Page 71 of John Wilder Gets Schooled
He bit his lip, and then a tiny, pleased smile crept onto his face. “I guess we are.”
Boyfriends.
Holy shit, but I loved the idea of that.
I slunk into the teachers’lounge a few minutes after my parking lot kiss, having gone by my classroom first to check if any of the kids were still waiting to be picked up. In the movies, a kiss like that—with a declaration involved—would come at the final credits, or at least the end of a scene. In real life, a car had beeped at me for standing there too long, and Wilder had rubbed the back of his neck and said, “I guess I’ll see you later?” before he and Gracie had walked away.
Then Pete the crossing guard had pointed his sign at me and glared, and I had no idea what that meant, and I still had work to do before I could leave school for the day. It was all very awkward and anticlimactic. Fortunately, those two things were so familiar to me that they were almost my comfort zone. Well, that was what I told myself as I walked into the teachers’ lounge with my head held high.
It was lucky my head was held high or I wouldn’t have had a chance to deflect the scrunched-up ball of paper that Alan threw at my head.
“What was that for?” I asked.
“I had twenty bucks on after Christmas,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
Dana sailed toward me with a coffee. “And I thought you’d hold out until Thanksgiving at least, asshole.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said hopefully.
Mrs. Freeman stood up from the couch. “They’re talking about the bets we were laying on when you’d finally ask Wilder out.”
So much for my hope. Also, so much for my preconceptions of Mrs. Freeman, who was now holding out her hand for the twenty-dollar bill Alan was begrudgingly handing over.
“Mrs. Freeman! I’m shocked!” I said.
“Not as shocked as Pete the crossing guard. He thought you’d make it till the end of the school year because you’d be afraid of getting in trouble, and now he’s out a fifty.”
No wonder he’d waved his sign at me threateningly.
Okay, so this whole thing was grossly unprofessional, but Icouldn’t even be angry about it, because—betting losses aside—everyone seemed genuinely happy for me. There were a lot of bad things that could have happened in a different school in a different small town if the teachers had found out I was seeing one of my students’ fathers. And while none of those bad things would be my fault, they’d certainly be my problem. So it filled me with a sort of joyful relief to discover that none of my colleagues was going to be a dick about Wilder and me. Mrs. Freeman might have been unprofessional by letting the betting pool happen under her watch, and even more unprofessional by winning it, but it turned out that I didn’t want a professional in these circumstances. I wanted a friend. And looking around the teachers’ lounge, I could see that I was surrounded by them.
I couldn’t even pretend to be mad, not when I was smiling this hard.
I could only imagine Wilder’s face when I told him about it. Wilder, myboyfriend. He’d probably be horrified and avoid speaking to Mrs. Freeman for the foreseeable future. But hopefully he’d think dating me was worth a little embarrassment.
“Hey,” I said to Dana as a brilliant idea struck me, “is there anywhere in town that sells flowers?”
“Wait, let me just text my husband and tell him you’re already outgunning him in the romance stakes,” she said, pulling out her phone.
“Goose Run Gas sells something that could pass for a bouquet in bad lighting,” Mrs. Freeman said, “but that’s about the only place in town.”
“Thanks,” I said. I still had some paperwork to do and I hurried through it so I could get out of there and away from the knowing looks of my colleagues. Myfriends.
I stopped at Goose Run Gas on the way home, hoping Danny wasn’t there. Not because I was trying to keep Wilder and me dating a secret, but Danny was Wilder’s best friend, and I didn’t want to let it slip we were a couple before Wilder got a chance to tell him himself. I was in luck—Danny wasn’t working. When Iasked the woman on the register where the flowers were, she gave me a doubtful look then led me over to a bucket tucked away in a corner near the drinks refrigerator and pointed.
I’d had visions of a nice bunch of roses or something, but this was Goose Run, so my choices were a bunch of chrysanthemums with half the heads missing, or… no, that was it. A battered bunch of mums. I looked at the flowers and at the woman. “What happened to them?”
“Goose. I can sell them to you for five bucks.”
“Sure.”
She was busy ringing me up when a familiar voice said, “Who the fuck are you buying flowers for? I thought you had a thing with Wilder.”
I turned to find Chase glaring at me.
So much for keeping things quiet—but then, this was Goose Run. I gave him a wary smile. “We do have a thing. These are for him. We’re kind of… dating now.”
