No, because I was doing my damnedest to ignore her, and that would have been impossible if I were looking at her. “I shouldn’t be socializing with my students.”
“Technically, but you still go to school here too. They can’t expect you not to speak to anyone.”
My leg starts to bounce when we get stopped by a red light. He might be partially correct, but she’s a student and I’m crossing a line I don’t want to think about. “I told her we would follow her home, so why didn’t she wait?” I mumble.
Oswald doesn’t have an answer, but he’s rubbernecking just as much as I am when we creep toward her driveway. The lights are on in the kitchen, and I can see her silhouette through one of the windows as she walks past.
I shift into park and pull out my phone.
“What are you doing? She’s right there,” Oswald points out.
“Making sure her alarm is set. That house is like a glass box with all those windows.”
“It’s not. Try asking instead of demanding.” Oswald is watching her through the window.
I delete what I had and type out a new message.
Me:Please make sure to set your alarm.
“How’s that?” I show Oswald.
He nods as he reads the short message. “Good, and you can’t even tell we’re a couple of stalkers watching her house right now.”
“It’s not stalking if she knows we’re looking out for her.”
“You keep telling yourself that.” He chuckles.
My phone vibrates, and I look down at the screen. Since I didn’t save her info in my contacts, her name doesn’t pop up.
Unknown:Thank you for checking, all set.
I know I’m strange, but I like that she uses punctuation and no abbreviations. I think about texting her again but decide against it.
“I hate that she’s in there alone,” I gripe as I put the truck in drive and ease away from the curb.
“I bet if you called her right now, she would invite us in,” Oswald cajoles, and I know it’s the truth. I hate thinking about her having met someone else before us and wondering if they would have taken advantage of her.
“That’s a bad idea for so many reasons,” I caution.
“I can’t think of one.”
The tone of his voice has me glaring over at him. “What took you two so long to get to the car?”
Oswald closes his eyes, and a smile curls his lips.
“What did you do?”
“Calm down, it was just a kiss.” He’s still smiling. I kind of want to punch him, because it clearly wasn’t a peck.
“She was talking about you, actually,” he says cryptically. I glance over at him, waiting for him to say more, but he just sits there. Damn it.
“What did she say?”
“She mentioned being embarrassed that you knew it was her who bumped into you and that yousmelled good.”
Fuck, why does that make me feel good? “She said that?”
“Yeah, she actually said really good. I might have mentioned how much you like your butt touched…” Oswald starts to laugh when I reach over and punch his arm. “I’m joking, but I did tell her you told me about her rubbing your butt and that I was jealous.”
