Together in the Wild: Clean Romance Novella (Alaska Adventure Romance Book 4)

by Hart, Renee

  Stanley stood by himself for a while. He wanted to go over and say hello, but in his mind, he thought that it would be rude to interrupt, and it could have been that Helena the art teacher just wanted to be left alone.

  Stanley talked to a few science students from the neighboring schools. He would shoot quick glances up at the art teacher, and almost every time, she wouldn’t be looking at Sandusky. She seemed almost repulsed by him. There were even a few times when she looked up at Stanley, and raised a small corner of her mouth in a neat little smile. Stanley would always smile back, but would blush and look away.

  Lisa was right, he was practically hopeless. He wanted nothing more than to at least introduce himself and hear her say her own name. But he was a dedicated teacher, and a fair wasn’t the right place to go about getting dates, even though that was what Sam Sandusky was now trying to do. The thought made Stanley cringe. He didn’t even know the art teacher, but he knew that if she could possibly seem interested in Sandusky, then maybe she wasn’t the right person for him. Luckily for Stanley, she didn’t look even remotely intrigued by Sam, no matter how tall and good looking he made himself out to be.

  Almost ten minutes had passed and Stanley was getting anxious. Then he had an idea. He hadn’t fully worked it out yet, but he started walking over towards Sam and the art teacher.

  “Mr. Sandusky, Vice Principal Henriques would like a word with you,” Stanley said in a low voice. He cleared his throat, but it wasn’t even necessary because Sandusky heard him.

  “I didn’t see her,” Sandusky said. He smiled through gritted teeth and panned the gymnasium for Lisa.

  “I don’t know if it’s urgent, she just said that if I saw you, I should let you know that she needs you,” Stanley said. Sandusky grunted and eyed him. He looked back at the art teacher and offered her a phony smile, and then he went off in search of Lisa.

  “The Vice Principal didn’t want to see him did she?” were the first words the art teacher said. She looked more amused than anything. The fact that she could tell is what surprised Stanley.

  “What gave it away?” Stanley said. He decided not to lie. It wasn’t his thing, and he wouldn’t know what lie to tell even if he did think to do it.

  “The fact that you were talking to that guy right before she went up to you. And she hasn’t been around you for like fifteen minutes. And you kept looking over here, so I was waiting for you to come and rescue me,” she said. She had a beautiful husky voice, but her giggle was soft and slow. She ended it with an “Mmmm”.

  “You really did look like you needed saving,” Stanley said. He laughed too, but his was low and unsure.

  “Helena,” she stretched out a hand to shake his. “Helena McCoy. I teach art at Wellington.”

  Stanley shook her hand. It was warm and her grip was the right kind of firm.

  “I’m Stanley March. I teach science.”

  “Really? I pegged you for an art teacher,” she grinned.

  “Really?” Stanley’s eyes widened ever so slightly.

  “No, I’m kidding. I knew you taught science. Or math. Basically I knew you had nothing to do with art,” Helena said.

  “It almost sounds like you’re trying to insult me,” Stanley frowned.

  “No! Oh gosh. Oh shoot. I’m sorry,” Helena looked extremely apologetic and winced as she spoke. She pat Stanley on the shoulder.

  “I’m not offended. I was joking,” Stanley smiled. “I guess I need to work on my sense of humor.”

  “And on your timing. That other guy just would not stop talking. He didn’t mention his students once. I don’t even know if he teaches here,” she said. She looked exasperated and she let out a sigh to confirm her frustration.

  “He actually teaches at another school. Math. He’s really great with numbers, but not too great with English language,” Stanley said.

  “Or comprehension. I told him I wasn’t interested like 5 times.”

  Stanley smiled at how easy this was. He was relaxing more and more with each word he spoke. Helena was extremely easy to talk to, and it was now very clear to him why it was that people had been flocking to her all morning.

  Stanley opened his mouth to speak again, but that was when Sandusky had come back.

  “So, Lisa said she’d talk to me later and that it wasn’t too important,” Sandusky said. He playfully nudged Stanley on the shoulder, but the nudge was harder than it appeared. “Thanks for keeping my seat warm for me.”

  “We’re standing,” Stanley said. Helena covered her mouth with both hands, and she giggled into them.

  Sandusky glared at Stanley.

  “I know that. It’s just an expression. Anyway, Ms. McCoy, where were we?” Sandusky said.

  “We were right here…standing,” she said. She snorted into her hands and giggled again. Stanley tried not to laugh, and instead swirled the remnants of the now melted ice around in his cup.

  “Yes. Yes we were. I was wondering Ms. McCoy, if I could get to know you a little better,” Sandusky said. He acted as if Stanley wasn’t standing less than 2 feet away from him. “I know you just moved to the state, and I figured you wanted someone to show you around and give you a tour of the city.”

  “Oh. Mr. Sandusky that is so so nice of you,” Helena said, exaggerating her words and her look of disappointment. “But Mr. March here already invited me out later this week, and he was so kind that I just couldn’t say no.”

  Stanley didn’t know if his eyes were as wide as Sandusky’s. He looked back and forth between them. Helena was smiling and Sandusky looked flustered. Helena was looking back and forth at the two men, trying not to giggle again now that both looked positively bewildered. Sandusky was also looking back and forth at Stanley and Helena.

  “Why…why yes. I said I would pick you up on Thursday…” Stanley sputtered.

  “Friday,” she interrupted.

  “Yes, Friday. Because Thursday night is a school night. Friday night at 7?”

  “8. You know what? I’ll meet you halfway. 7:30,” she said. When she smiled up at him he melted and smiled back.

  “Great. Just great,” Sandusky said through gritted teeth. “Oh look, there’s Mr. Jervais. I’m gonna go over there and say hello.”

  Sandusky walked away, muttering something under his breath and bumping his shoulder against Stanley’s shoulder in the most childish and dramatic fashion. Helena didn’t care. Neither did Stanley.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Stanley said with a blush.

  “You didn’t give me away,” Helena said. It was true. Stanley could have played oblivious, but he liked that he had played along.

  The bell in the gymnasium rang. It was time for the students to go back to their respected classes, and the neighboring schools to return to their buses.

  “It was very nice meeting you, Helena,” Stanley said. He didn’t want to overstep a boundary, but it felt right saying her name.

  “You too, Stanley,” she said. She turned to gather her students but paused.

  “Wait, I’ll need your number. And I’ll give you mine too.”

  “Oh…” Stanley said.

  “You’re still picking me up on Friday at 7:30 right?” Helena smiled. She looked hopeful.

  “To give you a tour?” Stanley asked.

  “No silly. Like a date. Be cheesy about it. Bring me flowers,” she said. She sounded sarcastic, and Stanley wasn’t sure if she was serious or not. She had taken a small book out of a bag and was furiously scribbling in it. She tore the page out of the book and handed it to him. She waited for him to recite his number to her, and she scribbled that into her book and put it back in her bag.

  “Flowers? Sure, I can do that. Friday at 7:30,” said Stanley.

  Helena had a puzzled look on her face, but she smiled when he confirmed the time.

  “Friday at 7:30,” she made her fingers into a gun and clicked the back of her tongue when she pretended to shoot it in Stanley’s direction.<
br />
  “And Helena…what kind of flowers do you like?”

  Helena shrugged and turned a bit to get ready to leave.

  “I don’t know. Surprise me…”

  Chapter 2

  Helena scrambled over a few boxes toward the front door. She wasn’t quite ready for her date yet. Time management was something she was going to have to work on.

  She had lived in this apartment and this city for just over a month and some boxes hadn’t been unpacked yet, and others were empty and hadn’t been thrown away. Anyone coming in would have thought that she had moved in just yesterday.

  Helena buzzed the intercom to let Stanley into her apartment building and grabbed handfuls of her hair to pull back into a ponytail. If her hair was straight it would have fallen more than halfway down her back, but her large curls bounced on her shoulders as she walked. She stood out more for the curls themselves than the bright pink streaks that were strewn about everywhere.

  She managed to get her hair in a messy bun and frowned at her reflection in the mirror. She let her hair out and swept it to one side instead. She picked up a purse that looked like a miniature backpack and went out the front door of her apartment. Stanley had just turned to her floor from the flight of stairs when she came out and closed the door behind her.

  “Hi there,” Helena said. Her voice was high and chipper despite the fact that they were both wearing dark colors. In fact, the only thing that stood out between them was the pink I her hair, and the single flower that Stanley was holding.

  It was a large pink flower with dark freckles and a long stem. In a way, it made it seem as if the two of them matched.

  “Hello,” Stanley said in a shy voice. He twirled the flower a bit in his hand. He wanted to tell Helena that she looked nice, but he was too nervous to say much else.

  It surprised him that he had had enough courage to even agree to such an impromptu date. He had freaked out at school after Helena and her students left, and on the morning of his date with Helena he decided to take his lunch break off the school compound. He drove to a flower shop that was almost across town in order to get something he thought would be special to Helena. It had been his third visit to the flower shop in less than a week.

  The flower shop was called Any Blooming Thing, and the dark haired woman with the nose ring and the little freckles had told him that a bouquet of flowers was too cliché for what he was going for. Instead, she picked out a single flower that she felt said a little about Stanley and a bit about Helena the beautiful art teacher. Knowing that a florist would obviously know more than him about flowers, and also probably more than he did about dating too, Stanley thanked the woman and promised to come back to that same flower shop because she had been so helpful to him.

  “Is…is that for me?” Helena asked. They had been standing awkwardly in front of her door for several moments. She didn’t have the heart to mention that she had really been joking about the fact that this was going to be a date and that she wasn’t really expecting flowers. She also didn’t say anything about that because she was genuinely stunned by the fact that he had complied, and had brought her a flower so unusual that it even matched her hair.

  “Yes, this is a lilium orientalis,” Stanley said while practically shoving it into her face. “Also known as the Stargazer lily, it’s not to be confused with the Starfighter or the Rubrum or the Sarbonne lily. They’re all in the same family. But this one I believe is the largest and the brightest or darkest, depending on how you look at it. I wasn’t too sure, so I did a quick search online.”

  Helena laughed and took the flower. She breathed in its fragrance and sighed.

  “It was really nice of you to actually get me a flower. It goes with my hair,” Helena said. For some reason, being around a crowded gymnasium gave her enough confidence to speak her mind.

  Now that she was in her new apartment and in front of someone she didn’t know, she noticed the anxiety building up inside of her. She didn’t know what to say or what to talk about. Was he really going to give her a tour of the city? What if he took her seriously when she said that this was a date? She didn’t want to lie or have him expecting anything from her. But now that he was there, she didn’t know how to let him know what her intentions were, or tell him that she hoped that his intentions were pure like the Stargazer he had just given her.

  After taking some time to figure out which part of town to explore first, they both decided on the local library. It was usually empty around this time. Stanley pointed out that there would be some information on the city and Helena would be able to find out about some of the potential places she could visit if she ever wanted to go exploring on her own. They only had 2 hours to be at the library because it was closed to the public at 10.

  “I didn’t realize there was an exhibit here,” Helena said when they stepped into the library. It was a grand entranceway with marble floors, an information desk all along one wall, and a single dinosaur skeleton in the center of the room. Behind the enormous display were 3 openings that led to different sections of the library. In the large room was a deep green carpet and towering book cases. The shelves up along the walls had ladders attached to wheels in order to get to the books on higher shelves. It was something Helena had only seen in movies.

  “Yes, this is an Apatosaurus. For a long time scientists considered them to be the same as Brontosauruses, but they found out some time last year that they were actually separate dinosaurs, and the Apatosaurus actually does exist.”

  “Did exist,” Helena corrected. She was still holding the Stargazer in her hand, and she used it to point as she spoke.

  “You’re right…did exist,” Stanley said. He was a little bit flustered by his mistake. It wasn’t a big deal, but he took any form of anything negative to heart.

  “But it’s beautiful. I’ve never seen dinosaur remains in person before. I always liked them. Apatosaurus is my fave, you know?” Helena said studying the specimen before her. She looked like a kid in a candy store. Her green eyes widened when she looked from the top of the Apatosaurus’ head, down its long neck, and then over his body to its long tail.

  “I’m a fan of the Diplodocus myself,” Stanley said. He pressed his finger on the bridge of his nose to adjust his glasses, and then he tucked his hands into the pockets of his pants. That was his safety. If he wasn’t holding something, then his hands would be hidden inside pockets.

  “Are dinosaurs what made you want to become a science teacher?”

  She was circling around the Apatosaurus display and running her hands along the rope that separated the patrons from the dinosaur.

  “Among other things. I grew up here, and coming to the library when I was younger took my mind off of a lot of things happening in my life,” Stanley said.

  He didn’t want to open up too much about his childhood. Helena could see that this was making him feel uncomfortable, and that made her feel awkward all over again.

  She wasn’t in the mood to go down the road of explaining her childhood either. She wanted to get to know the new place she was living in, and she didn’t know Stanley well enough to be so open just yet.

  “I actually wanted to be a more hands on scientist, but I fell in love with teaching when I was subbing for a professor I really admired. I’ve been meaning to lecture at a university, but I really love kids at this age. When they’re young like this we can help mold them.”

  “Force them into liking science?” Helena joked. She was moving over to the large opening toward the right side of the room, and Stanley followed behind her.

  “Well, a lot of children of color and women like science when they’re younger, but then they get discouraged over time, especially during middle school and high school years. So I’ve been trying to keep their interest level up,” Stanley said.

  Helena felt a bit bad for laughing. He was trying to make a difference through teaching, and she was too.

  “When I was a kid I wanted to be a painter. I wanted to be like
Basquiat or Picasso; kind of childish and whimsical works that most people would find silly or just plain bad. But I was so well trained that trying to force myself into some contemporary primitivism just came off as a copycat of Egon Schiele,” Helena said.

  “I’m not sure who that is. Maybe I should have taken you to the art history museum or gallery first. I’m sure it would have inspired you to start painting again. If you love it, then you should allow yourself to do it.”

  “That means a lot. I’m always worried that I’m painting like someone else instead of painting like me. And don’t worry about it. This is perfect. There’s barely anybody here, and I get to ride on a ladder. We can go to the museum and gallery some other time. I really appreciate this. Thank you for taking me out tonight,” she grinned at him.

  “I didn’t really have much of a choice,” Stanley said. He meant it as a joke, and Helena playfully smacked him on the stomach. Stanley took one of his hands out of his pockets and rubbed his belly to feign being hurt.

  Helena began dancing around the library, twirling up an aisle and then dancing on tiptoe in another. She stopped occasionally to take a look at a book that seemed to intrigue her. She went mostly for worn books with gold writing along the spine.

  “I figure if they’re worn that means a lot of people have read them, and that says something about books,” she had said when she caught up with Stanley. Instead of walking down each aisle, he walked alongside in order to watch Helena as she danced to music that only she could hear.

  “I never thought about it that way. Now I know a good way to search for books,” Stanley said.

  “Just call me Helena McCoy the life hacker.”

  “You’d make an interesting Xmen character.”

  Helena’s jaw dropped and she stared into Stanley’s eyes. She stared for so long that he got self-conscious and adjusted the glasses [that didn’t need to be adjusted] that rested comfortably on the bridge of his nose.

  “Who’s your favorite?” Helena finally asked.

  “I guess it depends which era of the Xmen. I’m very intrigued by Bishop, even when they tried to make him a bad guy in a newer version of the comics. Betsy Braddock isn’t one to be trifled with. Sometimes I like Cable. I don’t know. I just love the Xmen all around.”