Page 14 of Connectio

Pizza Palace? I almost drop it as I fumble with the catch. And no pineapple? You weird son of a bitch.

Sucking on my tooth, I exhale, grit my teeth, and force a smile as I frisbee the menu back to him. “I’m not fussy either.”

“Excellent!” He pulls out his mobile phone from his pocket and dials the number.

“Where’s the bathroom?” I ask, my throat tight.

“Down the hall. Last door on the left.”

Turning my back to him, I ferociously blink back tears, utterly disappointed, and escape the room. Escape him.

Clearly, Oliver Bunt is noPrince Charming.

Seriously, why do I even bother?

* * *

The restof our evening turned out as boring as the pineapple-less margarita pizza Oliver ordered us, and I realised rather quickly that the purpose of our “dinner date” had been for him to manipulate me into doing his catch-up work, which I was stupid enough to do.

I’m an idiot. A naïve, wannabe-princess idiot who thinks fairy tales are real. Well, not anymore. Enough is enough. That shit is for books and movie screens. So-called Prince Charmings don’t exist, and men in general are a waste of time.

Okay, so they help grow the human race. I’ll give them that. But if I want a baby, there are ways of having one on my own. Not that I want a baby. I’m content with the twenty-plus kids I call “mine” every day.

They fill my child-well.

And speaking of those twenty-plus kids now on their way home to spend the weekend with their parents, I can’t help but smile, recalling their responses to a recent task I’d set them while I make myself a cup of tea in the staffroom.

“So, to sum up Emergency Education Month,” I say while jiggling the teabag in my mug. “I asked the kids a partial question, and they had to fill in the blank.” I giggle, nearly choking on my words. “Some of the answers were hilarious. Want to hear?”

Sally—Ms Taylor—leans over the staffroom table and grabs a handful of M&M’s from an open packet. “Yeah, shoot.”

“Okay, so I said, ‘Where there’s smoke, there’s…,’and I asked them to raise their hands with answers I could write on the brainstorm board.” I squeeze the teabag and dump it into the bin before taking a seat next to Carly. As well as being my roommate, we also work together. That’s how we met. Carls is the “office lady” at school.

She shuffles her seat over a little to make room for me. The only other spare seat is next to Oliver, who’s sitting next to George—Mr Tims—at the opposite end of the table. Oliver and I haven’t really spoken since his fake date, and he’d have to be a few eggs short of a chicken orgy to not know I’m dirty on him.

He smiles, but I ignore it and continue my story.

“Some of their responses were pollution, a smoker, a teepee, a cold morning, burnt toast, a bushfire, and, of course, a fire.”

“Burnt toast?” Brooke—Ms Lewis—laughs. “Oh my God, I love it.”

“I know, right? I tell ya, trying to explain to Jet Bradley that our breath on a cold morning isn’t smoke is like pulling teeth.”

Carly’s phone rings from within her handbag, so she pulls it out, stands up, and walks away for privacy.

“That wouldn’t be the sexy-arse firefighter, would it?” Brooke asks.

Carly’s new squeeze, Derek, was one of the firefighters at our school’s Emergency Education demonstration last month. And not only was he very informative and demonstrative, let’s just say he also set a few fires in many a teacher’s underwear.

Carly doesn’t answer Brooke, instead leaving the room with her phone pressed to her ear. I go to continue my discussion of Emergency Education week, when Oliver takes the now empty seat beside me.

“Hey! You got any plans tonight?”

“Um…” I cup my mug in my hands and bring it to my lips. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

He waits for me to explain what plans I have, but I have fuck all plans so don’t know what to say.

“Because I was thinking—”