She made a face.
I bent down and started picking them up.
She joined me.
Neither of us said anything through the whole process—me collecting the pens, her organizing them over again. When we were finished, I stood up and let out a long exhale.
“So…” she said.
“So indeed,” I muttered.
But I still needed to do something—I reached into my back pocket. Maggie’s eyes went wide and confused like she was certain I had more condoms in there, but I just pulled out my wallet, then a dollar bill.
“For the swear jar,” I said.
She gaped at me as I put it into the appropriately labeled jar, which had previously been empty. Then she finally got her wits about her and said, “I think you owe me closer to ten.”
I snorted. “For real?”
She nodded, looking shellshocked and well-fucked and perfect. “Yeah,” she said. “For the guinea pig.”
“You have a guinea pig?”
“Not yet,” she said. “We’ve been fundraising. The swear jar is part of it.” She looked at the dollar bill in the jar. “You’ve basically just single-handedly accelerated the guinea pig acquisition timeline.”
I pulled my wallet out again. Threw a ten into the jar too.
Then we both laughed.
She was still laughing when she pressed her hand over her mouth to muffle it, eyes bright, and I thoughtthis is the problemwith total clarity. Not the sex. Not the breeding kink dirty talk in a kindergarten classroom. This. Her laughing about a guinea pig with her hair wrecked and cider on her dress.
“I wanna see you again,” I said.
Her smile faded, just slightly. “You see me all the time at school.”
“Not like that,” I said. “Have dinner with me.”
She stared at me in shock. That was starting to feel like a pattern. And I already knew her answer before she said it, because the sex had me careless when I needed to remember I was too old for her and too much of a fucking failure?—
“I can’t,” she said. “Not—not because of you?—”
“It’s fine,” I shook my head, desperate to get out of here, already moving to the door. “Forget I asked.”
She caught my wrist, just like she had earlier this afternoon.
“Because I just got out of a five-year relationship,” she said. “Because I’m your daughter’s teacher.”
“I get it,” I said. “We’re good.”
She chewed on her lip. “Actually?”
“Yeah,” I said. Then I gently pulled my hand away. “I’ll see you on Monday, Miss Laine.”
She nodded. “See you Monday.”
Then I was walking out of her classroom, down the hall…well aware that I should have stuck to my own rules and that I should have known better.
I didn’t ask. I didn’t go to women. They came tome.
