"Well, she was precious like a flower. She grew wild, wild but innocent. A perfect prayer in a desperate hour. She was everything beautiful and different
Stupid boy, you can't fence that in, Stupid boy..." -- Keith Urban 'Stupid Boy'
8
"Miss Kendall?"
"Yes?" She answered Betty the secretary as she passed the main office. She stopped and entered, noting a black vase with white polka dots full of her favorite flower - purple anemones.
"These are for you," Betty smiled mischievously as she pointed to the flowers.
"Oh, well. Do you know who left them?" She was puzzled for sure.
She shrugged. "No note. I looked. And the florist dropped them off, so..." Tessa nodded and thanked Betty before heading down the hallway to her classroom with her soda.
"Who are the flowers from?" Blake asked when Tessa re-entered her room.
Tessa shrugged.
"Oh come on," Nate laughed. "You know they're from Jarrett. I swear if I hadn't told him you liked flowers, he'd still be driving me crazy. What did you do to him? Did you slip something in his drink the other night?"
Tessa laughed as she tore a piece off her sandwich. "I was myself," she laughed. "I swear I didn't do anything."
"She's just a goddess," Blake commented and Tessa rolled her eyes. "What? You are! At least you have boobs and curves. You're like double gifted."
Tessa snorted and nearly choked on her food from trying not to laugh so loud. "Double gifted? Seriously? I love that one. I hate them. Its impossible to find clothes that look right."
"Ok, can we please talk about something else other than your "gifts"." Nate made quotations in the air when he said the word gifts. "Its really starting to make me feel really awkward."
"Aw, just think when Jarrett starts here next week we'll have two guys to make extremely awkward," Tessa told Blake and smiled widely as Blake pumped her arm up and down.
"Woot, woot!"
"Hold on guys, my phone's ringing," she laughed as she searched for her phone in her purse.
"Aw, she's already becoming one of us! She didn't say ya'll," Nate teased as they watched her dig aimlessly until she finally found what she was looking for.
"Hello?"
"Hey, you sound out of breath," it was Teddy. She was surprised when she found she was a little disappointed that it wasn't Jarrett.
"Yeah, I couldn't find my phone and we were laughing."
"We?"
"Blake and Nate and I," she said.
"Oh, ok. Cool. So um, I just wanted to inform you that you are now the proud godmother of a baby boy." He told her. "Samuel is his name."
"Why am I the godmother? Shouldn't it be someone that's not, like, hundreds of miles away?" She laughed.
"Well, you are the closest. Lauren is in another country," Teddy informed her with a chuckle.
"Oh yeah. So everyone's ok? I thought Hailey was due, like, next month."
"Yeah, well, Hailey went into labor last night and they realized she was actually farther along than they thought and he ended up being, like, nine pounds." Teddy said matter-of-factly.
"I'd die." She commented and let out a laugh.
"Yeah, me too. So how are you doing godmother?" He joked.
"I'm good. I actually got flowers today," she smiled as she said it.
"Oh yeah? From that guy?"
"That guy? Yes, that guy." She laughed silently at the way he didn't say his name. "And I think its sweet. I like flowers."
"Yeah, well... That's good I guess," he sounded a little disappointed. She wondered if it was because he hadn't ever known that she liked getting flowers or if it was because he was jealous that someone was making a move for her, even though he was with Jessica.
"Hey Ted, I need to go, OK? I have like five minutes to finish my lunch, and then I have to monitor a pep rally."
"Oh, OK." There he was with the disappointment again. If he was trying to put her on a guilt trip, it was starting to work.
"I'll call you later, OK? You can help me plan my outfit for the Fall Festival."
"OK," he sighed before hanging up the phone.
She turned to her friends and smiled. "I'm a godmother!"
- - - -
"Why won't you tell me where you are?"
"Because," she sighed. "I... I wanted things to work between me and Jason."
"And that went real well, didn't it?" He laughed sarcastically. She rolled her eyes angrily. Only a second ago, they had been talking about how their days had been, and now it was this.
"Ted," she warned.
"No, seriously. Do you think he didn't know about me? About how every night after he'd leave, I'd be there? I mean, seriously Tess. You are an open book."
"No I'm not. He didn't know. He would have said something." She said through clenched teeth.
"Then why did he leave you?"
She didn't say anything for a minute, because it still hurt to say it. To say that she had been played herself when she thought everything was fine. "He left me for a girl named Beth, OK? Apparently they were high school sweethearts or some nonsense like that. Why do you care anyway? You have Jessica, and whatever we had is gone, Ted. OK? I am happy here, and I like this life. And you seem to be pretty happy too."
"What if things were different... What if... What if I - "
"Ted," she warned again as she felt tears start to form. They burned her eyes. She didn't want him to say it. She didn't want Jessica to get hurt because of her. Jessica was an innocent bystander, and she didn't deserve to be in a love triangle.
"What Tess?" Why was he so angry? They were silent for a while. A long while. She was crying quietly, hoping he couldn't hear. But he did. And it tore him up inside, but he was angry with her, and he couldn't talk to her anymore. "This is stupid," he whispered.
And he hung up. He threw his phone across the room, not caring that it would probably shatter, leaving him phoneless until the next day when he could buy a new one. He laid back onto the bed and stared holes in the ceiling until he finally fell asleep hours later.
She laid on her bed, curled on her side, staring at the phone as it lay face up on her bed, taunting her. It only made her cry more. She never thought she'd cry over Teddy. What if Jason had known and not told her? What if she was just a stupid girl, thinking she was doing the right thing?
- - - -
Thank God the next day was Saturday. She woke up around noon, still in the gym shorts and baggy t-shirt she had been in the night before when she talked to Ted. Someone was knocking on her door.
She snapped her body up as her mind acknowledged that someone was at the door. What if it was Jarrett? She couldn't answer the door looking like she had just woken up after a week-long drinking binge. She ran to the bathroom and ran a brush through her hair, then grabbed that ridiculous maroon hoodie and threw it over her head as she ran down the hall and slid on the hardwood floor in front of the door.
But after flinging the door open, it was just Blake. "Wow, mornings are not good to you." At least Blake was honest.
"If you only knew the night I had," she sighed as she let her in and flopped onto the used couch.
"What are you doing?" Blake asked, only to get an oblivious look in return. "We're decorating your room today? Did you forget or something?"
"What?"
"Nevermind. Just get in the shower and put on something decent for human eyes," Blake laughed as she shoved her friend in the direction of the bedroom.
- - - -
"So you told me this the other day?" Tessa laughed. "Wow. I'm so forgetful."
"It's OK. Anyway, so about this night you had," Blake pried, and had it been Hailey or Lauren, she would have completely ignored the question and refused to answer it. But she refused to lie anymore.
"Ted called. And he was mad."
"About Jarrett?" Tessa nodded. "But he's got a girlfriend."
Tessa nodded again. "A point I continued to make. And then he brought up how I won't tell him where I am. And I finally told him it was because I knew he would have followed me and I wanted the relationship I had with Jason to work out, and with him around that never would have happened."
"Right," Blake commented as the two got out of the car and made their way into a department store in the mall. She continued to tell her everything, even though she already knew it. "It sounds like he's not over you. But you just need to forget about him, OK? Let's make today a girls day. We're going to buy stuff for your house. And then we're going to watch 'A Walk To Remember' because it comes on at seven and its my all time favorite. And we're going to pig out on junk food."
Tessa smiled. "That sounds like the perfect day."
- - - -
"I'm glad we left these walls white," Tessa said as she and Blake stood in the doorway of her newly decorated bedroom. "You are a genius."
"Thank you, thank you very much," Blake giggled as they stood there for another minute, admiring their handiwork.
"I can't believe we installed those by ourselves," Tessa laughed as she eyed the slate blue curtains that stretched from floor to ceiling and were much more attractive than the ugly blinds that covered the sliding glass door that led out to her balcony. "And you were right about the pur- I mean violet sheets and the white bedspread. It does match the curtains."
"Its all in the same color family," Blake spoke as if she was one of those famous interior decorators on HGTV. "And your flowers from Jarrett make a nice little accent, along with all those picture frames you have to fill now. I don't know how you're going to do that."
"Oh trust me, I will." She laughed. "Hey, its almost time for the pizza to get here."
"Oh yeah, come on," Blake laughed as she linked arms with Tessa and walked beside her down the hall. "Five bucks says he's blond and tall."
"Ok, five bucks says he's a middle-aged man with grease stains on his pants," Tessa laughed as the doorbell rang, which sent them into another fit of giggles.
Tessa opened the door, and it turned out that neither of them was right. The delivery boy was Josh Barnes from Tessa's second period class. "Oh hey Miss K," he laughed as he flung his shaggy brown hair out of his eyes.
"Hey Josh," she smiled as she handed him the money. "And you can keep the change."
"Thanks Miss K. See ya Monday," Josh waved as he walked back out to his car.
"Ok, so we were both wrong." Blake giggled as the two of them found seats and turned the TV to the correct channel. "Have I mentioned how much I love this movie?"
"Have I mentioned how much I love Shane West?" Tessa giggled as they watched Shane West pull up in his little muscle car in the opening scene.
- - - -
"Let's go get ice cream," Tessa said as the movie finished and Blake dried her eyes.
"Ice cream? OK," Blake laughed as they grabbed their coats. "Hey can we stop by, like Walgreens or something? I want to dye my hair."
"Sure," Tessa said as they got into her Jeep. It only took a minute to get to the ice cream shop and actually get their ice cream since it was the middle of October and it was freezing outside. They ate it on the way to the store.
"So what color should I get? I'm thinking about a light brown. I'm so tired of being blond," she said as she played with the ends of her long hair. "I wish I had your color. Its like, the perfect shade of strawberry blond."
"You think?" Blake nodded as she ate the last sthingyful of her pumpkin-flavored ice cream. "Well thanks."
"That's it! I'm going brunette!" She announced as the two of them hopped out of the car.
"Oh my gosh, I just realized how short you are. You're shorter than the stolen item detector thingy." Tessa said as the two of them walked through the front door.
"Just don't call me a midget. I'm taller than the legal age, OK?"
"I know. Wait-what?" Tessa burst out laughing. "You're taller than the legal age?"
"You know what I mean," Blake said as she laughed along as well. She found just the right shade of brown, then paid for her merchandise.
- - - -
After dyeing Blake's hair, they stayed up way past midnight talking about everything from the other teacher's at school to Nate and Jarrett to music, movies, and television shows. They even prank called Nate a couple times, asking what he was wearing, and just where did he put the last jar of peanut butter?
Tessa was beginning to feel like this was exactly the right place. She had always wanted to get out of Georgia - even before Teddy. He couldn't determine where she would live her life or how she could live her life. Sure, he was one of those people she could never live without, but she had needed her space for a long time, and he wanted her there, with him. She wanted to see where things went with Jarrett, and plus, she really, really loved her new town.
She realized that she was not stupid - he was stupid boy for thinking making her come home would be easy, especially when she didn't want to live there anymore.
