Gabe whirled around and barked, “HEY.”
The kids yelped and gave a start, and Todd immediately thrust the purloined fidget spinner at the other kid.
Gabe adroitly intercepted it and shoved it in his pocket. “You can pick it up in the office after school,” he said sternly. “Now get to class.”
The kids glumly shuffled off to class.
He turned back to Eden.
Who was biting her lip to keep from laughing.
“...ken?” he said tenderly. Tentatively. Like a tourist in a foreign land revisiting a language he’d learned in high school.
She drew in a long breath. Exhaled. “When this great guy I know told me how he lost his fiancée. That’s the last time my heart felt broken.”
He gave a soft, stunned laugh.
Together they stood absolutely wordlessly in the hall as kids swirled around them.
Two minutes until the bell.
He struggled to recover his aplomb, then gave up. What use was it to him?
“Truthfully,” she said, a little more conversationally, “you really made me think hard about it. Because I don’t think a man has broken my heart before. But I’ve realized it breaks a little all the time. In a sweet way. You know how sometimes there are swarms of little quakes along the minor faults in California? When Annelise says something amazing... a little while ago, and this is going to sound dumb, but I caught her talking to a caterpillar outside near our roses, explaining that it was about to become a butterfly, which might feel funny, but she was reassuring it, telling it not to be afraid. It’s something I told her about. My heart is broken and rearranged all the time, feels like, but it’s stronger along the broken parts. The whole landscape of my life changes all the time.”
That funny pain in his chest was like that jerk after you yanked your parachute rip cord, and it unfurled to catch the wind.
“Not dumb at all,” he said, when he could finally speak.
He didn’t really want to speak, actually. He just wanted to stand there and look at her and listen to her, as if she was music. And touch her poor beautiful tired face, which, if he was not mistaken, was sporting a teeny booger in the left nostril. It was pretty clear she’d had Annelise’s cold, too.
He really just wanted to make her life easier and better. To buy them name-brand Barbies if that’s what they wanted. To take care of them when they were sick.
Their bodies were suspended in that push-pull tension, leaning ever so slightly toward each other while being tugged at by their days and their duties.
Mrs. Pfingsten called to him from the hall, “Oh, Mr. Caldera, I wanted to talk to you about the sixth-grade field trip. Got a minute?”
“Sure, Peggy, why don’t you meet me in my office.”
He smiled at Eden. “All those earthquakes sound kinda like the making of an ecosystem, in fact,” he said over his shoulder, as he headed back to his office.
There was some consolation in walking away to the sound of her great laugh.Rightness was restored to his world once more.
And with the sound of the class bell ringing came the conviction they were headed toward that moment where a rogue breeze either knocked him and his parachute off course face-first into a cliff... or whether he would waft gently down into a smooth green meadow toward her smiling face and open arms.
And... maybe she would be naked, too, in the meadow.
Because what the hell. Even lyrical fantasies could be improved with a little nudity.
Four days later...
Eden’s dad usually did soccer game duty for Annelise because Eden needed to mind the store, but Eden didn’t even have to have an angsty heart-to-heart with herself before she sent Glenn the text that morning.
Hey pop—it’s a beautiful day and Danny’s minding the store. I thought I’d take Annelise to her soccer game. You could probably use the break!
Her dad texted back:
I do have to go to Home Depot. Water heater at Misty Cat is acting up. Thanks pumpkin. Tell Leesy knock ’em dead. xoxox