Mark choked on a laugh. “How have they not fired you?”
“They’re terrified I’d claim discrimination,” I said, tapping my thigh.
Mark did not look down. He was my best work friend, but like half the people in my life, he’d gotten weird when I lost a limb, and I wasn’t sure he’d ever stop getting freaked out by it. He was the baseline I was judging most men off of because it was fair. Mark was average, sometimes kind, and very superficial.
And I was too fragile to take that kind of blow to my ego.
“Look, if you change your mind?—”
“I won’t,” I told him, then sighed and leaned against the wall as I watched the kids destroy the snacks I’d prepared. “I’m not there yet, man.”
Mark sighed. “I get it. But you’ve gotta let loose at some point, you know. You can’t hide that body away forever.”
I laughed. “This hot-as-fuck Army vet saw my dick yesterday. I’m pretty sure that counts.”
Mark made a choking sound. “Excuse you. I’m just hearing about this now, why?”
“Because he’s the asshole I’ve had to work with in my PT sessions,” I told him, and I felt an odd sensation of satisfaction when Mark paled slightly.
“Is he missing, you know?—”
I tapped my stump. “Same as me, but he lost his right one.”
The look on his face said everything. It told me exactly why I wasn’t ready to meet strangers—and I couldn’t help but wonder if I ever would be.
I slid into one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs in the breakroom and stared at the cup of coffee I definitely did not want to drink. There were some stereotypes about teaching at a high school that were total bullshit. Awful coffee and even worse food were definitely two of them.
I’d only forgotten my lunch a handful of times, right at the start of my job, and after eating what the cafeteria served, I didn’t make that mistake again. I was pretty sure the only reason the kids survived was because they had stomachs made of steel.
Flexing my stump, I felt an uncomfortable tug around my knee. I lifted my thigh, rolling down the sleeve and easing it out of the socket. I felt it immediately plump with swelling, and I fought the urge to remove my compression sock just to give it a massage.
Kent had me working on desensitizing it with massage rollers and even dragging the tines of a fork across the end, but I was fairly sure that was a little too weird for the staff breakroom.
I started rubbing some of the ache out from behind the crook of my knee when the door opened, and my gaze fell on the art teacher. Miriam had been part of the small group that had been hired around the same time I was, and while we didn’t get the chance to talk much, she’d always been kind.
I quickly dropped my leg under the table and began fumbling with my prosthesis. “Sorry. Sorry. Let me just?—”
“Hey,” she said, walking over and dropping into a seat. “You’re fine.”
I swallowed heavily. “It was just aching.”
She nodded. “My husband has one.” She gestured at my prosthesis, which was propped against the table. “Well, his arm. He was electrocuted when he was seventeen, and they had to amputate right at the shoulder.”
I winced. “You met him after his accident?”
Miriam laughed. “Oh yes. There’s absolutely no way I would have married the guy I was dating when I was in high school.”
I grinned at her, then sat back and began to massage my leg again. Both my doctor and Kent had put the fear of god into me about contractures and how, if I wasn’t careful, I’d end up not being able to wear a prosthesis at all. And I sure as hell wasn’t about to let that happen. I had big plans with both my natural leg and my titanium one, and I’d be damned if I didn’t catch at least one wave by the end of the season.
“I’d say same, but I was a loner in high school. I did date a band geek—she played French horn. But it was mostly to convince my parents I wasn’t gay.”
She offered me a look of sympathy. “Yeah. Mine still don’t know I’m bi, and with Noah, it’s easier to let that slide. They’re not bad about it. Just…old.”
“Well, mine are bad about it, but luckily, I’ve been tragically single for years, so they don’t have to face it. I just get bi-weekly phone calls about what I’m doing wrong with my life, and those I can send right to voicemail.”
Her smile was more pity than anything, but I couldn’t really blame her for it. After a second, her brows furrowed. “Wait. Weren’t you dating that one guy—the one who subbed for Carol when she went on maternity leave?”
I winced. No, Seth and I hadn’t been dating. Seth was one more in the long list of guys I’d gone after who’d told me they were straight, but I’d let my foolish heart get involved anyway. The semester before my accident, we’d spent two months doing almost everything together, and I’d convinced myself he hadn’t made a move because he didn’t want things to get weird at school.
