk. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to—”
Her evasive maneuvering is swiftly ignored. “I just think we’re in different places in our lives. You still live with your dad and you’re in yourthirties.”
She saysthirtieslike it’s a terminal diagnosis. Logan should’ve known better than to hook up with a zillenial who thought Mary-Kate and Ashley were three people. Like most of the young teachers at Vista Summit High School, Schaffer lives in Portland, a forty-minute drive across the river. And she’s very self-righteous about it. “It’s tragic the way your quality of life starts to decline at the ripe old age of thirty-two,” Logan snarks.
“You’re literally always complaining about your back, and you get sick every time you eat cheese,” she points out.
Fair point, Schaffer.
Hannah looks her up and down with an expression of barely concealed revulsion, and Logan wonders if Sanderson captured that on her phone, too. “What’s your plan, Logan?”
She considers this in the same way she considered what question to ask the tarot cards. “Well, I was probably going to order some mozzarella sticks, maybe switch to beer—”
“What is your plan for yourlife?” Schaffer interrupts. “Are you going to live with your dad in this disgusting town forever?”
She feels that question wedge itself deep into her chest.The end of your adolescence, perhaps?
