Page 94 of Last Christmas (Private 0.60)
could make it up to you?"
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She pulled his tie from around his neck, tossing it on the floor. Her hands flew expertly over the buttons on
his shirt, across his belt buckle as he ran his fingers through her hair. She slid onto the table and pulled him
toward her. Ariana heard his breath quickening in the dark as Isobel edged off his shirt and let it fall to the
floor.
Oh. My. God.
Ariana closed her eyes and sank back underneath the staircase next to Thomas. This couldn't be happening.
Mr. Holmes would never have an affair with a student. He couldn't. Everyone at Easton knew that he was a
good guy. A guy with a wife at home, a pregnant wife who sometimes made biscotti for him to bring to class.
He wouldn't do this to her. There was no way.
Of course, the slobbering kissing sounds coming from the other side of the room suggested otherwise.
Ariana's stomach turned. She was even more disgusted with Isobel. She'd been dating her boyfriend, Jack,
since freshman year. Was almost as attached to him as she was to her morning latte. Ariana had once caught
her doodling the name Mrs. John Staton in the back of her spring issue of Vogue, and knew that the two of
them were serious. The spring issue was Isobel's prize possession. It was common knowledge around Billings
that any girl who so much as looked at her copy of the issue before Isobel read it cover to cover twice would
never live to tell the tale.
And yet here they were, Mr. Holmes and Isobel, devouring each other like a pair of horny, rabid dogs in the
Drake basement. Ariana felt her hands beginning to shake, and she didn't bother to stop them.
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It wasn't just the fact that they were hooking up, or lying about it, or breaking all sorts of state statutory rape
laws in the process. She was more pissed at herself for being so naive as to believe that they were good
people. That they were incapable of doing something so wrong. She had underestimated them, just like she'd
underestimated Daniel. She'd been at Easton long enough to know that nothing was ever exactly what it
seemed. Apparently, she hadn't learned the lesson well enough. She felt her hands curling tightly around
Thomas's wool coat, and rage churned in the pit of her stomach.
She noticed Mr. Holmes's Dockers out of the corner of her eye. Isobel had whipped the pants toward the
stairwell, and they were almost within reach. A phone peeked out of the back pocket, and Ariana glanced
down at her own cell, dead on the floor next to her.
