Thou Shalt Not(58)

God, I had one woman planning on coming over and having a show and tell session with me, and another woman talking about making me do a book report and turning it in. When did I suddenly become twelve again?

Holly had made sure my mind was in her panties, so I was tempted to reply “Would this be oral?” to April’s comment about the book report. I hated oral book reports though. If I sent a text like that I might get a flirtatious reply and then we would spiral downward once again when all I wanted to do was end things before they went any further. No, I didn’t. Yes, I did.

I was the king of book reports back in the day, I texted, keeping things very surface level.

Not the king of humility, though.

Hey, if you got it...

And that was before the days of copy and pasting on the internet. I bet you wrote some impressive papers.

I like to think I did. I still have a box in my closet at home full of old reports and papers I wrote in high school and college.

I bet there is some pretty neat stuff in there. Maybe I will have to come over and read a few sometime. :-)

Did she just invite herself to my house? What a difference twenty-four hours can make. Yesterday I would have been on cloud nine had she insinuated coming over to my house. But, now that I had been at her house, and heard her interact with Marco, it all had become more real and my feelings had seemingly done a 180. I needed to redirect the conversation.

Did Mr. West talk to you more about the job? I asked. I was genuinely curious, and actually figured that if the board voted to bring her on, West would let me know around the same time he let her know. Robin had been the high school’s English department head, and I imagined with her gone they would likely turn that responsibility over to me. No mention had been made of this though.

No. I haven’t heard anything yet. When I spoke to him about it last, he said I’d find out next week probably.

Will Marco be okay with you taking on a full-time job?

The period was nearing an end and I was already over the day. I wanted to be done showing videos. I wanted to go to the classroom next door and tell April that as much as I enjoyed spending time with her, we should definitely back off things and keep our relationship professional. I wanted to have an enjoyable evening. And I now wanted Holly to come over after work, and I wanted to fuck the night away with her.

He will have to be. He knows I want to get back to teaching. He knows I need it for my sanity. So, he might argue and fight me over it, but I am doing it. If they offer me the job that is.

When I read her text, I began to realize that maybe I was losing my mind, my grip on sanity. I wanted to go find Marco and stand up for April, tell him that she was a wonderful woman who deserved to be taken care of and treated right. She deserved the opportunity to do what she loved, and if he was going to try to keep her from it, he was going to have to come through me.

I imagined if I actually said this he would turn the color of a radish and chase me around while wielding a baseball bat. But this showed me how quickly I could jump right back into wanting to defend her, come to her rescue.

You should probably just stop texting her altogether, I told myself. You get more connected and drawn in with each text.

I’m sure he will see that it would make you happy.

But, what did I know? I had never spoken a word to him in my life. Nor did I hope to have to. Although I probably would, if she was hired full-time. At the very least, Staff Christmas parties brought everyone out for a night.

Guess we will see :-) she answered.

Holly stopped responding and April did as well, so I suffered through the end of my class in textual silence. I could have continued the conversation with both of them, but I hated being the person who kept texting when the other person hadn’t responded yet, so I put my phone down and finished watching the video with the students.

“Rays are back in town tonight, Mr. H,” Michael Killian whispered to me from his desk, which was to the left of mine.

“Yeah, they are. You going to the game?”

“Eh, I don’t know. My dad stopped going to the games after the All Star Break. Said if they weren’t going to try to win, he wasn’t gonna bother going.”

“Your father is a wise man,” I said.

Michael laughed and turned his attention back to the movie, which had reached the final scene. The bell went off to end the period, and all of the students immediately got to their feet to leave. No one bothered to stick around to watch the end. Bastards. Although, I didn’t expect them to. Or really blame them.

At lunch, I grabbed a chicken Caesar salad and joined my coworkers at the table. They were all caught up in what each other was doing over the weekend, the normal Friday routine.

I absently moved pieces of lettuce around, playing with my food more than eating it. I wasn’t particularly hungry and didn’t know why.