I’ve seen models, movie stars, pop stars, diplomats, mob wives, actual fucking princesses.
I’ve guarded people with entire countries in their back pockets.
But her?
This kindergarten teacher?
Yeah, I’m seconds from embarrassing myself with a hard-on like I’m some damn teenage altar boy.
Maybe it’s the Catholic school setting.
The faint smell of chalk and antiseptic and whatever cleaning fluid they use in these hallways.
Maybe it’s the distant echo of prayers on the whiteboard and the fact that for one split second, I forgot who I was and actually bowed my damn head.
Like I used to at St.Peter’s over in Newark, back when me and my brother Kai were little shits with scraped knees and bigger dreams than we had room for.
I wasn’t a die-hard then.Not now either.
But I liked school.I liked church.
I liked the idea of forgiveness.
Still do.
The idea that even someone like me—a guy who’s done shit no confessional could clean—might be made new again.
She doesn’t even know what she’s doing to me.
Sabrina Rosetto, with her soft curves and soft cardigan and soft voice, makes me want to be better.To earn something.
To earn her.
She doesn’t look at me right away.She’s busy with the kids, zipping up jackets, passing out folders, laughing at some inside joke with a freckle-faced boy who looks like he worships the ground she walks on.
I completely understand, kid.Trust me.
She’s strong.In a quiet way.
And I don’t miss the way her hand shakes when she thinks no one’s looking.
I catch it.
That tiny tremor.That flicker of nerves.
She’s scared.
And if she thinks this threat is real like I know it is—then she has every reason to be.
And yet she doesn’t cower under my stare.Doesn’t fawn.Doesn’t even offer me more than a glance until the last of the kids is out the door and down the hall.
I admit I’m on tenterhooks, waiting for even a crumb of her attention.
Then she turns.
And bam!
Full-frontal impact.
