Lesson Learned {Student Teacher Romance}

Chapter 6

"Hi," Joey mumbles into Keri's knees. "Um, I can't say you're name." 

"Just call me Will, little man," Mr. Benedict breaks into a warm chuckle that instantly put everyone at ease. 

He stretches up to his full height to ask, "Are you ladies baking?" 

"It's Moira's birthday," Keri volunteers before I can stop her.

"Oh?" He lifts a brow at that.

A fierce blush floods my cheeks and steals my reply. The man is so handsome I literally can't make my mouth work. 

"Mommy's making big girl brownies," Joey announces with gusto.

"Oh really?" Mr. Benedict laughs again.  "What are those?"

"I, I don't know," Joey ducks back behind Keri. "But mommy says I can make my own treats because big girl brownies get you drunk as a skunk."

"Ah," Mr. Benedict replies with a glint of humor behind his serious expression. "Well, it's a good thing you get to make your own."

"Can I get this one Mom?" Joey presses the box into Keri's hands.

"Well, we should go," I interject.

"We should?" Keri questions.

"Yes." I insist. "Good to see you, Mr. Benedict."

"Will." He reminds me in his velvety timbre.

I blink a few times in confusion, "What?"

"Call me Will," He says, his expression suddenly shy. "Happy birthday Moira."

"Thank you," I answer, hustling Keri and Joey along with a little more urgency. "Bye, Mr... Will."

Mr. Benedict flashes us a winning smile as I shove Keri along to get us to the checkout.

"What are you doing?" Keri scolds me on the way. "That guy was super hot and he asked you to call him by his first name. That was basically an invitation to make out with his face!"

"It was not, and he's my teacher!" I remind her.

"You mentioned that," she snarks with a roll of her eyes. "You need to get on that."

"C'mon weirdo," I tell her refusing to acknowledge what she's saying.

"I saw how that guy was looking at you!" She continues as we unload our basket onto the belt.

"He was looking at me like a student," I press while pulling Joey away from the gum he was about to pluck from the shelves.

"I'm pretty sure he'd get fired from his job if they saw him looking at a student like that." She says reaching into her purse to pay for our goodies. "And he looks really young to be a teacher."

The checkout lady, Beulah, raises a saggy brow as she scans the bottle of rum, looking up to evaluate us both shrewdly. 

Boozy brownies are a new addition to our birthday tradition, but Keri's mom is a caterer and she said that she's got a recipe that we should try. I was secretly glad that Joey required his own treats because I didn't want to get drunk as a skunk for my bday. 

"ID please?" She barks.

Keri snorts under her breath, but I want to shrink underneath the counter. Beulah's judgemental stare was angry enough to remind me that Auburn was a small town. 

Keri didn't drop the topic of Mr. Benedict the rest of the afternoon, and despite my best efforts, I couldn't help thinking about it either. 

It wasn't my fault! Mr. Benedict had the phenomenal looks and presence of a male model, not to mention the name of a beloved Jane Austen heartthrob.

After stuffing ourselves silly and watching a movie, Keri's mom gave me a ride home to find my mom cooking us a frozen pizza in the oven. As soon as it was done, we stuck a few candles on the top before popping a DVD into the player. 

We watched Twilight, which is my mom's favorite movie because she says it reminds her of the romance between her and my dad.

I don't remember my dad but I love the way she lights up when she talks about him. 

He was killed in a random mugging when I was two years old. The cops never caught his murderer and our family never recovered. My mom was an eighteen-year-old girl and a newly single mother who wasn't able to cope.

Like most couples in our town, they met in high school, and when she got pregnant with me, he vowed to always take care of her. 

They married against the wishes of his family, so we've never really gotten much help or support from them. 

According to my mom, my dad was a romantic, even at the tender age of fourteen. From her pictures, it looks like my dad was the typical nineties music man with a hankering for flannel and band t-shirts.

My green eyes are the only feature that I seem to share with him, a fact my mom likes to remind me of frequently. 

In my room, I have a framed picture of my dad and me sitting in the grass. He's staring at me with such love in his big emerald eyes, it looks as though I'm his entire world. 

I really wish I remembered that day. 

My mom fell asleep during the movie, so I covered her with a blanket and shuffled off to my bedroom. 

We never ended up eating the pizza, but that just means cold pizza for breakfast and I wasn't about to complain about that.

Tomorrow I'm going to need to get serious and sit down to write the outline and then the body of my essay for English class, but for tonight, I allow my thoughts to drift back to Mr. Benedict as I slip into a pleasant slumber.