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He doesn’t know?
Well, that makes him the only hometown boy who doesn’t know by now. Everyone figured it out real quick when I moved my son and me back here with my head held high, much to the chagrin of my upstanding parents. They eventually got over it. So did almost everyone else.
So maybe I’ll keep it that way for just a little longer. He’s bound to find out from someone else sooner or later. Perhaps one of the other teachers will spill it. Well, that’s fine. The less I have to talk about my past, the better.
Patty rubs her palms together and says, “Well, I’ll leave you to it. Beau, you’re in excellent hands.”
“That I am,” he replies, and why does that feel dirty the way he says it?
ChapterThree
Beau
“Oh man, so many books!”
“Yes,” Mary says dryly. “This is the library.”
I’m an idiot when I’m nervous around a pretty girl. And she’s the prettiest one I’ve seen since…ever.
We’ve cut through the media center on our way to the east wing of the school that houses the English and history classrooms, and I make a complete three-sixty turn.
“Yeah, but…there are a lot more books than I remember,” I say.
Mary turns back to give me a bemused look as she continues to the far door at the end of the library’s central aisle. “Maybe you just didn’t notice the books before. You were too busy making out with Ashlyn in the stacks.”
She’s got me there. I had dated the cheer squad captain, Ashlyn Glenn, for years. She dumped me right before winter break senior year after she got accepted early to an Ivy League school and got mad that I wasn’t going to follow her there. I knew no fancy school would grant me admittance, let alone offer a partial football scholarship.
If only I’d taken full advantage of my newfound freedom back then. Maybe Mary and I wouldn’t have lost track.
“That’s fair,” I say, stuffing my hands into the pockets of my chinos. “I read a lot more now, though. Thanks to you.”
Mary pauses, then turns to face me. “Me? What did I do?”
I shrug. “You were always going on and on aboutJane Eyre. So I read that. Then I ended up reading some other stuff by her and her sisters, then I blew through some Jane Austen. Not all of it. Some of it was boring as fuck, not gonna lie.”
She bristles at that. “I see. Wow. I’m impressed.”
“Yeah, the Victorian shit isn’t my bag. Except forFrankenstein. That one was the tits.”
She eyes me like she can’t decide whether I’m serious. “I was named after Mary Wollstonecraft,” she says.
“Mary Shelley,” I correct.
She sucks her lips into her mouth, just like she used to when I would admit that I hadn’t done the work before our tutoring session. “Listen. Don’t speak her husband’s name out loud to me. Them’s fighting words.”
I hold up my hands. “I surrender immediately.”
This makes her laugh, and it’s a sound that sparks a lightness inside me I thought was lost. A lightness that I lost when Granddad died, and I went on a bender that turned my life upside down.
A pink color spreads across her cheeks as she watches me walk past her and hold open the door.
“After you, madam.”
I detect a subtle roll of the eyes as she brushes past through the open door, the sleeve of her thin, cotton top grazing my lapels. Her floral-scented hair hits my nostrils, even as it is knotted up in a messy bun secured with a pencil.
Mary is the same as I remember, if slightly plumper, with a bouncy backside hidden under a flouncy summer skirt.
Her hips sway as she walks ahead of me, making the large floral pattern bounce back and forth.
