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“Right. Okay.” She reached into her briefcase and pulled out a few notebooks. “Let’s get started. I was told you need help with your English course, history, Spanish, and math classes?”
“And photography. That’s based on one big project.”
“Oh, sweet. Lucky for you, hablo español.”
“I have no clue what you’re saying. I don’t speak Spanish.”
She blankly stared at me and sighed. “Okay. This will be a process, but I’m not a quitter. Everything’s gonna work out fine.”
“Sounds like a quote a millennial would put on a mug and drink under their ‘live, laugh, love’ sign.”
She smiled.
Screw her and her smiles. They felt like warmth in my chilled world.
My chest tightened. Shit. There it was again…the odd feeling of panic building up in my chest. I tried my best to shake the sensation away.
Just think about screwing her. Forget about her smile, Milo.
“My dad says it all the time,” she said. “After my mother passed away when I was young, he’d say it to me every night before bed. ‘Everything’s gonna work out fine.’ At first, I thought he was saying it to make me feel better, but I quickly learned he was saying it to make himself feel better, too. Ever since then, it’s been our thing. It’s like tattooed on my brain whenever I get overwhelmed.”
My chest tightened more as her words replayed in my mind. My hands grew clammy as they formed fists under the table. The early stages of the panic were building second by second as I looked her way. I arched my brow. “You lost your mother?”
“Yeah. I was thirteen.”
“How?”
“Car accident. A drunk driver hit her while she was riding her bike.”
Damn.
At least I saw my mother’s death coming with her illness. A car crash didn’t give people a heads-up at all. Yet sometimes I wondered which was worse—knowing death was around the corner and dragging toward it daily or being completely naive to the fact.
Some days the knowing felt like a tortured clock that kept ticking louder and louder with every passing second.
I looked up at her, feeling an odd urge to divulge a piece of my heartache to her, too. I’d never met someone my age who’d also lost their mother. I wanted to speak, but the words wouldn’t leave my lips.
My mom’s dead, too. She’s gone. Cancer. It will be a year since she’s left in a few weeks. I miss her so much that it’s hard to breathe. Everything around me feels dark, except when I look at you sometimes.
Instead of speaking my truths, I mumbled a quiet, jaded, “Sorry.”
No person should lose their mother. Especially at thirteen.
How did she manage to be okay? To be the good girl she’d been? Part of me wished she could draw a road map of life after losing a parent to let me know how many stops I still had before I’d be okay like her. Most of the time, it felt like I’d never be okay again. The same went for my dad. We were a shell of the people we once were—an echo of our past lives.
She brushed a piece of fallen hair behind her ear. “It’s okay. My dad and I…we’re good.”
“Yeah. Everything’s gonna work out fine,” I muttered, somewhat mocking her saying and somewhat hoping it held some truth to it.
She smiled again.
My tightened chest...
My clammy palms…
My twisted mind…
I shifted in my chair and tapped my notebook. “Where are we starting, Ms. Evans?”
She hesitated as if she would correct me for calling her that, but instead, she said, “English. Let’s start there.”
I nodded and pulled out the homework for the class.
“How did you do on the exam yesterday?” she asked.
I pulled out that paper and placed it in front of her. “Swimmingly,” I mocked.
She frowned.
How was that possible? How was her frown beautiful, too?
“Did he tell you he’s not surprised with how you did?” she questioned.
“Something like that.”
“That’s not okay, Milo.”
“It’s just my reality.”
Her brows knitted together as she shook her head in disappointment. Only this time, she wasn’t directing the disappointment toward me. “Is that the first time he’s made a comment like that?”
“No. Doubt it will be the last, either.”
“Milo.”
“Don’t cry again, Ms. Sensitive. It’s not a big deal.”
“It is a big deal.”
“I gave him enough reasons not to believe in me.”
“That’s not his job,” she said, slightly irritated.
Holy shit. This woman didn’t have one bad look within her. Everything was remarkable. That was annoying.
“His job is to educate you, no matter what. Not ridicule you and make you feel lesser for flaws and mistakes you make along the way.”
“If you want to kick his ass for me, by all means,” I semi-joked. I was used to my friends caring about me, but having Starlet care felt extra personal. Having her stand up for me when she didn’t have to did a number on my thoughts. I didn’t know how to define my feelings, but seeing her riled up in my cause felt…good.
