“No, it’s fine. It’s a pretty name. Don’t hear it too often nowadays.”
“My mother was a bit old-fashioned.”
“Old-fashioned, perhaps, but clearly she had good taste.”
And then he winked at me.
Holy shit on a stick. It was a simple motion, basically a twitch of the eye, and yet it had my cheeks flushing and my heart hammering. If I didn’t know any better, I would think I was about to have a thyroid storm again.
But I wasn’t. Obviously, I was crushing on the widowed father of one of my students. Although he didn’t seem to mind so far, it wasn’t exactly professional.
I didn’t know what to say, so I just laughed. And then he gave me a gentlemanly nod while his son waved enthusiastically.
“Bye!” Benny said again as they walked out the door.
“Bye!” I called back once I found my voice again.
The whole exchange had me feeling equal parts giddy and embarrassed. I was acting like a girl who had never flirted before rather than the twenty-seven-year-old woman I was. But Ben didn’t seem to mind it. And while I struggled a lot with self-confidence, I couldn’t imagine any other reason he’d wink at me like that. It had to mean something, right? Even if it seemed impossible for someone like him to have chemistry with someone like me.
With all that going on in my head, I wasn’t exactly paying attention to my mouth. So maybe that, or maybe a side effect of my medication, had me speaking up right as they were about to close the door.
“Ben, would you want to get dinner sometime?”
It was like the entire world froze. He stood there, eyes wide. This time it didn’t even take a second for the panic to set in. It was instantaneous. What had I done? It was one thing to flirt—multiple studies had shown that both males and females onlyhad a fifty-percent success rate in being able to tell if someone was flirting with them or not—it was another thing entirely to ask out the grieving father of one of my students.
“I’m so—” I started.
“Actually, I’d love to.”
EIGHT
BEN
Coping Strategies
I was in a meadow.
I couldn’t remember why or how I had gotten there.
The sun was shining, and yellow and white flowers swayed idly in the tall grass.
When was the last time I had felt so at peace? I couldn’t even remember.
“There you are! Why’d you run off on me, silly?”
That voice.
I knew that voice.
Every cell in my body cried out at once, desperate to face that voice, and yet I could only turn in slow motion.
Agonizing second after agonizing second, I finally managed to turn, and there she was. Same as she had been when she was sixteen and I was fifteen.
“Vermillia…” I whispered, my throat threatening to close in on itself.
“Vermillia? Honey, what are you on about? You know I prefer to be called Millia.”
Right. Of course. I knew that.
