Answering Machine

“Miss Thompson?”

I looked up from the grammar worksheet I was correcting and peered through my glasses at Bobby McIntire, who was standing in front of my desk, eyes shifting cautiously between me and the classroom door.

“Is everything all right, Bobby?” I asked, noticing the group of snickering third graders standing a few yards behind him. If that wasn’t a sign that something odd was happening, I don’t know what was.

“There’s a man at the door.”

I all but jumped out of my chair, heart thudding against my chest.

“A man?” I repeated nervously, hoping that this was just some silly, elementary school prank that students liked to pull on new teachers.

“Yeah,” Bobby replied with a quick nod. “Mitchell dared me to be the one to tell you.”

I nodded my head and stood up, smoothing down the front of my skirt as I let out an “oh” of understanding. Hence the snickering classmates. I apprehensively made my way to the door, wracking my brain for the things I had been instructed to do in the case of the appearance of a crazy, perverted, kidnapper. My hands began to felt clammy and I started to wish there had been a baseball bat within reach, just in case. Standing as far away from the door as was possible, I craned my neck and leaned over to look through the narrow window in the door, before heaving a giant sigh of relief as I was met with John’s grinning face.

“It’s okay, guys,” I announced, turning to my students before pulling the door open.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” I muttered under my breath, although the smile that began to sweep across my face was beyond my control.

John simply smirked at me, before waving at the wide-eyed, more than likely confused children behind me.

“Class,” I began, catching their curious attention, “this is my friend, Mr. O’Callaghan.”

“Is he your boyfriend?” One particularly brave soul, unsurprisingly by the name of Mitchell, blurted out.

“Something like that,” John interjected, before receiving a discreet elbow jab in the gut from me.

“Ooh, Miss Thompson’s got a boyfriend!” the class began to coo, making obnoxious smooching noises and singing the two of us sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

“All right, all right, that’s enough,” I instructed. “Why don’t you all try to behave yourselves for two minutes while I see Mr. O’Callaghan out?”

My students just kept giggling, but managed to quiet down as I pushed John out the door and pulled it almost entirely shut behind us.

“See what you’ve done?” I chided, smacking him lightly in the shoulder. “What are you doing here, anyway? You’re not supposed to be home until tonight.”

John smiled slyly and took a step towards me, causing me to step backwards, my back bumping into the row of lockers behind me. I winced as a lock butted into my spine, and John let out a small laugh.

“So, what?” John started, his voice low as he leaned closer. “No happy exclamation of my return? No ‘I’ve missed you so much for the past month!’?”

“You’re really not supposed to be here,” I stated, trying to remain serious, although it was proving to be of no use as my voice was already catching in my throat and my breath was leaving my lips in labored puffs.

“Oh, please,” he laughed, “those ladies in the office love me. They let me walk around here like I own the place.”

I bit my lip and looked up at him, remembering to strain my ears to listen for any sounds of possible destruction from within the classroom.

“I have to get back to – “ I had begun to say, before John closed the already microscopic gap between us by just barely brushing his lips against mine. He smirked down at me, placing his hands on either side of my head, above my shoulders. This time, he moved his lips to mine in a real kiss, and I could practically feel my entire body turn to jell-o.

Braced against an elementary school locker was hardly an appropriate place to be kissed by your boyfriend, but being kissed by your boyfriend after he’d been gone for nearly a month was hardly an act that required a regard for appropriateness. All I could really do at that point was grip the collar of his shirt to pull him closer and hope that no one caught us.

“John,” I breathed as soon as he pulled away for half a second, “I really have to get back.”

“Okay, okay,” he surrendered, before leaving me with another knee-weakening kiss and his breathy voice ringing in my ears. “I’ll see you at home.”

Once he had taken off down the green tiled hallway, I practically stumbled back into the classroom. To my great thanks, my students were all at their desks, still working away at their worksheets.

I sighed as I sat back in the chair at my desk, returning halfheartedly to the half-corrected pages in front of me, suddenly wishing the next four hours simply wouldn’t exist so I could go home.

By the end of the day, I was sure I had fidgeted enough that my thumbs were about to fall off. As the final bell rang, I felt as relieved as a student who had been itching to get out of school for the entire day.

“Miss Thompson?” I heard one of the young girls in my class ask, tugging on my arm. I looked down to see her smiling up at me, and I smiled back.

“What is it, Abby?” I asked, attempting to stop some of the boys from running into the hallway before their buses were called.

“You know your friend, Mr. O...” She pulled a face, struggling with the name.

“O’Callaghan,” I finished for her with a smile, squatting down to her eye level.

“Yeah, Mr. O’Callaghan!” she exclaimed with an energetic nod.

“What about him?” I asked, helping her pull her backpack over her small shoulders.

“Are you gonna marry him?”

I looked at the girl with a curious smile and tugged one of her pigtails lightly, before standing up.

“He has to ask me first, sweetie,” I said with a laugh, figuring that was as good a response as any, guiding her towards the door as her bus was announced.

“Well if he asks,” she began to state with a tone of seriousness, “I think you should say yes.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I promised with a laugh, before waving goodbye as she skipped happily down the hallway.

As soon as all of the students had left for the day, I made my way to the teachers’ lounge, only to be greeted with the giddy stares of two of my co-workers.

“Something wrong?” I asked with a nervous laugh, looking first to Gina, then to Mary.

Mary gestured to the table at the back, where, when I squinted my eyes, I could make out a single stargazer lily, my absolute favorite flower, laying on the tabletop.

“That man candy of yours stopped by earlier,” Gina informed me, and I rolled my eyes.

“Man candy?” I repeated, giving her a look.

“Hey girl,” she said, pointing a finger at me, “you caught yourself a nice looking boy, and I’m not gonna lie to you about that.”

I simply laughed at her and nodded with a word of thanks, before picking up the flower.

“Have you been feeding him, though? That boy looked awfully skinny,” Mary, who was older than Gina and I, presumably around my mother’s age, asked with a worried look of doubt spread across her face.

“He just got back from tour today, so I’m not exactly sure what he’s been eating for the past month,” I told her with a smile.

“I don’t know how you do it,” Gina said, shaking her head. I absentmindedly ran my finger over one of the flower’s petals, before noticing a small note tag attached to the stem.

My fingers fumbled with the note tag at first, before I was able to unfold it and read the words scrawled in John’s narrow, slanted handwriting.

I love the things you do.

“It’s worth it,” I murmured with a smile, although it was more to myself than to my friends.