Thou Shalt Not(60)

Class got out at three-fifteen, and I needed to talk to April before leaving. If I could get to her by four, that wouldn’t give us much time. But I wanted her. I would make it work.

Can you be ready for work by 4?

Sure I can. Why?

You know that park near the bridge? Meet me there!

Lol. Why am I meeting you at the park?

Can you or not?

Yes, Luke, I can meet you. But why??

See you at 4!

God, you’re being weird.

I didn’t respond to her last text, but it did make me smile. When I first met her, Holly had not known the difference between “your” and “you’re” and seemed to always get them wrong in texts. I could only take it for so long before I sat her down one afternoon for an English lesson. She willingly listened, but she also had said, “You know, this kind of makes you an asshole for pointing this out.” To her credit, she picked it up pretty quickly after that, and I didn’t remember noticing any more mistakes. Every correct usage made me very happy. And in this case, it kind of turned me on. As if I needed to be any more than I already was.

The last bell of the day was five minutes away when my mind went back to April and the conversation we were about to have.

Keep your cool, Luke. Let her know you care about her. This is for your own good.

I kept telling myself that over and over as the clock ticked closer to three-fifteen.

Normally, at the end of the day the students would already have their books and supplies and be ready to shoot out the door, even more so on Fridays. In years past, I would have dismissed them early on a day like today, but the school had cracked down on early Friday dismissals because certain students had wreaked havoc in the hallways and distracted other classrooms. So, now we had to keep them until the bell rang.

I wanted to grab them by their collars and toss them out, but for some reason the kids who hadn’t slept though the movie were taking their sweet time getting up and leaving the room. The kids who had fallen asleep were being nudged awake by their friends, but they seemed to not want to move either.

“What’s with everyone being a slug?” I asked. “It’s Friday! Go home!”

With that, they picked up their pace a little bit, but not much. It wasn’t until three-twenty that the last of the students had left the classroom.

Okay, Luke, you can do this.

I quickly turned everything off in the room, and then grabbed my phone and keys and shut the lights off. I went out my door and walked into April’s classroom, entering more loudly than I had anticipated.

Mr. West was sitting in one of the student’s desks, right in front of April’s desk, where she was seated. Her hair was straight, and down to her shoulders, and for a second I stared.

“Hey Luke,” West said. “I was just going to see if you were next door. Sit down for a second.”

Shit. He was not supposed to be here. I needed to talk to her.

I sat down instead of asking West to leave like I wanted him to.

April smiled when I glanced her way while sitting down, and my heart started racing quickly like it always did.

Focus!

Mr. West informed us both that April had been approved by the board, and would be officially recognized in the staff meeting on Tuesday morning. I wondered why he couldn’t bother telling us on Monday. It could have waited, and then he wouldn’t be here and I would already be finishing up my conversation with her.

But, things never go the way you plan. Once he finished saying what he had to say, he apparently didn’t feel like leaving, because he lingered and tried engaging in small talk with us.

I looked at my watch and it was already three-forty five. The park I had instructed Holly to go to was ten minutes from her house, but on the way to her work. She would probably be leaving any minute now.

Fuck!

I stood up, hoping West would follow my lead. He did, but so did April.

“I need to get going,” I said, inching closer to the door.

“Let’s all get out of here,” he said. “It’s Friday. Who wants to be here any longer anyway?”

With that, April collected her things and we all left the room together and headed downstairs, like three best friends wandering the mall together. West talked all the way out to April’s car, and after politely wishing us both a nice weekend and then saying goodbye, she got into her car and drove off.

West patted me on the back.

“We’re lucky to have found her when we did,” he said. “God knew we would need someone like her, and He brought her to us when we didn’t even know we were going to need her. Crazy stuff.”

He patted me on the shoulder again and walked away to his car, leaving me standing in the middle of the parking lot by myself, wondering what the hell I was going to do now.