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Joss
Ben Rutherford was the principal of Pilgrim High School, which made him my boss as well as the man of my dreams.
He was tall with a strength that radiated from him. Maybe it was the short almost buzz cut of his hair, and the thick, but well manicured beard that attracted me. I don’t really know. And I don’t really care. I want him, badly enough to make a fool out of myself time and time again.
Like right now, fantasizing while he was asking me out.
Finally.
“Joss?” Ben’s brows dipped in concerned confusion.
I blinked and looked directly into those green eyes before letting out a sigh that sounded suspiciously like a swoon. “Um sure, that would be great, Ben. Did you want to pick me up? Because I can totally meet you there.” It was customary for the man to pick up the woman, but I was a modern woman and I understood how things worked.
Ben’s frown only darkened as he shook his head and I felt sick to my stomach. “A bunch of us, teachers and coaches, are meeting up there.” It was Friday night, which meant it was football night in Pilgrim, and plenty of the staff went out after the game for beer and non-school related conversation.
“Oh.” Of course, he wasn’t asking me out. I’d been batting my eyelashes, attempting to flirt without crossing the line at every opportunity and sending out as many signals as possible without seeming desperate, and still, Principal Rutherford hadn’t taken the bait.
And he wasn’t going to, ever. Clearly.
But I straightened my spine and squared my shoulders as embarrassment threatened to flatten me. “I’ll see if I can make it.” It was as non-committal as I could be in that moment, utterly humiliated as I was.
He flashed that charming, boy-next-door smile that melted my insides and shrugged. “I hope to see you there.” The unsaid, as a friend, no longer needed to be uttered, because it was clear he only wanted to make me feel included, as a teacher and a newcomer to the town of Pilgrim, Texas.
When he was out of earshot, I turned to my friend Mara who’d witnessed the entire mortifying ordeal and dropped my head on her shoulder. “Did that look as humiliating as it felt?”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Mara insisted, but I didn’t need to look up to see the sympathy to go along with the smile in her voice. “But it wasn’t good.”
“That’s what I was afraid of, because it felt terrible.” Worse than terrible, and it served as a perfect reminder why I didn’t take risks or go outside my comfort zone much. Moving to Pilgrim was probably the riskiest thing I’d done in my twenty-seven years of living. Or half-living, as my mom had told me on multiple occasions.
“It was bold of you to assume, and that was pretty bad ass.”
I looked up and stared at my friend’s twitching mouth. “Pretty stupid, you mean. What was I thinking? He barely knows I’m a woman, never mind interested. It’s time to call time of death on this crush. Permanently.” It was well past time, truth be told.
“Or maybe you could just ask him out. I heard there are women who’ve done that and lived to tell the tale.” I appreciated Mara’s sarcasm and blunt honesty, most of the time. Tonight was not one of those times.
I shook my head at her advice because it was pointless. “Mara I have been dropping hints and signs galore, and nothing.” It had amounted to less than nothing, in fact. “So, either he is so uninterested that he can’t even see me as a possibility,” which was a devastating thought to my female ego, “or he’s pretending not to get the hints, so he doesn’t have to reject me outright.” Neither possibility made me feel like anything but a loser, and I had to bite the inside of my cheek to stop the tears that stung behind my eyes.
Mara shrugged as her gaze landed on Principal Rutherford, surrounded by five sexy women, all dolled up and leaning in to show off their bodies, inappropriately dressed for the weather as they were. “Sometimes, often, men are just clueless. If you don’t beat them over the head, like that,” she pointed to one mom who pushed a stroller back and forth with one hand, and grasped his bicep with the other. “They are totally clueless.”
“Look at them! There’s no way I can compete with that.” Most days I wore my thick blond hair in a ponytail and I never bothered with any makeup other than mascara, while these women were expertly put together with professionally done hairstyles. “I look like a gym teacher, and they look like the hot librarian from porn videos.”
Mara bit back a laugh and shook her head. “You’re being ridiculous Joss, you know that, right? If Ben had any interest in those women he wouldn’t be scanning the crowd in search of someone to save him.”
