Free Following Trouble by Emme Rollins Page B

hair, brushing it out of my eyes as I sighed and sat back in the driver’s seat.
    “I hate this addiction stuff.” I closed my eyes, feeling a wave of nausea starting. It was always worse in the mornings, although Daisy’s ginger drink helped. She’d given the recipe to Rob and he got up every morning to make me one before I left for work.
    “Me too.” His hand moved to my neck, massaging.
    “The only thing I’ve ever been addicted to is you.” I opened my eyes and smiled over at him. “Unless you count sugar.”
    “That white stuff will get you every time.”
    “Come on, the kids are so looking forward to this.”
    I’d been preparing them for the past two weeks, since Rob had agreed to come in and play for my classes. We’d listened to some of Trouble’s songs and I’d been answering questions all week about every aspect of the music industry their active little minds could come up with. I loved my kids so much and I often thought of them as “mine,” in some Socratian or Platonic sense. I was “the teacher” and I loved it.
    Unfortunately, I worked with a lot of jaded teachers with tenure who saw themselves more as babysitters than anything else. And I got it—it wasn’t easy teaching in a low-income district. I could have moved to the suburbs and made double the money and probably had half the headaches, but in spite of its problems, I loved this city. I’d grown up there.
    Rob carried his guitar with him down the quiet hallway. The kids were lined up outside, out in front of the building, waiting to go through the metal detectors. People were always shocked when I told them I worked in an elementary school with metal detectors, but this wasn’t a Columbine reaction. Detroit had used metal detectors since the eighties.
    “How many kids?” Rob asked again as I opened the door to my classroom.
    “Twenty to thirty.” I laughed. “You give concerts to thousands and you’re worried about thirty elementary school kids?”
    This was the first year we were offering music full time for all the kids. The year before, I’d only taught music part-time and had team-taught a second grade classroom the rest of the time.
    “This is different.” He grinned sheepishly. “Kids are perceptive.”
    “You’ll do fine.” I patted his arm. “Just play the guitar and answer their questions. It will be easy.”
    “It’s the questions I’m worried about.” He pulled his phone out of his leather jacket when it rang, frowning as he looked at who was calling. “I gotta get this.”
    He walked over to the corner of my room, over where I stored the soft mats I’d purchased with my own money for all the kids to sit on. I didn’t have any desks, but I didn’t really care about that. We couldn’t do much in desks anyway. My class usually consisted of half music, half gym. We played a lot of musical games and mostly had fun. I liked teaching them new things, but I also wanted them to always associate music with fun.
    I went to my desk, stashing my purse in a drawer and locking it—unfortunately, that was one thing you quickly learned in any Detroit school. You had to lock up your valuables. It wasn’t even just the big kids who stole things. The little ones would take things without a second thought too.
    I pulled out a stack of “happy notes” to work on. I’d already stenciled each quarter note onto construction paper and cut them out. Now I peeled off stickers and pasted them in the middle of each one. I handed three of these out after every class. They were a strange little incentive for kids to behave and pay attention. They all loved getting happy notes.
    “Okay, Celeste, I got it.” Rob leaned against the wall, listening, nodding. I couldn’t help admiring him, still wondering just exactly how all of this had come about. He was still the most beautiful man I’d ever seen in my life. “Yeah, I’ll call him… right now? Really?”
    Obviously it was his assistant, Celeste, with some sort of