Chapter 13

Monday, July 29th, 2013

Another 5:45 alarm. My first official week of work had begun.

“Good morning, sunshine! Happy Monday!” Paul greeted me as we met in the parking lot of the gym.

“Morning.”

“How was your weekend?”

“It was ... interesting.”

Paul quirked an eyebrow. “Interesting, huh? Any more details than that?”

“No, let’s just leave it at that for now.” I couldn’t really begin to explain everything that had happened with Riley, and I certainly wasn’t going to talk about the threesome with Melissa and Tori. Plus I wanted to keep the stuff with Cece as a surprise.

“If you say so. Let’s go, those weights aren’t going to lift themselves.”

We went inside to start our Monday chest and core workout. Since I was reluctant to give details about my weekend, Paul filled me in on his. He and his wife Jackie had taken their daughters to Disneyland. He showed me some pictures on his phone and it looked liked they had a great time. His girls were adorable in their tiny princess dresses, the older one as Belle and the younger as Sleeping Beauty. It was also my first time seeing a picture of his wife and I had to say that Paul—though not a bad-looking guy himself—was definitely punching above his weight class. He had done well for himself by locking her down early.

Cece arrived right on schedule at 6:30. As she passed by us, she gave me a wave. “Morning, Ryan.”

“Morning, Cece.”

She continued on right by, not stopping to chat, but Paul sat on the bench looking at me with wide eyes. “Dude, what was that?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean since when are you on a first name basis with the Ice Queen? Or wait, what was your name for her? Gorgeous Glutes Goddess?”

I face-palmed, not bothering to correct his attempt at the G.G.G. acronym. “I ran into her here on Saturday and we talked a bit. She’s cool.”

“Well I think you’re the first guy here to ever get even that far with her, so kudos to you.”

“It’s not a big deal,” I said with a shrug.

“If you say so.”

We were close to finishing up when Cece came back over. She was smiling, no sign of her Ice Queen persona that she usually wore while at the gym. “Hi, I’m Cece!” she said, reaching out to shake Paul’s hand.

“Paul. Pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise.”

“What brings you to our corner of the gym on this fine Monday morning?” Paul asked with a cheesy grin. I almost smacked him.

“Just wanted to introduce myself. I got to know Ryan a bit the other day, and I see you two always working out together. Plus, I actually needed to talk to Ryan about something,” Cece said, turning to me. “Do you have a minute?”

“Sure,” I said, a bit surprised. I had no idea what she could need to talk to me about. She led me over to a quieter corner of the gym.

“So, I know we don’t know each other super well, and if it’s at all a hassle don’t feel bad about telling me no, but I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”

“I’ll see what I can do, what do you need?”

“My car is going to be in the shop for a few days, maybe up to a week, and I figured we live in roughly the same area and work out around the same times, so I was hoping maybe you wouldn’t mind picking me up on your way to the gym in the mornings and then dropping me off after.” I blinked in surprise at the request. “Like I said I totally get if it’s too much of a hassle, sorry it was a silly thing to ask out of nowhere.” The words tumbled out of her mouth in a rush. I actually found her nervous embarrassment extremely endearing.

“No, no, it’s totally cool, I just wasn’t expecting that. I don’t think it would be too much of a hassle, as long as you don’t live way off in the other direction from me. What’s your address?”

She gave it to me and I plugged it into my phone. It wasn’t exactly on the way from my apartment to the gym but it was only a couple minutes extra for me, especially early in the morning. Plus it actually was on the way from the gym to Spellman. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to help out a pretty girl, and getting to know her better could only be a good thing. After everything with Riley, Tori, Melissa, and whatever Emma was up to, it would be nice to expand the possibilities of my romantic options outside of Spellman. I didn’t know if that was at all on her mind, but I figured it was worth a shot. Cece checked a lot of boxes for me in terms of her physical attributes

“Yeah, that shouldn’t be a problem. The only thing is that Paul and I usually start our workouts at six, are you good with me picking you up a bit before that?”

“That’s fine. It won’t kill me to wake up half an hour earlier.”

“Then I guess you’ve got yourself a ride.” I handed my phone to her. “Here, put your number in my phone so I can call you just in case you do end up sleeping in.” She did just that, calling her own phone so she’d have my number as well before handing my phone back to me.

“Thank you so much, Ryan, I really appreciate it.”

“Happy to help. I guess I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow morning.”

“I guess you will,” Cece said with a smile. She turned to walk away, blessing me with the incredible view that was her perfect backside.

I returned to Paul who had a serious shit-eating grin on his face. “Well, well, well, looks like she’s gone from biting your head off to chasing after you in just a few days. Quite the turnaround.”

“I don’t think she’s chasing after me. Her car’s going to be in the shop for a few days and she wanted to know if I was willing to give her a ride to the gym in the mornings until it’s fixed,” I said.

“We’ll see. I just hope you don’t forget about your old gym buddy and ditch me for your Gorgeous Glutes Goddess.”

I laughed. “I won’t forget about you, Paul, but I swear to god if you ever mention that nickname around her I will kill you.”

“I told you, I’m saving it for when I give a speech at your wedding.”

We finished up our workout, hit the showers, and then headed off to start our respective days. I couldn’t help but continue to think about Cece and whether there was any ulterior motive for asking to carpool with me to the gym. I didn’t want to presume and make things awkward, but I also didn’t want to miss an opportunity if there was one to be had. There was plenty of time to figure that out over the next few mornings, though. I grabbed a gas station breakfast burrito then made my way over to Spellman. The parking lot was filling up with plenty of other teachers, but I didn’t see Tori or Melissa.

Mrs. Mitchell was waiting at the front door of the school greeting everyone as they came in. “Good morning, Ryan! How was your weekend?”

“Just fine, Mrs. Mitchell, thanks. Yours?”

“Very good. Ron and I actually went out to dinner with your mother and Maria on Saturday night, we all had a great time. Then I got to talk to Beth a bit on the phone yesterday. She’s all finished up with everything for Michaela’s wedding, so now she’s just relaxing on the beach until she flies home on Wednesday.”

“I’m looking forward to seeing her soon, then.”

“She’s excited too! I told her to reach out to you soon. Anyways, we have a few different meetings and trainings scheduled throughout the wee. All of the information should be in your email. We’re going to kick things off around eight-thirty.”

“Sounds good. Thanks Mrs. Mitchell.”

I made my way through the halls to my classroom. After unlocking the door and flipping on the light, I went right to my computer to check the schedule Mrs. Mitchell had emailed. Like she had said, the first item was the “2013-2014 School Year Welcome” meeting at eight-thirty. After that was a training seminar for the new classroom management/grading software the school was going to be using this year. I wasn’t familiar with this particular brand, which seemed to be focused on elementary school classrooms, with lots of tools for parent communication. That could be both a blessing and a curse. They were catering a lunch today for everyone, but not the rest of the week. After lunch was another meeting to discuss the policies and procedures for both the school and the district that had changed for this year.

The rest of the week was much more open, with fewer mandatory meetings and trainings and more time for the teachers to just get done whatever it was they still needed to do in order to be ready for students to arrive next week. There were still a few things I’d need to attend though, including meetings about the schedule for covering the car or bus lines before and after school, opportunities to manage some of the after school activities, plus planning and budgeting for field trip opportunities.

It was just after eight, still a bit early to head over to the multi-purpose room for the meeting, so I poked my head out of my classroom to see if Melissa had arrived yet. Her door was closed, but I could see the classroom light was on through the window. I walked over, knocked twice, and then opened the door. Melissa was sitting on her desk, talking to another woman who had her back to me.

“Ryan! Hey!” Melissa hopped off her desk and raced over to give me a hug, but after just a moment she let go and I could see she was embarrassed. I guess she was still having a hard time with the whole “maintain a professional distance at work” thing. The other woman gave Melissa a look with a raised eyebrow, causing her to blush.

“Becca, this is Ryan. He’s the new fifth grade teacher. Ryan, this is Becca Allen, my partner teacher slash mentor slash work mom.”

Becca scoffed and grabbed at her chest. “Oof! Work mom? I’m not that old! How about work big sister?” Then she smiled and walked over to me, reaching out for a handshake. “It’s nice to meet you, Ryan. I’m looking forward to working together this year.”

“Nice to meet you as well. Melissa has told me great things about you.”

“She better have! There’s only great things to tell,” she said with a laugh. Becca seemed like she’d be a fun person to be around. I knew from Melissa and Tori that she was a bit older than us, in her early thirties, but she could easily fit in with our younger crowd and no one would bat an eye. Her brown hair fell down just past her shoulders, and from her tan it looked like she had spent a good amount of time out in the sun this summer. She turned her gaze back to Melissa. “You didn’t tell me you already knew Ryan. When did that happen?”

“We met last Monday,” I answered for her. “I ran into her while setting up my classroom, and then I spent some time hanging out with Melissa and Tori last week. I’ve known Tori for years, actually.”

“Seems like I’m way behind. How do you know Tori?”

“We actually dated for a few years, in high school.”

That got her attention. “Oh, interesting. Seems like the girls have been holding out on me with all of this information.”

“We figured it would get out eventually,” Melissa said.

“So are you rekindling old romance with Tori, Ryan?”

I coughed. “I don’t know about that. We just reconnected, it’s been years and years since we’ve seen each other. It’s been nice catching up with her, though. Plus I get to hang out with Melissa, so that’s a nice bonus.”

Becca smirked. “She is pretty cool, even if she hasn’t been giving me all the good gossip like she’s supposed to.”

“I probably just haven’t done anything worth gossiping about yet,” I said, trying to deflect things a bit.

“I’m sorry, Ryan, but just you being here is something worth gossiping about. I know some of the teachers already have been.”

I sighed and rubbed my temples. “Great.”

Becca clapped her hands together and laughed. “Oh, this is going to be a fun year, I can already tell. I need to go grab my purse out of my classroom before the meeting starts. I’ll see you two over there. It was wonderful to finally meet you, Ryan.”

“You too, Becca. See you in a bit.” When she was gone I turned to Melissa. “Well, so much for keeping a low profile.”

“Sorry, I was just excited to see you. At least she seems locked in on the whole ‘you and Tori used to date’ gossip. Hopefully that will keep her distracted from anything about the two of us.” Melissa’s phone chirped from over on her desk. She grabbed it and checked the message. “Shit.”

“What?” She held her phone out to me. There was a text from Becca.

OMG, you totally already fucked him, didn’t you? Don’t lie to me, I can tell.

“So much for being distracted.”

“How can she tell? Am I really that obvious?” she asked. I just shrugged. She tapped out a message to Becca, and received a reply just a few moments later. “God damn it, Becca!”

“What now?” Once more I was handed her phone.

wtf how did you know? Am I really that obvious about it?

hahahaha I didn’t know, but now I do! I could tell you were into each other, but I was just messing with you about actually having fucked him already. How was it?

All I could do was laugh. “She got you good.”

The door opened and Becca stuck her head back in. She pointed to her eyes with two fingers and then back at us. We all broke out laughing. “Ryan, why don’t you go on ahead, I need to talk to my work little sister for a few minutes,” Becca said with a huge grin.

I gave Melissa a look, but she shooed me away. “I guess it’s girl talk time. Don’t worry, you get great reviews.” The two women started giggling like schoolgirls. Shaking my head, I abandoned the classroom before I had to hear Melissa describing our sexual encounters to Becca. I made my way over to the multipurpose room, which was starting to fill up. Metal folding chairs were laid out in rows facing the stage. I hoped that these meetings wouldn’t take too long—sitting on shitty chairs for hours at a time was not my idea of a good time. Tori was nowhere in sight. I did spot Riley talking with an older teacher I didn’t know, but decided it was probably best to keep our distance for now. There’d be plenty of forced interaction time later. No need to dive in now.

Taking a seat on the end of one of the middle rows, I pulled out my phone. There was a text from Cece.

Hey Ryan, thanks again so much for being willing to drive for me. Let me know if you need me to toss you some gas money.

Don’t worry about it, it’s barely out of my way at all, I replied.

“Is this seat taken?”

I looked up from my phone to find an attractive brunette standing next to me. It was harder for me to estimate while sitting down, but I thought she might be around five-eight or so. What stood out the most though were her breasts. Whoever she was she was absolutely stacked up top, her blouse providing an excellent view of some pretty impressive cleavage. I doubted such a top would be appropriate work attire when the students were around, but I guess things were a bit more lax during a non-student work day.