I watched Everett go with a mixture of sadness and pride. Obviously, I wasn't pleased that our time together had been interrupted, but I knew it was for a good reason. And seeing the determination on his face when he talked about catching the drug dealers made me feel proud of him, proud to have a noble, honorable man like him in my life.
I also felt guilty about misjudging him before, about making assumptions and thinking that he’d ditched me and stood me up to go drinking with his friend. Now that I knew the truth, I felt bad.
I'd been only too happy to volunteer to help him with Jane if he needed me to. He had a lot on his plate at the moment, and I wanted to do what I could to help ease the burden.
I really felt like talking to someone about all of this, so I decided to call up Kerry to see how things were going. The thought of calling Angie to see how she fared with that guy last night did cross my mind as well, but I figured she might be pretty hungover after all the drinking she had been doing. I shot Kerry a text to see if she had time for quick a Skype session. Seeing her face when we talked always made it feel like she wasn’t so far away. She immediately returned my text, and so I made my way to my laptop and booted up my computer.
"Hey girl!" I said as she answered.
"Hey there, Viv," she replied, smiling. I turned my webcam on so that she could see me, too.
"Wow," she remarked. "You're looking happy! What's going on?"
I chuckled and blushed a little.
"I know that look. It's a guy, isn't it?" she continued.
"Yeah, it's a guy."
She beamed a broad ear-to-ear grin at me. "It's that hot guy from across the street, am I right?"
I nodded, and couldn't help beaming out a huge smile myself.
"Wow, Viv! What was his name again? He was that high school principal guy, right?"
"Everett. Everett James."
"Ooh, that's a sexy-sounding name."
"Yeah, well it fits then because he’s sexy as hell," I informed her.
"Well go on! Don't hold back, give me all of the juicy details!"
"I don't know about juicy, but there are plenty of details. Remember I told you I babysat his kid?"
"Yeah, I do."
"She's such a little cutie pie, seriously."
"You told me that already. I want the details about the dad. And what about her mom? Did you find out anything about that?"
"I did. Seems her mom was...well, she was an alcoholic, apparently. She walked out on him and Jane."
"What?! Wow, she must be one cold-hearted bitch. No way I could ever leave my kids," Kerry stated adamantly.
"Right? Well anyway, as horrible as that is, at least Jane has a loving father."
"I guess. So, what have you and he been doing? Details, remember?" she teased.
"Well, we were supposed to go on a date last night, but he, uh, he stood me up – kinda."
"Say what? What kinda decent guy stands a girl up on the first date? And if that’s the case, why the hell are you smiling like that?"
"No, no, it was just a big mix-up. He got an emergency call and had to leave 15 minutes before our date started. And he forgot his phone, so he couldn't call and let me know about it."
"Hmm. What kind of problems does a high school principal have that are emergencies on a Friday night?" Kerry asked.
"Actually, there's some pretty serious stuff going on at his school. There's a massive drug problem."