Kicking Eternity

Chapter Four

Chapter 4

The person Raine most wanted to avoid this morning stood in the hall waiting outside her classroom. “Cal.” She kept her voice cool.  Their conversation from yesterday on the boat flew through her mind.

He nudged the classroom door open for her.

Her gaze skittered away from his. She looked down at the muscle flexing in his arm as he sandwiched a stack of cardboard squares against his chest, and back at the intensity in the blue depths of his eyes. She brushed past him putting space between them and slipped into the chair behind her desk.

He followed her. “We have unfinished business from yesterday.”

She looked up, feigned ignorance. “Oh?”

"I asked you if you were ever going to say those five hundred words." He stood beside her desk looking down at her. “Are you?”

Raine dropped her gaze to his hand wrapped around a Folgers can of brushes. It wasn’t an artist’s hand, but thicker, like a wrestler’s. The memory of Cal's taking her by the shoulders with those hands flitted through her mind. She met his eyes. "Maybe." Not in this millennium. I am so sunk.

"Now?" His eyes burned through her.

"I have to teach now."

 “Ouch. Cold.”

She tensed. Nobody ever called her cold. Cal stood too close. She could smell the clean shampoo scent from his damp hair. She inched her chair away from him. “I’m sorry, Cal, I'm just distracted. Thanks for opening the door for me. Gentlemen are hard to find, even at Bible college.” She smiled at him, a small smile meant to be kind, but not encouraging.

“Whatever, Raine.” Cal walked out of the classroom and toward the front door of the lodge. She felt the slap of his disgust as the screen door smacked behind him.

She shut the classroom door and locked it. She didn’t have time for this drama. Her first class of elementary students would show up in less than ten minutes for the story of Jesus walking on the water. She sunk to her knees on the carpet square next to the window. Her chin dropped to her chest.

Focus me on the lesson I have to teach. She was quiet—waiting for Jesus to walk across the wild ocean of her emotions. Please.

Peace flowed in, a sense of Jesus, like so many times before. She sighed, soaking in the quiet. Give me the ability and the power to teach Your Word to the children. She reached for the class list and prayed for each child. Her eyes slid shut. Use me right now. I love You. And, thanks. A fresh breeze blew in through the screen-less window cleansing the air of the musty scent of old Bibles and hymnals.

“Rainey, Rainey, where has your sunshine gone?” a familiar, deep voice sang.

Her eyes popped open.

Drew grinned and tipped his baseball cap at her as he stopped on the dirt road outside her window. A bat strung with mitts angled over his shoulder.

Was Drew’s mission in life to tease her? ‘Hypersensitive’, Mom called her. How many times had Mom said her brothers didn't know how to express affection toward her? They could hardly wrestle their baby sister to the floor like they did each other. Teasing was how they said they cared about her. Yeah, right.

“I was praying.” She wished back the petulant note in her voice.

Drew grabbed hold of the window sill knocking a few paint chips to the ground. “Hey, then, I must be the answer to your prayers.” She smelled the mint on his breath, and a speck of dried toothpaste clung to the corner of his mouth.