“Hm?”

“You were right.” I repeat with more conviction. “Back in Redwind, what you told me in that assessment meeting. You were right. I do have a problem with my temper.” I confessed. Knowing just how much it took for me to say something like that, some of the fear in her eyes dissipates into curiosity. “Or had.” I correct myself after some thought. I smiled down at my once upon a time guidance counselor, a serene one, not the intimidating kind I used to don whenever she was near. “I took your advice. I had some help.”

“You did?” She asks me in genuine surprise, her eyebrows shooting up to her head. With the kind of hell I raised when she first brought the idea up, who could blame this woman for being shocked?

“I did.” I confirm, grinning proudly.

She opened her mouth to say something, but before she could get a word out, somebody decided to walk up to us and interrupt our conversation.

“Hi babe,” My wife comes up to me from the side, a shopping bag in one hand and her free one snaking around my waist. She greets me with a chaste kiss on the lips, like she always does. The moment she pulled back was the only time she noticed that we had company and I was actually in the middle of conversing with someone. A light, embarrassed tint appears on her cheeks and she smiles that awkward yet adorable grin that I love. “Oh, I’m sorry..” She apologizes to the woman sitting down before us, who was looking up at us with blatant interest. Tina looked back and forth between me and the lady – me, in particular, and I knew from the look in her eyes that she was waiting for an introduction.

“Baby, do you remember Miss Adams.. uh.. Paige.. one of our guidance counselors in Redwind?”

Tina makes that face – the one where her eyes grow big and her mouth forms an ‘O’ before breaking out into a friendly smile. Yes, that’s my wife’s patented look of fake recognition. I wear that too sometimes as a polite way to cover up my mind’s inability to remember someone that I’ve met once, twice or a hundred times in the past. So, although she might pretend otherwise, I’m pretty darn sure that my wife couldn’t recall who this woman in front of us was. I don’t blame her, Paige Adams was only two weeks into her counseling job when I drove her out of Redwind Academy by causing a rampage in her office. After I left the assessment meeting, I freaked her out so much she submitted her resignation letter that very same afternoon.