Five Nights

The bus smelled like coffee and the specific funk of forty people — thirty Year Tens and six teachers — who’d woken up too early and hadn’t showered yet.

I was wearing dark jeans and a grey sweater, my dark hair in a practical braid because I’d learned during my first year of teaching that trying to maintain anything more complicated on a school trip was a waste of effort. The seat beneath me was that particular kind of bus seat — plastic-covered, slightly sticky, the kind that made you hyper-aware of your own body heat after three hours of sitting. I had my phone, my lesson plans (for the week I’d miss), a bottle of water I wasn’t drinking, and the specific low-level anxiety that came with being responsible for teenagers on a ski trip where a hundred things could go wrong before we even got to the mountain.

I boarded second-to-last, Chelsea behind me, and the first thing I noticed was Tim, sitting in the front section near the window. He was reading something on his phone, completely unbothered by the chaos of boarding. His dark brown hair had that slight wave to it, barely touched with grey. Even sitting down, you could tell he was tall — six-foot-two in a way that made you notice height. He looked like someone who belonged on a bus heading to a ski lodge — calm, prepared, exactly the person you’d want teaching alongside you if something went wrong.

I looked away immediately and kept walking toward the back.

A Year Ten named Marcus was being loud two rows from the back. A girl named Sophie was on her phone. Someone had already spilled something. Greg, our logistics coordinator, was moving up and down the aisle with his ever-present clipboard, trying to maintain order that no one was interested in maintaining.

And Chelsea was sprawled across the seat at the very back like she owned it.

“I engineered this,” she said, stretching her legs across my lap without asking. “I specifically requested the back seats.”

Chelsea was the kind of person who took up space on purpose — blonde, confident, flirty in a way that made her fun to be around. She had that quality of moving through the world like she was always about to tell a joke. She’d been at the school a year, same as me. We’d met in the staff room on day one and had been best friends ever since, which meant she saw things about me I didn’t necessarily want seen.

“Why would you do that?” I said, moving my legs slightly so she’d at least have to acknowledge she was using my lap as furniture.

“Because you’re predictable,” she said, “and if I didn’t engineer it, you’d sit somewhere else trying to avoid someone, and I’d have to watch you try not to watch that someone for three hours, which is painful. Also, I like the back seats. Good view of everyone.”

Chelsea was talking about Tim, which was obviously unfair because I was not trying to avoid Tim. I was being professional. Professional people maintained appropriate distances from their colleagues. Professional people didn’t spend staff meetings hyper-aware of where someone was sitting. Professional people didn’t notice every time that person happened to look in their direction.

“I’m not avoiding anyone,” I said, which was technically not a lie.

“Your face is avoiding,” Chelsea said. “Your whole energy is avoiding. You’ve been avoiding since the moment we got on this bus. You literally took the window seat so you wouldn’t have to make eye contact with anyone.”

The window showed the city disappearing behind us — the grey buildings giving way to suburbs, then trees, then the specific landscape that meant we were actually heading toward the mountains. We were really doing this. Five days away from school. Five days in a lodge with a group of teenagers, a handful of other teachers, and Tim.

“How long has it been?” Chelsea asked, not really looking at me.

“How long has what been?”

“How long have you been in love with Tim?”

“I’m not in love with Tim,” I said immediately, which was the kind of immediate that suggested the exact opposite.

“Right,” Chelsea said. “You’re just very interested in his skiing technique.”

“He’s a good skier,” I said, which was true. Tim moved through the world with the confidence of someone who’d been doing things competently for decades. He knew how to ski. He knew how to teach. He knew how to look at you in a staff meeting like you were the only person in the room.

“Em,” Chelsea said, actually turning to look at me now. “He’s a forty-eight-year-old married man. You’re obsessing over his skiing technique the way seventeen-year-olds obsess over celebrities. It’s a cover for something else.”

“I’m not obsessing. I barely think about him.”

“You think about him constantly,” Chelsea said. “I watch you. You have this specific look you get when he’s in the room. It’s like your face becomes very focused and also very blank at the same time, which is the opposite of subtle. Everyone can see it. I’m pretty sure Tony can see it.”

I didn’t respond because responding would mean defending myself, which would mean admitting that she had a point, which would mean admitting that I’d spent the past year being very aware of Tim in a way that had nothing to do with his skiing technique and everything to do with the way he made me feel like I mattered.

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” I said, looking back out the window. “He’s married.”

“And you’re leaving,” Chelsea said. “After this trip, you’re at a different school. So this is the last week you have any reason to be around him.”

“Exactly,” I said.

“So you should use it,” Chelsea said.

“Use what?”

“This week,” she said. “The fact that you’re leaving anyway. The fact that you’ll never see him after this. The fact that he’s been looking at you like he wants to know everything about you for the past year.”

“He hasn’t—”

“He absolutely has,” Chelsea said. “And you know he has. That’s why you’re going to jump out of your skin for the entire trip.”

The bus wound up toward the mountains. We passed through a small town, stopped for lunch at a service station where everything tasted plastic and time-stamped, got back on. Marcus complained about the bathroom. Sophie was still on her phone. Someone had acquired a bag of chips that smelled like they’d been cooked in a car that also contained a fish. By the time we arrived at the lodge, it was mid-afternoon, and I was tired from trying to maintain the fiction that I wasn’t acutely aware of the fact that I was about to spend five days in the same building as Tim.

The lodge appeared through the trees like something from a postcard. It was built from dark wood and stone, with a pitched roof and long windows facing the mountain. Snow covered everything — the grounds, the trees, the landscape — in a way that made it look like we’d arrived in a fairy tale. The sun was bright and low, making everything glow with that specific golden light that only happened at altitude. Inside, I could see a stone fireplace, warm lighting, the kind of cozy that made you want to curl up and never leave.

The parking area descended into chaos. Forty people trying to exit a bus simultaneously is never elegant. Marcus dropped his suitcase in the snow. Sophie and her friends were taking selfies with the mountain in the background, completely unconcerned about the fact that their bags were still on the bus. A girl named Ivy was reading a book while standing in the snow, apparently immune to cold and social cues. Greg was moving between groups with his clipboard, trying to establish some kind of order that everyone was actively ignoring.

And then Tim appeared.

He was wearing dark jeans and a grey henley — the kind of casual that suggested he’d dressed without thinking about it. He was forty-eight in a way that looked good on him — grey at the temples, comfortable in his own body, the kind of person who moved like they knew exactly what they were doing. He was helping the lodge manager with luggage logistics, pointing toward different areas of the parking area and saying something that made the manager laugh.

He was wearing the henley that belonged to his domestic life. The one that probably looked perfect on him at home, in his actual life, with Deborah. The one that looked wrong here, in this context, where I was allowed to look at him and think about him without it being completely inappropriate.

Chelsea grabbed my arm. “Are you breathing?” she said quietly.

“Yes,” I said.

“You’re not,” she said. “You stopped breathing when he came out. That’s a medical emergency.”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“You’re vibrating,” Chelsea said. “Like you’re a tuning fork and he’s the note.”

Greg did a headcount. Susan (one of the other teachers, earnest and oblivious, already documenting everything on her phone) was taking photos. Dan (geography teacher, early thirties, uncomplicated in a way that suggested he’d never had a complicated thought) was making jokes about the slopes. Tony (Tim’s oldest friend, standing beside him now with an expression that suggested he saw everything) was helping people with luggage.

And Tim was explaining the skiing schedule in a voice that was professional and warm and exactly the tone he used when he was being careful about something.

We were given a run-down of logistics by the lodge manager, a woman named Patricia who moved with the efficiency of someone who’d been running mountain lodges for decades. Rooms. Meals. What time we’d leave each morning for skiing. Dinner at seven. Breakfast at six-thirty. The whole week laid out like it was going to be simple, like the fact that I was about to be sleeping fifteen meters from someone I’d wanted for a year wasn’t going to make everything more complicated.

Tim was explaining the skiing schedule when I noticed Patricia handing out room keys. Two teachers per room. Some rooms with ensuite bathrooms. Some without. Chelsea was standing next to me, and I was preparing myself for the disappointment, preparing for it to be someone like Susan or one of the other teachers who’d want to talk about their marking all night.

“Emily, Tim, and Chelsea, room 312,” Patricia said, checking her clipboard.

I felt Chelsea’s entire body go rigid beside me. Not with shock. With satisfaction.

“That’s the one with the small annexe,” Patricia continued, and moved on to the next group.

We went upstairs. Room 312 was at the end of the corridor.

“I’m taking the annexe,” Chelsea said immediately, before either of us could say anything. She moved her bag with the satisfied expression of someone who’d just executed a plan flawlessly.

She’d engineered the bus seating. She’d engineered this room situation too. She knew exactly what she was doing.