I tilt my head. “Like what?”
She hesitates and then shrugs. “I don’t know. Tonight just felt…different.”
Another curl falls. I leave it this time.
“Goodnight, chula,” I say, stepping back.
“Goodnight, Mateo.”
She opens the door slowly, pausing in the frame like she’s about to say something else—but she doesn’t. And then she’s gone.
I walk back to my car, but my chest’s still tight, and my hand still remembers the feel of her skin.
Chapter Ten
ANALYSE
The next few days pass in a whirl.
We’re a few weeks away from Thanksgiving break and then Christmas following soon after, and my students are feral. I’m pulling out all the tricks to try and keep them engaged—mini whiteboards, very dramatic and theatrical read-alouds, bribery via snacks. None of it sticks. These kids are bloodhounds, and they smell that the holidays are right around the corner.
“Miss Garcia,” one of them groans mid-math lesson, “can’t we just watch a movie?”
“Sure,” I say sweetly, “as soon as you can multiply three-digit numbers without crying.”
The class groans in unison. Internally, I’m groaning as well. Truthfully, I don’t want to be doing this any more than they do. My head’s not in it today, my patience is hanging by a thread, and I’ve already refilled my coffee three times just to survive the morning.
I love these kids—I do—but today, I’m struggling, and it’snot even their fault. Damn Nico for getting into my head while I’m at a job that I actually love.
He’s been calling more. Texting, too. Little check-ins disguised as the doting father. But I know what he’s doing. He doesn’t miss me. He misses having access to me. It must eat at him to think I’m in a happy relationship. That I had the audacity to move on from him. To be happy without him. He thought he would leave me on my own—with our baby—and I’d be here waiting for him when he was ready. That I’d be waiting, always, for him to come back.
I realize now that that’s the kind of man Nico is. The kind that walks away and still expects the world to revolve around him. But I didn’t wait. I built a life without him. And now, the idea that I might actually be happy—without him, because of someone else—it’s crawling under his skin. Good.
“Miss Garcia, Umberto is trying to turn his desk into a spaceship again!”
Dios mio. I blink, refocus, and look up just in time to see Umberto on his knees beside his desk, arms flapping, making rocket noises while taping two rulers to the sides of his chair.
You’ve gotta be kidding me.
“Umberto,” I say as evenly as possible. “What did we say about aviation projects during math?”
He freezes mid-launch. “Not to do it?”
“That’s right. And yet, here we are.”
He stares at me for a beat, then he sighs, peels the rulers off one at a time, and mutters, “Nobody respects visionaries.”
I raise a brow but say nothing, and he takes his seat with exaggerated drama. I turn back to the board and try to remember where I left off. Something about fractions. Or maybe it was subtraction. Shit, I need to check my notes.
But at least I’m not thinking about Nico and his bullshit anymore.
That afternoon, I’m in the teacher’s lounge eating a less than desirable salad that I regretted making the moment I took the first bite. I’m debating whether I’m desperate enough to eat the sad tomato that’s trying to roll off my fork when my phone pings with a text.
I glance down, expecting a text from the girls, but it’s from Mateo.
Mateo
What’s for lunch?
