An (Almost) Perfect Love Story (Love Story Book Three) (2 page)

“Settle down, please,” I called out, struggling against the urge to raise my voice.
Deep breaths, Ashley,
I told myself. It’s not their fault that they’re little. Or that it’s February in Michigan and everyone has a cold.

“Tony, put that down,” I said sternly, watching as the five year old quickly replaced the stapler on my desk and turned to me, smiling sheepishly. I crossed my arms and shook my head at him. It was the second time that day that I’d had to remind him my desk was off limits. “Go move your name to yellow,” I told him, pointing to the behavior chart across the room. He slumped his little shoulders and trudged off to the chart. Tony was adorable, and he knew it. He also had a hard time following directions of any kind. I would have to have another talk with him.

“Everyone should be at the carpet by now,” I said. “Last chance to get a stuffed animal or blanket if you want one.”

I grabbed Christie’s arm as she went hurtling past, heading for the hallway. “Where are you going?”

“I left my blankie in my backpack,” she said.

“Sorry, lady,” I told her, steering her toward the toy bin. “You know you’re supposed to bring it to your cubby in the morning if you want it for story time. We can’t all be running out into the hallway everyday. You can pick one of my stuffed animals if you want.”

Christie sighed dramatically, but obediently walked over to the toy bin. I turned my attention back to Tony, who was sulking near the behavior chart. He had yet to move his name card to the section that would indicate he’d been warned. “Yellow, Tony,” I called. “Now, please.”

“Miss Ashley,” a little voice said from somewhere near my knees. I looked down to see Amanda, one of my favorite students, tugging at my pencil skirt. “I can’t find my elephant. I can’t listen to story time without my elephant!” Her wide blue eyes looked close to filling with tears, and I felt a pang of guilt for my earlier irritation. It was too easy to forget that my students were so young, many of them away from their homes and parents for the first time.

I took Amanda’s hand. “I bet your elephant is in your cubby. Let’s go look.”

Once I had Amanda sorted out, I led her over to the carpet, where most of the class had gathered with their various blankets and stuffed animals, ready for story time. I settled into my rocking chair and breathed deeply. This was my favorite time of the day. The kids were sleepy after lunch and recess, and they all looked so cute cuddled up, listening to me read.
This
was why I loved my job.

No sooner had I opened the
Frog and Toad are Friends
did a little hand waving from the back of the carpet distract me. “Do you need something, Tony?”

“I had an accident,” he announced proudly, to the laughs and squeals of his classmates.

I sighed and set down the book. Story time would have to wait.

* * *

“Remind me again why I went into teaching.”

I looked up from my desk to see Susan, a fifth grade teacher and one of my closest friends at Robert Burns Elementary, leaning against the doorway. She looked exhausted, which was a pretty typical look for teachers at 3:30 p.m. in an elementary school.

“Because you want to make a difference,” I told her, my voice flat. She laughed. “And because you love it, really.”

She came over to my desk and plopped onto one of the few adult-size chairs in the room. “I’m not feeling it today,” she told me. “The kids are running around like little monsters, I swear. I had to send Bill Carter down to the office for calling Mindy Parks a douchebag.” I burst out laughing. “Seriously, where does a ten year old even learn something like that?”

“TV,” I said, grinning at her. “Don’t you know it’s full of garbage these days?” Sometimes I envied Susan, working with the older kids. She certainly got to spend more of her time teaching and less of it making sure her students had gotten the hang of sitting still. But I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep a straight face if I heard a kid say something like that.

“How were your kids?” she asked, brushing her red hair away from her face. “Tell me they were crazy, too. I’ll be depressed if mine were the only ones acting like hellions.”

“They’re not hellions,” I told her, laughing again. Susan had a flair for the dramatic, and she tended to be sarcastic. But I had seen her in action as a teacher, and I knew she loved it, regardless of how much she complained. “My kids were a little crazy, but nothing out of the ordinary. It’s winter, they’re cooped up.”

“Yeah, just wait until next week,” she grumbled. “Valentine’s Day. Kill me now.”

“Oh, come on,” I said. “Valentine’s Day is fun! The kids have a blast!”

“The kids have too
much
fun,” she said darkly. “They get all hopped up on candy and the party atmosphere. It’s impossible to get any work done. And it’s worse when they’re older, ’cause then you have all the boyfriend, girlfriend drama.” She gave a mock shudder. “I hate Valentine’s Day.”

“You’re turning into a cynic,” I warned. “Come on! Don’t you love making the mailboxes for their cards? And decorating the room? It’s fun!”

Susan just rolled her eyes. “Whatever, Ashley. Valentine’s Day at school is no better than Valentine’s Day in my personal life. Both are disappointing and frustrating.”

“Susan!” I laughed. “You’re married.”

“All the more reason to hate Valentine’s Day,” she muttered. “Romance dies the second that ring goes on your finger, Ash.”

I made a face at her. “I hope I never end up so jaded.”

Susan just laughed. “Oh, you will,” she said, pointing a finger at me. “I know you think you have it made with your cutie pie boyfriend, but just you wait. Once they know they have you, they completely give up on trying to impress you.”

“Chris isn’t like that,” I said staunchly. Friend or not, I wasn’t going to let her talk crap about Chris.

“Okay,” she said, clearly unconvinced. “So what does Mr. Romantic have planned for Valentine’s Day, anyhow?”

I made a face at her moniker but decided to let it go. Not that I was complaining, but Chris
wasn’t
Mr. Romantic. Far from it. Of the two of us, I was certainly the one who’d gotten the romance gene. But Chris still made an effort to let me know how much I meant to him. What else could I ask for?

“I’m not sure,” I told Susan. “He says it’s a secret.”

“I think that’s code for he hasn’t come up with anything yet.” I stuck my tongue out at her and she grinned. “Joking. I hope he really has something nice planned for you. Whenever Ted tells me something is a secret, it usually means he forgot to make plans.”

I laughed along with her. Susan had been married for nearly ten years now. As much as she complained about her husband, Ted, I knew she really loved him, and their two sons. At least, I was pretty sure she did…

“Anyhow,” Susan said, standing. “A couple of us are gonna go for burgers and beer. You wanna come?”

I gestured at my desk. “Maybe next time? I want to get these lesson plans done before I leave.”

“Big plans this weekend?”

“Just some friends coming over.” My voice was casual, but I felt a little rush of excitement. I had made plans to spend the evening with most of my favorite people—Chris, Ryan, and Emily. Ryan had been traveling a lot for work lately, and Emily and I had both been spending too much time with our respective boyfriends and not enough time together. The four of us had been inseparable since freshman year of college, long before Chris and I started dating. The fierce foursome, Ryan liked to say. It had been way too long since the whole gang had been together.

“Well, have fun,” Susan said. “I promise I’ll be in a better mood by Monday.”

I grinned at her. “I expect you’ll be your old moody self by Tuesday morning, at the latest.”

Susan snorted and walked to the door. “You know me too well. Have a good weekend, Ash.”

“You, too,” I called after her.

I looked down at my lesson plans, sighing a little.
Get it done now, and you’ll have the rest of the weekend to yourself.
With thoughts of the white wine I was sure Emily would have chilled for me by the time I got home, I put my head down and got to work.

Chapter Three

As expected, Emily had a cheap bottle of white wine waiting in the fridge when I arrived back at the apartment. “Hey, Ash!” she called out from her bedroom when I opened the front door. “Wine’s in the fridge. I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Hi,” I called back, dropping my bag and slipping out of my heels. Emily constantly teased me for dressing up for work. “You run around after six year olds all day,” she would say. “Why not do it in tennis shoes?” It was hard to explain to someone who didn’t care about fashion how much better a really cute pair of peep-toed heels could make your day.

I headed to the kitchen, smiling at the sight of two wine glasses on the table. Emily and I often celebrated the end of our workweek with wine. Now that she was running her own business, her schedule wasn’t as regular as mine; lately it seemed like she’d had to stay late on Fridays almost every week.

I grabbed the pinot grigio from the fridge. As I started to pour, Emily appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, wrapped up in her old plaid bathrobe, her hair wet from a shower. “Hey,” she said. “Ooh, you found the wine. Goodie.”

I barely managed to suppress a sigh at the sight of Emily. Even fresh from a shower, sans makeup and clad in frayed flannel, Emily was beautiful. It was hard not to be jealous of her sometimes. Where I was on the shorter side, Emily was tall and thin with an athletic build I would never manage to achieve, even if I did manage to go to the gym more than once or twice a year.

To add insult to injury, Emily had long, straight blonde hair that I would have killed for, though she often complained that it wouldn’t take a curl to save her life. I could not relate as I had been blessed—or cursed, depending on the humidity—with an overabundance of mousey brown curls. I did my best to combat the mousiness with regular appointments with a stylist who somehow managed to get golden highlights to peek out through the mess of curls. I had recently let him talk me into cutting my hair into a longish bob. He had assured me I’d look like Sarah Jessica Parker, my style icon, from the fourth season of
Sex and the City
, when Carrie cut her hair after breaking up with Aidan. On good days, I liked the new style, but on frizzy days, I longed for the sleek control of my best friend’s long locks.

Emily joined me at the kitchen table. “How was your day?”

“Pretty tiring,” I admitted. “Kids were hyper. But it’s Friday, that’s typical.”

“I still get hyper on Fridays,” she said, laughing.

“How was your day?”

Emily groaned in response. “I have the whiniest client right now. Seriously, he’s driving me crazy. He never wants to do any work, he complains about every exercise I assign him. I’m starting to dread it every time I see his name on the schedule.”

I wrinkled my nose at her. “Why don’t you pass him off on someone else?” I asked. “Isn’t that the point of being the boss?”

Emily laughed. “True. Maybe I will someday.”

I smiled at her. “Yeah, right. You like the challenge, I bet. You’d be pissed if someone else managed to get through to him.”

She made a face at me. “You know me so well. So, what’s on the agenda tonight?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Ryan is pushing pretty hard for dancing.”

“What else is new?” she muttered. Ryan was forever trying to get us to go dancing with him. I was usually happy to comply, since I enjoyed dancing myself, but Emily and Chris were generally much harder to convince.

“Well what do you want to do?” I asked. “And don’t say something lame like you want to go to the movies. Or stay in. We all barely see each other anymore, I want to go out.”

“You’re right,” she said. “I think we should make a night of it, too. You’ll notice that I took a shower.”

I laughed. “Oh, lucky us. You actually bathed.”

She tossed a napkin at me. “Funny. I just meant that I was gonna let you do my hair and makeup. But if you’d rather tease…”

“No, no, I’ll do it!” I said eagerly. Forever the tomboy, Emily’s personal style could best be described as casual. Maybe even hyper-casual. Whenever she agreed to let me help her get ready, I jumped at the chance. She was way too pretty to be forever dressed down in jeans and T-shirts, though her boyfriend, Elliot didn’t seem to mind in the slightest.

“When are the boys coming over?” I asked, looking up at the clock over the sink. “Do I have time to shower, too?”

“Ryan said he’d be here around seven,” she said. “You have plenty of time.”

Since I had so much time, I decided to take a bath instead. I was kind of a sucker for baths. Give me a bottle of bubble bath and a good romance novel, and I was a happy girl. Chris liked to tease me about my ever-increasing collection of exotic bath oils, but I still couldn’t help buying them whenever something new caught my eye. I brought my wine glass in with me and waited while the tub filled with hot water. I added my favorite bubbles and sighed with happiness when I sank into the foamy hot water, enveloping myself in the heady scent of jasmine.

As I sipped my wine, I found myself thinking about the conversation I’d had with Susan at school. I knew she was cynical in nature, and that her attitude about her marriage probably had little to do with the institution itself. She’d gotten married very early and had struggled to raise her first born while going back to school for her teaching degree. I know it wasn’t easy for her, but I was sure she really felt it was all worth it. It was probably just her way, to complain like she did.

I, on the other hand, had always believed firmly in true love. Emily teased me for being too romantic, but I couldn’t help it; I had always been that way. It wasn’t my fault, not really, not when I grew up in the house that I did. My parents had the perfect marriage, the perfect relationship. They had been high school sweethearts and had stayed together ever since, neither dating anyone else. They’d been in love since the moment they laid eyes on each other. Now they had the perfect life, the perfect house, three happy kids, and a full social life filled with friends. I felt a happy little thrill, thinking about them. I knew that a lot of people didn’t think that kind of fairytale love existed anymore, but how could I doubt it? It was impossible when I grew up watching it in real life.