Thou Shalt Not (28 page)

The brandy men voiced their agreement.

Holly’s smile never left and I could feel the tug of war in my heart pulling me back into her camp. God, I was a mess.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Holly’s boss walk into the room. I had never actually seen him before, but from the descriptions she gave me, I knew it was him. His monstrous, bushy eyebrows gave it away.

“Hey, Holly,” he said, pointing to one of the TVs overhead. “Turn that up.”

All of our glances went up to the television. It had been on the sports’ station, but there was a special news report breaking in.

We caught the news anchor mid-sentence.

“...has confirmed that at 4:13pm Eastern Standard Time, Flight 2133 from Dallas to Miami crashed into the Gulf of Mexico. The death toll is not currently known, but is considered to be high. We go now to Paul Barry, live in Dallas. Paul...”

“Awful,” Holly’s boss said. “Turn it off. I’m tired of all this bad news.”

Holly obliged.

Nothing like bad news to kill the mood.

“God, that would be the worst way to die,” Holly said to me. “I think I would choose any other way but that.”

I disagreed. There were many other forms of death I considered to be worse than death by plane crash.

“If you could choose any way to die, what would it be?” she asked, running a rag over the counter.

“That’s a pretty morbid topic,” I said.

Holly’s face flushed. “I’m so sorry, Luke.” She squeezed her eyes closed. “I forget sometimes about Carrie.”

“Not cancer,” I said, finishing off my drink. “I’d go with something that had to do with free falling. Sky diving accident, careening off a cliff.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Really? I didn’t take you for a daredevil.”

“I’m not,” I admitted. I reached out a finger and touched the tip of her scrunched up nose. “That’s why I’d want to die one.”

“Well, I’d like to die while having sex,” she announced loudly. The guys a few stools away raised their glasses to her. “But, not until I’ve had an orgasm. Right in the middle. That’s the way to go out.”

I laughed and ordered another drink. There was no one quite like Holly.

Pretty soon, the dinner crowds started to come in and I said my goodbye.

I still hadn’t heard from April as I drove home, and was beginning to think I wouldn’t for the rest of the day. Probably for the rest of the weekend.

I warmed up some of the soup April had made for me and turned on the baseball game. Naturally, the pre-game show consisted mostly of talking about what had transpired the night before. Marco had apparently been suspended by the team for the remainder of the season and wouldn’t be joining them for the final week of games. This was obviously good news for the team, but I imagined it would be bad news for April. Now she was stuck with him at home all the time. Good thing she had a job to escape to.

Halfway through the second inning, my phone rang. It was April.

“Hello,” I said, surprised to see her calling.

“Hey Luke,” she said.

“What’s going on?”

“Do you mind if I stopped by for a few minutes? I had to run out and get groceries and he’s at the house with the kids.”

“Of course not,” I said, heart beginning to beat more rapidly. Why would she want to come over on a grocery run?

“I’m at the house,” I said. “Come over whenever.”

“Okay. Bye.”

And before I could reply she hung up.

There was only one reason she would be coming over. She felt guilty about what happened last night and needed to tell me it can’t happen again. She’s married. Oh god, why did I even let it happen? Nothing ruins a perfectly good friendship like fooling around after the woman’s husband tried to beat her.

Within fifteen seconds of hanging up, there was a knock on the door.

She had to have been right outside when she called.

I set my soup down and didn’t bother looking around to see if the house was in order. My hands began to shake.

I opened the door and she came at me before I even had a chance to see what she was wearing.

Her hands went around the back of my head and pulled me to her. Our lips met with force and our tongues immediately began dancing.

I took a few steps back, pulling her into the house and using my left foot to kick the door shut. Then I pushed her back up against the door and we continued to kiss.

Her hands slipped up underneath my shirt and began running along my back. Feeling her warm skin on mine felt amazing, and my cock began to stiffen. I was already pressed against her, so she could feel my reaction. She pulled me even closer, grinding her lower body into mine.

I picked her up and started to carry her over to the couch, the site of the previous night’s encounter.

“No,” she said before we reached the couch. “I can’t.”

Needless to say, that stopped any momentum we might have had.

“What’s wrong?” I said.

I lowered her to her feet and she stood next to me, hands still on my shoulders.

“Nothing. I just can’t be here very long. He’s expecting me home.”

“Oh,” was all I could say.

“But, I needed to tell you something and I wanted to say it to your face.”

“Okay, what is it?”

She sat down on the couch and I followed her lead.

“Every year after the season ends, Marco take us all down to Cuba to see his family and just have a vacation. We usually stay a few weeks to a month, depending on what we want to do down there and if we need to get back to the States for anything. But, now Marco’s season has ended before everyone else’s, so he is ready to go.”

“So, you’re going to be leaving for a while?” I said.

“No. I have a job now. I told him I can’t just leave with him for a few weeks when they are going to be officially giving me the full-time job on Tuesday. I said if he wanted me to go he would have to wait until Thanksgiving or Christmas break.”

“So, will he wait?”

“No, he booked the tickets after I told him. He’s leaving with the kids on Monday afternoon.”

“How long?”

“Three weeks. I have never been away from the kids for that long.”

I could hear the worry in her voice. I think she was glad he was leaving, but sending her kids off when she had been taking care of them for so long by herself seemed to bother her.

I pulled her toward me and held her in my arms. I didn’t have kids and didn’t have a damn clue what to say to even begin trying to assuage her fears or worries. So I stayed silent and simply held her. She didn’t fight it.

After a minute or two of silence, she spoke up.

“I really need to go. The groceries are in the car.”

“It’s Florida,” I said. “Everything has probably already gone bad.”

She laughed and we stood to our feet.

I walked her to the door and hugged her before I opened it. When the hug ended, she pulled back slightly to look up at me.

“My husband will be gone for three weeks, Luke,” she said, her eyes sparkling again. “If that’s not perfect timing, I don’t know what is.”

I kissed her again, with the same intensity we had been kissing earlier. If it had gone a few seconds longer, I would have said “Fuck the groceries” and taken her right there in front of the door.

But the kiss ended almost as quickly as it started, and she was out the door. The only evidence of her having been there was my pounding heart, my throbbing dick, and the words “Monday night” going over and over in my head.

The rest of the weekend dragged by. If you are ever looking forward to something in life, be prepared for the days leading up to it to go by excruciatingly slow. It’s as if Father Time is the most sadistic bastard to ever exist.

I spent Sunday preparing my lessons and assignments for the week, hoping the week of movies hadn’t completely deleted all the information I had taught them up until that point. But I’m sure it had, for most of them.

I did some grocery shopping as well, and after I brought the food back to the house, I decided to go to the gym. I felt the need to work out before I saw April again. I had no idea what would happen while her husband was away. I wasn’t stupid though, and if things went like they had while April was at my house and her husband was still very much in the same country as me, we would probably be seeing each other naked.  

Now, I have no problems with my body. I have always been in good shape, and even on the occasion where I let myself go for a few weeks, a few solid workouts and I was back to feeling great. But, there was something about the prospect of being naked with someone for the first time that made a guy want to get a few extra push-ups in beforehand.

Having Holly in my life had helped keep me focused on working out and running. She was health conscious when it came to exercise, and could eat whatever the hell she wanted and somehow lose weight. Plus, our sexual adventures together were often lengthy, and lengthy can’t happen if you don’t keep up with your cardio.

I found myself lying in bed Sunday night, unable to sleep. Most of the day I had spent thinking about what it would be like to have sex with April, but as I lay in bed, my thoughts turned to what the repercussions of having sex with her would be. No matter how much I was attracted to her, no matter how much I enjoyed her presence, no matter how much better she made me feel about life in general, she was still a very married woman with a husband known to be a violent dick. But the latter was really beside the point; she was my married coworker. There was a poster above Principal West’s desk at school that listed the Ten Commandments.
Thou Shalt Not
it said before each one.
Covet thy neighbor’s wife
was lucky number eight. I ran a hand over my face.

Had April and I gone from our serious make-out session the first time she came over right into sex that same day, I wouldn’t have thought about it. I wouldn’t have told her to hold on and wait so I could mentally run through the pros and cons of sexing up my new coworker. We would have fucked, and it would have been good.

But, now that I knew the chances of us having sex in the next 24-72 hours were very high, all the different positives and negatives floated through my mind. In two months, am I going to be blaming my dick for leading the charge, for making the decisions for me? Am I going to be blaming my heart for starting to fall for someone who didn’t really want anything other than sex and a connection? Or am I going to blame my head for overthinking everything and missing out on an opportunity to start something special? I hated myself right now. Nothing was this complicated with Holly. Why didn’t I just stick with Holly? I reached into my nightstand and fumbled around until I found my box of toothpicks. Toothpicks made me think better. I stuck it in between my back teeth and continued to torture myself.

Monday morning was muted. The students were in a weekend-coma that they hadn’t been revived from. I hadn’t seen April yet, but her classroom clearly wasn’t unattended or I would have found out quickly. She had probably just been running late again. Punctuality didn’t seem to be her strong suit.

As the bell chimed to send our classes to lunch, I walked over to her classroom. She was seated at her desk, looking tired.

“Hey,” I said, interrupting her from something she was doing on her phone.

“Oh,” she looked up. “Hey.”

“Coming to lunch?”

“Not today,” she said, standing up. “I am taking the afternoon off to take them to the airport.”

I could sense she still wasn’t comfortable with the idea of being without her children for a few weeks, but as a childless man, I knew my words of comfort would have been ineffective. Most likely, she wouldn’t be comfortable again until they were home.

“Are you going to be okay?”

“Yeah,” she said as she collected her things.

She walked toward me, and then past me, heading for the door.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” she said, leaving me standing alone in the middle of the classroom as the door shut behind her.

The worst part about giving people space is that normally when you know you need to give it, it just so happens to be the time you selfishly don’t want to give it. I wanted to chase her down the hall, call her, text her, just be in contact with her somehow. But I knew it wasn’t the time.