Page 21 of Between the Lines
She lets that thought trail off, and the potential in my chest rattles. I’ve never put a name to my future—let alone allowed a title other thannannytoappear next to my name. What if I had some control over that identity?
“Think about it,” she says, squeezing my forearm as the bell rings.
As lunch wraps up, Lucy lets me know that she’s going to type up a proposal and plan and send it my way. The happy couple leaves my classroom hand in hand, and I’m left wondering. The fact that I’ve never,neverhad anything close to a crush even, because my time has been so caged, strikes me harder than it ever has.
I want someone who prioritizes time for me. Someone who makesmewant to shift things around. But my calendar is booked out until I’m thirty. There’s no way a man could ever finagle his way into it.
Still. A girl can dream, can’t she?
ten
nathan
It has beenfive full weeks of school, and Claire Benson has finally come to me with a behavior issue.
I was waiting for her to show up. Waiting for her to finally admit that being best friends with seventh graders is the farthest strategy from classroom management. She was in over her head from the beginning.
She signed up for a meeting with me through my online conference scheduler, so I had my document prepared for her arrival last night, when I’d stayed here until seven-forty-five because working was more appealing to me than going home.
She knocks at my door and I straighten my back, straighten my tie, and clear my throat.
“Come in.”
Her cheeks instantly appear wind kissed when she steps fully into the room. I wonder if she’s nervous about presenting me the behaviors. Admitting that she should have taken my advice in the first place and started disciplining those boys right from the very beginning.
Or, the stray thought crosses my mind,could the blush be a result of our interaction at the library?
The thought is both surprising and intrusive. It doesn’t belong inthis space. It was absolute happenstance that Claire’s sister found me and demanded a game of chess, and an even lower probability that Claire and I had a small moment afterward. It means absolutely nothing. And yet, that blush seems to be a slow poison, returning from the other day and seeping into my sense of reality.
I shake my head, returning to the present.
“Ms. Benson, please, take a seat.”
I indicate to the twin leather chairs across from my desk. When she sits, the hem of her dress rides up, creating a squeaking sound when she sits. That sound is what draws my attention to her thigh, covered by a nude tight. For a fraction of a moment, I wonder where it ends, but I shake that thought away and dismiss it out the window, along with the shade of blush that seems to be frosting over my vision in rose tones.
She clears her throat and fiddles with the folder she brought along, clutching it in her manicured nails.
Lavender with a silver shimmer on her ring finger today.
Why did I even notice the change?
“So.” She stares at the back of my computer instead of me, clutches the folder, and shakes her head. I can see the conversation happening behind her eyes, like she’s psyching herself up, and almost chuckle.
“As you know, there have been some contemptuous behaviors happening in seventh grade, particularly with Rocco Thatcher and the boys he hangs out with.”
“Yes. And Rocco is the boy you played catch with in the hallway, is he not?”
She tilts her head and eyes me with annoyance, then shakes her head again. I wonder who she’s talking to in there.
“Yes, but that’s beside the point. I’ve been doing some behavior tracking, and I wanted to run an idea by you.”
She opens the folder, and the wind is knocked out of me for several reasons.
The first one being that I am utterly wrong in this situation.
Instantly, I feel like I owe her an apology for everything I planned to say. The way I’d amped myself up to put her in her place has shame careening over me in a tidal wave of tsunami proportions.
But as she opens the folder to an intricate spreadsheet, what fills my veins instead like battery power is the pride and admiration I have for what she brought me. Combine that with the cloud of haze that seems to have followed me in from our trip to the library, and I’m stunned where I sit.