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“Ms. Devin, Elijah wants to know if we get to go to art class today.”
“Yes, you do,” I said, patting the soft curls atop Elijah’s head. “I would love to hear that sweet little voice of yours sometime, too. But I’m so glad you have a friend like Finley you can talk to, buddy.”
He lifted his shoulders and shrank into himself, looking down at his feet. Finley beamed at him like a proud mother hen.
“Elijah’s like a little turtle, isn’t he?” She giggled so hard she snorted. Elijah tried to fight it, but after a few seconds, he giggled out loud, too.
“What does that make you?” I put my hands on my hips and raised my eyebrows at Finley, like this was the most important question of the day. And at that moment, it was.
She put her index finger to her chin, thinking this over. “Can I be a jellyfish?”
“What is it with you and jellyfish, girl?”
Finley lifted her knee again to scratch the skin around her band-aid, saying, “I got to see real jellyfishes one time at the aquarium with my—” She stopped short and looked away, losing her train of thought for a moment.
Was she about to say “mom”? I inhaled, wondering if I should follow-up with another question or let her try to finish.
“—and they looked like ghosts,” she finally said, skipping over any mention of whom she went to the aquarium with. I breathed out, forcing a chuckle. The room was filling up with more kids, many of them getting restless as they began the letter-tracing worksheets I’d laid out for them, so I’d have to cut this conversation short.
“That sounds really cool—just like you, Finley.”
As I turned to give my attention to some kids on the other side of the room, I was caught off guard as she slammed into me with a tight hug around my legs. I rubbed her back with both hands, squeezing the best I could while towering over her. After a few seconds, her grip loosened, and she smiled up at me with a nervous laugh. Her face had gone completely red, too, like she was feeling embarrassed about this impromptu display of affection.
“My goodness,” I said, swallowing. “I think you might be the best hugger ever.”
“Well, you should try hugging my dad. His hugs are even better.” And with that, she took off toward her spot at her table.
I’m sure they are, I thought to myself.
Later that morning, when the kids were off at art class, I found myself applying some roll-on perfume and popping a mint in my mouth just before Mason’s scheduled time.
I’d met with countless parents face-to-face, sometimes in really tricky situations, but the way my stomach flipped when I heard Mason’s gentle knock was unprecedented.
“Come in,” I called out from my desk chair, and Mason appeared through the doorway across the room a second later. And as he approached, I choked on what remained of my mint, swallowing it whole.
I wasn’t prepared for how sexy he’d look in dark jeans and a brown flannel shirt rolled up to his elbows. His hair was pulled back into an effortlessly sexy man-bun, a feat I only thought Jason Momoa was capable of. I was doing a pretty good job of pretending to be unfazed by all of this until he flashed his perfect smile at me and said, “Morning, Ms. Devin,” as he strolled my direction with his thumbs tucked into his pockets.
I attempted to smile back in a way that didn’t make it obvious I’d just been looking him up and down. “Good morning. Um,” I looked over at the metal and yellow plastic chair several feet away from me, sitting against the whiteboard. “You can just pull up that chair if you want.”
“Is this the time-out chair?” he asked, carrying it toward me. He didn’t place it in front of my desk like I assumed he would, and instead sat it down just an arm’s length away from mine. When I spun my chair to face him, our knees were merely inches apart.
“We don’t do time-out here.”
Mason crossed his arms against his chest. “They sure did when I went to kindergarten in this room. It was right over there,” he said, nodding toward the corner behind me. “I remember it well.”
“Did you find yourself in time-out a lot?”
“Oh yeah,” he answered without a beat. “Pretty sure I forced my poor kindergarten teacher into early retirement.”
"So, did you go to Woodvale High School?” We were similar in age, yet I couldn't remember seeing him back then.
“No.” Mason touched the ID on his lanyard, idly twisting it around with his left hand. “I transferred to Woodvale Day School in sixth grade.”
“Ah. The rich kids’ school.”
Mason grinned from one side of his mouth. “Is that what people call it?”
“That’s what my people called it,” I answered. This exchange was followed by a short lull, a moment in which we both stared silently at each other, each of us with a coy grin. In just a few sentences, we’d learned a lot about one another, which was not why we were here. I wondered if this was the kind of thing we would’ve talked about on that date that never happened.
