Hope II

***This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.***

He didn't know it as he stared at the e-mail asking him for a favor during his conference period at work, but he was about to embark on one of the greatest love stories he had ever lived. Or, it would at least make a great Prime-time movie on the Lifetime channel.

That's one thing he didn't miss about being married; having to pass by the living room while his wife was watching a Lifetime special on TV. It was usually about a woman who had been hurt plenty of times by men; they would promise her great things and then use her and just disappear from her life after she had invested so much of her time and effort into getting to know them.

Then, one day, she finally meets a man who is consistent with her, does everything that the other guys didn't do for her and shows her that he wants what she wants, they have great chemistry and always have something to talk about but then he gets put in the friend zone after sending her flowers.

He hit the reply button and started typing his response:

"Good Afternoon,

You may not know this, but I am a VERY private individual outside of work; I enjoy traveling alone every opportunity that I get (I'm trying to become the world's most interesting man, lol). HOWEVER, because it's you whose asking me and it technically is a business trip, I will make an exception and work with him on getting to and from San Antonio. Do you have a contact number for him so that I can shoot him a text or should I just e-mail him?

Have a great rest of your day!"

She had replied: "PS I am getting the idea you already ARE very interesting! LOL"

She was flirty with him at the beginning and that made it easy for him to feel comfortable with her. He was always a gentleman, but when she made those flirty comments, he saw it as a sign that he could let his guard down just a little bit and pursue her. He had to be careful, though; his last relationship hadn't been the healthiest and aside from his ex-wife, he had only dated one other girl long-term before getting married. Her email had made him curious, if she thought he was very interesting, she might be open to getting to know me better, but he was at work and it was time for his computer science class to begin so he hid the idea away.

Time had passed without an e-mail from either of them, but events were coming up that involved both of their efforts and they started looking for any excuse to email each other. It was all work-related, of course; they worked very well together. He would give her ideas and she would create projects out of those ideas or share them with people who could make those ideas work. They shared thoughts on how to improve lessons, the logistics of teaching summer school, and setting up a class visit by some of the executives of a program he was teaching. Each time, he would drop a bit of personal information about himself so that she understood that he wanted more than a work-related relationship with her. He had noticed her three years earlier but they had never had a conversation.

The day he first saw her, she was sitting on a school bus. He had walked into the bus wide-eyed and optimistic: it was his first year of teaching and he had been asked last minute to supervise a group of students at a competitive school event. Fate would have it that his mentor had lost her father-in-law and couldn't make it, so he had been volunteered to substitute. She was wearing a blue dress with long, curly, dark blondish hair that was styled like Goddess Athena, hanging down her shoulders like golden waterfalls that ran down the sides of Mount Olympus. She had a killer smile that could cause a traffic accident if you stared at it too long. He couldn't remember the words they spoke, mostly because they were mainly formalities, but her visage was branded into his mind and he would never forget that he had seen a little piece of heaven that day. They would meet a few more times after that, and each time he could recall what she looked like -- her radiance was hard to forget.