Taken

“Sheesh, avoid much?” I hopped off the desk. “Fine, I’ll go talk to David.” She grabbed my arm and sighed. “Sit down.”

I did. “Are you mad at me?”

“No.” She pulled the cap off the highlighter and drew a fat star next to something on the report. “I’m not mad at you.”

I sat on the edge of the desk, watching her, waiting. “So who are you mad at?”

“I’m not mad.” She was back to highlighting again.

“And I’m Sister Mary Margaret from Our Holy Virginity.” She laughed then, shaking her head. “Sometimes I don’t know what to do with you.”

“Just pay attention to me.” I stuck my tongue out at her.

“Brat.” She smiled, going back to her work.

“Sarah, I’m going back to school in two weeks,” I whined. “We don’t have much longer. What’s more important, me or that stupid report?” Her eyes flashed as she glanced up at me. “This is life, Lizzie. And trust me, life sucks. And it never stops sucking. Get used to it.”

“You’re such a bitch.” I pouted.

“And you’re such a baby.” She continued to chew on her pen cap and we sat in silence for a while, Sarah working, me pouting.

“Are we fighting?” I asked.

She smiled up at me. “Do you want to fight?”

“I don’t know what I want.” I sighed.

“Maybe that’s the problem.” She traced her fingernail down a line of numbers, distracted again.

“Well I know what I don’t want.”

“Hm?”

I nudged her again. “I don’t want to get married before I’m forty.”

“You’d better put Tim on a leash, then.” Sarah snorted.

“Very funny.”

“Nineteen, Sarah!”

“I heard you.” She slipped her glasses off and rubbed her eyes. “Stupid people do stupid things. Young people are inherently stupid. And again, I wouldn’t rule out the pregnancy idea.”

“But-she’s only nineteen! And…hey…are you calling me stupid?!”

“Who’s only nineteen?” David had materialized, filling the door frame. I knew the moment I looked at him that he’d overheard us.

“My boyfriend’s friend’s girlfriend…well, fiancee, I guess,” I amended. “They’re getting married next weekend. Who in their right mind gets married at nineteen?” I noticed him looking at where my foot was resting on Sarah’s thigh, but I didn’t move it.

She was too busy working again to notice him noticing.

“Nineteen is right about the age when you think you know everything, but you really don’t know anything.” He moved further into the room, helping himself to the other chair opposite Sarah. He set his surveys down on her desk. “I was only twenty when I

got married…trust me, I can believe it.” He sighed. Sarah glanced at him for a moment, then at me. David didn’t usually talk about his private life.

“You’re married?” I was just making conversation. Sarah had told me he was divorced.

“Was married,” he corrected.

“How long?” Sarah asked.

I cocked my head at her. I didn’t think she’d ever paid this much attention to David. It wasn’t just that she’d asked him a personal question-it was that Sarah was showing an actual interest.

“Eight years.”

I raised my eyebrows. Their eyes were locked, and there was some communication going on between them that I didn’t get.

“Kids?” I asked, just for something to say.

“No.” He smiled over at me. “She wanted them, but I…” He cleared his throat. “I can’t. That was one of the things that broke us up, actually.”

“Can’t?” I looked at him, puzzled. “Can’t have…sex?”

“Lizzie!” Sarah pinched the inside of my thigh, making me yelp. She looked kindly at David-so kindly, her face didn’t even look like Sarah’s for a moment there. “He means he’s sterile. Probably a low sperm count?”

“That’s about right.” David nodded and shrugged. “I’m shooting blanks.”

“Oh.” I rubbed my thigh. It hurt.

“It was the same with us.” Sarah revealed. “My ex wanted them, but I couldn’t…” I noticed her looking down at the ring she was wearing, and it didn’t occur to me for a moment that when she said “her ex,” she actually meant ex- husband. “I had… well, I was damaged. Pretty much beyond repair. There was no way I could carry a child to term. So he went and married someone else who could.”

“I’m sorry, Sarah.” David didn’t reach out to touch her, but she responded as if he had, her face softening as she looked at him.

“Lizzie, you can close your mouth.” she said, not even glancing at me, but smiling a small, knowing smile.

My mouth snapped shut, and I tried not to reveal my hurt. I dropped my foot from her lap. David sensed something going on between the two of us, but his eyes never left her for a moment.

“I know, it hurts, doesn’t it?”

It took me a moment to realize, he wasn’t talking to me, but to her. She looked at him speculatively, still with the pen cap in her mouth. Finally, she nodded.

“How long?” he asked.

“I got married at twenty-eight…was married for five years. He was…” She groped for the right word. “Self-absorbed.”

That put the divorce about two years ago, I calculated.