So maybe I had nursed a little crush on him, but I knew that even thinking about hooking up with him was all kinds of bad, not that he would even want me. For one thing, I depended on him for a lot of help since I was the senior English team lead and he was the head senior counselor. And for another thing, I was still married in the eyes of God and the law, and I knew I was in no way even close to being ready to jump into something new.
Even separated, I was still married. I had to keep reminding myself of that fact as I stared at Jesse Drake’s truck for a moment. I took a deep breath.
Those little flutters low in my tummy just weren’t going away, and as I found myself walking toward the door to enter the bar, they started battling against the inside of my stomach as my heart joined in and started pounding in my chest. I forced another deep breath into my lungs, wondering why I suddenly had nerves. I’d always been attracted to Jesse, but my body had never reacted quite like that before just in anticipation of seeing him.
I glanced around and found my group in the usual spot. About half of the English department showed up to happy hour, as did about half of the Social Studies teachers, so we had a group of over ten teachers. My heart stopped its loud pounding and those flutters went away when I saw that Jesse wasn’t at the table. I snuck a quick scan of the entire bar, but I didn’t see him anywhere.
“Veronica!” my happy hour friends exclaimed as I approached the table. Our ritual was to yell out the name of each person upon arrival.
I grinned, feeling disappointed that he wasn’t there as I took one of the two open seats at the table, wondering why his truck was there but he wasn’t. The bar was at the end of a strip mall, so maybe he was visiting one of the other shops in the area. I silently berated myself, picking up a menu as Quinn’s eyes met mine across the table. She grinned and I smiled back as I thought about how adorable she always was. Her naturally curly blonde hair and her bright blue eyes and her high cheekbones and her perfect figure always tended to draw the attention of men.
“Good meeting?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Who the fuck schedules a meeting on a Friday afternoon?” I complained.
“Bill!” everyone in hearing distance exclaimed. He was notorious for doing that, and we all hated it.
“What can I get for you, sweetie?” the waitress asked, pen poised over her pad of paper.
“Double vodka seven,” I replied. “And potato skins,” I added on second thought. Shit, I was separated and a little depressed, and it wasn’t like anyone was around who was going to judge my eating habits. I might as well enjoy some fucking potato skins.
“On your own check?” she asked, and I nodded.
The moment she stepped away, something in the air changed. I felt an electric undercurrent, and instinctively I knew that he was there. Then he appeared, pulling out the chair next to me and sitting down.
Those annoying little flutters immediately reignited in my belly.
Great.
This crush of mine was starting to get out of control.
“You know they don’t pay for overtime, right?” Jesse asked, his eyes meeting mine. I noticed for the first time the half-drank beer that had been sitting on the table, and no one had yelled out his name when he sat down, so apparently he had been here for awhile. If I had to guess, I figured he’d either gone to the restroom or he’d gone to the bar to chat up some of the ladies seated there, but my quick scan when I’d walked in hadn’t spotted him, so I figured it was the former. And I was glad, because I didn’t like the thought of him flirting with other women. I wanted him flirting with me.
I had to stop these thoughts. This was wrong on multiple levels.
I started a repetitive chant in my head: “Stop it! He’s not for you! Stop it! He’s not for you!”
“Yep,” I said, trying to catch my breath as his dark eyes bored into mine. God damn, he was hot. And just like that, those eyes of his made the chanting stop. In fact, it was replaced with a new chant: “Holy fuck! He’s so hot! Holy fuck! He’s so hot!”
Dammit.
“What was the holdup?”
“Parent meeting.”
“Fucking Bill,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair as I chuckled.
The waitress was on the other side of the table, and Jesse held up his glass and tapped the side, the universal signal meaning, “I’ll have another.”
She nodded, and I swore I saw her blush a little, and then she scampered off to put in our orders.
“How did that lesson on satire go?” Quinn yelled from across the table, interrupting what was sure to be the start of some flirty banter between Jesse and me.