Where You Are (23 page)

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Authors: J.H. Trumble

BOOK: Where You Are
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Chapter 31
Andrew
 
This is what pisses me off.
The next week I stay after school
again,
three extras hours, without pay, on a non-tutoring day to tutor a sarcastic little brat who used his hour last week to fuck with my head. Maya has to move her group back an hour so she can pick up Kiki from Ms. Smith's Village and take her to a doctor's appointment, which I had planned to do, and said little brat doesn't show up. He doesn't say anything in class. He doesn't stop by after school. He doesn't leave a note in my mailbox.
He just doesn't show.
At four forty, I leave. And then, just to cover my ass, I leave a note on the door, just in case he does show.
The house is quiet when I get home. It occurs to me that I haven't been in the house alone once since moving in. I don't turn on the TV to check the news as I usually do. I just want to soak up the quiet and unwind, or I swear to God, I'm going to hunt down a live chicken and bite its head off.
So I'm not particularly thrilled when someone knocks on the door, and I'm really hoping I don't have to play nice with parents or babysit any kids until Maya gets home.
I paste a smile on my face and open the door.
“Sorry, I'm—” Robert looks up at me from the step down, and my knees actually go a little weak. “What are
you
doing here?” he asks.
For a moment I think he's followed me here, but he looks just as surprised as I am, and I dismiss the thought.
“I was about to ask you the same thing,” I say, my heart hammering in my chest.
“I work with some kids here, every Wednesday, with Ms. Momin.”
No. No way. No
fucking
way
. Maya's talked about her group, but she's never mentioned any names, or if she has, they just didn't stick with me. I can't believe it. Robert, my Robert, has been coming here for months? And now he's here and I'm here and there are so many things I want to say to him. But all I can think to say is, “Come on in.”
I hold the door open for him and he slips past me like I'm going to punch him or something. “Your group's been postponed until six. Maya said she called everyone.”
“Maya? My phone's dead. Wait, you know Ms. Momin? And, why are you here?”
I wipe my hand down my face. Wow. It occurs to me later that this moment is the very definition of serendipity. “Maya—Ms. Momin—is my ex-wife.” I'm embarrassed to admit the next part. “I live here now. I mean, I used to live here, and I moved back a couple of weeks ago.”
“You were married to Ms. Momin?
She's
your ex-wife?
She
was the woman in that picture?”
I shrug.
His face screws up as he tries to grasp what I've said. “Wait. What do you mean you moved back in? You don't live in your apartment anymore?”
I shake my head.
“Why?”
“Do I really need to answer that?”
“Yes,” he says, his voice cracking. “You do.”
I'm still holding the door open. I close it, and that in itself makes me nervous. Because he's so close, and we are so alone. “Robert, I'm so sorry. I didn't—”
I don't know what he sees in my face, but he throws himself at me. I stagger backward into a small table and a lamp tumbles to the floor. I think he means to hurt me for hurting him, but he grabs my face in his hands and jams his mouth against mine.
It takes about five seconds to undo all the distance I've managed to put between us in the last two and a half weeks.
My hands are under his shirt and he's pulling it over his head and whispering things like, “How much time do we have?” and I'm answering, “Not much,” and he's saying, “Then we'll hurry,” and I'm saying, “God, I want you,” and he's saying, “You've got me,” and I'm hoping like hell Maya doesn't pull into the driveway for another twenty minutes at least.
There's no time to get completely naked, and no need. We're naked enough. And there's plenty of need already. By the time the garage door goes up half an hour later, we're dressed, I've righted the lamp and lit the candle that Maya likes to burn when the kids are here to help them relax, and Robert's moving the dining room chairs into a semicircle.
“Hey,” she says to Robert as I scoop up Kiki. “You're early. Didn't you get my message?”
“Um, yeah. I just got here. Is it okay if I'm a little early? I can always—”
“No, of course not. I guess you've met my ex-husband.”
“Yeah,” I say before he can respond. We haven't worked out our story yet, so I'm doing it on the fly. “We've had a few minutes to get acquainted.”
Robert smiles a little too broadly, then turns away quickly to retrieve his recorder from the table.
“Well,” I say to Maya, trying very hard not to look at Robert and imagine him with his jeans around his thighs again. “How about I take this one for some chicken tenders somewhere?”
“Just no McDonald's,” Maya says, giving Kiki a kiss on the cheek.
Maya's
no McDonald's
sets off a chant. “McDonald's, McDonald's, McDonald's.” Kiki's jumping in my arms, and in my peripheral vision, I see Robert watching and grinning. Boy, I'd like to take him for a Happy Meal.
“All right, all right, all right,” Maya says. “Just no chicken nuggets, okay. Who knows what's in that stuff.”
 
As I watch my daughter pick her way through two chicken nuggets—she's quite persistent—I realize that I am too far gone to turn back now. I'm crazy about that kid. And four months—three now, I think—is too damn long.
In retrospect, lying about knowing Robert was probably a bad idea. There was really no reason to lie. I have students; he has teachers. No big deal. I just felt a little naked standing there and my knee-jerk response was to lie. No harm done, though.
When Kiki runs off to play with another little girl on the Mc-playground, I send him a text. I don't have to worry about him getting it during his group session; his battery is dead. But I want it to be the first thing he sees when he charges his phone tonight.
I surrender. Please delete.
I'm back home and in bed when he texts back.
 
Robert
 
Ms. Momin has always been super nice to me. And I feel a little guilty about ejaculating in her entryway.
I'm also finding it hard to focus on the kids today because I keep remembering the way his hands felt on my skin, and I'm sitting here in front of three special-needs kids and a woman who is my sort-of boyfriend's ex-wife, and I'm primed and ready to go again. I shift uncomfortably, hoping she sees me as too much of a kid to ever let her eyes drift between my legs.
“Good job, guys!” I say when we finish
the lamb was sure to go.
Patrick is out of his seat again and flailing his arms about and almost beans Sophie.
“Take it easy, Patrick,” I say, capturing one of his bent arms. He puckers up his mouth like he's waiting for the word he wants to say to build up inside him, then explodes with a “Bah!”
“Yeah, it was really good.”
“Bah!”
Ms. Momin winks at me over Sophie's head, and I wonder if she's ever had Andrew's penis in
her
mouth. And just when I'm starting to get things under control again, suddenly I'm not.
Stop thinking about it!
I keep hoping Andrew and Kiki will get back before we finish, but they don't. And maybe that's for the best. But if I don't get my hands on him again soon, I'm likely to lose it and give us both away.
By the time I get home and plug in my phone, I'm already making plans. His text—
I surrender
—drives away any lingering doubts. I text back.
LOL. About time. I'm deleting.
Chapter 32
Andrew
 
Not even Stephen can ruffle my feathers today. He could drop his pants and tell me to kiss his ass first period, and I'd still be smiling.
When he asks why I wasn't there for tutoring yesterday, I beam as I tell him I didn't think he was coming, and the next time he's even one minute late, I won't be there either.
You little piss ant.
I almost stay in my room during lunch, hoping maybe Robert will stop by, but that's about as stupid as you can get. So I lock my classroom and hurry off to the lounge, just in case.
I've continued to set my lunch down next to Jennifer every day, even after she went off on me. I admit, it's just to piss her off. I expect her to go away in a huff today, just as she's been doing for almost two weeks now, but she doesn't. In fact, she pulls out the chair for me and pats the seat like we're best friends again.
She's up to something, I know it. I just don't know what to do about it. I can leave and not know what she's up to, or stay and at least have a chance at heading her off.
I smile and sit.
She takes a bite of her salad and casts a smug kind of smile at me.
“So how are your classes?” I ask.
“They're all right.”
Okay. I squirm. Around the table are my colleagues. I wouldn't call them friends, but they are people I work with every day, and we are generally friendly. I focus my attention on them. My department chair, a middle-aged woman named Ilene, says, “I hear they didn't approve your application for the admin program.”
Old news, but apparently new to Ilene. There are no secrets in public schools. Well, there's at least one, and I intend to keep it that way.
“No. They sure didn't. That's okay,” I say cheerily. “I'll apply again next year.”
“Well, I just want you to know, I gave you a great recommendation.”
“Thanks, Ilene.”
“Let me know if you apply again next year, and I'll—”
She doesn't get a chance to finish, because Jennifer chooses that moment to ask rather loudly, “Why didn't you tell me you're gay?”
All conversation in the room comes to a screeching halt. And all eyes in the room fix on me.
The peanut butter kind of sticks in my throat, and I have to take a sip of Powerade to force it down.
“I, um, guess you didn't ask.”
“Don't you think maybe you should have told me that
before
you asked me out?”
I set my sandwich back on the plastic wrap spread and dust my fingers while trying to remain calm, trying to look nonchalant, and trying not to be sick to my stomach. Finally, I look at her.
“Can we talk about this some other time?” I keep my voice low, hoping she'll follow suit. Like that was going to happen.
“You know what? No, we can't. Not that I care who you bang, but I don't appreciate being humiliated, and I don't appreciate you playing your little games with me.” She shoves her chair back and snaps the plastic lid back on her salad, then snatches her water bottle off the table. “You need a cover, go to Penney's. I hear they're having a sale.”
She takes her lunch and storms out of the room. For a moment, no one speaks, then slowly the conversation returns. By the end of the lunch period, it has almost reached a normal volume. I don't engage in the conversation, and no one tries to engage me. When the bell rings, I flee to the relative safety of my room.
Her question is a fair one. If I worked anywhere else other than a public school—an engineering firm, an accounting office, an insurance company—I wouldn't have thought twice about admitting to my colleagues that I am, in fact, 100 percent queer. But public school is a world unto itself. It's okay to be gay; you just don't talk about it. It's an unspoken rule, but it's pretty hard and fast down here. It's one of those things you just know. I honestly don't care if my colleagues know; I just didn't want to be the subject of their gossip. So much for that.
I haven't quite gotten back to my happy place by sixth period, but seeing Robert walk through that door does give me a little boost, and I have to remind myself to play it cool.
Today he smiles and says, “Hey, Mr. Mac,” and I swear I want to kiss him right then and there, not because I want to kiss him right then and there, which I do, but because it's normal kid-to-teacher stuff—a smile, a greeting, the use of my name in diminutive. No winks, no full-body scans. Normal feels safe.
At the end of the period, he straightens the desks in his row, then gives me a shy smile (which I find so endearing, considering where that mouth has been) and drops a note on my desk.

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