“How often had you been with this teacher?” I asked carefully.
“I don’t even know. A lot.”
As the disturbing thoughts entered my mind, he continued to try to validate the situation.
“She was my ninth-grade history teacher. She was so hot and strict. She’d carry around a ruler and walk up and down the aisles of desks while we worked on our assignments. She’d slap our desks if we weren’t working or were talking. I’d get the biggest boner sitting there watching her walk with the ruler. She’d always wear dresses and tall heels, making her calf muscles bulge. I had been rubbing myself during class, and then she told me to stay after class. That’s how it all started.”
“Had it gone on since ninth-grade?”
“Yeah. We continued until I was nineteen or so.”
“Wow. So, what, five or six years?” I asked. I was astonished that this woman would continue to carry that on for so long.
“Yes, about that. She would tell me how good I was compared to her husband. In high school I had just started entering amateur surf competitions. She would bring her husband to some of the competitions, and they’d take me out to dinner after, then back to their place.”
“With the husband?”
“Yeah.”
The woman added her husband. Josh was used to threesomes.
“Was she your first?” I asked.
“Yes. Fuck, she was good.”
I let a few minutes of silence settle between us before I brought our conversation back to the present.
“We will talk to Ali and encourage her to notify the police. If she elects to do so, the police will pick up her garments and the evidence here. Hopefully, she got a good look at the guy.”
“Or maybe the parking lot surveillance cameras picked something up,” Josh suggested. “I don’t want her to get depressed and then all of this explode on her. I don’t want to lose her,” Josh murmured.
As the double doors opened and the techs wheeled Ali out, I patted Josh’s back and told him things would be okay. And they would be. I’d see to it that they were.
12
Sam
The car wasquiet on the drive back to my place, as I had expected that it would be. Ali and Josh were both worn out. Once we went inside the house, I reminded them that they were free to help themselves to anything in the kitchen.
“Be prepared for Josh to eat you out of your house and suck you dry,” Ali mumbled as she looked up at us with a faint smile.
I will gladly take hearing her say just about anything tonight.
Josh’s mouth turned up into a smile, and his quick humor was right on cue.
“Yeah, be prepared, Sam.” Josh playfully wiggled his eyebrows. “I might suck you dry.”
I decided to play along with them to keep the lighter mood going.
“Don’t think for a second that I wouldn’t enjoy it,” I said. I slapped his chest as I walked past him into the kitchen.
I grabbed a few bottles of water from the fridge and joined them in the living room. It was late, and both of them needed some comfort. I led them upstairs and then turned to look at them.
“Ali, I want to be near you tonight. You have the choice, though, where you want to try to sleep. You can either—”
“Your room,” she spoke up before I had the chance to finish my sentence.
She looked adorable standing there in the pair of hospital scrubs that she wore when we left.
