Picture Perfect

Chapter Eighteen - Elliot

Every time I write this book I get the BIGGEST smile on my face. It's irrepressibly lovely.

Love, Cam

♡

Chapter Eighteen

Elliot

I couldn't resist 'accidentally' bumping into Tyler after school finished on Monday. I'd been trying to reschedule my stupid commitments so I could go out to dinner with him on Tuesday, but so far I'd had no success. It was a little shady of me to use his daughter as a way to see him, but in all fairness, I liked his daughter a lot.

Saskie was full of stories about her weekend; she was tired, but still enthusiastic about having been back to Ireland. Her accent was a little stronger, which amused me. I wondered if Tyler's would get stronger when he visited home.

"Daddy!" Saskie practically bounced over to Tyler, who looked like he was having a very intense conversation with a fellow parent. He looked relieved, and picked her up immediately, clinging to her like a support raft.

"Hi, turtlebug," he smiled, kissing her on the cheek. He caught sight of me and smiled shyly, shuffling his feet slightly. I tried not to keel over and die from cuteness. "Hi, Elliot," he said.

The other parent, a woman who I recognised as Nathan's mother, smiled at me with forced determination, and I realised with a sinking suspicion that I was about to be accosted with some form of plan that the PTA wanted me to enact.

"Elliot, great! Just the man I was hoping to see-"

"I'm so sorry, Alison," Tyler interjected quickly. "We really have to dash - Elliot's sister signed him up to help out with the gallery this evening, and we've got a lot to get on with."

Alison did not look pleased, but smiled politely and let us get away. I had, fortunately, packed up and brought my coat and bag with me, so I didn't need to slip back into the school to retrieve them.

"Thank you," I said gratefully, once we were in Tyler's car and Saskie was buckled into her car-seat. "You don't have to drive me home, though - just drop me by the bus stop."

Tyler grinned. "You mean you don't want to come around campus with me and post flyers everywhere? I'm heartbroken."

Next to Saskie were a huge pile of flyers, and I picked one up and read it aloud. "Local gallery looking for local artists to display their work - free to display, small percentage of any sales to the gallery." I smiled. "Sounds like a good plan."

"We're hoping to get a lot of interest," Tyler replied, looking happily ahead at the road. "There's some for classes, too, but I imagine art students won't be looking to do extra classes, especially as most of them will be for beginner-intermediate levels."

"Still, some of them may not study various types of art that you offer classes in," I shrugged. "Worth a shot. Are you coming to campus with us, Saskie?"

Saskie looked over at her name, having clearly zoned out of the conversation because it had bored her. "What?" she asked.

"No, Sask is staying with Sorcha," Tyler replied quickly, and shot me a warning look. "You don't want to come do boring stuff with us, do you Sask?"

"No," Saskie replied, clearly having been informed that hanging with her dad that evening would be an utter waste of time for her cool self.

Tyler smiled and said to me, "And you don't have to either, you know. It will be pretty dull, just going around posting flyers. We'll probably get a lot of 'no, sod off'."