“Absolutely.I’m looking forward to it.”
He leaned in and kissed her cheek before leaving.She wanted to sigh, but she didn’t.Silly teenagers sighed at sweet gestures in the moment.Grown up ladies waited until they were in the appropriate company.Fred was not the appropriate company.Even if he was her best friend.
He wore a smirk when she returned to her desk.“I might have lied to your students.”
Her brow furrowed.“What do you mean?”
“That kiss says girlfriend/boyfriend, and here I told them that you couldn’t be that yet since this is a first date.”
Esther’s cheeks grew warm.“Well, it’s not like we haven’t met up for coffee after school or talked on the phone.It’s just that this is the first real date.”
“Does that mean that can I come to class on Monday and correct my mistake?”he teased.
She swatted his arm.“No!I’m quite glad that you slowed Savannah’s roll on the whole Miss Adams is Madison’s dad’s girlfriend thing.”
“Why?”
She shrugged.“I don’t know.It felt weird to hear her say it and to know that my personal life is part of the playground gossip.”
Fred chuckled.“You can’t tell me that you didn’t expect that to happen.I mean, you’re smart enough to be a teacher.Surely, you know how the playground gossip machine works.Teachers doing something deemed ‘un-teacher-y,’” he put air quotes around the word, “was the best kind of gossip when we were kids.Remember when our gym teacher was seen at Friendly’s buying ice cream?”
Esther chuckled.“Yeah, I do remember that.”She shook her head.“Do you think in twenty years there’ll be adults sitting around saying, ‘do you remember when our teacher dated our friend’s dad?’”
“You have to ask?Of course!I mean, that’s better than a gym teacher’s secret obsession with ice cream.”
“Secret obsession?Seriously, Fred, it was a guy buying a carton of ice cream.That’s hardly an obsession.”
Fred shook his head.“I heard it happened more than once.”
They both laughed.
“So this is my future, huh?”
“Guess you should’ve thought about that before flirting with one of the parents to get him to go out with you.”
Again, she swatted his arm.“I didn’t flirt with Steve.”
“That’s not what I heard on the playground.”
“You were never on the playground with these kids.”
Fred shrugged.“No, but if I was, that’s how I’d probably hear it.”
She sighed.“Well, then, I guess I better not mess this relationship up, or there’ll be all sorts of stories.”
“You know that if any of the kids saw that peck on your cheek just now, the embellished stories would be flying on Monday.So, you better behave in the movie theatre.Do you remember when our high school English teacher –"
“Yes.Point taken.No kissing during the movie.”She put some papers to grade in her bag to take home with her.Then, she gathered the ones that needed to be sent home in the next weekly folder and went to file them.
“Did I make a mistake by agreeing to date him?”she asked Fred.
He shrugged but didn’t look up from what he was doing.“That’s not for me to say.Only you can decide that, and I’m thinking it will take a few dates before you know.”His shoulders rose and fell noticeably as if he had taken and expelled a deep breath.“One more sheet.”He waggled the last sheet of paper.“Told you I was good at this.”His smile seemed a little flat.
“You’re also really good at this friend stuff.I’m sure you’d rather not be sitting in a room cutting out circles and talking about the guy I’m dating.”
His eyes had returned to watching his scissors follow the line on the paper he held.“That’s what friends are for, right?”Again, his shoulders rose and fell noticeably.“That being said, to be honest, the fewer details I have to hear about your dating Steve, the better.Mandy would probably be more interested in hearing them.”
But Mandy wouldn’t be sitting here on a day off, cutting out art project things.She wasn’t always the put others before herself kind of person – especially when it came to manual labour.
