Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 137588 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 688(@200wpm)___ 550(@250wpm)___ 459(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137588 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 688(@200wpm)___ 550(@250wpm)___ 459(@300wpm)
“I think you have a very gifted and colourful life ahead of you, Helen.”
“You do?”
“Yes, I do.”
Her eyes twinkled. “What about your mum? Did she like numbers, too?”
“Not so much. She was more for people than money, she was a nurse. For the love of it, not the salary. My father earned plenty enough for all of us. He’d go to church every Sunday, for the public face more than anything else, but he found his God in the stock market. My brothers, too.”
“My mum is in care work. She looks after the old folk down at Hawthorn House.”
“And does she also think you need to keep your feet on the ground?”
Helen shrugged. “I dunno, she thinks whatever Dad thinks, most of the time, anyway. Sometimes she changes his mind though, when he’s being mean.”
“My mother saved my backside from the belt a few times. I’d have taken a lot worse without her intervention.”
“My dad has never hit me, he just moans.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” I checked my watch. “You need to be home for six? If so, we’ll have to leave soon.”
“No…” Her tone was so eager. Cute and eager. “It’s no problem. They’ll put mine in the oven… and I can heat it up later, no big deal… unless, unless you need to be somewhere…”
I should’ve said yes. Should’ve made my excuses and driven her straight back to real life, where I was her teacher and this was nothing. “No,” I said. “I don’t.” I lit another cigarette to keep my hands busy. “So, what else? What else do you see?”
She turned to face me, hitching her leg up on the rock and gracing me with a view of her thigh, almost up to her crotch. She didn’t notice, and I tried not to look, but her skin was so pale and so beautiful. It would have been so easy to touch her, so very easy. I made myself focus on her words. “I see the way you love art, the way you love the masters, the beauty you see in everything. You see things that I see. Sometimes I see something beautiful, something that inspires me, even something simple and ordinary that other people overlook. A play of shadow in the art room, the texture of spilled paint, the gleam of light in a water glass… and then I see you’ve seen it, too.”
“We share an artistic eye.”
“Earlier you said it was more than that,” she whispered, and she was nervous again, her eyes darting to her lap and she hitched her skirt down. “What did you mean?”
“I meant we’re cut from similar cloth,” I said. “It’s not just the artistic eye, it’s the way of viewing the world. You could cut through the differences, the personality traits, the life history, even the age gap, and what you’d have left is the same creative current running through us both. That’s what I meant. That’s how I see it.”
“So, we are friends, right, Mr Roberts? That’s what it means?”
The hopefulness in her eyes gave me shivers, and my cock thumped afresh. She shifted her legs, and her goose-pimpled shin pressed against my thigh. I swallowed before succumbing to the inevitable, crossing another line that should never be crossed.
“It’s Mark,” I said. “You should call me Mark.”
***
Helen
Mark. Mark Roberts. Mark, Mark, Mark.
Kiss me, Mark. Touch me, Mark. That feels so good, Mark.
I love you, Mark.
I’m in love with you, Mark.
“That’s going to take some getting used to,” I said, and I was smiling. I couldn’t stop smiling.
“Don’t get too used to it. I’ll still have to be Mr Roberts in school time.”
My heart fluttered at the implication. In school time. I daren’t even dream, daren’t hope, but my spirit was soaring, here in this special place, this secret place, with Mark. Mark. My smile must have spoken volumes.
“What?” he said. “It’s just a name, Helen.” But he was smiling, too. “I’m glad it pleases you.”
“It does. I like it, Mark.”
He laughed. “That actually sounds quite strange. Fewer and fewer people call me Mark these days, it seems.”
“Why?” The question tumbled out.
He shrugged. “I guess it means I see more and more people in school, and less outside of it. That, or I’m becoming an increasingly grumpy old bastard and nobody wants to speak with me anymore.”
“I don’t believe that.” The breeze picked up again and I pulled my shins towards me, rubbed them with my palms.
“Give it time.”
I’d give it all the time in the world, and it wouldn’t matter. His eyes caught the last of the sun, reflected it back to me, and his irises were so blue. Like the summer sky on still water. His features were so strong… so dark… so… beautiful. My skin still burned from his touch, from the strength of his grip as he’d helped me over the fence. I wish I’d have fallen, tripped on the railing and toppled into his arms, and he’d have caught me and held me tight. I wished he was still touching me. I wished the world was full of fences and he’d have to help me over every single one for the rest of time.