Separation Anxiety (2 page)

Great.

This crush of mine was starting to get out of control.

“You know they don’t pay for overtime, right?” Jesse asked, his eyes meeting mine. I noticed for the first time the half-drank beer that had been sitting on the table, and no one had yelled out his name when he sat down, so apparently he had been here for awhile. If I had to guess, I figured he’d either gone to the restroom or he’d gone to the bar to chat up some of the ladies seated there, but my quick scan when I’d walked in hadn’t spotted him, so I figured it was the former. And I was glad, because I didn’t like the thought of him flirting with other women. I wanted him flirting with me.

I had to stop these thoughts. This was wrong on multiple levels.

I started a repetitive chant in my head: “Stop it! He’s not for you! Stop it! He’s not for you!”

“Yep,” I said, trying to catch my breath as his dark eyes bored into mine. God damn, he was hot. And just like that, those eyes of his made the chanting stop. In fact,
it was replaced with a new chant: “Holy fuck! He’s so hot! Holy fuck! He’s so hot!”

Dammit.

“What was the holdup?”

“Parent meeting.”

“Fucking Bill,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair as I chuckled.

The waitress was on the other side of the table, and
Jesse held up his glass and tapped the side, the universal signal meaning, “I’ll have another.”

She nodded, and I swore I saw her blush a little, and then she scampered off to put in our orders.

“How did that lesson on satire go?” Quinn yelled from across the table, interrupting what was sure to be the start of some flirty banter between Jesse and me.

“Fine,” I said. She had helped me plan a killer lesson, and I was using it first with my honors kids. She was going to try it the following week with her on-level students. “They came up with some really great examples.”

I had thought about telling Quinn that Richard and I were over about a million times, but I still hadn’t. She had become my very best friend over the past five years. We had a great time together, laughing at lunch until we both had tears streaming down our faces at the most ridiculously immature things, and we gave each other solid advice and could have lengthy, deep talks. But something about the fact that she was the one who helped me find Richard made me pause when telling her. I literally had told not a single soul about the separation. I just wasn’t ready for the assured looks of sympathy I’d receive and the advice about how to fix a marriage. It was too broken to recover. We weren’t just bent; we were broken beyond repair, and the bigger issue was that neither of us
wanted
to fix it anymore. We’d given it the old college try for two years, and sometimes things just don’t work out.

I had always believed that marriage was once and forever, but suddenly I found myself about to become another statistic. That thought saddened me, but it wasn’t the end of the world; it was just the end of Richard and me. I knew I had to start telling people eventually, but really nothing had changed from the outside. Things still looked fine, and I’d tell people when I was ready. I’d tell people once we made it official. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it was really silly to sit around waiting for something to happen.

I finally made the decision that I was going to file the paperwork for divorce. The sooner we could end things, the sooner we’d both be able to move on.

“Earth to Veronica,” I heard
Jesse’s deep, raspy voice next to me, close to my ear.

I snapped out of my thoughts. “Sorry,” I muttered.

“Where did you go just now?” he asked.

“Just a lot on my mind,” I said, skirting the question.

“Care to share?” he asked, a look of concern washing over his warm brown eyes.

I shrugged. “Maybe later,” I said
, looking away before I lost myself in those eyes.

I felt his hand on my arm. It was warm and rough and electrical and perfect. I felt all of the blood in my body rushing to that one spot where he touched me, and then I felt my neck warm and my face heat up as a blush spread across my cheeks. I knew I was being ridiculous. This was my friend. This was
my Jesse, my trusted colleague. Wait. Not “my” Jesse. Just Jesse.

I was still married, I reminded myself once again. But a little corner of my mind was also justifying that I was separated and there was no hope left for
my marriage.

“Irreconcilable differences” meant no fault. If I acted on these feelings that I was developing, we wouldn’t be able to claim “no fault” anymore. If I cheated, I would be at fault. And right now, things were going to end
fairly amicably. We’d already pretty much divided our things, and we had been in talks about selling the house and splitting the profits. So I had to maintain the steady line until things were fully over between us, until the judge declared that in the eyes of the law, we were officially divorced.

All of that ran through my head in the split second his hand touched my arm. I glanced down at his fingers, and I noticed not for the first time how beautiful his hands were. Seriously, he could be a hand model or something.
His fingers were long with trim, neat fingernails. I could tell that he spent time working out, because his hands looked strong and powerful. I suddenly wondered what his naked chest looked like, or what his abdominal muscles looked like under that shirt and tie he wore every day except Friday, when he wore a polo shirt with CVHS emblazoned over the top left pocket and well worn jeans that made his ass look incredible.

Okay, so maybe I’d spen
t some time checking him out in the past.

“V, you know you can talk to me,” he said, his voice low and intense, that wonderful hand still artfully placed over my skin.

I loved when he called me “V.” Something about it was sweet and intimate and intense all at once, and I suddenly felt like it was only the two of us sitting at that table, even though we were surrounded by friends and colleagues.

I did know that I could talk to him. He was a counselor, after all. If there was anybody that I trusted to keep my confessions to himself, and if there was anybody who could give me sound advice,
Jesse was it.

I nodded, suddenly unable to speak around the lump that had formed in my throat. I felt those tiny pricks behind my eyes, and then the waitress appeared with my drink and I grabbed it from her gratefully, gulping half of it down with one long pull.
I felt the cold liquid slide down my throat. I needed it to clear the threat of tears caused by the man sitting beside me who wanted to comfort me, and I needed it to cool down after the heat that I’d felt rush through me at the skin to skin contact. While it helped with the threat of tears, the vodka had the opposite effect on me than I had intended, causing my body to heat even more rather than cool down.

“Jesus. Slow down,”
Jesse said with a laugh, finishing off his beer and handing the waitress the empty glass as she handed him a fresh one. His voice was no longer low and intimate, close to my ear, and his hand was no longer on my arm. A brief chill prickled my skin where his hand had just been.

Quinn giggled from across the table. She knew that I thought
Jesse was hot, but she had no idea what was really going on in my head.

“Long week,” I said weakly, trying to come up with some excuse as to why I’d just chugged down half of my vodka drink.

He nodded. “I get it. Every week in February tends to be long,” he said.

“How’s counseling seniors going this time of year?” I asked, changing the subject to something safer.

“Good. I’ve already contacted all of the parents of seniors in danger of failing, so hopefully they’ll get their asses in gear. How are your seniors?”

“Good. I don’t have any failing, and
we’ve just been preparing like crazy for the AP test in May.”

“Do you think they’ll be
ready?” he asked, taking a long sip of his drink.

“Fucking better be,” I grinned.

“They’ve got the best teacher in your department, so they’ll be fine.”

I blushed from the top of my head to the bottom of my toes.

“Stop,” I chided, and he grinned.

“I’
m serious, V,” he said, his voice low and sexy again as he ran his hand through his hair. “You know how awesome you are, don’t you?”

I didn’t, not anymore. I had for a lon
g time. I’d always been confident, but my relationship with Richard had taken that from me.

The waitress came back with my order of potato skins, so I was saved from having to answer his question. I watched him watch the waitress walk away, and I was reminded of his sexual tendencies. He glanced at my potato skins, covered in bacon and cheese and greasy goodness, and then he glanced up at me, a smirk curling his beautifully sculpted lips.

“You sharing those?” he asked.

I nodded. “Help yourself,” I said, even though I knew I could put the entire plate down myself.

He grinned, and I melted a little. I gulped down some more vodka.

“So that waitress?” he said, grabbing a potato skin and gesturing with it toward the woman who had just placed my food in front of me. I looked over at him and raised my eyebrows. “She likes it rough.”

I choked on some potato. Guess what I did to clear the blockage from my throat? Yep. Gulped down some more vodka.

He chuckled as he patted me on the back, and I was hyperaware of his hands on me again.

It wasn’t unusual to hear Jesse talk about sex, but hearing him talk about sex when I was realizing how serious my crush on him had become was a little too much for me. I suddenly wanted to know what rough with him was like. It wasn’t like I hadn’t imagined it before, but I had been on a sexual hiatus for over a year, and the last time I’d had sex with Richard wasn’t exactly pleasurable.

It
had been our one year anniversary. You know how people say that once you get married, you never have sex again? Most married couples I knew weren’t like that at all. But once Richard and I got married, sex became a monthly chore. Before the wedding, it had always been great. Our first time together had been romantic and sweet, and each time after was always pleasurable. But with getting married came buying a house, working harder to make ends meet, and the stress that went along with all of those things. Most nights we were both simply too tired to do it, but we agreed that we needed a date night at least once a month. Our last “date night” was our first wedding anniversary. We’d both drank too much in anticipation of our monthly chore, and he passed out while he was still inside of me. I had to push him off of me and then the dramatic tears that come with too much drinking came, and I cried myself to sleep.

Something told me that with
Jesse, I’d never cry myself to sleep.

I’d always go to sleep with a smile on my face.

My drink was empty, so I reluctantly called over the waitress who had been lucky enough to fuck the man sitting next to me.

“I’ll have another,” I announced when she came back. Her nametag said “Tami.”

“Another double?” she asked, and I shook my head.

“Single is fine,” I said, knowing I should slow down a little.

She scampered away after holding eyes a little too long with Jesse.

“That was a double?”
Jesse asked, incredulous.

“Yeah. You got a problem with that?” I teased.

“Someone’s going to need to drive your drunk ass home.”

He was righ
t. Another drink would put me in the unsafe driving zone, but I’d deal with it when it was time to leave. Quinn would take me home, and I’d figure out a way to get my car the next day. No big deal, I thought, even though I realized that it was kind of a big deal because it’s not like I’d be able to rely on my husband to help me pick up my car.

“So how’s the man with two first names?”
Jesse asked, changing the subject again.

He always called Richard that since his name was Richard Thomas. It annoyed me at first because it had been my husband that he was making fun of, but now I just found it funny.

“You know, that means I have two first names, too,” I said.

“Yeah, but your last name is a guy name, so it’s okay.”

I giggled. Actually giggled, like a stupid kid with a crush on the hot guy. Which was accurate, except I wasn’t a kid.

“You have two first names, too,” I countered, realizing for the first time that he actually did. I think I’d been too mesmerized by those dark, mysterious eyes to register that fact all of the times he’d teased me about my husband’s name before.

“I suppose I do,” he grinned. We smiled at each other for a beat. “So he’s good?” he pressed, and I sensed that he knew something was up.

I shrugged. “Sure. He’s fine.”

“What’s going on, V?” His voice was low and intense and an image of him hovering over me inappropriately flashed through my mind.

“Nothing,” I said, shoving a potato skin covered with sour cream into my mouth. Not a smart move, but
I wasn’t prepared to talk about it. Plus, I was already feeling the first effects of the vodka, and vodka, as everyone knows, is truth serum. The last thing I needed was to make a drunken confession about the state of my marriage to my crush.