Page 84 of It Was Always You

With a boosted ego, he smiled. ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s a nice compliment. And to be honest, most of the ones I work with are ugly as sin, but don’t tell them I said so.’ He winked.

She giggled as she sipped her coffee. ‘So… are you married, Adam?’ she eventually asked.

‘Yes… well… no… widowed, actually.’ He winced at his mixed-up answer.

‘Oh, that’s sad. I thought you must be married. All the good-looking ones are.’ She pulled her lips in, closed her eyes, and hit herself on the head. ‘Stop putting foot in mouth, Petra.’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment, too, eh?’

They chatted for a while about the Whole Foods shop and some of the interesting characters Petra encountered on a daily basis, and Adam regaled her with stories of his own unhealthy diet.

Eventually, Petra took a deep breath. ‘Look… Adam… I know this is quite forward of me, but as you can see my brain-to-mouth filter is malfunctioning today anyway. Why stop now, I say. Anyway, can we swap numbers? You know, in case you decide you might want to meet up again? You seem really nice, and well, most of the guys I meet are either married, old, boring, or gay… so…’

He reached into his inside pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper and a chewed biro, probably one he had found on the classroom floor.

He proceeded to scribble down his number and hand it to her. ‘Here you go. You have mine. You know, in case you decide you don’t want to hear from me. That way it’s up to you if you contact me or not.’

She took the number and put it in her bag. ‘Thanks. Look, I should go really. I have to get home to feed Grunewald.’

He was the one to narrow his eyes this time. ‘And Grunewald would be…?’

She shrugged. ‘He’s my parrot. I get quite a good deal on seeds,’ she stated as if that was the sole reason one had a pet bird.

‘Ah, of course.’ He nodded.

The two new acquaintances parted company with an awkward handshake. She said she would call and arrange coffee maybe. As he walked away, he surmised giving her his number was possibly a stupid thing to have done. She seemed a bit flaky, after all. She was pretty, but that was maybe where things ended. As he put his items through the self-checkout, he decided she probably wouldn’t call him anyway. She’d seemed very nervous, so he put thoughts of Petra from his mind and left the supermarket.

The following day was draining. Chaucer and a group of disaffected fifteen-year-olds was a combination set for disaster. The language was neither easy to pick up nor did they feel – as they informed him on a regular basis – that it held any relevance to them whatsoever. Adam had tried every which way to get through to them, but they were behaving very badly and were testing his already stretched patience. Thank goodness it was Friday at last and not long until the summer holidays.

After running a whole-class detention, Adam arrived back to his car. The car park was all but empty, and he had a cold beer waiting at home with his name on it. Well, it quite possibly had Mr Budweiser’s name on it, but he was going to drink it regardless. As he was throwing his bag of exercise books for grading into the back of the car, he spotted something moving out of the corner of his eye. He glanced up to see Petra’s face disappearing behind the wall.

What the⁠—?

He slammed the door. ‘Hi, Petra? What are you doing here?’ he called as he approached where she was trying to hide. He heard her cursing and she slowly walked out from where she was badly secreted.

Her cheeks were flushed. ‘Oh… erm… Hi, Adam. I… I just… erm… wanted to check your leg was okay,’ she stuttered and fiddled with her hair as she spoke.

He smiled and tried to ignore the uneasy knot in his stomach. ‘A simple call or text message would have sufficed, you know. You have my number, after all. You didn’t have to come all the way out here, and I didn’t actually say where I worked, did I?’ He asked the question more of himself.

She shook her head. ‘No, you didn’t say where, but well… I figured it out really and I had the day off from work so…’ She continued to fidget.

‘Oh, right, well, that’s nice, but really you didn’t have to come and wait for me on your day off.’

She shrugged. ‘Oh, no, it’s okay. I took the day off especially.’

The sense of disquiet in the pit of his stomach increased and he glanced around to see if anyone else was close by. ‘You took the day off especially so you could come to my place of work to check on my leg? Oh…’ He tried to sound breezy. ‘Well, as you can see, I’m upright and fine, so you can go home and stop worrying now.’

‘Are you free tonight?’ she blurted out and then covered her mouth with her hand as if the words had escaped by accident.

‘I’m sorry, no, I’m going out with my friend for her birthday.’

Her face crumpled in displeasure. ‘You said you were single.’

He shook his head and narrowed his eyes. ‘No, no, I said I was widowed, but really, Petra, I only met you yesterday. What’s all this about?’

She shrugged again and looked at the floor. ‘I like you… a lot.’

He puffed his cheeks out. ‘Thank you, that’s sweet and everything, but you can’t just go turning up at my place of work. It’s not the done thing. It’s not exactly healthy, Petra.’ He glanced around again to see if anyone was bearing witness to the conversation, desperate not to be alone with her.