“Hey, Ms. Miller?”

Sarah was in the school yard, keeping her class from climbing on the railing, and making sure each kid went off with the right family member, and the fifth graders didn’t get into any fights. And okay, yeah, smiling a little at the really cute pre-K student waiting for her big sibling in kindergarten to come outside. Kindergarten was always last. But this voice was the mom of her favorite student.

“Hey, Ms. Campbell. How’s it going?”

“It’s okay. I just wanted to tell you we are moving and changing schools at the end of the month.”

“What?” She quickly tried to control her face. Families moved all the time. She knew this. “Where are you going? Where will Jon be in school?”

The mom named a neighborhood to the west of them. “And he’ll be at that Wolf school that’s over there. You know he’ll even have a male teacher, and I know that’s important.”

“Oh—okay. Thank you for telling me. You know I’m going to miss him and your family so much.”

She had to keep it together. She had to. She had kids around her, still waiting to be picked up. She wasn’t prepared for the depth of the bleakness she felt. There was always turnover at the end of the fall semester, and she’d thought she’d gotten used to it.

But Jon was special. She’d taught his older siblings, she knew his family, he’d been a gift to her classroom. His usual bright smile and ready laugh brought more peace into her class room than all her specialized routines. He probably didn’t know it yet, but he was a leader, and even if he struggled with long division, he struggled until he got it. And she was losing him to a charter school—that was probably what hurt the most, that his mom had chosen, that her school wasn’t good enough anymore, even though she knew the whole faculty side of the school loved and rooted for the students to succeed. So many years of service, and it just wasn’t enough. But at least it was Mark’s school. Mark’s school that he was quitting. Her heart had lifted for one instant and then plummeted.

She was crying by the time she walked to Mark’s back stoop. She’d parked in her alley lot spot and walked straight to his house. His truck was there, just barely not sticking out of the alley, and she patted it as she walked past it and more tears fell. She pounded on the outer door. It was tempered glass with decorative bars over it.

He didn’t open it right away so she hit it so hard the glass rattled against the bars. “MARRRRK—let me in!”

She heard rushing footsteps and a “Coming!”

He opened the door and looked at her. “I’m so sorry, baby, I had my headphones in and couldn’t hear. Are you okay?”

“You can’t quit. I need you to stay at Wolf so you can watch one of my babies.” She stopped to sob and ended up finishing in a voice shaken by tears. “HIs mom is transferring him to your fucking charter school and—and I’m losing him.”

“Whoa. Whoa, baby.” His southern accent got deeper and his arms went around her, and she snuggled into both.

“You know, it’s not my fault I can’t personally erase the effects of poverty and trauma and racism from every student’s life. I TRY, Mark. I try. I can’t fix everything. I can’t raise every test score. I can love those kids and help them as much as I can, and live a life my county friends can’t even understand. But I can’t even keep this one kid—this family—I love so much.” She ended on a wail and he drew her even tighter in to his arms as she screamed into his chest.

He tugged at her gently and led her from his kitchen to the living room. She gave in as he pulled her down to sit with him on his couch.

Mark thought he had a plan, but nothing had prepared him for holding his sobbing neighbor as she wept over systemic injustice. Foolish not to imagine it—he should’ve seen it coming. But, oh, he was so sad for her. And she was getting snot all over his shirt. I mean, it was fine, he loved her. But he’d planned their next time alone to be a little different. But now all he could do was pat her back and press gentle kisses along her hairline, giving the gray hairs just a few extra kisses. She’d fucking earned those gray hairs.

“Hey baby. It’s okay. Shhhhhhh…. I’ve got you.”

“I just want to be enough. Why am I not enough? I don’t know how much more loss I can take.” Her pitiful face, red and tear-streaked, raised to his. He raised his hands to wipe the tears away, looked dubiously at his shirt, then found a dry spot to wipe his hands on near the side.

Then he stroked her hair with his hands. “Baby, you are amazing, and I’m in awe of how you pour your life out in service to these children, but you aren’t Jesus. You’re not supposed to be enough. You do what you can. And I hate to tell you this, but Jesus is at the charter school just as much as he’s at your school. And they wouldn’t let me break my contract, so I’ll be able to watch your boy.” With each clause, he stroked from the top of her head down her back.

Her breath caught as she heard the last sentence. “What! You’ll still be there?”

“Yeah, they said that my perception of my teaching capabilities didn’t matter because I had a signed contract. So maybe I’m doing okay for the kids, but I think they just want to keep me because I’m a male. I’m staying through the end of the school year.”

“Mark! That’s fantastic!” Before he could express his confusion at her excitement, she wrapped her arms around him and was kissing him furiously. He opened his mouth and took it all in. He could taste the salt of her tears that he hadn’t managed to get, and the sweetness of her, and yes, this is what he wanted forever. Forever, more. The pleasure of having her in his arms, his mouth on hers, and his fingers on her skin sang through him.

Wait. Wait. Fingers on her skin. He opened his eyes. Yes. His fingers were on her skin, her shirt was rucked up, and damn if he didn’t know and like where his fingers were headed. And shit, he was going to stop.

There was grace, he knew, but there was also shaking off physical desire and honoring the convictions both of them had voiced.

“When we’re married, I’m gonna read you the complete Song of Solomon, and then we won’t get out of bed for a week.” He pulled her shirt down as he spoke, realizing that her hands had slipped up and under his shirt, too, and when he moved her to be beside him, her hands grazed his rigid dick, and he shuddered and moaned.

“See, that’s the exact sound you made when you ate the pho.”

“It was really good pho, and it was my first time to have it—shut up.”

He cautiously eased a few more inches away from her. When he came for the first time with her he wanted to be inside her. Damn, maybe that was too ambitious for a 29-year-old virgin. He would also take naked together. Not fully clothed on the couch. Right. Maybe better not to plan all the ways he could orgasm with this woman as his partner.

“So,” her voice was tentative, “What made you stop? Wait—did you say married?”

Well, there went his plan. Foiled by sexual frustration.

“Yeah—I did.” His face was hot and he was afraid the expression he was making was a grimace. “I had a plan to go slow and woo you, and you know, maybe tell you that I love you and stuff? Bring you flowers? Take you out for drinks? Help you in your garden? But then you were here and you needed me and you kissed me, and I almost got to second base before I realized what was happening.” His plans just didn’t work around her. She was like some sort of unknown mineral deposit, throwing off his compass—but leading him to a better place than he had planned. “Fuck it. I love you, I want to marry you, and live my life with you, and I want to have sex with you so bad I can’t even breathe.”

Her eyes dipped to his groin, and he groaned again. “Yes, right now. Stop looking at it.”

She reached her hand to snag his. “Is this okay? We can hold hands?”

“Yeah, we can hold hands.”

She stroked her fingers over his palm while she talked.

“You know I’m old, right? I’ve got gray hairs and strong opinions? And I’m already ‘advanced maternal age’ so if you want kids we probably shouldn’t wait? You could marry a younger girl and get all that breezy child-free time.”

He closed his hand around her. “I don’t want a girl: I want you. And you gave me your strong opinions the first time we met in the alley, and it didn’t scare me off—and you were right. And we’ll have kids from school in our life whether we have our own or not. Obviously, we’ve got chemistry. But Sarah, do you really want me?”

Sarah stared into the brown eyes of the man she loved. She got a little lost in them. She considered what she knew about him, his strength, his humility, his compassion—not everybody wanted to make a difference in the world, the way life seemed ten thousand times more sustainable in his arms…totally unexpected, but it was right.

“Sarah?” he asked again.

“Oh, yeah. Um, Mark, you were who I went to when I was upset. You know who you are, you listen to me, respect me, can’t stop kissing me—” His hand squeezed hers tight and she grinned at the rueful expression on his face. “—Even though I’m always the one who kisses you first. I would be a fool not to love you. You are a good man, even if you got sucked in by USAteach. Yes, I want you.”

Mark said, “High five!” and raised his hand. She looked at him, befuddled, and then realized—right, limit contact.

“High five.” And yeah, they were still holding hands, too, but damn if there wasn’t still a zing when their palms connected. Hurray for providence, hurray for neighbors. She smiled fondly at him, and the joy in his face was blinding.

“Do you want to know when I realized I loved you?”

“Is it embarrassing? It’s not the soup, is it?”

“No, it’s not the soup.”

“Fine, then carry on.”

“When you came over and asked for teaching help. That’s when I knew.”

“What?” The corner of his mouth quirked up, and she took a second to think about how she would kiss it, later.

“You brought me alcohol, and you asked me for help, and the sun shone on you, and you shone at me, and that’s when I knew. I wasn’t happy about it, but that’s when I knew.”

“I…guess it took me longer. I felt like such an awkward failure that night.”

“You’re my awkward failure now.” She patted his hand that she’d been holding.

“I must’ve always been yours. We just didn’t know it.” Dammit, he was shining again. But she loved him, and he loved her, and she could bask in his glow.

“High five?”

“High five.”