Page 26 of Further To Fall

Austin laughed. “There really wasn’t a good moment. You were all hysterical, and then we were making a plan to save the world, so this was the first chance I had.”

I smacked his stomach with the back of my hand as I got up. “Order me pad thai, I need it after today.”

“You got it, babe.”

I made a beeline for my bathroom, and sure enough, I looked like a drowned raccoon. There were tracks of mascara down my cheeks, my eyes looked like I had taken a van ride with the members of The Grateful Dead, and my hair looked like a small rodent had made a home there. Just great.

As I methodically wiped the makeup from my face, my mind wandered to the man in my living room. He’d said I never had to worry about being without him, but I knew that wasn’t true. One day, he would get over his hang-ups with relationships. Or worse, he’d meet someone who he loved enough to make him get over them, and he would have no choice but to leave me behind.

I knew that if either of us got a significant other, our friendship would have to change. Austin wouldn’t be ditching his evening plans at the drop of a hat for me, he would be ditching them for some other girl’s bad day. The thought had me rubbing the space between my breasts, trying to ease the burning sensation there. What was that quote fromSixteen Candles? Oh, yeah. “That’s why they call them crushes. If they were easy, they’d call them something else.”

13

Austin

Pulling into a parking spot in the school’s lot, I spotted Carter leaning across her car’s front seat to grab her bag, her skirt pulling tightly across her ass. I also saw that I wasn’t the only one noticing. Some pencil-pushing fucker was taking an abnormally long time fumbling with his keys while his eyes were fixed on my little firecracker’s ass.

My little firecracker. Fuck. Carter wasn’t really mine, but somewhere along the line, I’d started thinking of her that way. I slammed my door extra hard, jarring the joker from the trance Carter’s ass had him in. She looked over my way and waved. Joker looked back and forth between the two of us and stepped towards Carter. I picked up my pace.

“Hey, Austin.” She beamed up at me. Fuckingbeamedlike I had solved all her problems just by showing up here. “Austin, this is my friend and colleague, Kyle. Kyle, this is one of my best friends, Austin.”

Kyle looked as if he had just tasted something sour. “When you mentioned your friend, Austin, I always assumed you were talking about another girl.”

Carter let out a choked laugh. “Um, nope. He’s very much a dude.”

I smirked and extended my hand. “Nice to meet you, man.”

His beady little eyes narrowed as he attempted to squeeze my hand harder. “You, as well.”

Carter, oblivious to the tension, said, “So glad you guys finally got to meet! Austin, we’d better get in there so I can move the desks around and get everything ready for your presentation.”

I stretched out my arm and pulled her to my side, grabbing her bag in the process. “Show me the way.” She pointed towards a set of blue double doors that screamed “school,” and we set off, Kyle the creeper following behind us.

As we walked through the hallways, I couldn’t help but be taken back to my elementary school days, remembering all the mystery meat Mondays, and my favorite teacher, Miss Rachael, who starred in so many of my pre-pubescent daydreams. I bet Carter starred in quite a few fantasies herself.

Carter unlocked the door to her classroom and pushed it open, flipping on the lights and walking over to her desk, taking her bag from my shoulder. I took a moment to soak it all in. I shouldn’t have been surprised since I had seen her crafting decorations that day I came over to apologize, but somehow, I still was.

She had covered every spare inch of wall space with handmade posters, paper flowers, and even an intricately crafted map of the world where each country had an animal, flower, and food item drawn on it. I couldn’t begin to imagine how many hours it had taken to put this all together, and I was sure she hadn’t gotten paid for that time. I sure as hell never had a classroom that looked like this one. “Carter, this is incredible.”

She was already at work moving the desks in the first row to the sides of the classroom. “You like it?” Her eyes sparkled with pride.

I pulled another desk to the side, following her lead. “I love it. You’re an awesome teacher, you know that?”

She blushed the pretty shade of pink that had become one of my favorite colors. “Thanks, Austin. I hope so.”

I reached up and brushed a strand of hair from her face, my fingers lingering on her cheek, that familiar energy buzzing to life at the touch. “I know so.”

She looked down at her shoes, breaking the contact. “I should run you through how things will go today before the kids get here. They know you’re coming and are super excited. Pretty much all the boys are huge UFL fans, even if they are way too young to be watching that stuff. I’ll introduce you and then let you go through your speech. You’ll have to use me to demonstrate on because I didn’t want to send the kids home with permission slips for a self-defense workshop, just in case there’s something bad happening at Michael’s house.”

I could tell Carter was nervous, she was talking faster and faster the way she always did when she was anxious, so I reached out, grabbed the back of her neck, and squeezed. “Hey, it’s going to be okay. The kids are going to love it because they won’t have to do school work for an hour. And, hopefully, it will encourage Michael to open up. But, at the very least, we’ll be giving everyone some valuable information.”

She let out a slow breath. “You’re right.”

I felt my cheeks pull into a smile. “Can you say that again? I want to record it on my phone so I can play it back to you later.”

Carter slapped me playfully in the stomach. “Jerk.”

Just then the bell rang, and I heard the thundering footsteps of what could only be hundreds of little terrors. Oh, shit, I hoped I could pull this off. I did not want to let Carter down.

---