Rescue Me: A Bad Boy Military Romance (12 page)

I furrow my eyebrows. “I accept your apology.” I pause. “And yeah, I totally was winging that.”

Luke guffaws and puts his hand on my back. “Let’s go to the teacher’s lounge and talk strategy of how we’re going to get through this sex ed thing without being laughed off the stage.”

My skin tingles where he’s touching me through my clothes. “The teacher’s lounge, huh?” I ask him, sounding more flirtatious than I ever thought I could.

Luke grins. “I know you’ve only been in there once. Well, that I know of.”

I laugh. “Don’t worry, I didn’t sneak in there with anybody but you.” My stomach tingles at the memory. We walk down the deserted hallways to the lounge. Principal Sykes smiles and holds the door for us as he exits the lounge.

“Doing some prep work, you too?” he asks with a twinkle in his eye that makes me wonder if he somehow knows what Luke and I were doing in here a decade ago.

“Yep. You know teenagers. They’re ruthless critics. Would hate for Miss Ella to get off to a bad start on her first day back at Buxwell Prep.”

I walk over to the vending machine and buy a bag of potato chips and a chocolate bar.

“Now that’s just sad,” Luke says from his perch at a round, wood-laminate-covered table.

“I didn’t think to pack a lunch. I didn’t know I would be here
past
lunch. I thought I’d be wiping a few noses and doing a few hearing tests and then I’d be on my merry way,” I explain, pulling out a chair at the opposite side of the curved table.

Luke opens the same cooler lunchbox he brought to the clinic the other day. He pulls out a bento box.

“Where the hell did you get that?” I ask, gaping at the gorgeous, shiny-wood bento.

He laughs. “We do have Amazon.com, darlin’, even all the way out here in the sticks.”

“I usually only see bento boxes being carried around by preppy California people. I didn’t expect you to have one.” I peer across the table to see the contents.

“What?” Luke asks, his mouth full of food.

“I was just making sure you didn’t cut your sandwich into the shape of a panda bear,” I say jokingly.

He laughs and wipes his mouth. “Nah. Just an avocado, tomato, and sprout sandwich on some homemade wheat bread.”

My mouth waters at the description. “Do you
sleep
?”

“Not too much anymore,” he says, patting his leg under the table. Suddenly, I feel guilty. “The pain keeps you up at night?”

He shrugs. “I get a shit ton of stuff done, so I’m not complaining.” He reaches into his cooler lunchbox and produces a stainless steel bento box. “Here you go, Ella.” He slides the container across the table with a
whoosh
.

I gape at him, opening the tin. Inside is an identical sandwich, with a side salad and a square of brownie in the corner. “I don’t even know who you are anymore, do I?”

He grins at me. “I keep telling you that, Ella. But you just won’t listen.”

Suddenly, I have a flash of Luke standing in a kitchen – our kitchen – lovingly packing up a lunchbox for an imaginary daughter. The pain of this thought nearly knocks me off my chair. I clear my throat and dig in. “Thanks,” I say. “How’d you know I would be here?”

“Tanya told me last night.”

“How’d you know I wouldn’t have packed my lunch?”

“You know, I had a good feeling I might have been running through your dreams after our little outing yesterday. I figured you wouldn’t get much sleep and might run off without food for the umpteenth time.”

I flash back to me in high school, my hair frizzy and frazzled and me staying up studying. “I always forgot my lunch and you always gave me half of yours.” The memory creeps up through my veins and spills out onto the table between us.

“So you do remember some things,” he replies.

My throat is suddenly thick with emotion and I push my food aside, reaching into my bag to pull out a pen and a fresh notebook. I click the end of the pen and start scribbling. “So, what’s the game plan with the teens?”

Luke looks nervously over to the door, which is still shut. He stands up and locks it, pulling out the chair next to me and sitting down. “This is the deal. We’re not allowed to teach
actual
sex education. It’s a state law thing. And Principal Sykes will be fucking steaming mad if he finds out. But I cannot and will not fail these kids like that.”

I furrow my brow. “So what do we do?”

Luke smiles and takes the pen and paper from me, drawing something. He pulls back from it and pushes the notebook back towards me. “Metaphor, Ella. It’s all about the metaphors.”

An hour later, I’m feeling a hundred times more confident than I did on this stage this morning. Part of this feeling comes from basking in the glow of Luke, who seems to be the most popular teacher who ever existed.

“Mr. Davis!” call out a few kids, including the jocks who are normally way too cool to be seen connecting with a teacher.

The kids settle quickly, clearly eager to have this talk.

“Alright, everyone. This is Miss Ella, and I want you to show her the respect and kindness I know you all have buried somewhere, deep down, underneath those hormones of yours.”

They all laugh.

Principal Sykes sticks his shiny head into the auditorium and gives us a thumbs up. I feel nervous, but Luke is unfazed by this brief interruption.

“All good in here, Mr. Sykes,” Luke calls back. Sykes smiles and shuts the door. Luke rubs his hands together. “We’re in here for two hours-“ this news garners a cheer from a crowd clearly eager to skip two full periods - “and I expect you to be on your best behavior. But there’s a little wrinkle, and so I need your help.”

Everyone leans forward. He has the room at full attention, like he’s Matthew McConaughey accepting his Oscar.

“I need one person to stand at the doorway and peek out the window. The catch is, you have to both listen and stay on watch.”

“What are we watching out for?” asks a girl in the front row, who is already paying rapt attention, notebook open and pen in hand. I realize she’s me, a dozen years ago.

“Principal Sykes, Miss Holly, Miss Tanya – really
any
adult. Do I have any volunteers?” A dozen hands shoot up, and Luke chooses a tribute to send to the door. “Alright, next order of business. Your parents are going to ask you what you learned about in here. And I want you to tell them the truth: you’re learning about the importance of fruit.”

A few people snicker. “Fruit?” asks Me-From-Twelve-Years-Ago in the front row.

“That’s right, Dana,” Luke says. He reaches into a big grocery sack and pulls out a banana. “We’re going to teach you about fruit.”

An hour into the presentation, each kid has come onstage to slide a condom over the banana that Luke and I take turns holding. It’s a testament to how much these kids love Luke that they’re willing to come up here like this. I can’t think of a single other adult who could pull off that level of trust.

“So if you get the urge to make fruit salad, I’m going to need you to be safe. You need to be sure of a few things. One, that your partner says yes, wholeheartedly, to making fruit salad with you. Two, that you and your partner agree to be safe while making said fruit salad. This means: condoms at a minimum. And where can you get condoms if you can’t buy any?”

The whole auditorium chimes in. “At the fruit market.”

Luke lowers his voice and whispers dramatically. “And what is the fruit market in non-metaphor terms?”

“Your office,” everyone whispers back.

Luke rubs his hands together, satisfied at this response. “Who wants to break for questions?” Twenty hands shoot up into the air. “Dana!” Luke chooses my doppelganger in the front row.

“Won’t I get pregnant even if I use a condom?” she asks.

Luke nods. “Great question. There’s a small, small chance of that, which is why you should always, always use a backup form of birth control. Like spermicide, or hormonal contraceptives. And you need to make sure you’re putting a condom on the right way, every single time.” Dana scribbles this information down like she’s copying the nuclear codes from the President’s Chief of Staff. “Next!” Luke points at a jock in the back row.

“Have you had sex?” asks a pimple-faced kid in a letterman’s jacket.

Luke laughs. “Yes, I have.”

“Was it good?” another kid asks.

“Well, usually, yes. If you’re with the right person, and you’re safe, and you both feel comfortable with one another.” Luke darts his eyes over to me and I turn beet red. I wish he hadn’t looked at me just then. “Who else?”

A kid with glasses in the third row gets chosen. “Did you and Miss Ella have sex? In high school?”

I drop the banana I’m holding in place for a cheerleader. It falls to the stage with a loud
clunk
.

“Why are you asking me that?” Luke inquires, clearly trying to arrange his face into a look of surprise. He might have pulled it off had I not dropped the banana.

“My mom says that you and Miss Ella dated in high school. She says you still love her, but she won’t give you the time of day.”

Luke laughs darkly. “Out of the mouths of babes…” he says, strolling back and forth across the stage. “This is a good question, though, because it brings up an important point. Whose business is it that you’re having sex or not?” He scans the auditorium. The audience is silent, held at rapt attention. “It’s a real question with a real answer.”

Dana’s hand shoots up. “No one’s,” she answers.

Luke nods. “Twenty points for Miss Wilkinson over here,” he says dramatically. “That’s right. Nobody has a right to know. And you shouldn’t brag to your friends about it. It’s a breach of privacy between you and your partner. Your intimacy is between each other. It shouldn’t be between anyone else.”

I smile at Luke and he nods back at me.

“Banana!” yells the kid guarding the door, using the code word.

Everyone mutters and Luke holds up his hands. “It’s fine. Thank you, back to your seat,” he says to the guard. The auditorium doors open and Sykes walks in. Luke acts like he was mid-sentence during the interruption. “So having sex is a dangerous proposition. What’s the only way to be sure you won’t get pregnant or end up with gonorrhea?”

“Abstinence,” the auditorium chants dully.

Sykes looks pleased, waves his thanks at Luke, and then shuts the door.

Everyone breathes a sigh of relief.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

ELLA

“You could have told me that he was a counselor at the school,” I say to Alexa over popcorn and wine on my front porch. Dragonflies float by us lazily as the sun sets around us on this gorgeous Friday night.

“I thought you might want to see it in action for yourself,” she says, shrugging.

“The kids love him,” I say.

“I know. I can’t wait until Teddy gets him as a sub one day. He’s quite a catch. War hero, freaking gorgeous, good with kids, handyman.”

“And he can cook,” I say without meaning to.

“There you go,” Alexa replies. “The total package. If only he were interested in you – oh, wait. He is. He’s obsessed.”

My phone buzzes and I answer it without thinking. “Ella,” I say.

There’s breathing on the end of the line.

“Hello?” I say again. Alexa looks at me with concern. “Who is this?” I pull the phone away from my face and see Jason’s name there. I feel sick and set down my glass of wine. “Jason, stop calling me. I mean it. I’m sick of it. We’re over, done, finished with. I don’t want to hear from you again.”

“You will,” he says ominously. The line goes dead.

“He’s still calling you?” Alexa asks me.

“Yeah, he is,” I say. I realize I’m shaking and pick up my wine glass again. I take a huge sip of it, hoping the alcohol will calm me. “What is it with me and guys not letting me go?”

“Don’t conflate Jason with Luke,” Alexa says. “Luke
did
let you go. And he’s letting you take your time with him. Jason is…well. That’s not really what
he’s
doing, is it?”

She’s right. My hand shakes as I go to block his number. I hope that gives him the hint that I’m serious. I’m not entirely sure what else to do. Alexa changes the subject and I try to forget the phone call. But it haunts me even in my dreams.

I barely sleep that night, waking up at two in the morning and finally handwashing all of the empty casserole dishes the town’s brought me. Every single one of them has masking tape with the name of the owner written in permanent marker. After a few hours of washing, they are finally all clean. I strap them all to the back of my bicycle as the sun rises on a glorious Saturday morning and begin my trip around town.

It takes me five hours until I’m down to the last one, being that each person I stopped to see insisted that I come inside for a glass of sweet tea and a chat. At the second-to-last house, I feign a medical emergency for one of my patients so I can finally slip out the front door.

I hope onto my much-unburdened bicycle and pedal as hard as I can to the edge of town. A truck passes me on the way and I wave, coughing a little as the dust fills my lungs. I pedal harder, drenched in sweat. It occurs to me to be self-conscious but there’s no turning back now. Would I prefer to see Luke while I’m not sweaty and dirty? Of course.

But that’s not how it is.

I speed up to his front door and lean the bike against the enormous slabs of limestone rock that make up this glorious house. I tap the doorknocker a handful of times and wait. I hear a buzz saw coming from the inside of the house and I wait until it stops. I bang on the door as loudly as I can again, casserole dish in hand.

I hear footsteps and Luke pulls open the door. My breath catches in my throat as I realize he’s shirtless, sweating, and covered in sawdust. At least we’re both dirty.

“Hey there, Ella,” he says with a smile. I can tell that he’s enjoying the way my eyes dance over his half-naked body.

I clear my throat and hold up the casserole dish. “I’m only returning this,” I say with a smile. “Thanks, by the way. The lasagna was delicious.”

“Made it with zucchini I grew last year in my garden,” he says.