Just Maybe, Teacher/Parent Romance. On Hold.

Chapter 3

The following week, I still couldn’t stop thinking about my daughter’s kindergarten teacher. Everywhere I went; I would analyze a woman and always found something wrong with her. She was never perfect for me. I constantly found myself comparing others too Mairi. Whether they didn’t have a light enough shade of green or her hair wasn’t the right color blonde.

Later that week, I dropped the kids off at Mrs. Kane’s house so I could run some much needed errands. In the car, the song ‘Thinking of You’ by the Maine came on and once again reminded me of Mairi. At the very end of the song, I pulled into the grocery store parking lot.

*~*

 I add a box of cheerios into my shopping cart. I push my cart forward while looking down at my grocery list. Suddenly, I run into something hard, causing myself to look up to see a rather surprised looking Mairi Murray.

“I’m so sorry! I wasn’t watching where I was going.” She says, guilt written all over her face.

“It’s perfectly fine, I wasn’t paying attention either. To preoccupied with this extremely exciting list.” I said, attempting to take away her guilt.

Her face visibly relaxes, “So how’s Alice?”

“She’s doing fine; she’s with our neighbor at the moment so I could get some stuff done. This is my relaxing time, shopping for food.” We both get a chuckle out of that.

“She’s such a sweet thing. I swear I wish all of my students were like her. Students like her keep me sane. There’s this one kid, Johnny, who has a sweet spot for her and he drives me crazy! You know how little boys are, trying to get a girls attention at that age, just not in the most pleasant of ways.”

“Isn’t that the truth, I remember once my eldest, Ross, came home after school and asked me why showing a girl his buggers wasn’t impressive. That was a long talk.”

“Oh, I’m sure you taught him how to be a mini Casanova.”

“You bet I did!”

I can’t help but notice how her pale green eyes glisten whenever she laughs and how her smile lights up her whole face, spreading from ear to ear. Oh, and that laugh! Gosh, it’s like music to my ears. It’s like a melody that I would play to sooth and calm me down.

“Excuse me, but you’re hogging up the aisle.” An elderly woman complains.

We both move apart instantly, moving toward the corner of the store, out of people’s way.

“It was really nice talking to you again, Keith.” She says warmly.

“The pleasure is all mine.” We smile and we turn our carts to go our separate ways whenever a thought dawned on me.

“Mairi! What do you say we go get a cup of coffee after?”

She looks unsure at first, but in the end she smiles and nods her head. “Meet me here in 15 minutes? I think that’s enough time to get the rest of my groceries and check out.”

“That sounds reasonable.”

“Great, see you soon.”

We wave and continue shopping.

*~*

“You ready?” I ask.

“I was born ready!”

We walk across the street to the Starbucks and stand in the short line of people.

“What would you like to drink?” I asked her, completely forgetting that I had no idea what she wanted.

“I’ll have a vanilla iced coffee, thank you.”

“Anytime, good choice by the way, you have good taste.”

“Why thank you.” She winks at me.

Finally, it’s our turn to order and I proceeded told the cashier what we’d like to order. She tells us it’ll be right up and disappears to go make our coffees.

“Do you wanna go find a seat while I grab our drinks?” I ask.

“Sure.”

Whenever the cashier returned with our drinks, I went to find Mairi. I found her next to the windows, at a two seated table, staring out the window.

“Hey.”

“Hey, thanks for the coffee.”

“No problem at all.”

And for the next hour and a half, we continued to talk about everything and nothing. I haven’t laughed so hard and so frequent in a long time.

She looks down at her watch and cusses under her breath. “Shoot, I have to get going; I’m supposed to take my little brother out to eat tonight, of course, my treat.”

“We’ll have to do this sometime again, soon.” She nods her head, smiling, causing me to smile.

I hug her good bye and stare at her as she walks towards the door. Before she exits out the door completely, she looks back and smiles a real, true smile, the kind that lights up your whole face and makes the corner of your eyes wrinkle.

She raises her hand and does a tiny wave then finally exiting out of the door.

Why do I feel like once again, I won’t be able to get her out of my head?