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He smiled deeper, his dimples winking at me. “No stats until the third date.”
“Okay,” I grinned. “Tell me more about your siblings.”
Two of his sisters were happily married, one was divorced, and one had not yet met ‘the one’. His brother was a confirmed bachelor. He had seven nieces and nephews all equally adored.
I told him I was an only child, which was not strictly true, and that my parents passed when I was in my early twenties.
“And why aren’t you married with six kids?” he asked, giving me a taste of my own words.
“I think, like you, my parents’ relationship set the bar high. Not only because of the way they treated each other, but for how they treated me, how they taught me to treat other people.” I thought some more. “Just look around at the relationships around us. Would you want to settle for less than what Willa and Barrett have now that you know it’s possible? I see how happy Lenny and Junie are, and I see the same thing in my two best friends and their husbands. I’ve never felt like that about someone else.” I needed to qualify that in the name of honesty. “At least, I’ve never felt like that about someone who felt the same for me.”
“I’m thinking he must have been a fool,” Lucky murmured, his eyes soft on my face.
What if you’re too much for anybody?
I smiled, knowing the chances of him turning tail and running would increase astronomically once I let him in.
If I let him in.
I gave myself a mental shake and reminded myself that we would only ever be friends. “We shall see. How about you?”
He leaned back in his chair and ran his hand through his hair. “I can honestly tell you I’ve never felt that way about anyone before. Marriage requires work and self-sacrifice if it’s to be done right. Your partner’s happiness must be as important as your own if not more so. Every decision you make affects them. You essentially live your life for them as well as with them, and so far, I’ve never felt driven to that level of commitment.”
At least we were on the same page. I liked him. A lot. We would have a bit of fun and then we’d go our separate ways. And hopefully he’d find someone he wanted to build his life around who could give him a couple of kids.
Lucky
The vegan place wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Minty even managed to finagle a promise from me that I’d go back in exchange for her assurance that our next dinner would be at Spuds where I could load up on souvlaki.
And that was happening tomorrow for lunch.
“Okay, miscreants,” I yelled over the cacophony of too many musical instruments in the wrong hands. “Back to your seats.”
I wrote out the homework due for next week on the board and promised I’d update the student website. A promise I made daily and broke almost as often. We had a deal. If I forgot to update the website, and they forgot to do their homework, they got a day’s grace.
It was rare they did not get their day’s grace.
Working at an inner-city high school had its challenges.
Unlike the suburbs, many of these students did not have internet at home, never mind access to the laptops and desktops that their suburban counterparts upgraded every couple of years.
They did however have cell phones, guns, drugs, knives, and some already had a rap sheet. Oh, yeah. And fake IDs. Which I found out when a group of them showed up at one of Drivetrain’s shows.
I saw them file in, dressed tough, looking hopeful. I told Barrett between songs. He welcomed them and warned them their continued presence depended on their beverage choices.
I laughed out loud when they looked at me, mouths hanging open. I made the universal sign for ‘I’m watching you’, then ordered a shit load of apps for them to eat while they watched the show.
When they left it was with fists in the air screaming, ‘Mr. Triggs’.
The ACEs scores some of these kids carried curdled my stomach. The fact there was little I could do made it worse.
Food scarcity, a political term that meant half my students didn’t bring a lunch and most likely had cookies for breakfast, did not fuel their brains to learn.
Last Christmas, the board sent around student feedback forms asking students what would help them succeed. It was anonymous. Forms were filled out and popped into my mailbox throughout the week.
The first day of Christmas vacation, I sat in my kitchen and read through the responses. Fifty of my one hundred and twenty students filled out the forms. These were the students that still had hope.Based on the handwriting, most of them were female. Forty-five formsincluded underwear on the wish list.
It was fucking Christmas.
