Their eyes meet across the yard. There's a spark, a thought, a wish ... a hope.
Nestled away in the Australian countryside, two teachers find each other, but how long before either of them act on their feelings? That's where the friends step in ...
It would be Valentine's Day on Friday and it was simply a blip on Kylie's radar. She had lessons and PD to prepare for; she would be stuck in the office for most of the week, leaving Jack to wrangle the casual who had agreed to a week's work and the prac student, Lucie all on his own. Not that was a bad thing. She knew he could handle it and trusted him to do just that.
Right now, it was a quarter to midnight on Saturday. Kylie was hunched over on her lounge barely listening to the late night movie on the TV. Although she was looking at work stuff, her mind was wandering down that corridor and into something really off limits ... and the previous few weeks had done nothing at all to stem the flow of thoughts and feelings. It scared her to no end, because ... the last relationship she had, the last time she allowed herself to be vulnerable and exposed had ended up disastrously for her. Not that that was happening here, exactly ... but feelings, thoughts and sensations were coming to life and in a way she hadn't experienced in ... shit, have I even experienced it like this before?
Shaking her head to clear it of any more distracting thoughts, Kylie leant back into the lounge and promptly abandoned the work she had been painfully, dutifully arching her aching back over all day.
She conceded defeat for the day, putting her feet up on the lounge and finally decided to focus on the late night movie: Bridges of Madison County. If it hadn't been a favourite of Nan Foley's, Kylie would have changed channels to a rerun of The Big Bang Theory.
She had a natural aversion to chick flicks of all eras with the exception of a rare few. Kylie always found the pairings to be either painful or obvious, that the female lead would always overact so much it became cringe worthy ... at that moment, Clint Eastwood took up the screen and Kylie screwed up her face.
A pinging on her phone slowly dragged her already waning attention from the TV. Ali was lighting up their group chat - established about ten years ago now, when they were at uni - because ever since their last catch up, the day Kylie received her citation from Barry Orr, they had taken every possible opportunity to shamelessly ambush Kylie, looking for the latest updates on Jack. They had become convinced, from the moment Kylie denied liking Jack, that he was indeed the one for her.
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How the hell am I supposed to put you off the scent? Kylie wondered frantically as she read through the girls' messages. Then she stopped herself, having just heard her own thoughts and groaned. Well, fuck ...
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