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I gave him a flirty smile, reveling in the fun of it all. The chase, the contact. The fact that he didn’t know who I was or what I wanted from him.
He gestured toward the paper, a small thumbnail photo of Cory next to the headline “High School Principal Pleads Not Guilty,” Frank’s latest piece. “Some light lunchtime reading?”
I looked embarrassed, as if I’d been caught. “True confession, I’m kind of obsessed with this story. I’ve read every newspaper article and blog about it.”
“Yeah, well. The media loves a circus, and people love to read about it.”
“I keep imagining it. One moment he’s going to faculty meetings and supervising the dismissal gate. The next, he’s in handcuffs.” I paused and shook my head, as if I couldn’t believe it. “I mean, who hasn’t had a crush on the hot teacher? How many of us wouldn’t have acted on it if given the chance? Van Halen even wrote a song about it.”
“No way,” Nate said. “She has to be eighteen, or I walk away. No exceptions.”
“All I’m saying,” I said, trying to backtrack, “is that if either of those girls had been a few months older, this story wouldn’t be happening. A man’s life wouldn’t have been destroyed simply because he fell in love with the wrong person at the wrong time.” I turned my glass of whiskey in small circles, hoping I sounded convincing.
Nate looked at me, as if weighing his words. “Believe it or not, I actually know the guy.”
I widened my eyes. “No way.”
He took a sip of whiskey and said, “We went to college together.”
I leaned forward. “Are you still friends?”
Nate gave a short laugh. “We were for a long time. I probably know him better than anyone else. But no, we’re not friends anymore.”
“And you never knew?” I pressed. “In all those years, not even a hint? A sideways comment about a beautiful student, or a hypothetical fantasy about one of them?”
Nate shook his head, the corners of his mouth lifting in a smile. “Never,” he said.
“Come on,” I said. “I find that hard to believe.”
“Believe it.”
“My guess is that there were more than two girls,” I said. “I mean, look at him. Maybe they weren’t always his students—I’m sure there are a lot of places he could have found underage girls willing to date him. The beach, or maybe they worked at a restaurant he frequented regularly.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Nate said.
Our food had arrived, and I picked up a french fry and took a bite, trying to think about what to ask next. I didn’t have a lot of time, and he seemed pretty committed to keeping his distance from Cory.
Nate gestured toward the newspaper. “I will tell you, there’s more to it than what you’ve read.”
“There usually is.” I lifted my glass to my lips, the whiskey burning as it went down, and pivoted. “I read somewhere that there’s a girlfriend they want to talk to, but they can’t find her.”
“Meg,” Nate muttered. “God, she was a piece of work. She lied about everything and had no friends as far as I could tell. She just snuck into Cory’s life and appropriated his, convincing him to give her a free place to live. He bought her clothes, helped pay her bills. She even conned him into giving her access to his bank account, which she then emptied.”
“Where’d he meet her?”
“In a coffee shop. They both got stood up by their respective blind dates.” He shook his head. “It was a little too coincidental.”
I ate another fry, though I was too jumpy to have much of an appetite. “You don’t think it’s possible that there might be two people in a coffee shop, each of them meeting a blind date?” I asked. “Or that they’d both been stood up?”
“I’m saying that Meg’s likes and beliefs aligned just a little too easily with Cory’s.”
“But why target him?”
“Why wouldn’t she? Meg was working the front desk at the Y. For a girl like that, Cory would be a catch.”
I gave him a playful glance. “A girl like that?”
Nate held up his hands, grinning. “What I meant is that Meg wasn’t exactly flush with opportunities. Community college was a stretch for her.”
