Lean on Me
Copyright© 2025 by Danny January
Chapter 7
Romance Sex Story: Chapter 7 - The continuing chronicles of Jack Pierce. Autumn of 1982. The chronicles, in order are: 1. Feasting with a Silver Spoon 2. Summertime and the Livin' is Easy 3. Something Fishy Going On 4. Centerfield 5. Tourist Season 6. Lean on Me They are progressive and not meant to be stand-alone stories.
Caution: This Romance Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including mt/ft Consensual Heterosexual Fiction
On Sunday morning, I decided to start with a run, then work on my journal and homework at The Wappoo Cut. I parked on East Arctic near 5th Street. I’d loosened up and was settling into a nice pace when a familiar face came running toward me from the opposite direction. How often did she run, anyway?
“Hey, Sport, want some company?” she hollered as she approached.
“If I won’t slow you down.”
“Follow me and we’ll both slow down,” she said.
We turned right at 9th Street, cutting across the boardwalk to the beach. I started toward the packed sand near the water.
“Uh-uh. Up here, where it’s soft.”
“Holy crap, we’ll be running twelve-minute miles,” I said.
“If we’re lucky. I’ve run ten already, and this is my resistance training.”
“Resistance training for running?”
“We don’t have hills here, sweetheart. This works just as well.”
After a half mile of running in soft sand, I was a believer. Normally, my calves get a pretty good workout from running. Your calves are designed to carry you mile after mile without complaint. They don’t use a lot of oxygen and seem to be impervious to lactic acid buildup. Not the thighs. Running in soft sand puts your thighs to work, and I was feeling it.
“Do you do this often?” I asked.
“Nope. Just when I’m running with someone who needs to be humbled. Play racquetball recently?”
“You’re pretty mean. Not since the last time we ran. I’m overdue for a lesson. This will wear me out.”
“If you’d like to take a break, that’s fine with me. I’ll just keep going.”
“And let a girl outdo me? I don’t think so,” I said, but she knew I was kidding, sort of.
We passed the end of East Arctic Street, her with long easy strides and me trying not to cry. She showed no signs of slowing down or easing up. I stayed with her and we kept up a laborious pace. My shoes filled with sand, so I took first one, then the other off, maintaining my pace. She laughed and followed suit. If she did this regularly, she would have taken her shoes off before me, right?
“You don’t do this all the time, do you?” I asked and stopped.
“No. I’m dying,” she laughed, and we slowed to a walk. “Let me catch my breath a minute. What’s new with you, Mr. Aquaman?”
I thought about what I should offer. What the heck. “A good friend of mine, his father is dying of cancer. He doesn’t have long.”
“That’s rough. Close friend?”
“You know what? The concept of having a close friend is pretty new for me, to be honest.” We walked in silence for a few moments, veering to the right, toward the ocean and harder-packed sand. “I think all of my friends are older than me, and I think I’m probably their youngest friend.”
“And how old are you?”
“I’ll be seventeen in February.”
“You’re sixteen? I would have guessed eighteen or even twenty. Sixteen? Why, you’re just a baby.”
“Want to hear something crazy? I’m engaged. I’ve been engaged since last summer.”
“No shit. You’re certain?”
“Yeah. Not even a tiny little doubt. You might be the only person in the Lowcountry who didn’t see us on TV. Debbie Dare interviewed us, and it got a lot of play.”
“No kidding. Do you feel like childhood passed you by?”
“No. Not really. I mean, how does anyone think that? From my perspective, I’m just normal.” We got down to hard-packed sand and started jogging at an easy pace. The cool, wet sand felt good beneath my feet.
Natalie Boorman and I didn’t have much in common besides running. She was serious about it, and I wasn’t, so we didn’t really have running in common. A little, I suppose. She was older than me and out of school. For some unknown reason, I told her just about everything that was going on in my life. She was a good listener.
I’d just been jogging and talking, not really paying attention to how far we had run. We ended up all the way at the end of East Ashley Avenue, on the beach, looking across the inlet at Morris Island Lighthouse. The old lighthouse had been inactive for decades. A preservation society was trying to save it, and it actually looked like it was in pretty good shape. It was low tide, and we probably could have walked to it through shallow water.
“You seem to have it planned out pretty well. Is anything in your way?” she asked as we stopped to enjoy the view. We sat on large rocks, brushed the sand from our feet, and put our shoes back on.
“Honestly, I can’t think of anything. You know, it seems like most of the things I do, I do because I want to. Like tutoring at the Carolina Youth Development Center or taking kung fu lessons. I could skip both of those and watch Dukes of Hazzard and Magnum PI instead. I like those shows.”
“Not very fulfilling though.”
“No. I guess not. Is that the deal? Vince is going to school to study the brain. I think he’s going to end up being a neurosurgeon, but who knows. He says we spend a lot of time chasing a dopamine high.”
“There are other kinds of high. You ever do that?”
“Drugs? No. I had a private alcohol taste testing session one time. I could deal with rum and Coke, but I tried Scotch and that didn’t work very well,” I said and laughed. “I’ve never done any drugs.”
“Not curious?”
“I guess I’m not. I get it, I think, but it seems like what people do when they’re not, I don’t know...”
“Fulfilled?” she offered.
“Yeah. Maybe that’s it. Alcohol is legal, and you can get drunk. I guess I did, at least a little bit. I didn’t find it very appealing.”
“You’d rather spend your evenings tutoring foster kids?”
“Yeah. Crazy, huh?”
“I don’t think so. Unusual, but not crazy. It’s a good thing, Mr. Aquaman. Don’t do drugs just because other people do. If you’re the only one going to that orphanage, keep going, even if you’re the only one. Do you know how many friends I have that would go on a ten-mile run with me?”
“Dozens? I don’t know.”
“None. Not really. You, maybe. Ready to head back?”
We took it nice and easy, which I thought was probably unusual for her. I thought about her lack of running friends and that she ran a lot. She wasn’t a grump, and I thought she was easy to talk to. Where was the disconnect?
“You’d like to win Boston, right?”
“It’s probably a pipe dream. The competition is so strong.”
“But it’s like the gold standard, right?”
“That or an Olympic medal.”
“What would change if you won?”
“What?”
“How would your life be different if you won Boston?”
We were back near 5th Street. We had cooled down enough to sit, and we did. “Do you know who Grete Waitz is?”
“No idea.”
“She is certainly the most famous female distance runner. She’s Norwegian, and she won the New York City marathon. Adidas sponsors her. Do you think I’m pretty?” she asked out of nowhere. She turned so I could see her face.
“Yes. Definitely.”
“Thank you. Grete is not. That may seem unkind, but she’s a runner, not a model.”
“If you won the Boston Marathon, you could get endorsements,” I suggested, realizing where she was going with this.
“Shoes are the obvious thing. I think Adidas started something, and other brands are going to catch on. I like Adidas, but I’d race in Pumas if they chose to endorse me. If you win a big race like Boston, you’re instantly famous. If you’re famous, you become marketable. Grete is a very nice person and a terrific competitor, but she has a face made for radio. Gosh, that’s harsh. I’m no beauty queen, but I think Puma would rather have an attractive spokesperson.”
“How much would their endorsement be worth?” I asked, having no clue.
“Well, for one thing, I’d never have to buy my own shoes again,” she said with a straight face. I laughed and she joined me. “I think this fitness thing is just starting. Ten years ago, the only fitness personality anyone knew was Jack LaLanne. That has changed, and I think there’s money in it. Running, baseball, basketball, fitness, and every kind of aerobics. Check the magazine rack at Piggly Wiggly.”
“I never thought of any of that. My in-laws found out that I’m a pretty good baseball player, and they tried to talk me into playing in college with the hopes that I could break into the Bigs.”
“The Bigs?”
“That’s what they call Major League Baseball. Lots of money.”
“Is that what you’re going to do? This is the first time you’ve mentioned it.”
“No. I play baseball because it’s fun and it’s a team sport. I’ve never really played a team sport before, so I’m having fun.”
“America’s pastime. Isn’t the money attractive?”
“It might be, if I didn’t already have a buttload of money waiting for me in a trust fund.”
“Enough?”
“My future mother-in-law once said I have enough money to burn a wet mule.”
“Ha-ha-ha. I know that one. The Kingfish, Huey Long, right?” I nodded. “Must be nice. Holy shit, Mr. Aquaman, you just have everything going for you, don’t you?”
“I do, and even if everything else fell apart, I have my good looks to fall back on,” I said, laughing.
“I bet there’s a line of young ladies just hoping for you to get tired of Kim.”
“There’s a rumor to that effect, but I’m pretty happy with Kim. I’m getting the better deal in this.”
“Uh-huh. So, what are your weaknesses? My dad always told me to maximize the impact of your strengths and minimize the impact of your weaknesses. So, Mr. Aquaman, what are they?”
“How much time do you have? I have no artistic ability. None. I can’t draw a straight line. I can’t sing or play a musical instrument. Just terrible. Kim can’t sing either, but when we’re together, we can sing pretty loud. We’re so bad it’s funny, at least to us. I hate public speaking, and I get worn out if I spend time with a lot of people. I actually came for a run to get away from people for a while.”
“Sorry to ruin your morning.”
“No, no. That’s not what I meant. One-on-one is fine. When I leave the beach, I’ll drive over to The Wappoo Cut, sit by myself, and write for a couple of hours. Public speaking? Nope. I was the best man at my brother’s wedding, and I had to give a toast. Everyone says I did fine, but it was all I could do to keep from throwing up the day before, just thinking about it. I overanalyze everything. I get what my brother calls paralysis by analysis.”
“None of that sounds so bad.”
“No, but I’m also a hopeless romantic and optimist, and when you combine that with overanalyzing things, I can get wrapped around the axle. Tutoring at the center is a good example. We almost didn’t do it because I’m afraid of the potential emotional downside. It should have been a no-brainer.”
“You’re being too hard on yourself.”
“That’s another thing. Good enough is never good enough, and sometimes it drives me nuts. I’m super competitive. It’s hard for me to play miniature golf or go bowling without being competitive. It’s like a disease.”
“I have that same disease. ‘We’re just here to have fun’,” she said mockingly. “Winning is fun. Let’s have fun by winning.”
“Exactly.” We both laughed. Maybe we had that one thing in common. “I’m going to The Wappoo Cut to write, but I may as well get an early lunch first. Hungry?”
“What do you have in mind?”
“La Esperanza is close if Mexican is okay.”
Fifteen minutes later, we walked into an uncharacteristically busy restaurant. I thought Camila must work whenever they were open. She pointed to the last empty table, and we took it. Our waitress was Miranda, and she looked like she could have been Camila’s younger sister.
Natalie ordered a taco salad and a water. I surprised them both.
“¿Puedo conseguir el mole de pollo, por favor?”
After a moment’s hesitation, she asked, “¿Te gustaría tortillas de maíz o de harina?”
“Maiz, y una Coca-Cola Light, por favor.” She wrote down our order and took our menus.
“I didn’t see that coming,” Natalie said.
“I took Spanish in school, but didn’t really learn how to speak it very well until I worked landscaping one summer. I was the Gringo.”
“You’re just full of surprises.”
She asked more questions, and I told her about Kim and my plans to attend college in Atlanta, come back to the Lowcountry, and build our own little ranch. We were finished with lunch, and I realized about the only thing I knew about her was that she was a competitive runner. I asked her a question about her plans, she looked at her watch and told me, “Next time.”
I paid for lunch, she thanked me, and told me when she frequently ran. Pretty much every morning.
I drove over to the Wappoo Cut and had to park high on the grass. The place was packed. I grabbed my journal and a pen and walked out to my favorite picnic table. It was full. The other table was just as full. What was going on? I found someone who had pulled up to the dock. They must have forgotten something because they weren’t staying.
“What’s going on today?” I asked.
“Sheepshead tournament. You must be the only one here that doesn’t know,” he said, jumping back on board their deck boat.
Dane had mentioned a fishing tournament months ago. This one was just for sheepshead? The people at both picnic tables looked like they were going to be there a while. I didn’t want to spend time at The Cut anyway. I changed my plans in a major way.
I drove to the hardware store and purchased a pole saw that could extend twelve feet, then drove out to the property. I wrapped a piece of electrical tape around the pole so that it would be easier for me to judge the proper height. Then, I started walking the paths I’d already cut. Whenever I found a branch that hung over the path and was less than twelve feet high, I trimmed it. It was pretty straightforward work, but I was surprised how much there was. Kim and I must have been doing a lot more ducking than I remembered.
The branches were generally small enough that I could simply toss them off the trail and not worry about them. I lost track of time, but knew I’d been at it for a couple of hours. My shoulders were sore as hell. I stopped working for a minute and heard a pileated woodpecker. They’re huge woodpeckers, the size of a crow, with black and white feathers, except for a red crown. When they pound on a tree, there’s no mistaking them for another bird, and their call sounds a lot like Woody Woodpecker. It sounds like they’re laughing at you. I smiled at the sound as I listened for a while.
I heard a couple of other birds that I knew. Cardinals and wrens were pretty easy to identify. I heard what I thought was a nuthatch, then saw him. But I heard quite a few birds that I couldn’t identify by sound. I realized there were some trees that I couldn’t identify either. I didn’t think I had accidentally cut down any good ones. I thought it through, trying to remember what types I’d dropped. For sheer number, sweetgum trees won the prize. I’d cut down at least a dozen magnolias, but they weren’t too big, and they each looked like they were going to grow at crazy angles.
I finished one path and started back toward the clearing. I remembered that I’d cut down a dogwood and a couple of American Holly trees. I hadn’t cut down a single oak tree or cedar, and that was good. I thought I might have cut a black cherry by mistake, but that’s the only types I could remember for sure.
When I got to the clearing, I saw Kim sitting in the back of her truck, reading. “I knew you’d show up eventually. Ooh, a pole saw. Did you trim the trails?”
“The northern trail is clear to twelve feet. What are you reading?”
“Sometimes a Strange Notion by Ken Kesey. There was a movie, but I never saw it. Pretty good. Come back to my house, there’s something I want to show you.”
“Okay. Hug? Kiss? Any of that stuff?” She laughed, and we did both for a few moments before I followed her back to her house.
Inside, she popped a videotape into the player and started it. “Cassidy loaned this to me.”
“What is it?” I asked as the initial snow of a homemade movie played.
“Just watch.” For the next fifteen minutes, we watched a series of college cheerleaders showing their moves. If you’re a cheerleader, it was probably fascinating. “What do you think?”
“I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be looking for. I saw four or five teams of college cheerleaders doing their thing.”
“But did you see how crisp they were? They’re beautiful. And they all have guys on the teams.”
“Okay. And?”
“Don’t you want to be a cheerleader?”
“So I can hold Annie over my head? Then, when I tossed her up, I could catch her little butt. Cassidy, too.”
“Never mind. Let’s go swimming.” I had to laugh. “You’re a poopoo head.” I laughed again.
“I might be a poopoo head, but I’m no fool. You didn’t think that through, did you?”
She turned and hugged me, then really squeezed me. “No. They looked good, though, didn’t they?”
“They looked very sharp. Especially that blonde from USC. She looked really sharp.” The hug was over, replaced with a sharp punch to my shoulder.
Thirty minutes later, I was bobbing around in the deep end when Kim walked out toward the pool wearing a yellow polka dot bikini, just like the song. The song lyrics said it was an itsy bitsy, teenie weenie, yellow polka dot bikini. It was definitely teenie. I liked it.
“Baby, that is not the bikini of song,” I said as she approached.
“No? I thought that’s exactly what it was.”
“Nope, because if it was, he never would have finished writing the song. Damn, you look good.”
“Not interested in catching Annie’s butt anymore?”
“Who?”
“Smart man,” she said and dropped into the pool beside me. She stayed under and let her hair float on the surface. It spread out in a thin fan, and when she popped up, it covered her face. “I’m Cousin It,” she said, and I had no idea what that meant. She tried to explain it, but it was hopeless.
“Good week, I think.”
“I think so. We’re going to have to work on not having the center dominate our thoughts.”
“Swim season starts tomorrow, so that shouldn’t be a problem for me.”
“What are your goals this year, Jack?”
“Swimming? I’d like to compete at state in fly and breaststroke since I didn’t do that last year. I’d like to win it all, but that’s not realistic. A lot of guys who swam the fifty were seniors. Maybe I’ll try that this year. You know what? I did so good last year that I think I just want to have fun this year.”
It was as though time had stopped. Kim just stared at me. “Who are you and what have you done with my fiancé?”
“What?”
“Winning is fun.”
“Oh, that fiancé. This might just be a temporary psychological condition. I’m trying it out.”
“Well, it’s scaring me,” she said, and we both laughed.
“You are without spot or blemish,” I said, running my hands along her back and sides.
“My freckles are about to make a reappearance.”
“Maybe I can finish my map of them.”
We swam for a half hour or so, and I helped Kim work on her backstroke. I liked it when Kim did the backstroke because it showed off her amazing built-in floaties. Kim left before dinner since we both had slacked off on homework that weekend and had some catching up to do.
Shortly after I picked Kim up on Monday morning, my cassette player started croaking out some weird noises instead of Emmylou Harris’s If I Could Only Win Your Love. “What happened?” I asked.
“Your tape player ate Pieces of the Sky,” she said, trying to eject the cassette. She got the cassette out, but a long string of tape was still in the player.
“How did that happen?”
“When’s the last time you cleaned it?” she asked. Cleaned it? “When’s the last time you wiped down the heads with rubbing alcohol?” Heads? Rubbing alcohol? “You’ve never cleaned it, have you?”
“No? You have to clean it?”
“It’s hopeless. Your player ate Pieces of the Sky right before Boulder to Birmingham came on. What a sucky way to start the week.”
I found out that I could buy a cleaning kit that afternoon when I went to buy a replacement cassette. I felt like I’d killed Emmylou, and after I saw her in concert and everything. “Don’t tell her,” I said, and Kim hmphed and laughed at the same time.
Morning was pretty straightforward. I turned in a short essay for Advanced Comp and took a quiz in Physics. I was glad I’d studied. Physics was going to be a bit more difficult than I’d first thought, but that was okay. I was the last one to the lunch table, and it seemed like they were all waiting for me. I sat down and considered what Mom had packed. “It was easy and you’ll like it. Trust me,” she’d said as I left that morning.
“So,” Annie said, before I had a chance to open my treasure. “Who was the hot blonde you were with at lunch yesterday?” Hot blonde? I had no idea what she was talking about. “At La Esperanza. Lunch. Yesterday.”
“Oh.” It dawned on me. “That was Natalie Boorman. I met her running a couple of weeks ago.”
“Do tell,” Annie said. Everyone seemed interested except Kim, who was trying to hold back a smile. I opened my Dukes of Hazzard lunchbox. There was exactly one Tupperware container in it, filled with peel and eat shrimp, and a little container of cocktail sauce. That, and a bunch of napkins. What a great lunch.
“We ran ten miles or so a couple of weeks ago and then ran together again yesterday. Good run. She does marathons. Wants to win Boston, and she’s really fast. We finished running, and I took her to lunch. Actually, I met her there. Why?”
“Kim?” Annie asked.
“Good enough for me,” she said. She had a meatloaf sandwich, and it looked pretty good, but not as good as my shrimp.
“That’s it?” Annie asked. I ate a shrimp. Man, I loved shrimp.
“Is that it, Jack?” Kim asked, taking a bite of her sandwich.
“Pretty much. She can hold a six-ten pace for an entire marathon. That’s crazy fast. That means she would finish a marathon in around two hours and forty minutes.”
“That sounds fast,” Gizmo said, and that’s when I realized Gizmo was sitting at our table, right next to Cassidy.
“We’re a thing,” Cassidy said. Gizmo worked his eyebrows and nodded. Why was I not even remotely surprised?
On the way to our next class, Kim asked, “Anything else?”
“Natalie is a world-class runner. She’s probably thirty or so. She had fun pushing me to run faster, and then in deep sand. She pushed me. I guess I like that.”
“Fair enough. Just so you know, that doesn’t bother me.”
“If I thought it would, I would have told you. If I run at Folly, I’ll probably see her again. She runs eighty miles a week.”
“I don’t. Yikes. Eighty?”
“Yeah. I guess that’s pretty normal for marathon runners.”
“Double yikes.”
That afternoon, we started swim practice with the whole team. Coach Miller told us that this was our largest team ever. He said that when Bobby Claire graduated, he left some pretty big flippers to fill. Bobby had won State in backstroke and done well in IM as well. Ryan McCarthy was another hole to fill. He said that a rising tide floats all boats. I thought that was a Yogi Berraism, but I’m not sure anyone else did.
“Bottom line, gentleman, is this: I expect you to cooperate and compete. When you help each other improve, you do, too. Fastest two times get to compete. You’re limited to four events. Aquaman, you have a bull’s eye on your chest. By the end of last season, he had one of the two fastest times in every event. He’s not going to surrender his option easily. You’re going to have to take that from him. Billy, you and Vic get to share a lane. Everyone else can pick one. Let’s see a good five hundred free to start things off.”
That was it. The season was underway, and Coach Miller expected me to set the standard. I’d been expecting that. Still, it was kind of crazy to hear it. It wasn’t just the guys at Porter-Gaud who would paint a bull’s eye on me. It was every other swimmer in the state. I liked the sound of that even more.
“Anything else you want from me, Coach? Swim fast and encourage other guys to try to do the same?”
“That about sums it up. Do we need to worry about any of these new guys?”
“I don’t think so, but who knows?”
“I’ve seen my share of surprises, that’s for sure. Did I notice a match made in heaven at your table today?”
He had to be asking about Cassidy and Gizmo. “No comment,” I said, and he laughed.
“Get wet, Aquaman. Get wet.”
I knocked out my five hundred, then switched to work on fly. I thought it provided the biggest opportunity for improvement. When I finished five hundred fly, I stopped in the shallow end and noticed Coach Miller looking at me. He gave me a double palms-up. “What kind of a freestyle is that, Aquaman?” Whoops.
I did a couple of laps of freestyle, just to show that I knew the difference, and practice was over. I climbed out last and started for the locker room. “Are you and Miss McTighe going to the Carolina Youth Development Center tonight?”
“How do you know about that, Coach? There’s only about five people who know.”
“Six.”
“Probably.”
“If you keep it to Monday nights, you shouldn’t have a conflict with swimming. We don’t have a single meet on a Monday.”
“Thanks, Coach. How do you know this stuff? Any comments about the center?”
“Me? I’m just the swim coach.”
“Sure. Sort of like Kim is just another girl.”
“Strange analogy, but yes, just like that,” he said and smiled. I laughed because we both knew Kim was not just another girl.
Kim and I swung by the record store on the way home, and I picked up a replacement for the cassette my player had ruined that morning. It seemed prudent to purchase a cleaning kit, so I did that as well.
After a good workout, Kim and I worked on our homework for Drama. She went home to fix dinner for her folks. Mom cooked up something strange, and I hovered over it in the kitchen.
“What are you making? It smells good, but I haven’t seen it before.”
“No, you haven’t. This is Kedjenou. Guess where it’s from.”
“Piggly Wiggly?”
“No, silly. What country?” I had no idea. I tried to sneak a taste and got swatted for trying. “Ivory Coast, or should I say, Côte d’Ivoire?”
“You’re cooking recipes from Côte d’Ivoire?”
“Just tonight. Africa. I’m going to cook a bunch of different dishes from Africa, rather than just one country.”
“Hmm. I’ve never seen an African restaurant. Kim wants to go to South Africa on our honeymoon. Are there any recipes from there?”
“I will certainly look.”
I was low on gas, so Kim picked up Mac and me and drove us to the center. It was sort of cool so Kim tucked Mac inside her puffy neon pink jacket. Mac didn’t care what color it was as long as he got to be next to Kim. I felt the same way.
We were met by Mrs. Porter, and she gave us new name tags we could keep. Mine said Aquaman, and Kim’s said Frontier Woman. They had their logo on it with a red lanyard. I didn’t remember telling them our nicknames, but there they were.
When the kids came into the room, they immediately looked for Mac, hidden beneath Kim’s jacket. He was hidden for a minute, at least. When he heard the kids, his little tail thrashed around inside her jacket, and he gave a tiny yelp. So much for being sneaky.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” Kim said as they traded ear scratches for hand licks. “We bring Mac some of the time, but you have to work on homework and improvement. Deal?” They were good with that.
Bobby and Mel showed up just as we started, and Mrs. Porter brought kids out for them to work with. We each had four or five kids. She said that would be the norm, but there were some other kids who might need help occasionally. I thought if we were going to have the same kids, I should get to know mine a little better.
Nicki and Lisa were in eighth grade, and Stephie and Jacqui were in seventh. Jacqui seemed a lot older than your typical seventh grader. Maybe she had repeated, or maybe she simply matured faster. Nicky was cute and a total flirt. Lisa had enormous glasses, and Stephie had the curliest blonde hair I’d ever seen.
I started with the seventh graders and saw that Nicki understood their lesson pretty well. I coached her as she helped Stephie and Jacqui try to get their heads around the concepts. Once they were doing okay, I helped my eighth graders. Nicki was sitting next to me and kept scooting closer and closer. I remembered a line from a Marx Brothers’ movie, “If I was any closer, I’d be behind you.”
I caught Kim’s eye. When she looked at me, I nodded to Nicki, then held up my ring finger. She got it. I didn’t want Nicki to be embarrassed, but she needed to keep her mind on math. “Nicki,” I whispered to her. When she looked up at me, all smiles, I nodded toward Kim. She looked at Kim, who held out her engagement ring, motioned that I belonged to her, then gave her a mean look. She gave her a mean look for about two seconds, then laughed. I squeezed Nicki’s hand, she sighed and relaxed, then focused on math. It was cute.