“Good to know,” I reply, matching his tone, trying to keep my voice light even though my heart is doing that annoying thing where it beats a bit too fast for no reason.
He pauses at the door, looking back into the room. “It was nice to meet Theo properly.”
“It was nice of you to take the time,” I say.
Ben’s gaze flicks to me, steady and kind. “He’s a good kid.”
“He is,” I reply softly.
Ben nods once, then opens the door, but he doesn’t leave immediately. He shifts his weight, as if he’s considering something.
“And for what it’s worth,” he adds, voice casual but not careless, “your classroom feels… calm. Like you’ve made it a good place to be.”
I stare at him for a second, caught off guard by how simple and how generous it is, that statement. It isn’t a compliment about my appearance. It isn’t a line. It’s a compliment about what I’ve built, what I maintain, what I hold together every day.
“Thanks,” I manage, and my voice wobbles a fraction, which is humiliating. Ben doesn’t comment on it. He just gives me a small smile, then he’s gone, the door clicking shut behind him.
I glance at the blind, smooth and obedient, and then my eyes drift to the spot where Ben stood, where Theo beamed, where for five minutes I wasn’t just Mum and Miss Collins and the woman who does everything alone. I haven’t spent time with a man my age that isn’t Rory in so long. It’s refreshing and yet it stings, because it reminds me of how much of my life has become women and children and lists and logistics, and how little of it has been softness. Ben is steady and kind and in so many ways, perfect on paper. He’s patient. He’s respectful. He talks to Theolike he matters. He doesn’t make me feel like I’m too much. He doesn’t drain the room. But Ben does not make my heart race. And that should be fine. That should be the point. My heart racing has not exactly led me to stability. My heart racing has led me to sleepless nights, and stupid choices, and that buzzing feeling low in my belly that feels like desire and danger braided together. Rory makes my body react like it has its own agenda, like it doesn’t care what I’ve promised myself. Rory makes me laugh and then makes me furious. Rory makes me feel seen and then makes me feel like I’m standing on ice that could crack at any moment. Ben makes me feel… normal. I don’t even know what I’m meant to want any more.
I sit down at my desk, because my legs suddenly feel tired, and I stare at the planning book open in front of me without actually seeing the words. It hits me, then, with that familiar, sinking clarity. I miss being a woman in someone’s eyes. Not a mum. Not a teacher. Not the person who remembers spare PE kits and signs reading records and knows which child’s parents are splitting up and which one is struggling with sleep. Just a woman. I miss being noticed in a way that feels safe. I miss the ease of it, the playful back and forth, the little moments where you realise someone is looking at you and you don’t immediately think,what do they want from me?orhow long until this becomes complicated?And the worst part is, I don’t know if I’m even capable of it with anyone else. Because my body has memorised Rory. It’s like it’s locked onto him as the definition of wanting, of attraction, of that dizzy chemistry that makes you feel alive. And now I’m sitting here wondering if that’s because he’s special, or because my life has been so starved of romance that my brain latched onto the first thing that made me feel something. I hate that thought. I hate the idea that I’m that cliché, the woman who thinks she wants the wrong man because she’s forgotten what steady feels like. But I also hate the ideathat I’m meant to settle for steady if it means feeling nothing. I love being single in so many ways. I love the simplicity of it. The quiet. The fact that my home is mine and Theo’s, and there’s no one else’s moods to manage, no one else’s expectations sliding into my evenings like a fog. I love that I can do bedtime our way, eat toast for dinner if I can’t face cooking, wear the same leggings three days in a row without anyone commenting. But I would love, sometimes, to have a man to share life with. Not to complete me. God, I hate that phrase. I’m not half a person. I’m not a project. I just… I’d like someone to sit on the sofa with at the end of the day, someone to make a cup of tea without being asked, someone who notices the little things, someone who looks at me like I’m not just functioning, but living. And I can’t imagine that life with anyone other than Rory. That is the terrifying truth. Because Rory isn’t even mine. Not really. Not in the way that would make sense. Not in a way that would make it easy. Not in the way that would let me stop being careful. He’s the man my mind returns to when it shouldn’t. The man who has made me feel more in the last year than I felt in the five before it. The man who is wrapped up in my body like muscle memory, in my heart like a bruise I keep pressing because at least it proves I can still feel.
I picture Ben again, kneeling in front of Theo, smiling, patient, steady. I picture the way he asked me first, how he didn’t assume. And then I picture Rory, all heat and chaos and denial, the way he looks at me like I’m the one thing he can’t control, the way he makes me feel like a choice, even when he’s pretending he isn’t choosing me at all.
What if this is it? What if Rory has ruined me for everyone else? Not because he’s bad, necessarily, but because he’s stamped himself onto the part of me that still wants, that still longs, that still aches for something that isn’t just survival.
I run my thumb over the edge of the desk, grounding myself in the physical, in the here, because my thoughts are slipping into that familiar spiral where everything feels too big and too final.
It was just a blind. A man fixing a blind. A few minutes of polite conversation. A tiny bit of banter that made me blush like a teenager. And yet my chest feels cracked open, like the moment has shown me something I’ve been pretending I don’t need. I want to be wanted. I want to feel safe. I want to feel that spark. And I don’t know if I’m allowed to want all of it. I don’t know if all of it even exists in one person.
My phone buzzes on the desk, and I nearly jump, my heart still too close to the surface. I glance at it, expecting a reminder, an email, a message from the group chat about snack contributions for World Book Day. But it’s nothing important. Just a calendar notification. For a second, though, my body has that stupid, hopeful reflex, the one that thinks it might be Rory, because apparently, I’m still that girl, still wired to look for him even when I’m trying not to.
I exhale then straighten the papers on my desk with more force than necessary, because sometimes tidying is the only way I can convince myself I have control over anything at all.
Outside, I can hear Theo’s voice, loud and excited, telling someone about the drill, about the ladder, about Ben the fixer of misbehaving things. And something in me twists, because I’m standing here wondering if I can be fixed too, and whether I even want to be. Whether I’m brave enough to admit that I might want both, and that wanting both doesn’t make me greedy, it makes me human.
I look up at the blind again, sunlight pouring in exactly where I need it now, and I think, not for the first time, that maybe the problem has never been the blind at all. Maybe the problem is that I’ve spent so long adjusting to what doesn’t work thatI’ve forgotten what it feels like when something just does. And I don’t know, yet, whether Rory is the thing that works, or the thing I keep tugging at even though it’s frayed, because at least it’s familiar.
I swallow, blink hard, and pick up my pen. There are lessons to plan. Children to teach. A life to keep moving. But somewhere under the routine, under the roles, under the steady hum of responsibility, there’s that quieter truth, persistent and aching. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life never being looked at the way Rory looks at me. And that thought scares me more than anything.
CHAPTER THIRTY-two
RORY
The first few days back after Christmas are all about routine; Isla clinging to my hand like she’s forgotten how school works, me pretending I haven’t been mentally replaying the party room almost kiss for weeks straight, and Freya moving through the playground like she always does, efficient and warm and just slightly out of reach in a way that now feels deliberate.
We are friends. We shook on it. Except, apparently my dick has forgotten that as it twitches in my underwear every time I see her.
Pickup is its usual chaos, the gates bursting open and children pouring out like they’ve been stored in a cupboard all day and finally released into oxygen. Isla spots Theo instantly and the two of them collide in that over-excited, no-concept-of-personal-space way that makes adults wince and children beam.
“ISLA! I got to use a drill today!” Theo shrieks excitedly.
“A drill?” Isla repeats, wide-eyed.
“Yeah! Ben showed me! In Mum’s classroom! We fixed the blind and he let me hold it!”
There it is. Ben. Of course, it’s Ben. I crouch to their height, keeping my voice casual, as if this is simply a charming anecdote and not the beginning of an internal spiral.
“Who’s Ben?” I ask, light and easy. Just a dad making conversation.
