“What?” she asked in an annoyed tone, breaking me from my thoughts.
“I think you’re cute when you are being stubborn as fuck. Usually it’s with me.” Shrugging, I said, “Well, it’s almost all of the time with yours truly,” and winked at her.
As Sarah shook her head and rolled her eyes, I said, “The first time I saw you, my first thought was that you were this gorgeous girl. And babe?”
Rolling her big, bright beautiful eyes at me, Sarah said, “Yeah?”
“Look at me when I tell you this,” I demanded.
After Sarah scrunched her eyebrows together and tucked her lower lip into her mouth, she gave me her full attention.
“Not only do I think you’re cute, Sarah Thompson—” Looking straight into her eyes, I smiled. “I think you’re gorgeous, cool, funny, smart, and sexy, to name a few, woman. Most of all?” Placing my hands on her thighs, I thought for sure she would push me away, but she didn’t. I leaned my head in close to hers. Close to enough to her lips so that if I moved just a tad bit further, I could kiss her again. “Beautiful,” I whispered. Leaving her eyes for a split second, I looked down at her mouth, mesmerized as her tongue darted out and wet her sweet tasting, plump, red lips.
Looking back up into her eyes, I wanted to say something but I was interrupted by our astronomy teacher. “All right, class, today we’ll be—”
Releasing a low, deep groan, I turned in my seat and faced the front. At first I wasn’t listening to what the teacher was talking about. I was too stuck on the fact that I had wanted to ask Sarah to go out on a date. It seemed like for a split second she might have actually liked me. And that maybe she would have said yes. Maybe.
I started to wonder what she would have said if I asked her when something caught my attention the teacher had said.
“So you guys will be breaking up into teams of two,” Mr. Klein said as he raised two fingers. Walking out in front of his desk, he sat on the top and crossed his arms. “You’ll be looking at stars.”
Hearing a bunch of groans around the classroom, Mr. Klein waved his hands in the air and laughed. “All right. All right. Calm down, every one. It could be fun—”
“Yeah, for the losers,” someone shouted out.
“Okay, thank you, Mr. Brennan. You can go visit the detention office if you don’t keep quiet,” Mr. Klein said in a stern voice. Shaking his head, Mr. Klein looked out across the room. “As I was saying, you and your team member will look up at the stars. Just get yourself used to the stars and the galaxy. You don’t have to do a report or fill out any papers. All you have to do is describe it—”
“Ugh!” People started to groan.
“In one paragraph, guys. Come on. It’s not that bad.” Mr. Klein laughed as he waved his hand. “Anyway, you have a week to do it. Next Monday, we’ll start presentations.”
“Presentations? What the heck, Klein,” someone yelled from the back.
“As I was saying—you and your team member will present to the class what you observed while looking at the stars. You can explain the night and the clouds. What the night sky looked like.”
Turning around, Mr. Klein grabbed a stack of papers from his desk and turned around. As he started to walk over to the first row of students, he counted out the papers and handed them to the student and continued. “This project is worth 50 points. It’s an easy 50 points.”
After he finished passing out the papers, he raised a finger and counted. “One. You show up and look at the night sky. Two. You write down a paragraph of what you saw. And three, everybody. You discuss what you saw in the sky.”
As students groaned, Mr. Klein said, “You don’t have to write a ten page paper. You don’t have to dress in a suit or dress. You don’t have to do anything difficult. It’s really very simple and I’m practically giving you these 50 points for free.”
“Then why don’t you?” Brennan questioned from the back.
“Really, Mr. Brennan?” Mr. Klein asked amused. Closing his eyes and shaking his head, Mr. Klein let out a laugh. “You’re going to make this year very entertaining.”
“I’m glad you think so.” Brennan laughed from the back.
“So can we at least pick our own team member?” someone asked.
Turning to the kid who said that, Mr. Klein said, “Yeah. You picked them the first day of school when you chose your seats.”
As soon as he said that, my face lit up and I could hear Sarah groaning beside me, mumbling under her breath. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“So get to know your partner. Figure out when the two of you can meet up to work on this project together,” Mr. Klein said. “You two are going to be working on a lot of projects together this year, so I hope you two are happy with who you chose to sit next to.”