Naomi laughed as Abby shook her head as they walked into the conference room. The noise stopped almost immediately as everyone caught sight of them. Naomi introduced them and then went around the conference table and introduced the department representatives, which included Lindsey, and three student council members. Their group sat at the empty end of the table, closest to the door.
“You guys do the toy drive for the children’s hospital, right?” A Hispanic woman with short, curly hair asked. Thea, the science teacher, if he remembered correctly.
“We do,” James said.
She nodded. “I recognize your vests. My son was hospitalized for two months at the end of last year.”
“He okay?” Nick asked.
“Yes. He broke his femur in two places, dislocated his elbow, and had a concussion.” Thea’s voice was tight as she recounted his injuries.
“Damn,” Nick said. James smacked him in the chest with the back of his hand. “I mean…dang. How’d he do that?”
“Motocross. He got run off the track by a competitor and crashed hard.” Her lips formed a thin line.
“He still competing?” James asked.
“Not yet,” she said. “He still has six months of physical therapy to get through, and to be honest, I don’t know that I’m okay with him riding again.”
“I get it,” Tinker said. “It can be a dangerous sport. No parent wants to see their kid hurt.”
She nodded and a few of the other teachers chimed in with agreement. The tension he’d felt when they’d first walked in seemed to leave the room. He wasn’t sure if it was her intention or not, but he appreciated her helping put people at ease.
He hadn’t thought about their vests when they’d shown up at the school and how people would take it. They’d worn their vests when they did Melanie’s ride, but that had been in a kind of official capacity—not rolling up into the front office.
“Let’s go ahead and get started,” Abby said. “As most of us know, the theme for this year’s showcase is Fusion. The student council came up with the tagline “Where Creativity Meets Curiosity.” I’d like to go around and have each department highlight their needs outside what they can provide themselves or have already completed. Nick, James, and Christian are here to help with anything we can’t handle ourselves since Penny is on bed rest.”
The math department rep started, and each teacher chimed in.
Abby slid her notepad over and tapped it. He leaned forward. In tight script she’d written, Do you need something to take notes?
He slid her pen from her hand and replied, I wasn’t supposed to be part of the meeting. I’m just here to introduce James and Nick.
She nodded once and pulled the notepad back to her.
A twinge of something hit him quick. Yearning, maybe? He wanted her to write something else. He’d never been the guy in school girls wrote notes to. She’d taken the time to check on him, even if it had been to ask if he needed to take notes, and he liked it.
“What kind of budget are you looking at?” James asked.
Tinker realized he’d missed the last few minutes of the conversation, so it was probably a good thing he couldn’t get time off to help.
“Five thousand dollars,” Abby said. “I know it’s not a lot, so if we need to adjust designs, we can do that.”
“You got drawings? Measurements? That kind of thing?” Ben asked.
Lindsey, he remembered her, placed a large tube of paper on the table and unrolled it. “Grades four and five are doing a medley of Alice in Wonderland. Grade six is doing a scene from Willy Wonka, and seven and eight are doing two ensemble scenes from Into the Woods. Each performance is fifteen to twenty minutes. We want to be able to have an interchangeable set for the performances so we can turn them around or move them from one side to the other to cut down on the time between performances.”
She continued to explain the set designs for the upper elementary and middle school before moving on to the high school.
Tinker leaned close and whispered, “What kind of art do you teach?”
Abby tucked her chin into her shoulder. “Fashion design, sculpture, and visual arts,” she said softly.
A sly grin formed. “Visual arts like video?”
Her blush was instantaneous. “Painting.”
“I like the way you blush.” He did. He imagined that blush at inappropriate moments of the day. Like right now, in the middle of a meeting about school plays, but he couldn’t help himself. She popped into his mind whether he wanted her to or not.
