And as much as I missed him, I was angrier than I was sorry. Whenever I reached for my phone to apologize, I remembered how he’d blindsided me and I set it back down. And Jack didn’t make an effort either. Riley presided over class more quietly than he usually did. Which is to say that he didn’t call anyone ‘a fucking useless imbecile.’ We listened to him discuss hostage situations. We learned about when keeping quiet was more important than speaking up. Sometimes, I felt like his eyes were hovering on me a second longer than they were hovering on anyone else in the class. I wonder how much Jack talked to him. I wonder if he knew that we’d fought. At the end of class, he cleared his throat. “We’ll be assigning you to your career profile of a deceased journalist on Monday. If you’re interested in someone in particular, let me know by tomorrow and we’ll see if you can be assigned to that person” Valentine’s Day dawned bitterly cold, and stupid, like every day in February and like every Valentine’s Day before it.
