Maybe if I brought Joe Blow home to meet my folks my dad would get off my back about this whole marriage thing. Not likely.
I’d cast my line and caught a fish. All that was left to do was decide if this was a catch and release situation or not.
CHAPTER 2
MAISIE
When the final bell rang for the day, my classroom cleared out fast, the teenagers leaving behind only a mess and clouds of Axe body spray strong enough to choke a horse.
In their wake, my usually neat space looked like it had been hit by a hurricane made entirely of teenage angst, with chairs at odd angles, pencil shavings on the floor, and a few of the desks suspiciously close to others. I’d been mid-sentence when they’d received their stay of execution, which meant I got to give them their graded pop quizzes back first thing in the morning instead of last thing in the afternoon.
Boy, some of them are in for a crappy start to the day. That’s for sure.
Shaking my head, I dropped into the chair behind my desk and picked up my red pen, ready to start working my way through a stack of homework assignments that would inevitably range frombarely coherenttoshockingly inventive.
Some of them turned out to be decent, but one kid had writtenmath sucksas the answer to every problem. While not mathematically correct, I supposed it was emotionally valid. I just couldn’t give him any marks for it. Another kid had—presumably accidentally—swapped their pluses and minusesaround and had ended up with an answer number big enough to fund NASA for the rest of the eternity.
I sighed but kept going. About halfway through the stack of assignments, I genuinely found myself wondering why I’d bothered getting a degree in mathematics when these days, it seemed more like creative writing.
The door suddenly creaked open and Debbie’s head popped in first. She looked around, obviously checking to make sure the room was empty before she stepped inside.
“All the hostages have been released?” she asked. “I had a lingerer today. It turns out he desperately needed to ask why we had to cover the discoveries of ancient civilizations in history.”
I grimaced. “Don’t worry, you’re safe here. They went up in a puff of smoke before the bell had even finished ringing.”
She chuckled, shutting the door and moving over to perch herself on the edge of the desk nearest to mine. As the middle-school history teacher at the local STEM charter school where we both worked, she didn’t seem too put out by having to explain why we covered ancient civilizations in our history curriculum.
If anything, she seemed pretty excited about something. Leaning forward slightly, her glittering brown eyes met mine and she grinned, arching an eyebrow as steep as it could go. “So?”
“So what?” I asked, already dreading the answer when it suddenly occurred to me that I knew what she was so curious about.
“How did it go with Kevin?” she whisper-yelled like me going on a date was supposed to be a state secret. “He’s nice, right?”
“If by nice, you mean that he’s a disaster, then yes, he’s perfectly nice.” I looked back down at the paper I’d been grading, feeling too guilty to keep looking into her eyes.
Debbie had set me up on a date with the Kevin in question. She knew him from spin class and she’d sworn up and down thathe and I would be good together. I appreciated her effort. God knows, she was much more invested in the search for a man for me than I was, but the date had been awful.
I felt so bad about wasting all the work she’d put into setting us up, but seriously, I’d rather walk down the aisle in a public ceremony with my trusty, battery-operated boyfriend before I got into a relationship with that guy.
“Oh, come on. It couldn’t have been that bad.” The desk squeaked softly across the tile floor as she made herself comfortable, pushing it back just a little in the process. “At least he’s hot.”
“Not hot enough to spend twenty minutes explaining why pineapple on a pizza should be considered a war crime,” I said dryly, wishing I was joking. “Definitely not hot enough to call his mother at the table, put her on speakerphone, and ask her to back up his argument.”
She winced. “Did that really happen?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe he was just nervous,” she said, her voice soft and kind.
I groaned. Debbie was a hopeless romantic. I could’ve been trapped in a burning building with my date, and she still would have found a silver lining, probably getting all excited about how we’d havesuch a great story to tell at the wedding.
Looking up at her, I shook my head, seeing the sincere sorrow that sparked to life in her clear brown eyes. With her bohemian style, patterned maxi-dress, and forearms full of bangles, she could’ve passed for anything from a psychic to an art gallery owner. She was gorgeous, with a heart-shaped face, smooth, pale skin, and raven-dark hair.
She also happened to be one of the most genuine people I’d ever met. Debbie would place others’ happiness over her ownany day of the week and she cared deeply about pretty much everyone she’d ever met.
I desperately didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but I’d rather chew off my own arm before I went on another date with Kevin. “He wasn’t just nervous, babe, but maybeyoushould go out with him. If you guys hit it off so well before, maybe it didn’t pan out for us becauseyou’rethe one who’s meant to be with him.”
Her head cocked, a thoughtful glaze in her eyes for a beat before she gave her head a brief shake. “No, I definitely got you-vibes from him. Besides, I don’tneeda man. I’m happy to keep waiting for my perfect match to come along. Maybe you’ll meet someone at the Halloween party?”
