AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“And who do we have here?” Kendall asked in a teacher-y voice, looking down at Finley. She held a stack of packets against her chest.
“Uh,” I said, clearing my throat. My heart was going to explode right out of my chest any minute now. “This is Finley.”
“Do you have any jellyfish?” Finley asked.
Kendall pulled her eyes away from mine to look down at Finley. “No, I’m sorry,” she said with a little laugh. “I just have boring ol’ goldfish. But guess what? You’ll get a chance to feed them if you’re the student of the day.”
And much to my horror, Finley turned to an imaginary camera and said, “No jellyfish, guys, but be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the goldfish-feeding video!” Kendall turned to me with an inquisitive expression, both eyebrows raised. Because to her, it probably looked like Finley was speaking directly to the bookshelves beside her.
“She, um, watches a lot of YouTube,” I explained with a nervous chuckle. Kendall kept her eyes locked on mine, and I had to be the one to break the eye contact because it was almost too intense—she was even more beautiful in person, and I simply could not bear it.
And it was slowly beginning to sink in that everything I had planned to do with her—to do to her—would never happen. Not now.
With some effort, I made myself look up at her again. She was observing the families on the other side of the room, all of them busy checking out the cubbies along the opposite wall. When Kendall turned back to me, my heart skipped a beat as she softly said, “I didn’t know you had a daughter.”
“Didn’t know you were my daughter’s teacher,” I replied. Finley was tapping on the glass, so I gave her shoulder a gentle pat to make her stop.
“Obviously,” Kendall said in this almost bratty tone that made it hard for me to breathe. My eyes dropped to her hips, and I couldn’t help but envision all the pictures I possessed of this woman’s naked body on the device in my pocket. Kendall’s eyes darted from side to side. “And did you bring Finley… alone?”
“Yes, I did,” I answered, pulling my hands out of my pockets. Was she looking for Finley’s mom? I wiped my palms on my jeans, worried for a moment she thought I was a cheating husband. “It’s just me and her.”
Kendall nodded, seemingly satisfied with that answer. Finley, deciding she was bored with the fish, looked up at her teacher and asked, “So, where’s my desk, anyway?” I stayed by the fish tank as Kendall led Finley to a table near the front of the room, pointing out a laminated nameplate with Finley’s first and last name on it. She showed her all the other things laid out on her desk, including a stack of papers and a sucker—it took Finley a fraction of a second to rip the candy open.
After that, Kendall turned to greet another family that walked in—a mom, a dad, and a terrified-looking little boy. She put her hands on her knees, bending over as she spoke to him. I had to tear my eyes off her backside. Don’t make it obvious, idiot, I told myself before joining Finley by her spot at the table. “Is this where you’re going to sit, Fin?” I asked her.
“Yup! And look, my teacher gave me a sucker. I like her a lot, Dad.”
“Yeah. She, uh—she seems pretty cool,” I said, running my hands through my hair. As Finley knelt down to check out a shelf full of puzzles, I watched Kendall hand a packet to the mom she was speaking to.
“Here’s the volunteer form for it—it has all the information you need.”
“Thank you,” the mom said, giving Kendall a nod before following her son to his table.
I approached Kendall from behind. “You wanna tell me about that packet you got there?”
She turned to me and blinked. “Oh, this?” She looked down at the papers in her hands. “It’s… the Room Mom application form.”
I took a step closer. “‘Room Mom’?”
“Yeah, every year I get a couple of moms to volunteer in the classroom since I don’t have an aide.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked, stepping even closer to her. “And what kinds of things do these moms do?”
“Um,” she started, glancing at the family that had just walked in the classroom door. “They just assist with general classroom needs. Whatever I need that day.” She was still clutching the packets close to her chest. It appeared she wasn’t going to give one up unless I asked.
“You gonna hand me one of those?” I asked, nodding toward the papers and taking yet another step closer to her.
She stared at me for a moment as if to assess whether I was serious or not before extending a packet toward me. “I highly doubt you’d be interested in something like this.”
I took the packet from her. “You don’t know me that well.”
“Evidently not,” she said with a quick glance in Finley’s direction.
I grinned, skimming the form in my hands. “Let’s see. Laminating, cutting, assisting children during small group time—yeah, this all sounds right up my alley. And look at that, it actually says ‘Room Parent.’ So you were just being a little sexist, huh?”
Kendall pressed her lips together, taking a moment before she replied. “I’m sorry, the terminology was changed a year ago when we got a new principal—and, well, I’ve never had a dad volunteer. Ever.”
“Until now.”
