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“Yes, Ellie?” Sam answered, focusing on her students and trying to ignore the ticking of the clock as lunchtime loomed closer.
At noon, Sam was at her desk, eating her salad and scrolling through her email. Aero didn’t come.
Sam realized she felt disappointed. She had looked forward to seeing him to determine how he felt following their dinner, but he never came.
Her students returned, and she carried on with her lessons but peeked out of her classroom at one point to see if he was out there. Her eyes landed on his tool bag, which was sitting across the hall from her classroom.
She grabbed the lunch she had made for him, looked up and down the hall, and deposited it on top of the bag with a purple sticky note that read, “Call me,” followed by her phone number.
It was a brazen move, but if he didn’t call or text her, she’d know to let him go.
Aero stared down at the sticky note and the plastic container beneath it.
She’d made him lunch.
Aero was speechless. Sam had gone out of her way to feed him, had clearly come looking for him, and left him a note - complete with a smiley face.
His heart hammered in his chest.
Aero had every intention of going to see Sam at lunch but had been called away to an emergency at another location. Despite having finished up all existing projects and cleared his schedule for the South Street Elementary job, Aero still had to respond to calls about network issues, security alarms, and technical issues at sites where Warrior Security had installed and managed the system. While he often employed others for the construction portion of his business, mainly Bear and Gunner, they were not equipped to handle actual technical issues.
He had only just returned to the school after lunch had ended, disappointed at having missed an opportunity to see Sam.
Pulling out his phone, Aero saved her number, tucked the sticky note into his tool bag, and opened the salad.
It was good, with vegetables and chicken. She’d even put a plastic fork inside for him. The gesture was so sweet and so kind that Aero found himself smiling as he ate the salad.
Sam took care of people; that much was obvious.
When was the last time someone took care of him? He swallowed hard, shuddering at the thought.
Finishing the food, Aero snapped the lid on the container and walked up to Sam’s classroom. He could hear her talking to her students, slightly muffled by the closed door.
On top of the container, he left a scrap of paper that read “Thank you,” followed by his phone number, and set it on the carpet next to the door.
Chapter 3
“You okay?” Gemma asked, sipping her coffee.
“Yeah,” Sam said, leaning forward to help Levi with his block tower.
“You keep looking around like you’re waiting for something.” Gemma eyed Sam suspiciously.
“I do not,” Sam said, indignant.
“You totally do,” Gemma insisted, and Evie nodded in agreement.
“You’re acting weird,” Evie said, looking up from the puzzle she was helping Ashlyn with, Elliot asleep on her shoulder.
Sam was seated beside Gemma on the couch in the clubhouse living room, having coffee. She hadn’t seen Aero since the night they went to dinner, but she had received his notes.
Sam had gotten into the habit of making two lunches, leaving one with his tools while she ate the other one alone. If she were honest, it disappointed her when he did not show up for lunch, especially when she knew he was in the building. He always returned her plastic containers with a note, usually written on a torn scrap of paper in his neat block print.
Sam kept the notes in her desk drawer.
They usually started with “thank you” and included comments on her lessons or the books she read to her students and what he was working on in the building.
Thanks for lunch. We’re pulling more wire today.
