"Have a goodnight Ms. Dawn!" Tucker waves at me as he ducks out of the classroom, all knobby knees and rosy cheeks. He's the shortest kid in my fourth-grade class this year, and positively my favorite, although I'm not supposed to let anyone know that.
"Thank you, you too, goodnight Tucker!" I maneuver around the desks quietly, tucking in chairs and collecting forgotten pencils off the floor as I go.
Today was a good day, the first in a week of hopefully many more good days to come. My mind is all over the place, already reviewing lesson plans for tomorrow, and the art project I have planned for Wednesday's class. Not to mention the mental checklist running through my head, trying to remember everything I'll need to buy so I can make cannoli's for AJ and Kate's engagement dinner this Saturday. Maybe Mom has extra piping bags at home?
After retiring from nursing, she got back into painting, and even more surprisingly, she took up baking. With some of Helen's recipes, and a few quick tips, she became this baker extraordinaire over night, as if it was just a secret talent waiting to be set free.
I have to smile at the idea of Helen, and her beautiful family. We still talk, as do I, Mia, Peyton, Enzo, and Matteo. In part, it's because of them I have this job. Enzo, who's a teacher at the high school to this feeder elementary school, managed to pull some strings with the school board when he heard they had jobs available; I was employed right out of teachers college on his reference.
I'm so incredibly gone, so lost in my thoughts, and a whirlwind of memories, that I don't hear my name being called over the PA system, asking me to come to the office.
When finished tidying the room, I move to the chalk board, erasing the various notes and outlines that were drawn on today, and start moving to fill in our agenda for tomorrow, on the side, as always, so the kids know what's happening when they come in tomorrow.
He clears his throat from the doorway, and it's such a distinctive sound, I can't help but be flooded with memories when I look up and meet his eyes. Midnight blue eyes that glow in the brightness of the fluorescent lights overhead, just as they did years ago, whenever I spotted him across the hallway of our old High School.
Although I've kept in touch with his family, we also mutually avoided the topic of Nathan. It killed me to not be able to ask how he was doing, to not hear his voice, or see him. In that sense, it was a comfort to know that his family would tell me if he wasn't okay. No news was always good news in that regard.
He's as beautiful as I remember; short, unruly brown hair that seems to be styled in no particular direction, and yet looks amazing anyways. Tan, smooth skin riddled with acne scars over his sharp jaw and cheek bones. His scar is still my favorite feature; paler than his normal complexion, and thus complimenting the darkness of his blue iris.
And then he smiles; with this shy dusting of a blush over his cheeks, and I feel like I'm a teenager all over again, with my heart fluttering in my chest, and my lips naturally smiling back.
There's so much of him that has changed, that isn't what I remember; there's a shadow of hair dusting his jaw, and his shoulders and chest are so broad, thick with obvious muscle beneath his black canvas jacket and hoodie. He seems so much surer of himself, an air of confidence that believes in the man I always knew him to be.
"M-may I come in, Ms. Dawn?" He gestures to the classroom around us, trying not to smile at all the educational posters and pictures lining the walls.
"Of c-course." I'm so distracted by the clarity of his voice, that it makes me falter in my own sentence, too obviously surprised to try and hide it.
Nathan has to duck to get through the doorway, and only once he's through it do I realize how small I still am in comparison. Feeling grown up, in my teaching job, in my teaching clothes, has done nothing in terms of physical growth. My head still just barely reaches his chest, if that, and my arm would still have to be bent up to hold his hand.
"You look b-beautiful. You always have." He smiles down at me, eyes never straying from my own, seeming content to just look.
"Thank you, Nathan." It's my turn to blush, glancing self consciously down at my knit sweater and jeans, smoothing the fabric down across my waist for no particular reason at all, other than to have something to do with my hands.
"You look beautiful too, that hasn't changed."
The boyish smile he sends me is so comforting, that I can't help but relax, leaning back to sit on the desk behind me. "Thank you," he murmurs as he mimics my actions, leaning back on the row of desks behind him.
"How are you, Nathan?"
His hands pull together in front of him, fingers fumbling over each other slowly, as he shyly smiles at the ground.
"I'm good. Actually, really good. I guess that's why I came, I was j-just-" His lips freezes, eyes catching hold of my neck as I push my hair away from my face.
In two small, slow steps, he's right in front of me, so close, that I could reach my fingers out and touch the fabric of the old high school sweatshirt he's wearing. It's a closeness that feels so familiar it hurts.
His arm reaches out slowly, eyes locked on mine, as if asking for silent permission. When I don't resist, he draws them closer, the skin of his fingers just barely brushing my neck as he picks up the sun shaped medallion laying in the slope of my collarbones.
"You still wear it?" He brushes a thumb over the face, eyes wide with surprise, seemingly mesmerized by the worn metal.
There's something so intimate about the moment, something so soft and quiet, that I whisper my reply.
"Everyday. I never took it off."
His eyes flicker up to mine, wide and wondrous, and everything I remember from what feels like a lifetime ago.
"You never took it off?" The words are a gasp, just barely hiding the surprise he feels. The shock. And yet there it is, flickering in his pupils, twitching in the corner of his lips as he tries to fight an ear to ear grin; hope.
"I never took it off," I repeat, sharing the smile that breaks out across his face.
He drops the medallion, backing up as he clears his throat, obviously realizing how close we are. He's smiling at the ground in this shy, adorable way that brings back a thousand memories all at once, each one stronger than the last.
"Do you want to join me, f-for a walk?"
"I'd love that."
. . . . .
"And then I got the teaching job at North Ridge, thanks to your brother Enzo, where I've been ever since, so yeah, that's pretty much it." I place one foot over the other, arms out at my sides, watching my footing as I make my way, slowly, across the half wall dividing the rolling hills of the park from the paved path. Nathan keeps close to my side on the ground below, never straying too far, but not hovering either; just close enough that if I fall, I won't be in danger for long.
"That's amazing, good for you, those kids a-are lucky to have you as a t-teacher. Say congratulations to AJ for me by the way, I wish him and Kate all the best." He laughs lightly, "And who knows, maybe I'll pay Luke, Parker and Beau a visit at their gym."
I can't help but laugh with him; who would have thought that my brother, and two of my greatest friends, would grow up to create a business so vast?
"How about you, Mr. Walker? What's been keeping you busy the past few years?"
He rests his hands in his jean pockets, looking up at the sky sky as he recites his past few years from memory.
"I did a lot of therapy, took time off out of high school to really focus on me. As you would know, I'm sure, si-since I wasn't working in the cafe at the t-time either. But, I finished u-up my high school diploma online, so I could still graduate w-with my class. Took a year off to work after graduation, save some money for school, and then I went to U of T, to study and become a psychologist. I graduate w-with my Master's this Summer."
"What do you want to do, with psychology I mean?" I reach the end of the half wall, and without question, Nathan raises his arms to help me down carefully.
"I want t-to work with a high school, as a guidance counselor. I figured I c-could take what I've learnt from personal ex-experience, at school, and even everything you taught me, and use it to help others."
"That's really wonderful Nathan, really wonderful. Good for you," I can't help the pride that swells in my heart; Nathan, a guidance counselor, helping kids, helping families. I can only imagine how good he is at it, how easily he connects with the kids. Nathan always was full of great advice, and he was definitely always a great listener.
"Thank you," he's quiet, smiling softly as he watches me.
We don't seem to be following any particular path; Nathan picks out the turns we take as we go, winding us through the busy streets of Toronto with ease; he smiles at those in the crowd that turn to stare.
"Not that I mind just walking, but are we going anywhere particular?"
He grins down at me as we walk, taking another lazy turn at an intersection.
"Don't you ever just like to walk around, see where the world takes you?"
I can't help but grin, because once upon a time, on a very different street, between two somewhat different people, I asked him a very similar question.
I'm not paying enough attention; I'm grinning at him, and he's grinning at me, and it's making me distracted. The toe of my ballet flat catches the crack between two uneven slabs of the sidewalk, and suddenly I'm dropping, losing my balance in the middle of a crowd, and begrudgingly accepting the bruise I'll gain from my impact with the ground.
But it never comes, a strong-arm loops around my waist, and a hand grabs my arm, pulling me up until I'm flush against his side, with my toes barely touching the ground.
"Are you okay?" He's already checking my body for signs of injury, eyes zigzagging down from my shoulders to my legs, worry seeping into his expression.
The hand on my arm is rubbing soothing circles into my shoulder, softly, trying to comfort me.
"I'm fine, really, sorry about that," I blush furiously under all the glances I'm getting, some sympathetic, and some laced with smirks as they try not to laugh. "I'm such a klutz sometimes, I guess I really haven't outgrown that,"
"Hey," His fingers are gentle under my chin, directing my face away from the crowd and towards him, so our eyes meet. Nathan looks so gentle, so understanding, it soothes my rambling, letting me focus only on him.
"Don't pay any attention to them." His eyes flicker down to my lips, just barely, for a fraction of a second, but they dart back to my own gaze. He blushes at being caught, and then he bites his lip, seeming to debate his words.
Clearing his throat, his hand slides from my arm to my waist, hesitantly, gently, with every notion that if this isn't what I want he'll let me go.
"You know, someone once told me that if people are staring, you should give them something to look at."
I don't know who moves first; who kisses who is lost on me. His arms are looping around my back, and my hands tangle in his hair, loving how short it is, how familiar it is as it slips between my fingers.
My memory didn't do this justice, any of it; how soft his lips are, how strong he feels, anchoring me to him, how his hands fist just slightly into the fabric of my jacket.
The world carries on around us, a constant blur of motion; people bustle by, with things to do, places to be, and people to see once they get there. They have lives, and memories, and are all so consistently caught up in their own world, as I am in mine, that I don't know if any of us recognize each other at all. But then there's the boy with his arms around my waist, with his hands pressing into my back, and I have to wonder if the love he had for me, and the love I in turn had for him, every truly faded at all.
"We should, um, keep going..." Nathan trails off, his eye lashes fluttering as his lips brush mine.
"We should," I nod loosely, leaning in to kiss him again, and within seconds he's just as lost in it as I am.
I've decided, right now in this very moment of what feels like the deciding factor of the rest of my life, that love does not fade. You never stop loving someone, and you never wake up one day just to cease the worth they hold in your heart.
When you love someone, you simply carry them with you. Even if you never see them again, even, if you just love them for a day. Love is not selective, it is not for the faint of heart, and it is most certainly not temporarily.
Love is for the infinite. It's for moments like this, that are completely and utterly us.