“Lots of reasons, but the main one is what happens to the rays of sunlight when they hit the ocean. The water reacts with the light, and you see blue or green.” I try to keep the explanation simple. Even as brilliant as she is, she’s too young to understand the light spectrum and how water absorbs the red wavelengths, making it look blue. “How about tomorrow, we look at what happens when we add color and light to water?” I say. Without the headache, that would be fun. I can’t even remember what the lesson plan for tomorrow actually is with a bass drum banging against my left temple.
“Yeah,” Thema says, and skips to the door.
Once they are all accounted for and on their way home, I grab my things.
“Iris,” Chris Bentley, the principal, calls out when I try to hurry to my car. “Can I have a quick word?”
I don’t really want to. I have that weird slightly metallic taste in my mouth, the one I get before I feel sick, with too much saliva pooling beneath my tongue. Normally, I’d just capitulate and stay, but today, I don’t feel like I can.
“Is it urgent?” I ask. “I don’t feel great. Headache.” For some reason, I point to my temple, like he doesn’t already know where a headache takes place.
“Ouch,” he says. “Yeah, you don’t look great. Let me walk you to your car.” He takes my bag and the books from my hands before I can argue.
“There wasn’t enough space in the parking lot this morning, so I had to park on a side street across from the school.”
“No worries.” He opens the door so I can walk through. Chris is attractive as older men go. Dark hair with threads of silver, a wide smile he’s generous with, and kind hazel eyes. If he were maybe a decade younger and not my boss, I might have flirted.
When we get to the car, he waits while I pop the lock and then drops my bag and books into the trunk. “Thank you,” I say as he slams it shut. The noise makes me wince.
“No worries. You sure you’re okay to drive home? I could always drive you, if you can give me half an hour.”
The idea of waiting for an ice pack and painkillers is more than I can handle. “I’m fine, thank you. What did you need to speak to me about?”
Chris smiles. “Oh, it was about Dylan. We’ve made all the official reports. Come see me when you’re feeling better tomorrow, and I can bring you up to speed.”
“That’s great news. I’m holding out hope there’s some genuine reason he keeps showing up bruised the way he does, but my gut says it’s exactly what we think it is.” It hurts my heart that he carries himself like he’s permanently hurt. His ribs. His back. His arm. But there’s always a story. Football practice. Over-playful older brother. Falling in the park on his skateboard.
I’m relieved when a parent calls Chris’s name. I watch as he leads the parent back onto the school grounds.
“You like a guy in a shirt and tie, little chick?”
Every hair on my body prickles in anticipation as I turn to face Spark. His beard has grown in a little. His clothes have the dust of the highway on them. And yet, he still looks more handsome than any man I’ve ever met. His eyes are such a light blue, they remind me of thick ice over water. He’s all bold cheekbones and masculine jaw. In another life, he could be a model. I want to rest my aching head against his chest. Let him surround me and hold me upright for moment. A thin layer of jealousy laces his comment, and it feels good.
“You’ve been gone,” I say, instead of answering his question.
It’s been a whole week since he paid for brunch after throwing mine in the garbage. I enjoyed the peace of not seeing him. I also missed him. I’m waiting for this polarizing set of feelings I have about him to end. This time, I mostly want to smile at his cute name for me, while part of me wants to jump in the car and drive away from . . . temptation. From him.
“I was. I’m back. I got you something.” From his back pocket, he pulls a black furry pom-pom, but then I notice it’s so much more.
“What is it?”
Spark opens his palm. On a selection of silver hoops are . . . tools . . . things . . . oh my God.
“This is an alarm. You press this button, and you’ll deafen any fucker. This is a slim whistle so you can get attention. This is for your fingers.” It’s a small metal face of a cat with pointy ears. He takes my hand and slides two of my fingers through the eyes. The ears are now sharp, pointed weapons that protrude from my knuckles. “That’s a holder for a lipstick and the pom-pom is just fucking weird. But you need to keep it with you.”
He bought me things to keep me safe. For a moment, I forget about the nausea and the headache.
“Spark,” I say, trying to find the right words.
He tips his chin to study my face. “You okay?”
“Everything’s good,” I lie. He doesn’t need to know about my headache.
He stares me down for a second, then turns as if to walk back to his bike without a word.
“That’s it? You appear in my life, then disappear for a week, then just reappear to say hi and give me weapons?”
I’m yelling at his back.
Cool.
Shit.
He turns around, his face fierce. As if I said something horribly wrong. But he doesn’t pause, doesn’t give me room to breathe. He just pushes me back until my body is sandwiched between the cool steel and glass of my car and the heat of his chest.
“You want to know where I went?” he growls next to my ear.
“No,” I say, but even I know it sounds like a lie.
“I took a ride, Iris. A long fucking ride to get you out of my mind.”
I look up into his eyes. They appear darker now. More like thunder clouds. He looks like he hasn’t slept for a week. “And did you?” I whisper, my voice hoarse.
“I drove along the highway and thought about how you felt against my back that night I took you home from the restaurant. I stayed in a motel the first night and wondered what it would feel like to watch you dance. I stayed in Green Mountain National Forest and saw pines so green they reminded me of your fucking eyes. I grabbed a cinnamon bun with my coffee one afternoon and thought about how you had icing on your lips that last morning I saw you. I couldn’t stop thinking about you even though I fucking tried.”
“Spark,” I say. Wishing I could think of something else. But I can’t. His eyes and his body pin me in place.
And my body warms beneath his gaze. Because I’ve thought about him.
“And before I left, I spent time running down the guys who harassed you that morning.”
My heart drops at that. “You didn’t kill them, did you?”
Spark huffs. “You care more about them than you do us, little chick? Because if I knew you got a hard-on for neo-Nazi sickos, I could give you their address.”
His words slice, but beneath them, I can hear that I’ve upset him. “No. I don’t want you getting hurt on my account,” I splutter. “They did nothing more than try to get me to go for a drive with them. You didn’t need to put yourself in harm’s way for me, Spark.”
He laughs sadly. “I’ll always put myself in harm’s way for you. But for some reason, you seem to like lying to me.”