“I said I would help her, Liam,” Annie said, coming to Sadie’s defense. “But I’ve been so busy. We're all busy this time of year. The quarter is coming to an end and the holidays are around the corner. Planning a whole play is a lot for one person to handle.”
“Christine handled it just fine …for years,” Liam said, kicking himself even harder.God, I suck.
Christine McGee had started teaching the same year as Elaine—thirty years ago—and had organized the holiday play every year she’d taught. It had apparently grown more and more elaborate with each passing year. Last year had been a full-fledged musical production that had left Liam amazed of what the smalltown second grade teacher was capable. When Christine had retired the past summer, though, Liam knew he had to find someone else to run the show. At this point, it was something the community just expected to happen each year.
He’d assigned Sadie the role in a vengeful bit of anger at the beginning of the school year. He knew drama productions were outside of her wheelhouse. She’d probably joined her idiot boyfriend in making the drama kids’ lives hell in high school. All the more reason to make her plan a playnow. Maybe it was time for someone to makeherlife hell.
“Christine was a machine,” Annie said sharply. “And she’d been doing the play for thirty years. Sadie is just one person, and this is her first year in Lake Conrad.”
All the teachers were looking at Sadie now, a couple whispering behind their hands and giggling. Sadie’s shoulders hunched over a bit as her eyes skipped around the room, her smile slipping on and off her increasingly red face.
He flashed back to their ninth grade Algebra class, when the teacher had asked her to name the three basic laws of algebra.
It had been the easiest question in the world, but she hadn’t known the answer. Watching her squirm in her seat as the teacher had questioned her had been physically painful for Liam.
He’d thrown his arm in the air, yelling the teacher’s name. Anything in an effort to get this negative attention off of her—to save her.
Before the teacher could even call on him, though, he'd risen from his chair and shouted at the top of his lungs, “The Commutative, Associative, and Distributive Laws!”
The class had erupted in laughter, and Sadie’s cheeks had turned even more red. Tyler Carter had threatened to kick his ass when he’d run into him in the bathroom that afternoon.
Now, in this far away library, under entirely different circumstances, his heart collapsed just the same as it had in that Algebra classroom. He felt his eyes soften and his breaths coming out short.
“Fine,” he barked in a too loud voice, pulling up his agenda and pretending to look at it before glaring up at her again. “I’ll help you.”
“Huh?” Sadie asked, confusion marking her brow.
“You need help, so I’ll help you,” he said again, slowly, like she was stupid. “Now, moving on….”
The back of Liam’s neck burned as he ignored Sadie’s shocked face and droned on mindlessly about cafeteria helpers and plans for updated laptops for the next school year.
What did you just do?
“Liam, what’s the matter with you?”
Liam looked up from the clipboard in his hand to see Annie standing next to him. She was bundled up in a poofy gray coat that went down to her ankles and wore a green knit hat pulled over her wild curls and matching green mittens on her hands.
He’d seen Annie glaring daggers at him through the after-school crowd as kids and teachers had poured out of the school. He knew why she was pissed, and he had no desire to hear about it, so he'd done his best to avoid her at all costs.
Liam was admittedly a little closer to Annie than he was with his other employees. He was well aware it probably wasn’t super appropriate for a principal to be on such friendly terms with a teacher in his employ. But truth be told, Liam had never thought he’d end up a principal so young … especially in such a small town. True, he’d always wanted to work himself up the ranks of the administrative hierarchy and be a principal someday, but he’d had no idea it would happen so soon.
He’d been shocked when he had actually been offered the job as principal at Lake Conrad Elementary School. He’d thought it was a long shot when he interviewed for it—he was only twenty-eight, after all, and he’d never heard of a principal as young as him.
Unfortunately, it left him in kind of a weird place friend-wise in his new home. Most of the people in Lake Conrad that were his age were going to bars and hanging out on the ski hill all day. And while it was important that he maintain a professional demeanor—he was principal of the elementary school, after all—he was stillyoung. He still wanted to have fun and hang out with people his own age.
He just couldn’t see himself skiing or getting drinks after work with the fifty-something-year-old members of the school board.
So, it had felt natural to become friends with Annie, whowashis employee but someone he had more in common with than some of the other people in his supposed peer group.
“What do you mean?” he finally asked absently, looking back down at his clipboard, the letters and numbers blurring.
“You know exactly what I mean. Why are you so mean to Sadie? She gets enough shit from people.”
“Who else does she get shit from?” Liam asked quickly, looking up at Annie’s angry features.
“Oh, it’s … no one,” Annie said cryptically, rolling her eyes dismissively. “Just a misunderstanding between her and Jake …but we’re talking aboutyou. You chased her on the beach this morning?”
Liam had met Annie’s friends, Jake and Lena, at The Golden Carafe a few weeks ago. He knew they were dating … but had something happened between Jake and Sadie? The thought caused a sour feeling to swirl around his chest.