How Do You Spell Romance?

Amazingly, two minutes later, the auditorium door opened and a man walked in wearing stonewash jeans and an orange polo bearing the school logo. Thin gold eyeglasses framed his warm brown eyes...

A seventh grader named Emmaline was spelling “origami” when the microphone in the auditorium at Lincoln Middle School suddenly went mute. For English teacher Ellen McNamara, this was a crisis. Scheduling today’s spelling bee practice had required lots of bargaining with other faculty, and it absolutely could not be rescheduled. She needed a quick fix if these kids were going to get comfortable using the microphone by next week.

Frantically, she texted the number for the IT department. Then she assigned the group of rowdy middle schoolers to pair up and quiz each other on some words.

“It won’t be long,” she said, hoping that the new IT guy would have a quicker response time than his predecessor.

Amazingly, two minutes later, the auditorium door opened and a man walked in wearing stonewash jeans and an orange polo bearing the school logo. Thin gold eyeglasses framed his warm brown eyes, and he had a hint of stubble. For a second, he looked like any school employee, but when Ellen looked again, she realized she recognized him.

“Andrew Nash?” Ellen found herself laughing. Never had she imagined that the new IT guy would be her IT guy. Ages ago, in a classroom a floor above where they now stood, she had edited and he had formatted the school newspaper. She had so many fond memories of their afternoons together huddled over the computer and of the silly lovelorn entries she wrote about him in her journal at night. What a tragedy it had been when he’d gone on to a private high school.

“Ellen!” Andrew strode down the aisle and offered a handshake, but then changed his mind and went in for a hug. “Wow, this is great.”

“Amazing.” Ellen swooned a bit over how good he smelled. Lost in his gaze, she shed her professional persona, taking in the handsome adult face of her childhood crush and basking in the delight she found in this reunion. “It’s been too long.”

“Eons,” Andrew agreed, not taking his eyes from Ellen’s. “You look exactly the same. Dimples and all.”

Ellen felt herself blush. He’d always teased her about her dimples, but this didn’t feel like teasing. It felt nice. She probably would have just stood there for the rest of the afternoon forgetting about the crisis at hand if not for the sudden clatter of a kid in the front row throwing an empty water bottle onto the stage.

“Better look at that mic,” Andrew said, and he brushed his fingers against her arm as he went past her toward the stage. Then he turned back. “Join me?”

“Why not?” Ellen followed Andrew onto the stage, where she watched him tinker with some wires beneath the podium, ultimately unplugging one and handing it to Ellen. She tried not to notice how little space there was between them.

“Hold onto this for a second,” he said. “I’ll be right back.” He disappeared backstage momentarily to test the controls behind the scenes. Ellen found herself mourning even that little bit of space between them. Obviously, she had never really gotten over her crush.

When he returned, he plugged the cord back in, then tapped the microphone. “F-I-X-E-D,” he said, “Fixed.” His voice echoed through the room, causing several of the kids to giggle. In his tone, she heard the same hint of playfulness that had always attracted her to him.

Turning away from the microphone he said. “Did you ever think we’d be back together in this old place?”

“Definitely not,” said Ellen. “Not after you abandoned me for that high school.”

“That was my parents, not me. You were the main reason I wanted to stay.”

“Oh, come on,” Ellen said. “You don’t have to say that.”

“It’s true!” protested Andrew. “We made a great team.” He grinned. “We still do, evidently.”

“Can you stay for a bit?” Ellen said, surveying the restless teens in the auditorium chairs who were quickly losing focus. “We need to get back to practicing, but I don’t want to let you go again.”

“I’d love nothing more,” said Andrew and he made himself comfortable in the seat next to Ellen as she brought the kids back into formation and began firing off words for them to spell.

After each word, Andrew leaned over and whispered a comment to make Ellen laugh. It was all she could do not to dissolve into giggles until finally, an eighth grader named Connor got up to spell “enraptured.”

“Now that’s a good word,” Andrew said into Ellen’s ear, sending a chill through her. “I’m going to lock my office and get ready to go home. Then we should have dinner, don’t you think?”

Ellen grinned as she gave her reply. It was an enthusiastic “Y-E-S.”

***

Katie Fitzgerald is the author of Library Lovebirds, an ebook collection of bookish romances, and a novel in flash, The Bennetts Bloom. Her short stories and flash fiction appear online at Spark Flash Fiction and Micromance Magazine, as well as in various anthologies. She is a 2024 Sparkie Award recipient for Best Romantic Suspense and a nominee for the Pushcart Prize and the Cupid Prize. A graduate of Vassar College and a trained librarian, Katie resides in Maryland with her husband and five kids.