Thou Shalt Not(99)

When lunch was over, I went back up to my classroom and found April sitting on the death couch.

“Where’s Marco?” I asked.

“We went to lunch. He just dropped me off.”

I nodded and sat down at my desk, turning my chair toward her. The goddamn Bic was sitting on my desk, but I didn’t react to it like I normally did.

“He says he came to be a part of my welcome dinner,” she said, breaking the momentary silence. “That he wanted to meet all the great people I’d be working with.”

Ah, the New Teacher Potluck, welcoming April to the faculty. Some much had been going on that I forgot it was coming up.

“Do you believe him?”

“I don’t know,” she said, leaning forward on the couch. She covered her face with her hands, and then ran them back through her hair. “Something just doesn’t feel right.”

“Like he knows something?” I asked.

“Like he knows something,” she said. “He mentioned you at lunch.”

“Oh god, what did he say?”

“Just kept saying you seemed like a nice guy. I told him you played baseball most of your life and that caught his interest even more.”

“Did you tell him the whole story?”

“No,” she shook her head. “I didn’t exactly want him knowing I knew your life story after a few weeks.”

“That would make things fairly obvious.”

“Exactly.”

The bell rang, and the kids would be on their way back from lunch.

April stood up and straightened her dress out with her hands.

“Don’t text me until I figure out what’s going on,” she said. “We can talk here unless you hear from me.”

I nodded in agreement. “Okay.”

Although, knowing me, even if I got a text from her saying “It’s okay to text right now,” I probably would have ignored it, thinking it was a text actually sent by Marco to trick me into giving away information.

When I say I think of every possible scenario, I absolutely mean it.



The rest of the day went by without event. Holly and I texted back and forth most of the afternoon. It took a little while to get back into our groove, but eventually we got there and she spent most of the time ranting about her brother. I knew she loved him and felt like a mom, so her rants were more funny than anything else. Holly would do anything for family, or for someone she cared about. The moments she allowed herself to bitch about them only made her more lovable.

We made plans to meet up and see a movie later. She said she needed to get out of the house, and I seemed to be going to a restaurant every other night and was tired of eating out so much.

The movie theater was fairly empty, which I expected for a Wednesday night. Holly and I never picked a movie before we went to the theater. It was our tradition to just pick a time to go and then we would see the next open showing, no matter what the movie was. The only exception was if we had already seen the movie. It was a fun little tradition, but it also forced us to see some real clunkers. Once or twice I had tried to get out of the movie we were going to have to see and convince her to see something else, but she always reminded me it was my idea in the first place and to shut up and watch the movie.

We were in luck, though. The movie playing next was a foreign film about soldiers forced to celebrate Christmas on the battlefield during World War II. I had heard good things about it, and Holly wasn’t at all opposed to subtitles, which was a giant plus in her category.

The theater was empty, as apparently foreign movies about war weren’t popular in the middle of the week. Naturally, my thoughts went to all the things we could do in an empty theater, but I wasn’t all that sure if Holly would be up for it. She wasn’t opposed to public fooling around though, as she had once given me a blowjob in this same theater complex. That had been in the very beginning.

“So, I’ve got a slight problem,” I said, as we sat down in our seats. The commercials hadn’t even started as we still had twenty-five minutes before show time.

“Oh boy,” she said, introducing her large Coke to the sticky cup-holder armrest. “What is it?”

We had discussed the April situation during the day through text, in between Holly’s ranting about her brother. I had told her that April’s husband had shown up at the school, and that it had made things pretty uncomfortable for a little while.

Holly said, “Sucks to be you guys, but you deserve it.”

I expected nothing less from her.

I also explained that because of that, I hadn’t yet had the opportunity to end things officially with April. This bothered her a little, which was completely understandable. But, I promised her it would be done.