under the weather

Elliot wasn't sure he could get back into the swing of things. He was dragging before school even started. He was down right sick the day before school opened.

"Are you sure you can do this, anymore?" Amanda gave him a worried look. She'd made a messy amount of orange jello to try to sooth his stomach ache.

"Sure I am." He couldn't quite smile about it. But he knew he had too. He had made it through his first year teaching. The second year had to be breeze. Didn't it?

"Its just-" She gritted back a frown. "I dunno if you're cut out for this. You seemed at perfect ease on stage, you know. Maybe that's where you'd rather be."

He'd taken refuge on the couch and had watched hours of the TODAY show wondering if it was on all day. He stared at her though, wondering if by chance she might have something in mind other than babying him. He put his hands behind his head.

"Are you kidding me?" He might have been faking a little when he said it, but not really. "I love teaching. I do. Its what I was meant to do." She was close enough for him to touch her fore arm.

"Its probably all my fault." She looked away then as if she might cry. "Its just- you probably want to be with someone else."

"What? Don't you say that." He didn't understand as he pulled her in, almost on top of him, but he put his arm around her. They were close. So close. Hadn't their little adventure made them inseparable now? "What would ever make you think that?"

"I hear things." She pouted. He kissed her forehead. "I know what they said last year when, when I was pregnant and that time I was at your school. Those two teachers saying I was just a child. And couldn't you find someone who was an actual adult, who wasn't a child having a child."

"Who said that?" Elliot winced. He sighed then.

"I dunno. I dunno their names." She sucked in a breath then. "No telling, what they're saying now. How I evidently can't raise a child."

"Mandy, you just gotta stop thinking like that." He told her. "I don't. Really."

She nodded then as if she believed him.

He kissed her then. It was just what he needed. And her reaction made it certain that they were definitely on the same page. Evidently, he saw someone completely different up close and personal. It was definitely something not spotted from far away.

Elliot smiled. He was feeling better. And maybe he was hungry for something other than jello.