Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 85725 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 429(@200wpm)___ 343(@250wpm)___ 286(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85725 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 429(@200wpm)___ 343(@250wpm)___ 286(@300wpm)
“Violette!”
“Ohmygod, look at you! Learning your French vocab words!”
“I am! I am!”
“Maybe we should read Purplicious during your library time today.”
“Yeah!”
“No, Justin, I’d rather take the effing Greyhound than effing fly coach,” her mother scoffs, Bluetooth conversation still in progress in spite of the fact she should be focused on getting her daughter to her classroom. “Ugh! Come on, Sandy! You’re making Mommy even more late!”
“Bye, Miss Jenkins!” She giggles seconds before her mother yanks her away by the hand, worried more about her phone call than the small human in her care.
Unfortunately, that shit right there is pretty common. You get used to it. Even if you wish you couldn’t.
Resuming my trek for my office space, I allow myself another brief inhaling of the sweet scent from the object I can’t believe I’m still clutching.
Where should I put this? On my desk in my back office so I have a little piece of him here at school or on the kitchen table at home so it feels like he’s finally taking me up on my offer to come inside? Am I maybe…a little…too into this stranger? Especially considering the fact he hasn’t said a single word to me. And why hasn’t he? Why leave me a thank you note – which more people really should do in general – when he could’ve just said it? Writing me a note is way more effort than saying those two words. Think about it. He had to find a pen. Okay. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he already had a pen. That’s fair, but he had to find paper. Or maybe…maybe he had that too. But what about the flower? The chances he had that just sitting around in his backpack are slimmer than a romance novel winning a Pulitzer Prize. That means at some point post his flip out, he had to go find this flower, walk all the way back to my house, and leave it there for me. During that entire process he could’ve stopped. Threw away the idea of wanting to do something nice for me and just hightailed it to someplace warm, which would’ve been the smarter idea considering how cold it was last night. Hell, the couple minutes I was out there with him, I felt like that moment when Little Penguin, the star of the finger puppet books I read to the baby class, gets chilly and needs to snuggle. See what I’m getting at? Instead of safely sheltering himself from the dropping temperatures, he marched through the cold, got this flower, marched back to my home, and left it. Why? Why do all of that instead of just saying thank you? Is it because the action says more? Means more? Did he want it to say or mean more? Did he need it to? Uh…feel free to chime in at any point here. I’m all ears.
“That’s a pretty huge smile,” Presley Morrison, my boss, the owner of the school, and by far one of the most gorgeous women in the entire building, casually comments.
Startled by her voice, I completely lose my footing and land on the hard hallway floor, contents of my workbag spilling out.
“Ohsheesh,” Presley immediately rushes to assist in collecting my lost objects, starting with my book club planner. “You okay? I really didn’t mean to scare the living ‘ish out of you.”
I prepare to insist that she didn’t, that that’s why I shouldn’t walk while distracted yet stop to briefly observe the way so many people walk past me without even a second look. How so many individuals don’t even acknowledge the fact there’s a fucking human being on the floor potentially in need of help. They don’t know why I’ve fallen. They don’t know if I can get up on my own or need medical assistance. And from the focused looks on their faces to the way they simply swing wide or step over my scattered items, it’s clear they don’t care either way.
Is this what Mr. Green Eyes feels like? Does the world ever stop to try to lend him a hand? Maybe I was the first one. Maybe that’s why he went out of his way to say thank you. Hm. No. No way. That can’t be it. People have tried to help him before, right? Maybe? At least once? Probably at least once.
My boss’s voice cautiously calls out to me at the same time she offers me the notebook, “Jaye?”
“Yeah!” Shoving the item back into the bag is followed by two more objects being treated the same. “I’m totally fine. If Pete the Cat doesn’t cry about stepping in stuff, no need for me to be upset about tripping over stuff even if stuff is technically me.” The smallest giggle escapes as I rise to my feet. “Thanks for the help, though. It’s…nice to be reminded kindness isn’t an extinct thing like the Mosasaurus.”