Page 16 of Ancient History

I was on. “Hey, Famous Amos.”

“Hi.” A greeting had never sounded less friendly. Amos didn’t shoo me away, but it didn’t take my powers of deduction to know that he wanted me to fuck off, a fact which was a dick punch to the heart.

My brain went blank. Whatever grand plan lay in my head scurried off.

“I thought things would be different. But not much has changed around here. Looks pretty much the same.”

“Yep. Same old South Rock.” Amos had a lead balloon of interest in his voice. The row of freckles tracked across his face, but I couldn’t run my finger along them this time.

“How long have you been teaching here?”

“Three years.”

“Nice. You loved high school so much you had to come back.”

His jaw tightened. “I like teaching history. I wanted to teach at the high school level. South Rock was hiring.”

“Cool. It’s meant to be.”

“Home room is starting soon. Do you have classes here or are you just coaching?”

Translation: Are you gonna be here every day, all day?

“I’m teaching gym and coaching. I’m technically a substitute teacher for the rest of the year.”

Amos nodded. It looked like the conversational burden would rest solely with me. It was so weird getting stonewalled by him when I knew how bubbly and chatty he could be.

“So, are the kids assholes like we were? Well, not us. We were good kids. Some kids in our grade were nightmares.” Where the hell was I going with this? Damn him and his luscious green eyes getting me all nervous. “Do you remember Lance Parham and how he’d start singing in the back of class?”

He gave the barest of acknowledgement nods.

“And Melissa Rodriguez who always talked back to teachers and threatened to have her lawyer dad come in to talk to the principal.” She dated one of the guys on the soccer team, and I had to suffer through hearing stories in her high-pitched voice throughout junior year.

A teeny tiny slight smile of recognition started to emerge on his still, one thousand percent kissable lips.

“Don’t forget Peter Simkins,” he said.

“Simkins! He was always on his phone. The teachers would confiscate his phone, but then he’d always have another. He was dealing drugs, right? That’s what was happening with all those phone calls?”

“I heard he had six girlfriends scattered across the state.” Amos raised an eyebrow. It sounded just plausible enough. “A different cell phone for each.”

“Simkins the string bean? Props to him.”

It felt like old times for a quick second. I got lost in his voice and brushed my finger through his light forearm hair.

He yanked his arm back, his eyes bulging at the contact. Whatever progress I’d made in the past sixty seconds was reversed. The stonewall was back up, stronger than ever.

“I need to get to my classroom.” He turned and started walking at a breakneck pace, one level below making a run for it.

I tried catching up to him, forcing my legs to keep up. He made a sharp right into a hallway that housed the basketball team’s trophy-less trophy case. There was a reason why they were tucked away up here and not in the front entrance like football and soccer.

I couldn’t pivot turn like I used to, and the quick twist to follow him brought out a fresh lance of pain in my left knee. A sledgehammer ache ran up my leg. I bit back a scream of agony.

“Amos.” His name came out somewhere between a whisper and a grunt.

He stopped and spun around. His eyes traveled down to my left knee, which I tried to rub inconspicuously. I managed a smile as I put weight back on it to show everything was hunky dory.

I didn’t want that kind of attention. I hated that one little tear in my knee could overpower me like this. No matter how strong the rest of me was, I couldn’t fix this.

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