Love You Better (Better Love 1)

This semester’s student teaching assignments are in seventh and eighth grades, while next semester the university will place us in a high school. The program I’m in to get my bachelor’s degree in education requires that we get both middle school and high school experience in order to graduate with a secondary teaching certification. It makes sense, but I already know where I belong. High school is the end goal, but right now I’m just happy teaching in a classroom.

The only thing I look forward to more than my student teaching days is my Saturday night Netflix and Fill date with Ivy. Two nights ago, we watched this, in Ivy’s words, “tasteless comedy aimed at entertaining man-children,” and while she tried to pretend that she hated it, she about pissed herself laughing, and I about pissed myself laughing at her laughing.

Writing the agenda on the board, I’m lost in my thoughts of the oversized, off the shoulder sweatshirt Ivy was wearing on Saturday. The freckles on her back that I dream about tracing with my fingertips dance in front of me like stars in my vision. I only snap out of it when my supervising teacher comes lumbering into the room smelling like a mixture of coffee and cigarettes and grumbling something unintelligible. He’s a grumpy fucker in the mornings.

“Good morning, class!” Mr. Miller booms, and the students greet him back randomly, some with giggles and some with disinterest. “And good morning, Mr. Pierce.”

“Good morning, sir.”

“How was your weekend?”

“It was good. Almost finished with my project for Educational Psychology.”

He nods. “And training as well?”

“Yes, sir. Nine weeks until the marathon.”

I know what question he’s going to ask next—he asks the same one every Monday.

“And how about socializing? Did you go out at all?”

I shake my head slowly and shrug. “Nah. Too busy.”

Mr. Miller harrumphs and gives me a skeptical look.

“Have some fun once in a while, Mr. Pierce. It will be a lot harder to make time for it once you start teaching, so you might as well make the best of your last free year.”

Before I can respond, he turns to the class and begins going over the day’s agenda. This isn’t the first time Mr. Miller has given me the you’re only i

n undergrad once speech. Instead of overthinking it, though, I focus on today’s lesson. We’re starting our unit on Industrialization, and call me a nerd, but I fucking love this shit.

When the lunch period rolls around, I grab my bag from the fridge in the lounge and set up at Mr. Miller’s desk. He always takes his lunch in the teacher’s lounge after driving around the block twice to smoke a cigarette. I prefer to eat my lunch in the classroom.

At first, I did it because I could work on lesson plans or course readings, but a few days into my first week Matthew came wandering back into the classroom for something and found me sitting at Mr. Miller’s desk. Since then, he’s started eating lunch in the room with me, and we’ve worked out a nice little system.

“Ok, Matthew. What have you got?”

Matthew plops a crumpled brown paper sack onto the table in front of him and proceeds to dump out its contents.

“I’ve got three granola bars—two are chocolate chip and one is almond.” I’m not sure what the granola bar ever did to him, but you’d think almond was code for garbage juice by the way he scrunches his nose up at it. I’ll definitely be taking that one. “I also have two whole packs of fruit snacks and these cheese crackers!”

“Not too shabby,” I say, nodding my head with feigned approval. As far as Matthew’s lunches go, this one is pretty standard. A small, random selection of easy-grab processed shit shoved into a rumpled brown paper sack. Sometimes he has a juice pouch or a can of soda, and once in a while, he might have a piece of fruit, but I’ve never seen him with a sandwich or any consistency of healthy foods.

As disappointing as his lunch spread may be, there’s always one thing that always brings a smile to my face.

“And what does it say today?” I ask with enthusiasm, and Matthew groans.

“Awww, Mr. Pierce, do I have to?”

“Matthew, it’s very cool that your mom writes you those notes. It means she cares about you and wants you to have a good day,” I press, and he rolls his eyes.

“No, for real!” I insist. “I think it’s so awesome that I want to do it for my own kids when I become a dad someday. I wish my parents did it for me.”

His grin grows, and he gives me side-eye. “You want to be a dad?” he asks with a giggle.

“Of course, I do! I’m going to be a cool dad.”

“I wish you were my dad,” Matthew says quietly, and I feel like someone kicked me right in my fucking chest. I’m not even sure how to respond to that, so I go with honesty.