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Joy smiled as her last student left her tiny classroom and went down the hall to her regular teacher. The grin slipped away as she faced her empty room again. She pressed the lock on her door and flipped off the lights.

“You don’t care that Scott’s dating,” she told the classroom, which was only big enough to hold a horseshoe table with four chairs around it, and one behind it for her. There were some built-in cabinets behind that, with several feet of windows to let in the light. Between the door and the table, she had a couple of filing cabinets, which held her plants, because Joy believed learning and plants went hand in hand.

A small rug sat on the floor, and she used to get down with the students and play reading games with them. Now, she sat on a chair at the head of the rug to participate. Getting up and down off the floor—especially in a skirt—wasn’t exactly easy for her anymore.

She sighed as she rounded the table and sat in the teacher’s chair. She’d been promoted this year. She normally sat at desks outside teacher’s classrooms and worked with random students throughout the day.

Now, she had her own room—a mere closet compared to the certified teacher’s classrooms, but her own room nonetheless. She worked with the same students every single day, building relationships with them and really having a hand in their progress. The certifications she’d earned over the summer had really helped her.

And there she sat, seriously considering giving it all up.

“For what?” she asked herself. “For a man who’s going out with someone else? You can’t care about this.”

She twisted and grabbed her phone from the basket where it sat during the day. She’d started eating lunch in the faculty lounge, and then she’d been going across the street, where a huge park sat. It had a walking path, and one time around was almost a mile and a half. Because of how the fourth graders staggered their lunch start times, she got a longer lunch than most, and she could eat and walk the loop before she had to be back in her room, ready for her next small group of students.

She worked with twenty children throughout the day, in groups of four. Each group came for forty-five minutes, and then she had fifteen to herself to reset everything and get ready for the next group. Five times a day, she taught the same thing, tailoring the lesson slightly depending on questions, moods, and who needed what help.

They’d only been in school for four weeks, and already Joy could see improvement in every one of her students.

She swiped on her phone and saw she’d missed a few texts from Lauren.I’m going to make all of his favorite treats to hopefully sweeten him up.

When you get a minute, can I get that recipe for your raisin-filled cookies?

Joy shook her head, her frustration with Lauren at an all-time high. She loved the woman, but she was astronomically stubborn, so independent, and currently in full-blown self-sabotage mode. Even Bea agreed, and she normally made excuses for Lauren.

Joy knew all the reasons Lauren acted the way she did, probably better than anyone. She shared the feeling of abandonment far too much with Lauren, and she backed out of the texts and went into her cloud storage app, where she kept all of her recipes.

From time to time, one of her sons would ask for one, and she wanted to be able to reply quickly. Her boys were grown, out of the house. Both married and living in the Dallas-Fort-Worth area. Leaving Texas would mean leaving them, and while her boys had lives of their own now, Joy did talk to them and see them fairly regularly.

Wendell had left almost three years ago now, and Joy waited for her throat to close and her chest to hollow. They didn’t, at least not to the extent they usually did, and she wondered if perhaps she was ready to move past him.

She’d gone out with Chester McMillan this summer, and it had been fun. Some sparks there, but nothing like the buzz that filled her head when she so much asthoughtabout Scott Anderson.

After navigating to his texts, she read through them all again. He’d texted her the very day she’d left Hilton Head with,Hey, I hope you have a safe trip home. Send me some pictures of your place in Texas. I’d love to see it.

To Joy’s surprise, she’d done as he’d requested, and they’d chatted a little bit about her house there, her kids, and her job. Scott was always—always—flirty and witty and fun to talk to, and Joy found herself smiling through the texts for a second time just as she had the first time she’d read them.

Fine, this was at least the sixth or seventh time she’d read through his texts, and they’d made her light up like this every single time.

She’d friend-zoned him near the end of their current conversation, and he’d still flirted with her. He hadn’t texted her for about a week now though, and Joy really didn’t like the idea of him going out with someone else.

Maybe she didn’t want to put him so solidly in the friend zone. Maybe they could flirt and get to know each other across the hundreds of miles that separated them, because with phones and computers and video capabilities these days, was anyone truly that far apart?

She started typing out a message, hated it, and deleted it. How could she say,So my girlfriend called and we gossiped about you going out with someone else, and I gotta say—I don’t like it. I don’t like the idea of you going out with anyone but me.

There was no way she could say that. She wasn’t even sure if it was true.

“Oh, it’s true,” she whispered to herself.

Her heartbeat raced, and she drew in a deep breath. Someone tried to open her door, and Joy looked up. A moment later, a key slid into the lock, and the door opened. The custodian came in, and Joy rose from her chair.

“Oh, good gravy.” The man stumbled backward, his hand clutching his chest, clearly surprised to see her there. “I’m sorry, Miss Joy. I didn’t know you were still here. You’re usually gone by now.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.” She turned and opened the bottom drawer in the corner. After dropping her phone into her purse, she straightened and faced Mr. Cutler. “I’m on my way out now. Are you okay?”

He smiled at her, and he had about twenty years on her. “Just got my old ticker fired up again.”

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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