The Teacher by Freida McFadden

Author:Freida McFadden [McFadden, Freida]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-02-06T00:00:00+00:00

Just finishing up. Will be there in two minutes.

I stare at the message until it disappears from the screen. I love the messages he sends me. Every time I get one, I read it and reread it for the entire sixty seconds.

After the message vanishes, I take out the poem I wrote for Nathaniel and read it one more time. Lotus said it was sappy, but I don’t think it is. It really does feel like my love for Nathaniel is this endless black hole. Lotus just doesn’t understand because she has never been in love. Really, I feel sorry for her.

The door to the darkroom cracks open, and I get that jolt of excitement like I always do practically anytime I see Nathaniel. But especially in here because I know he’s going to touch me. And I love the way his face lights up when he sees me.

“Addie,” he breathes. “My sweet Adeline.”

“Hi.” I always feel weirdly shy when he comes in here. It takes me a few minutes to warm up. “How are you?”

“Really good now that I’m here.” He crosses the small space and wastes no time in kissing me. Good thing he doesn’t get shy. “And there’s something I want to show you.”

“What is it?”

In the dim light, his cheeks color. “I wrote a poem—for you.”

This absolutely takes my breath away. He wrote a poem for me? How could that be? I’m not the kind of person who men write poems for. And yet he means it. Nathaniel Bennett wrote me a poem.

I’m going to faint from happiness.

“Do you want to hear it?” he asks, now shy himself.

I nod. “Very much.”

He pulls a scrap of notebook paper from his pocket. I recognize his handwriting now, and I can see the scribbles on the page. Words he wrote just for me. I listen in rapt attention as he recites the verses:

Life nearly passed me by

Then she

Young and alive

With smooth hands

And pink cheeks

Showed me myself

Took away my breath

With cherry-red lips

Gave me life once again

When he finishes the last line, I can barely breathe myself. It’s such a beautiful poem. Nobody has ever written anything like that for me before. Hudson was my friend, but he was no poet. Even if something had happened between the two of us, he never would have written anything like that for me.

“I love it,” I whisper. “So much.”

“I mean it,” he says softly. “You gave me my life back. You have no idea how dreary my world was before you came along.”

He laces his fingers into mine, and we just stand like that for a moment, staring at each other. I can’t even bear to show him what I wrote for him after hearing his beautiful verses. It seems so stupid and immature by comparison. I’ll have to keep working on it. Until I write something worthy of him.

“I think about you all the time.” He reaches out to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. “Do you think about me?”

“Every moment of the day,” I answer truthfully.

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