Page 107 of The Space Between
He asked the question and somehow it feels like more than a hundred apologies ever could.
Folding it in half, I slide it into the front pocket of my purse before heading to school.
The halls feel different now.Or maybe I do.
The kids are louder today. The honeymoon phase is over. I already had a sixth grader tell me my class is boring and another one cry because she forgot her lunch. But even as the day spins, I’m rooted because last night, Gruene gave me something I didn’t think he could.
Not sex. Not closeness. Truth.
It was messy and hard and probably tore something in him wide open, but he said it.
“I don’t want to keep running.”
That has to count for something.
Right?
I catchmyself glancing at the office phone during planning period, wondering if he called. I checked my cell phone beneath the desk during a lull.
He didn’t text me either, not that I expected him to but I keep thinking about the way he looked standing at my door last night—raw and vulnerable, like he’d peeled back skin just to show me what was underneath.
Lunch?
I shouldn’t hope… but I do.
When the bellrings and lunch break hits, I find myself walking toward the parking lot without a plan.
It’s hot. Mid-August Texas hot.
The sun is beating down like it’s got something to prove. The kind of Texas heat that settles in your bones and refuses to leave. It’s like a loving, slap to the face.
As I walk out of the office doors, I see it.
His truck.
He’s parked under the shade of a giant oak tree across the road. His driver’s side door is open and one booted foot is hanging out like he’s waiting on the kind of thing he doesn’t wait for.
Me.
Walking faster, I cross the road.
My heart is a mess of questions, but he smiles when I get there.
Just a little. Just enough.
“You hungry?” He asks.
I nod and he hands me a brown paper bag like we’re in high school and he packed my lunch himself.
Inside is a cold Dr Pepper, a turkey sandwich, and a still-warm chocolate chip cookie wrapped in a napkin that has “don’t laugh” scribbled on it in pen.
I look up and his cheeks flush.
“I tried baking. I mean, it’s just the kind you put in the oven.” He blurts out.
I blink. “Youwhat?”
He clears his throat. “I was in town running an errand and just grabbed some and threw them in the oven when I got back.”
