“You weren’t home.” He said it so simply.
“Okay?”
This time, the line of his jaw hardened. “You didn’t tell me why.”
“I thought you heard me tell your dad.” When his right eye twitched—because he hadn’t been paying attention?—I continued. “I’ll go to the bar tomorrow after work, and the program is Thursday night. I’ll probably stay at school until it starts.”
He didn’t respond. But he did help put the unexpected set together.
Since I’d lectured him about being rude, I could be considerate. “Would you like to come?”
He blinked. “Sure. Why not?” He made it sound so casual I bit back a smile. I doubted he would’ve come without an invite, but he sounded like he had wanted to. “I might have to buy a car while I’m here.”
“Why?”
“I don’t have a vehicle when you’re at work.”
Oh. Wait— “You walked here?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“How long did you wait on the curb before you realized a car wasn’t going to magically appear?”
His gaze intensified and then the corner of his mouth lifted. “I promise it wasn’t more than an hour.” He tipped his head. “Would it surprise you I didn’t have to ask for directions?”
I snorted. “I bet a lot of women stopped and gave them to you anyway.”
His laugh was deep.
I grinned. “I just have to put all my stuff away, and then I can give you a ride home.”
He came with me without asking. I loaded my empty buckets that had once held carefully crafted bats and pumpkins my students had worked on all afternoon. Another bucket of staplers, tape, string, and paints was next.
Gideon pushed the cart. In my classroom, I put everything away and he wandered around.
“Is it weird to work in the same place you went to school?” he asked.
“Yes and no. When I first started, it was intimidating to work with people like Joseph. He’s always excited when an old student starts working here though.”
He roamed through my class. I felt exposed, like I’d lifted my blouse and was flashing him as he strolled through my life’s work.
“Why elementary?” he asked.
“I’ve always liked kids. I watched Mama take care of them my entire life, and I guess I wanted to pay it forward. The high school can get crowded some years, you know, with the middle school stuffed into one wing.” Bourbon Canyon was too small for three separate buildings and infrastructure.
He approached. I’d already put my office supplies in their place, but I moved the stapler from one side of the computer to the other.
“That’s not the only reason.” He stopped at the edge of my desk. I tried to picture him as a little kid, saying Miss K at least three times while leaning over the papers I was grading to get my attention. My heart melted. The cowlick he kept brushed in place, trimmed at just the right length to weigh it down, had probably stood on end when he was young. “Let me rephrase my original question. Why teaching?”
How had he known I wasn’t telling him everything? I stabbed at the pens in my penholder until they all sat evenly on the bottom instead of sticking up at different heights. “I wanted something of my own.”
“You have something of your own though, don’t you?”
I chewed the inside of my cheek. “What do you mean?”
“Your dad gave you all a portion of the ranch.”
“Some land,” I clarified. “So yes, I get rent from letting my brothers use the pasture, but not much. Most of it isn’t fit for livestock.”
