“I promise it will be good,” he coaxed after my hesitation turned into awkward silence. “I owe you one anyway. For Garmans that one time.”

“Oh yeah,” I smiled. “I forgot about that.”

“I’ll bring you something,” he declared. “You’ll love it.”

“Thank you.” I looked up and met his chocolate eyes, letting real gratitude shine through me. “Seriously, thank you. You might just save the day.”

He paused midstride and smiled disarmingly at me. “That’s the goal.”

We parted ways and I headed off to my classroom. I noticed that it was easier to face the day after our pleasant exchange. My stomach didn’t feel quite so violent and my headache had receded to a muted jackhammer.

Either the Tylenol had kicked in or Eli had healing powers on top of his superhero-lunch-bringing skills.

I thought about Eli the entire time I set up for the day. His interest in me was so unexpected. Sure, there had been mild flirting over the last couple years, but it had been harmless. He was just a good-looking guy that liked to have fun and I had been a married woman that liked the attention.

But I had never been serious, and I had never thought he was serious either.

My morning was a blur of unruly students and lectures on grammar. When I reached third period, which was a mixture of juniors and seniors, I was thankful for a class that didn’t need to learn the basics of the English language. Even I knew my morning lectures were boring. I had been fighting yawns for hours.

Third period was my most challenging class of the day, but it turned out to be exactly what I needed. I finally woke up thanks to the livelier class and our discussion on the Scarlet Letter. It was one of my favorite books to read and to teach, because even if I couldn’t get my students to actually read it, they all loved to share their opinions on adultery.

I mean, who didn’t?

“These people are so stupid,” Jay Allen declared, punctuating his opinion by slamming his book down on his desk. “It’s just a baby. It’s not like she was a serial killer or ate people or anything.”

I tried not to smile. Ate people? Tried and failed. “But it’s a different time period, Jay. The culture back then took sex, marriage, children outside of marriage and all other sins very seriously. It was their way of life.”

“Well, it’s a stupid way of life,” he grumbled mutinously. “Leave the woman alone. She already had a kid to take care of by herself. She had enough problems. It’s not like she had food stamps.”

“That’s true,” I agreed, happy with the direction of his thoughts. “There was no system put in place to protect her from starvation or poverty.”

Jay continued, shaking his head at Hester’s tragic circumstances, “Being a single mom is hard anyway, but at least my moms has help. And nobody’s making her stand in the middle of the city so they can yell bullshit at her.”

Andre Gonzalez snickered from the other side of the classroom. “That’s because ain’t nobody wants to stare at yo’ mom for longer than they have to. Hester was a hottie.”

Jay half rose out of his seat to defend his mother’s honor. A nervous twitch pulled at my gut and I wondered if I was going to have to call for help.

“Shut your mouth, Gonzalez,” Jay hollered. “Talk about my mom like that again and we’re going to have words.”

“Alright, enough,” I demanded with my most stern teacher voice. “Andre, if you talk about another student’s mother in my class again, I’ll send you to detention.” Jay smirked proudly until I turned to him and said, “And you, Mr. Allen, if you threaten another student again, you’ll find yourself in the same place.”

Silence reigned once again so I tried to refocus them. “How do you know Hester Prynne was a hottie, Andre?” I doubted he had read his assignment so it took me by surprise that he was making judgment calls on her.

He stared at me for a long minute before finally deciding to answer. “She got the pastor to do the nasty with her, didn’t she? That was like a… a… sin or whatever. He was probably a virgin and he knew he’d go to hell for it. It takes a certain kind of woman for a man to choose hell.”

I rocked back on my heels, amazed at his insight. Andre was just as bad as Jay most days, at least when he chose to come to class. Some days he was worse.

“That’s a good point,” I said quietly. “Or maybe he was just desperate? Maybe he just wanted to get laid?”

The kids laughed at me, some of them threw out crass comments and escalated the conversation beyond appropriate school discussion, but at least they were engaging.

“Nah,” Jay spoke up over the raucous. “He wasn’t sleeping around. It was just her. Just this one girl.”

“So he loved her?” I prompted.

“Sure,” Jay agreed. “True love. It’s not just the booty that would have made him stray from his vows. He needed something stronger than that.”

“And did she love him?”

Jay nodded as if it was obvious. “I mean, her husband was a psycho, but she loved that Dimmesdale guy. She wanted to run away with him all those years later.”

I let his words settle over the class and wondered if these kids knew anything about love. How could they? I didn’t know anything about it and I was almost twice their age.

“So? What do you think about that?” I stared at them, but nobody was brave enough to answer. “Is true love enough? Was it enough for Hester and the way she was forced to live? Does it make their crimes forgivable? Does it redeem them?”

“No,” Andre announced loudly. “It just made them stupid.”

The bell rang and the kids jumped out of their seats before I could say anything more. Besides, there wasn’t really anything else to say.

I was inclined to agree with him.

“Don’t forget about your Scarlet Letter project! Now that we’ve finished the book, you need to be thinking about how you’re going to represent it to the class.” I hollered after them. “I want to hear your proposals on Monday!” They grumbled as they filed out of my room, but it didn’t bother me.

I felt like we’d made a breakthrough today. Somehow, despite my hung-over brain and my students’ usual lack of enthusiasm, we’d come together on social issues they could all relate to.

How many of them had single moms?

How many of them had been abandoned by people they loved?

Kara stepped into my classroom and I lunged for the trashcan. “Don’t puke!”

After a series of mumbled curse words, she collapsed in my desk chair. “Don’t say that word. God, don’t ever say that word again.”

I breathed a sigh of relief that she wasn’t going to toss her cookies all over my desk and smiled. “Did you have fun last night, Kara? Are you super happy we went out for hump day?”

“I want to die,” she mumbled. “Why the hell did I let you talk me into tequila shots?”

I tried not to laugh. Er, I tried not to laugh loud enough that she heard me.

“Am I interrupting?” Eli asked from the doorway.

I turned around and gave him a smile. “Nope, not at all. Kara is just dying.”

“I can see that,” he chuckled.

“Tequila,” she winced.

Eli turned to me with his eyebrows raised and a playful smile on his lips. “Death by tequila, not a pleasant way to go.”

“Eli, I hate you,” she grumbled.

“At least you don’t have to share your lunch with her,” he said to me.

The heavenly scent of fried foods had made its way over to me and my stomach rumbled loudly. “What did you bring me?”

“Ruby’s.”

“Oh, my god. You’re truly my hero!”

He set three Styrofoam containers on my desk and opened them slowly. My mouth started watering as soon as I saw the fried, crispy lumpias and spiced tocilog.

“This is my ultimate hangover cure,” he explained. “Ruby’s fixes everything.”

Kara winced, “Not everything…” she slipped out of my chair and practically collapsed on the ground. She curled up into a ball and tucked her arm under her head. “Wake me up in ten minutes.”