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“How about you just chill in my room while I get changed, again, and then we’ll switch so you can throw on a pair of my sweats, and then I’ll go back down there with you,” he suggested as he led me not to the door that I’d come flying out of, but to the one beside it.
That’s when I realized that the door beside it led directly into what had to have been his bedroom.
I swallowed hard, feeling the discomfort start to rise.
“What do you do now if you’re not teaching school?” he asked. “Can you even do anything with a teaching degree besides teach?”
I thought about not telling him. In fact, I thought about making another run for it.
Which he had to have felt because his arm around me tightened just enough to let me know he wouldn’t let me go.
“Well?” he asked as he locked the door behind him, pushed me, not so gently, into the chair right beside the door, and said with one look that I clearly interpreted. Stay.
I sighed and brought my legs up into the chair, going into what Faye used to call my “discomfort” position.
It was with my legs up, my arms around my legs, and my head all but tucked into the tops of my knees.
It allowed me to see, but it also allowed me to be a much smaller target. Which inevitably caused people to overlook me.
Something told me this man wouldn’t overlook me, ever.
“I don’t teach anymore,” I admitted. “Never really started, honestly. But I got my degree, and I kind of lucked into a job that was created for me. I design curriculum to improve the quality of education for students in multiple school districts. I also monitor school effectiveness and coach teachers—via Zoom—and make recommendations to help improve their teaching.” I paused, taking a deep breath. “I also market for a few companies and do podcasts.”
He tilted his head as he bent down to gather some clothes from a bag that looked like it’d exploded all over the bedroom floor.
He grabbed a pair of underwear, sweats, and a black t-shirt.
He also grabbed another pair of sweatpants and a black sweatshirt and laid them on the bed before saying, “Zoom means that you don’t have to get up close and personal with kids?”
I shrugged. “It wasn’t necessarily the kids that bothered me. It was the parents who I would have to get in contact with. Or fellow teachers, administrators, or custodians that I would have to converse with. Let’s just say, I don’t do well in any crowd more than four people. I’ll turn into a scaredy-cat.”
He snorted and walked to the bathroom.
When he emerged a few seconds later, he was less wet, had a pair of sweatpants on that fit him like a glove, and a black t-shirt that fit him even better.
Before, I hadn’t realized what a good body he had—he’d kept it well hidden under his clothes—or I hadn’t been paying super close attention because of obvious reasons.
But now, sitting there in the chair in his bedroom, I realized rather quickly how very attractive he was.
He wasn’t my type, though.
He was Faye’s.
Which had my heart skipping a beat because Faye wouldn’t have a type anymore.
She wouldn’t have all those babies she’d talked about.
She wouldn’t visit the world—mainly Italy, where she was from.
She wouldn’t be able to watch her first professional hockey game, or ever visit the beach like a normal person.
She was gone.
“Why don’t you go get out of those clothes?” he suggested. “I’ll throw them in the dryer.”
“The power isn’t on,” I pointed out.
It was getting dark as hell, too.
Whatever reprieve we’d had in the cloud coverage was gone, and now all I could see was darkness, and the faintest hint of his body due to the curtains covering the windows.
“It isn’t,” he agreed. “But that doesn’t mean, when the power does come back on, that we can’t turn it on then.”
He had a point.
“Okay,” I said quietly, unfolding myself from the chair.
“Leave the door open a crack and you can kind of see what you’re doing,” he suggested. “I left my phone in the kitchen with yours.”
I winced, remembering that I’d left it on the counter now that I was thinking about it.
“Oh,” I said softly. “Okay.”
With that, I took the clothes he was now holding out to me, and then walked woodenly to the bathroom.
Once I was changed, I tied the tie on his sweats as tight as I could—which still wasn’t enough—and walked back out.
I had my wet clothes in one hand, and the waist of his sweats in the other.
“You happen to have a belt?” I joked half-heartedly.
I could see his shadow moving toward me as he said, “Try rolling them up?”
Then the wet clothes were out of my hands, and he was out of the room.
