Hello Again, Sir {s/t - complete}

What About Now?: 25.

 You have no idea how hard it is to write in a Male teacher’s perspective (well maybe you do, because you do, but to me, it’s hard… as I’m a college student, a girl, and I have no interest in becoming a teacher or what they do.) So, no one tell me off for this being weird, or bad, or silly, or whatever.
...K?

 ;;

                The restaurant I decided to take Hanna to at the top of town had a fresh feel to it.

                It was the opposite side of town to where Ted and Freddie and pretty much all the faculty lived. The room was light with tea lights on every table and white table cloths. I had planned to take her there for a seven thirty reservation.

                Unfortunately, I didn’t research enough into the restaurant because it turns out – even though they lived on the opposite side of the town – Ted’s wife owned the restaurant and we didn’t even get to set foot in the door before I was ushering Hanna down the stairs and out the door after opening it to look up and see Ted standing at the wine counter checking the delivery.

                Maybe that’s how he interacts with his wife; helping her work. Who knows? It was just unfortunate for me that I didn’t know this information and I was glad the door didn’t have a bell, I reserved under my first name – Alex was common enough, right? – and that he hadn’t seen me.

                We ended up eating fish and chips down on the pier.

                “I’m sorry.”

                “Alex, why are you worrying?”

                I turned to look at Hanna, stuffing a chip in my mouth to keep warm. “Well I was going to take you out for a meal and now we’re here… eating on paper with wooden forks.” I snorted and Hanna giggled.

                “Really I should be asking why you decided to take me out tonight.”

                “Yeah…” I replied distantly.

                “Cheer up!” she demanding in a joking tone. “Seriously!”

                “You enjoy having fish and chips in the freezing cold?”

                Hanna shrugged. “Sometimes you’ve got to lose to know how to win.” She replied, not caring to extend her answer further. She looked away, towards the sea and I watched as the wind blew in her hair, pushing it out of her face. Her features were composed and she gripped her bag of chips in her hand, having only nibbled on a couple since we’d sat down ten minutes ago.

                I had nearly finished mine.

                I knew some girls didn’t like eating in front of males, but Hanna ate like a pig when she wanted to and I wondered why she wasn’t hungry. She couldn’t have eaten earlier on; she knew she was coming out. And even if she had eaten, she really did eat like a pig, so would have eaten the chips anyway. (I’m not exaggerating!)

                Earlier she was fine, she was cheerful now, so why didn’t she want to eat?

                She went through fazes like this… before… where she wouldn’t eat, she couldn’t talk to anyone and she’d spend all day in bed or secluded. But she wasn’t secluded, she was talking to people; and I couldn’t understand why she wasn’t eating.

                I placed my chips beside me on the bench and leant against Hanna’s shoulder, looking up from the crook in her neck to her face. “Hey, you okay?”

                Hanna’s eyes flickered to me. The night sky was dark and her eyes were so bright, it was almost as if they were as bright as the moonlight. (You can tell I’m an English teacher. I bang on about Hanna’s eyes a lot. This is so cliché. Isn’t love, though?)  “I’m fine.” She murmured, placing her head on top of mine. “I’m just thinking.”

                “You sure?” I persisted. “You’ve hardly touched your food.”

                “I’m not really hungry.”

                “Hanna, are you kidding? You can’t have lost your appetite in two years.”

                I was expecting her to say something along the lines of ‘a lot can happen in two years.’ But she never said it. Instead she sniffed and said nothing more for a moment until she replied, “my new medication… I tend to lose my appetite on them.”

                “Oh.”

                “Yeah.”

                A wry smile passed across my face and I grabbed Hanna’s left hand in mine, giving it a reassuring squeeze. Hanna had been on anti-depressants, anxiety pills and many other things since the accident, and I remembered sitting in the hospital holding Hanna’s hand whilst the doctor describe what each of her new tablets were and when she had to take them. There were a lot.

                I traced circles against Hanna’s palm and she moved her free arm to place her food on the bench next to her, causing her coat to move up her arm from the movement of her body and her wrist became on show. I winced as I saw the pink lines of skin that were engraved into Hanna’s skin, watching as her scars looks different from each angle. 

                I moved my finger and carefully traced a finger over the scars which made Hanna – who had been absentmindedly thinking about something – jump.

                “I’m sorry.” I whispered, moving my hand quickly. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

                Hanna quickly sat up, tugging on her coat sleeve to cover up her skin. I sighed lightly and sat up, watching her struggle to hide her arm.

                “Don’t,” I instructed, putting my hand on her knee. “It’s fine.”

                “No it’s not.”

                “You don’t need to hide anything from me. You know that, Hanna.”

                “I don’t want you looking at them,” she muttered, a deep frown etched across her face.

                “Why not?” I asked, leaning closer to her. I didn’t try and pry her hand away from her sleeve or look at her scars, I just looked at her face instead. Her kind, innocent face. Because after all, that’s all she was. An innocent, intelligent girl who’d lost her father had had to adjust without him, but with me. She was the girl I’d helped get back out of bed, I’d helped pass her GCSE’s, I’d helped… recover and laugh.

                This was the girl I had fallen in love with.

                “They’re ugly.” She replied.

                “No, they’re not.” I replied sternly.  “They represent strength.”

                “No, they—”

                “Sure,” I interjected, “it mean you’ve been through some bad times, but you’ve survived. Anyone looking at you now would see you’re standing strong. You had to overcome it. Those scars are beautiful. It shows you had passion for something, you were upset about something, but you carried on. That’s what important. They’re a story.”

                “Wow,” Hanna muttered sarcastically, turning away, “you really are an English teacher.”

                I chuckled lightly, trying to ease the awkwardness in the air. I didn’t want Hanna feeling down about her past, if we went down that road, who knew how far she would go. And how long it would take her to get back.

                “Don’t you know it, babe.” I replied, using a pet-name to try and get her to laugh.

                “Do you wish you’d chosen something else?” Hanna suddenly asked, turning towards me.

                “What?”

                “Do you wish you’d become something else when you saw  me… at college?”

                “Hanna,” I sighed, raking a hand through my hair which was blowing in the breeze. “Don’t get me wrong, my heart fell into the pit of my stomach when I saw you. When I realised you were my student, but at the same time I was happy. Because I got to see you. We weren’t exactly on good terms before that, were we? I was half glad because it meant I could see you again. I wouldn’t change that. I just had to compromise being with you for seeing you, if you understand what I’m saying. Let’s just say… this is all a bit complicated.”

                “Yeah, I know.” Hanna replied, twisting her body around to face me. “But now, if we’d left things on good terms before you became a teacher… don’t you ever wish you’d done something else, instead of teaching?”

                “Teaching is all I’ve ever known, Hanna.” I muttered, dropping my eyes to the floor.

                “And you’re all I’ve ever wanted,” Hanna replied, “so I’m asking you.”

                I looked up at the blonde, watching as she stared at me intensely. “I want to be with you Hanna, but is this really your idea of fun?”

                The corner of Hanna’s lips twitched. “Everything can be fun.”

                “That doesn’t even make sense!” I replied, shaking my head. “I broke my promise. I can’t provide for you, I can’t be there for you. I can’t support you. I can’t… love you anymore. Things have changed. You can’t sneak around for me, just for my selfishness, just for us to be together.”

                “We can make today fun.” Hanna replied, ignoring my speech completely.

                “Like we can make every day fun?” I retorted. “Hanna, I’m still your teacher. If I wasn’t then things would be different. If you were just a college student I would never have met you but I met you before. This is really complicated. But before, when I was your friend, when I took you out on a date, it was easy. Now just looking at you is a task.”

                 “Don’t worry about it—”

                “N—”

                 “No, Alex, listen.” Hanna interrupted persistently. “We can have fun. If you really want it.”

                 “What are you talking about?” I replied, raising my voice slightly. My eyes widened from the wind and also because I was trying not to get upset. I wasn’t upset enough to cry, but asking my questions was also indirectly throwing it in my face that I couldn’t ever be with Hanna. So why was I on a date with her now?

                Didn’t I say that I didn’t care about these things?

                That I wanted to be with her no matter what?

                I also had a job to keep; a reputation to maintain; a retirement to save for. I couldn’t do that if I got fired. But didn’t I dream of spending retirement in a hot, foreign country with Hanna by my side, our children and grandchildren visiting regularly?

                 “Come here.” Hanna said. She grabbed my hand before I could do anything.

                “Where are we going?” I asked as she dragged me back down towards the entrance of the pier and then to the stairs to the left. It was dark by now and the stairs were wooden and slightly slippery, so I gripped Hanna’s hand in panic for her falling down and relaxed when we got to the bottom. It was darker here because there were no lights like the ones that lined the pier above us and Hanna looked like a silhouette.

                “Come on,” Hanna whispered, dropping her coat off her shoulders, taking her arms out of her sleeves and tossing it on the floor. She dug her hands into her pockets and pulled out keys – I could hear them jingling – and her phone which lit up because she had pressed a button and chucked them on top of her coat. She hadn’t brought a bag, but not she was just in a black, knee-length dress as she began pulling off her shoes.

                She giggled and that’s when my attention snapped back to her face.

                She was back.

                “Come on, Alex, what are you waiting for?”

                “Huh?” I asked, wrinkling up my nose in confusion.

                “Take your jacket off, leave anything valuable here.”

                “You put valuable and leave in the same sentence and expect me to cooperate?”

                Hanna had moved back slightly from jumbling and moving around with her belongings and now she was no longer underneath the pier. I could see her rolling her eyes in the moonlight and without waiting for her to reply, and ignoring the light breeze that was nipping at my skin, I began taking off my own jacket.

                “Hurry up, Alex!” Hanna said and I looked up from carefully hiding my phone inside my jacket pocket on the ground to see she’d already began running down the beach, sand kicking out behind her from underneath her feet.

                “You’re crazy,” I muttered to myself, heading down after her. By the time I had gotten down the length of the pier to the bottom of the beach where the sea started, I had lost Hanna and looked around me for her.

                She giggled and it echoed and I quickly twisted towards the large posts of the pier, squinting. I couldn’t see her behind any of them and turned in the other direction, looking for her against the open beach. 

                Nada.

                There wasn’t a single soul on the beach apart from Hanna and myself and I didn’t know where she was, so I turned towards the sea, kicking my foot against the cold sand as I looked out to sea to see if Hanna’s had gone in.

                A cry of surprise left my lips as a pair of hands grabbed my shoulders, pushing me with force down to the ground. My knee’s gave way first and my body turned as Hanna jumped on me and we ended up – don’t ask me how – in the position of me lying on the floor stomach up with Hanna on top of me looking down, and I realised, Hanna was in kissing distance.

                “Hello again, Sir.” Hanna whispered. Her breathing was heavy from running. 

                “Hi.” I replied, searching her face as a devilish smirk formed on her lips. 

                I moved my face closer to Hanna’s as her eyes searched mine and just as my lips brushed against hers, she pulled back, giggled and ran off into the sea.

                I rolled onto my stomach and put both of my hands on the floor, pushing my weight up. Walking, instead of running, I left the blur of lights from coastline stores, lampposts, and cars behind as I braved the icy cold sea.

                When I was in so the water was up to my waist, the hairs had already stuck up on my neck underneath my shirt and I saw Hanna lying on her back, laughing at me.

                I must have looked freezing, yet Hanna looked warm.

                Hanna looked happy.

                “What?” she asked innocently after a brief amount of time, splashing some water in my direction.

                “Nothing.” I replied, continuing to stare at her, unfazed by the droplets that had just sprayed my face.

                Hanna really looked happy, and I believe that it was because of me; because of tonight.

                Because this was how it used to be.

                This was normal.

                “No, seriously—” Hanna began standing up, probably to walk over to me and playfully hit me or nudge me but I cut her off when I put my hands into the cold water, grabbed Hanna’s waist, pulled her towards me and crashed my lips onto hers.