“All right.”
“So… I don’t know whether to tell him that I know who he is or not. And this feeling that I have, this… I work better with him than I’ve ever worked with anyone, and I just feel—I don’t know, protective of him somehow, and attracted to him for sure, but I don’t know how he feels about me. And I don’t know what to do about it. Should I tell him I know who he is? Should I tell him that I’m attracted to him? I mean, that’s gonna be really embarrassing if he only likes me as a friend.”
“Right, so that’s the con, but the pro of that is that he might like you for more, so you have a lot to gain if he does.”
“And you’re saying that that is better than the potential embarrassment if he doesn’t.”
“Right.”
“Or should I tell him that I’m his Secret Saint partner first?”
“Yeah. I would definitely do that, and I would do it as soon as possible.”
“Why? I keep telling myself that it’s better to keep our identities a secret.”
“It is, if neither one of you knows who the other is, but if you know something that he doesn’t, you’re hiding it from him and not the rest of the town. And…how would you feel if he knew who you were, and he didn’t tell you?”
Nelly sat and thought about that for a while. It was always good to try to put herself in someone else’s position and try to figure out how she would feel about it.
It didn’t take her long to figure out that she would want to know. And she would feel betrayed if Roland actually did have feelings for her, knew who she was, and didn’t tell her. After all, wasn’t that the bedrock of any relationship—that you were honest and open with each other?
“I would want to know,” she said simply.
“That’s what I thought.”
“So I need to tell him who I am, and then you think I need to admit that I’m attracted to him?”
“Now that, I don’t necessarily think you need to admit immediately. I mean, you’ll get hints from him about whether he kind of feels the same. Like, there’s no need to put yourself out thereunless you have an inkling that you’re not going to be embarrassed. You can kind of get an idea that you’re not going to, first.”
“Right.” She let out a breath. “Thanks for clarifying that for me. I don’t know why I struggled with it so much. To say or not to say, how long to keep the secret, all of that. You know?”
“Yeah. You know, the other thing that you could do is just ask him. If you guys talk as easily as you say you do, just say, ‘Hey, if I figure out who you are, do you want me to tell you that I know?’”
“Then he’ll pretty much know that I know.”
“Exactly. And then he’ll know whether he wants to know, and then he’ll be able to tell you whether he wants to know who you are. Make sense?”
“Yeah. Good point.” It was always good to just talk about things rather than make assumptions or act on partial information, when she could get everything she needed.
“So I was thinking about coming back home,” Kate said after they’d been silent for a bit and Nelly had been thinking about hanging up.
“For a visit?” Nelly said, immediately excited that her friend would be coming home.
“No… For good.”
“But you just said you were really happy there. You were involved in so many things! It’s all going really well, I thought.”
“Well, I’m making it work, but…I thought working in an inner-city school would be rewarding, and it is when I work with the students, but there are so many things they want me to teach that I don’t believe in, and the culture and attitude here is just… It’s so much different than our beautiful small town, you know?”
“You’re homesick,” Nelly said simply.
“Yeah. I’m definitely homesick.”
But it was more too. Nelly could tell from the tone of her voice that she was deeply unhappy with the direction things were going at the school district she worked at.
“Whoever’s in charge usually makes a big difference in the general atmosphere of the school.”
They were blessed enough in Mistletoe Meadows to have a really amazing school counselor, but…she thought that person might be leaving.
