“I can help you with both of those things.”

“Oh yeah, Superman? And how are you going to do that?”

“Your first problem, I called my stepsister. She’s an elementary school teacher, too. I asked her for some advice about your situation.”

“You . . . you talked to your stepsister? About me?” Why did that make my breath catch?

“Yes, and she said to try really utilizing positive reinforcement. Because right now he’s learned that if he misbehaves, you’ll respond, even if it is negatively. Catch this little boy being good and verbally reward him for it. Do the same for other kids so that he sees positive behavior getting praised. She was guessing that it’s all about the attention. Which I understand. I kind of went through something similar when my dad . . . when he left us. My mom basically checked out and I wanted the attention of my teacher at school. Just to know that there was some adult in my life who still cared about me.”

It was the most personal thing he’d ever told me, and my chest felt tight. I wanted to cry for him, for the little boy who had felt unloved by his parents.

Because I had grown up feeling exactly the same way.

I wanted to ask him about his family but was afraid of being shot down. “It sounds like you had a really good teacher.”

“Ms. Sparr. I put her through a lot, but she stuck with me. She used to give me these little assignments in class like cleaning the chalkboard or sharpening her pencil. She used to let me be the line leader a lot, too. Small things but they made me feel special. I really needed that attention.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, maybe you could give it a shot. Because if she had looked like you, I can only imagine it would have been a lot worse.”

“Um, thanks?” I asked it as a question because I didn’t know what in the crap he was talking about.

Was his implication that my face would scare small children into being bad? Or that he thought I was pretty and that would have made him want my attention more? I was so confused.

“I’m going to go change and then I’ll come back and help you with your second problem. Because that just happens to be my area of expertise.”

Then, heaven help me, the man winked at me. Actually winked at me and it was one of the sexiest things I’d ever been a part of. My blood pressure spiked and I grabbed my phone.

I texted Shay and Delia. We needed to parse out every possible meaning of what he’d said.

 

Shay instantly responded:

 

Shaking my head, I texted:

I really couldn’t fault her logic there.

Delia didn’t answer, and I was disappointed. Also, a little concerned because she usually responded to texts quickly, and recently, the past few times I’d texted, she’d stayed silent. Had she bewitched the new substi-cute teacher into going on a date with her? I made a mental note to check in with her and see how she was doing.

I also wanted her more objective opinion on this. Shay was a bit unreliable when it came to this situation because she wanted Tyler and me to get together, given that he was incredible looking.

Which, again, no faulting that logic.

Tyler came back in the room and I hid my phone under my leg, as if he could read it from six feet away. Pigeon followed him but came over to lie down on the floor next to my feet. I reached down to scratch behind her ears.

“I am going to order some takeout. Do you want some?” he asked. “My treat.”

“While I know my answer is supposed to be ‘no thank you,’ because of dignity or pride or whatever, I’m going to say absolutely yes.”

He grinned. “I do like how you speak your mind. What should we get?”

Inspiration struck. “Oh, remember how we were talking about getting you some culture? One of the ways of doing that is to eat foods from different countries. And we’ve got so many different international restaurants nearby to choose from. Maybe Korean? Vietnamese? Thai? Turkish? Indian? Egyptian?”

He thought about it and then said, “Let’s do Thai. What do you recommend?”

“I’ll look it up and see what’s close.” I did an online search and found a restaurant half a mile away. I showed the menu to Tyler, who read it over my shoulder. I could feel the heat from his chest next to my neck, making my skin tingle. He braced his arm on the table as he read it and the screen in front of me started to swirl and swim, so that I couldn’t focus. I noticed that he had such strong, nicely formed forearms.

I sighed. I was truly pathetic.

We decided on a few different dishes, like pad thai, noodle soup, and green-curry chicken. More accurately, he decided and I nodded, as I was so distracted by him that I couldn’t have said words even if I wanted to. It was both a relief and a disappointment when he moved away to call in the order.

When he hung up, he sat back down at the table with me. “We should go over your budget while we wait. Why don’t you show me your last month’s expenses?”

I quickly and mentally ran through what I had bought and whether it would show up on my account. Most of the replacement stuff I’d done through Amazon and Violet had paid for the shoes. I didn’t think there was anything too embarrassing.

After I logged in to my bank account, I pushed my laptop toward him.

“Do you mind if I download some software for budgeting?”

“Sure.”

He mentioned one by name that was free and would sync up with my bank account. After a few minutes, he angled my laptop so that we could both see it. “So it seems like your biggest expenses fall in this miscellaneous category. Part of setting a budget is figuring out how much you should be spending and then discipline yourself to stay under that amount. You should also be looking at monthly expenditures that maybe are unnecessary. Like . . .” He scrolled down a bit and said, “Do you really need Netflix?”

That was like asking me if I needed my firstborn child. “Uh, yes. I need it. That’s nonnegotiable. If for no other reason than it allows me to consume television the same way I do ice cream and alcohol.”

He laughed and said, “Okay, okay. You win. Netflix stays. What about this expense for Sephora? A hundred and thirty-two dollars?”

While I’d had to downgrade my hair dye, makeup, cleanser, and toner, I was not willing to give this up. “That’s for my moisturizer.”

He blinked at me a couple of times, as if he hadn’t heard me correctly. “You paid a hundred and thirty-two dollars for lotion for your face?”

“It’s not lotion. It’s moisturizer.”

“For one bottle? What’s in it? Dragon’s blood and the scraping of a unicorn’s horn?”

I wasn’t about to tell him it wasn’t for a whole bottle, but for like two ounces. “Ha-ha. I need it. My face needs it.”

“You don’t need it. You’re beautiful.”

“It’s why I’m beautiful!” I was caught between sheer delight and disbelief at his words, and partial terror that he was going to make me stop using it. But then I started thinking about the way he’d complimented me—he’d said it so matter-of-factly, like it wasn’t his personal opinion, just a truth he happened to agree with.

I wasn’t sure how to feel about that.