Hearing my compliments, she grinned at me and blushed herself as I spoke about her.
Mason on the other hand groaned, “Why are you so good for her instead of with me?” he joked, elbowing her.
“Well obviously I’m good for her. Miss. Robinson is awesome and amazing and—” she began counting on her fingers as she continued to praise me with positive words.
Mason looked my way, catching my eye. He let out a soft chuckle as he looked apologetic at me. With what I normally put up within a day with these children, this was a lovely break. If she wanted to compliment me, I wouldn’t stop her. Plus, she was too distracted to notice that our attention was more on each other than her.
“—and awesome!” she exclaimed, breathing heavily as she fought to get out her entire sentence in one breath.
“You already said awesome, Princess,” he pointed out as he pulled his eyes from mine to look back at her.
Looking at the time, I couldn’t believe how many minutes had already trickled by. Was I simply too distracted by him to notice? Clearing my throat, I handed my paper over to him. “This is her report in case you wanted to look further into how she’s doing,” I explained to him with pressed lips. “Unfortunately as much as I enjoyed hearing how great I am, I sadly have the next set of parents coming in soon so we’ll have to cut it here,” I told them, surprising myself with how disappointed I sounded.
Standing back up, they followed my lead and I led them over to the door. Holding my hand out, Olivia was quick to shake it before giving Mason the chance to do it once again. The warmth of his hand was more than welcoming as I found myself staring up at him, though I had no clue what it was I wanted to be said. This wasn’t the place for it anyway. If what I was feeling was real, then I would face it when that time came around.
When his hand fell from mine, he gave me one last smile before leaving the classroom.
Like the hopeless romantic that I was, I found myself staring at the doorway with my heart picking up in my chest.
What we had was a one-night stand, feelings weren’t supposed to form. Feelings led to being hurt all over again and love wasn’t supposed to be in my cards.
With the next set of parents arriving with their student, I had to shake the troubling thoughts out of my head before putting a smile on my face and shoving Mason to the back of my mind. Once I was back home, then I would try to figure out what these feelings were.