She texted him a couple times over the next weeks, checking in on him and his students. Her advice was helpful! His latest text: They are really learning! You are the best. She preened during her lunch time—she ate at her desk while the students were supervised by the art teacher in the cafeteria.

As her students came back from lunch, she put her teacher face back on. Today they were going to learn more about tenses—one of her favorites, but not always the students’. As her favorite—well maybe it was wrong to call him her favorite, but she’d taught his three older siblings too, and was invested in their family—student walked to his desk, she noticed he was looking sad—usually he had a smile on his face and a bad joke at the ready.

“What’s wrong, Jon? Did lunch go okay?”

He took a few seconds to answer. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Okay, buddy, but if you need to talk about stuff, you can talk to me or to Ms. Walker.” Ms. Walker was the social worker for the school.

Her students had their desks in groups of three, mostly pointed at her. She waited until they all filed in, used the hand sanitizer, went to their desks, pulled out their workbooks, and held their pencils up to show they were ready to listen. That was, at least, what happened on a good day, and today was a good day. She walked from group to group. “What’s the difference between what you did yesterday, and what you will do tomorrow?”

“Alex, tell me something you did yesterday.”

“I watched a show!” Maybe one day the answer would involve reading.

“Sierra, tell me something you will do tomorrow.”

“Eat pizza!” Dang it.

“What about you, Jon? What will you do tomorrow—and say it as a complete sentence, if you can.”

“I will see the sea!”

“Oh, Jon, really?” He was gonna try this, wasn’t he?

“See and sea—it’s a joke, Ms. Miller.” And there was that gap-toothed smile that had been missing when he came back from lunch.

“Pretty funny.” She looked around the room—the other children were mostly smiling, whether at Jon or at his joke, she wasn’t sure. “Can anyone tell me the difference between what Alex said and what Jon said?”

Eventually, one of them did, and she slowed down to help them with their worksheets. The one kid who she knew was dealing with stuff at home acted out, and she had to call the principal. Her school district didn’t do suspensions for her grade anymore.

She added, Pray for Gabriel and his family to her to-do list. Sometimes she wanted to punch the people who said that there was no prayer in the public schools. She prayed all the time in school—not aloud, obviously, and still everything in the current political climate was trying to make things more precarious for kids like her students, and for the teachers who tried to be there for them. She’d really like to talk more to both Jesus and the politicians who claimed to follow him about their care for the least of these.

The weather was starting to cool down a little, finally, and all her parents were prompt to get their kids, so she had time to stop and check on the school garden before she went home. The older grades were supposedly in charge of it, but some days she stopped to help. It was probably time to pull most things up and start the fall crops.

She returned to her house to find a terra-cotta pot with a blooming orchid in it by her back door. The note read in short spiky handwriting, Still thrown by that kiss, but very thankful for your help. These past few weeks were totally different from the beginning of the semester.

Sarah shook her head slowly and unlocked the door. She walked through to the front door to check the mail—nothing good. She hung up her keys, set the flower pot down, put her teacher bag in its place, and sat down to check Facebook. Again, nothing good. Another friend engaged, another one pregnant, and her sister was on a fancy business trip. The anger she’d thought was about Mark and charter schools wafted out of the box. Blah blah blah my life is so great, out in suburbia or with my high-powered business job. Yeah, she couldn’t really see a husband fitting into her life or a minivan in her backyard parking space. She’d have to give up some of her garden. And if she was just part of selling a product, her soul would shrivel up. Why was she so angry at these people she loved for living the lives they wanted? She took a few deep breaths, searching for calm, before her eye snagged on the orchid, set in the middle of the clean space on her table, and she left Facebook and called the giver of the plant instead.

“This is Mark.”

“Hey, thanks for the flowers. And you’re still shook by the kiss?”

“Listen. I’ve kissed my share of women before. But I don’t go from a single kiss to making out in the same night. Everything happens decently and in order. But I see you and I want to be touching you. Everywhere. I don’t know what to do except stay away from you.”

“So we can talk on the phone, though? Fifty feet away from each other, that’s okay?” She was smiling now.

“Sarah—Sarah. This isn’t funny.” Mark sounded very frustrated.

“It is to me. It’s also really sweet and slightly disturbing, but I mean, I’m not complaining.” Everybody she knew liked her, but it had been a long time since anyone had put her in the “overwhelmingly desirable” category.

“Well, I am.”

“What are you complaining about?”

“Celibacy before marriage, that you’re my close neighbor, that I just met you…you name it.”

“Oh.” He didn’t have a filter, did he? Maybe that was just with her?

“So, I guess I’ll see you at church.”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll make sure I’m on the other side of the aisle.” His comment came out slow, deep, and dour, and she couldn’t stop smiling, nor her heart contracting.

She hung up with a weird triumphant feeling lifting her spirits.