This Girl: A Novel

then immediately head straight for the window. When I pull back the curtain, I see her twirl back toward her house and practically skip inside.
    “What are you looking at?” Maya says.
    Her voice startles me and I snatch the curtain shut and turn around. “Nothing.” I take my jacket off and step on the heel of my shoe to ease my foot out of it. “Thanks, Maya. You want to watch him again next Thursday?”
    She stands up and heads to the front door. “Don’t I always?” she says. “But I’m not watching that weird one again.” She shuts the door behind her and I throw myself on the couch and sigh. This was by far the best date I’ve ever been on, and I have a feeling they’re only going to get better.

6.
    the honeymoon
    LAKE SMILES, THINKING back on how blissfully happy we both were after that date. “I had never had a night like that in my life,” she says. “Everything about it was perfect, from beginning to end. Even the grilled cheese.”
    “Everything except the fact that I failed to mention my occupation.”
    She frowns. “Well, yeah. That part sucked.”
    I laugh. “Sucked is an understatement for how I felt in that hallway,” I say. “But, we got through it. As tough as it was, look at us now.”
    “Wait,” she says, pressing her fingers to my lips. “Don’t jump ahead. Start from where you left off. I want to know what you were thinking when you saw me in the hallway that day. My god, you were so pissed at me,” she says.
    “Pissed at you? Lake, you thought I was mad at you?”
    She shrugs.
    “No, babe. I was anything but pissed at you.”

oh, shit
    MY THREE-DAY WEEKEND. What can I say about my three-day weekend other than it was the longest, most treacherous three days of my entire life. I was distracted the entire time thinking about her. I could have kicked myself for not getting her phone number before I left; at least we could have texted. My grandfather apparently noticed the difference in my attention span during the course of the visit. Before we left their house last night, he pulled me aside and said, “So? Who is she?”
    Of course I played dumb and denied having met someone. What would he think if he knew I went on one date with this girl, and she already had me in a stupor? He laughed when I denied it and he squeezed my shoulder. “Can’t wait to meet her,” he said.
    I usually dread Monday mornings, but there’s a different air about today. Probably because I know I’ll get to see her after work today. I slide the note under the windshield wiper of her Jeep, then head back across the street to my car. As soon as I place my fingers on the door handle, I have second thoughts. I’m being way too forward. Who says, “I can’t wait to see you” in a note after one date? The last thing I want to do is scare her off. I walk back to her Jeep and lift the wiper blade to remove the note from her windshield.
    “Leave it.”
    I spin around and Julia is standing in their entryway, holding a cup of coffee between her hands. I look down at the note, then back at the Jeep, then back at Julia, not really knowing what to say.
    “You should leave it,” she says, pointing to the note in my hand. “She’ll like it.” She smiles and heads back into the house, leaving me completely and utterly embarrassed in her driveway. I place the note back under the windshield wiper and make my way back across the street, hoping Julia is right.
    •••
    “I TOLD YOU last week he was coming,” Mrs. Alex says in a defensive tone of voice.
    “No, you said he called about coming. You never told me it was today.”
    She turns to her computer and begins typing. “Well, I’m telling you now. He’ll be here at eleven o’clock to observe your fourth-period class.” She reaches to her printer and removes a freshly printed form. “And you’ll have a new student in your next class. I just registered her this morning. Here’s her information.” She hands me the form and smiles. I roll my eyes and shove the form into my satchel, suddenly dreading the remainder of the day.
    I walk in a hurry to third period considering I’m already five minutes late. I look down at my watch and groan. An eleven o’clock observation? That’s just an hour from now. All I have scheduled for my classes today are section tests. I wasn’t prepared to lecture at all, much less in front of my faculty advisor. I’ll just have to use this period to prepare something last-minute.
    God, could this day get