7:51

4.

Shut Up and Dance – Walk the Moon

"So, those first two encounters weren't at all awkward, huh?"

If I could smile, I would. Sure, they weren't your stereotypical, 'our eyes met and we instantly fell in love' meetings, but I knew I preferred them to any kind of fairy tale start. It was our start, not some generic story. And even if it was perhaps an underwhelming start, it was the start of something a lot better.

"I didn't really get as far as deciding how exactly to play you this whole thing, to be honest. If I play it all at once...I'm hoping upon everything that you'll wake up any second, Beth. But if you don't...maybe I'll take it slow. You can wake up whenever though – I promise I won't be mad at you for interrupting the playlist," Noah jokes and pauses, almost like he's waiting for me to respond. "I'll play another one for now, though. I know we both like this one too much for me to make you wait for it."

When he presses play, I know it too.

·

The first few hours of any new term were, in a way, always the most challenging. Even though you didn't yet have all the kids complaining about being tired and bored of school, you did have them all still bouncing off the walls and full of energy from the break they'd had. I could tell you straight away which was worse. Morning break provided some relief as they let off some steam running around the playground, granting us teachers twenty minutes of slight rest, but by the time lunch rolled around I was ready to pass out. It was all I could do to remain on my own two feet rather than crawling into the staff room on all fours, and I thanked my lucky stars that neither Chloe nor I had been put on for supervising lunch that day.

"Wow. You look like death. I have to say, I think being taken down by your class on the first day is a record," Chloe commented when I collapsed on the sofa next to her.

"It's like they know," I groaned. "It's like they have some sixth sense, so that right when I'm mentally begging them for just a few moments of quiet they start talking even louder."

"Our class were angels," James said as he and Chloe gave smug grins. "It must just be you, Beth."

"Shut up," I laughed, throwing a cushion at him. "They're only quiet to you because they're too petrified to speak. How come you get the easy class and they get to go home early?"

"Oh, just give it a month or two – they will not be the easy class then. Everyone knows you have the easy class," Chloe said.

"Please. Four- and five-year-olds don't come crying to you every other day because they broke up with their boyfriend or girlfriend of one week, or because they didn't get invited to a sleepover."

"You sound cheery," a voice I wasn't used to hearing said, and I turned to see that Noah had walked in and joined us all. "So, do you actually like being a teacher? Or are you just stuck with it because you're not good enough to do anything else?"

"It's a little early on in our friendship to be insulting my career, don't you think?" I told him with a raised eyebrow.

"It's a little early on in our acquaintanceship to be calling us friends, don't you think?" he retorted, taking a seat next to me.

"Ooh, good one," Chloe chuckled.

"Yeah, well...okay, I got nothing," I admitted in defeat and Chloe held her fist out for Noah to bump, making me roll my eyes jokingly as he did so. The microwave pinged and she jumped up to get her soup out of it, leaving just Noah and I on the sofa with James opposite us. Although the other teachers were milling around, we rarely had more conversation with them than just friendly small talk in the first few minutes of lunch. James, Chloe and I – and obviously now Noah, too – were the closest in age and the youngest by about a ten year gap, so we tended to stick together more.