Chapter 8
CHAPTER
EIGHT
CLAY
“ H ey, feels like you’ve been avoiding me.” Ally bumped me with her hip in the teachers’ lounge on Friday morning while I was toasting a bagel. I’d arrived at school at seven to grade papers because sometimes the harsh fluorescent lighting in the classroom made it easier to focus.
It was not because I was hoping to avoid bumping into any of the faculty members who taught sunrise classes and would reliably arrive at seven thirty. And it wasn’t because anything had changed in my casual friendship with Ally. But a man could only take so much, and after spending more time in the same room with her than I had in a decade, I needed some space.
Feeling the softness of her skin and the warmth of her body when I carried her against my chest had thrown me for a loop. I liked it all just a bit too much. So my overeager libido needed an Ally break. I needed to show it who was boss.
“Me? No, of course not.” I continued watching my bagel brown in the toaster oven like it was the most fascinating thing in the world.
“ And observe, the leopard bagel basking in the morning sun, blissfully unaware of predators waiting nearby with cream cheese... ,” Ally intoned in a deep announcer’s voice.
Grudgingly letting out a chuckle, I turned to face her. “Sorry. Zoned out there.”
“Need some good heart-accelerating coffee.” She held up a large, full tumbler with steam wafting from the top.
“Mmm, yeah. I didn’t sleep too well, and I stumbled in here without making a pot. I’m so tired that even the high school swill smells good,” I teased.
Reaching for a cup on the shelf, she corrected me. “It’s not the school swill. You made me see the error of my ways, and I dug out my French press and made coffee myself.” Turning the cup in her hand, she read, “‘I’m just here for the coffee.’ Sounds about right.” She tipped the tumbler, poured half the coffee into the empty cup, and handed it to me.
“I don’t want to take your coffee.”
“Please. I emptied the whole French press into this thing. It’s more than any one person should be drinking, greyhound.”
“What?”
Her cheeks bloomed pink and I couldn’t help but stare.
“ What what?”
“Greyhound? What’s that?”
She looked away and waved a hand dismissively. “Sorry. I sort of call you that in my head because you’re always running around.” She met my eyes apologetically and I knew if I made a big deal about it, she’d get more uncomfortable. But I kind of loved that she had a nickname for me.
“Fitting, I suppose.” I reached for the cup and smelled the aroma before taking a sip. “Vanilla latte?”
She shrugged. “You got me kinda hooked. I used vanilla-flavored soy milk, so it was kind of a cheat. Anyhow, are we still on for tomorrow? I stocked up on bear spray.” She made a gesture of spraying perfume into the air and walking through it.
“Hang on. What kind of bear spray?”
She shrugged. “Whatever they had at the bait and tackle place.”
Guiding her to the empty plank table in the middle of the room, I pulled out a chair and faced it toward me, motioning for her to take a seat. Once she sat, I tried to explain the error of her ways. “The bait and tackle place,” I confirmed.
She tilted her head as though it was obvious why a person would buy bear spray at a fishing supply store.
“If you don’t see any bears, can you use it to catch fish?” I asked.
Tilting the chair back, she scoffed, “Maybe. Would that be so bad? Are you a bear spray elitist and a coffee elitist?”
“First of all, I see you agree with me about the coffee. And second, did you keep your receipt?”
“I guess. Why are you hovering over me like you’re getting ready to give me a lecture?” she asked, just as I realized I was indeed hovering. I took a step back.
“Because I’m giving you a lecture. Return the bear spray. We’re not going to be spraying bears.” The image of Ally on a hiking trail spritzing a bear with an atomizer was too good not to lock away in my mind.
Pressing her lips together, she looked up at me like a student who didn’t understand a word of Shakespeare despite reading it for the tenth time. I wanted to reach over and hug the confusion right out of her. Instead, I pulled a chair into the middle of the room, flipped it around, and straddled it, too far from her now for any hugging.
“What’s wrong with bear spray? The guy at the store said it’s effective for warding off bears.”
“Of course he did. He wanted to sell you bear spray.”
“Yeah, probably. And I wanted to keep bears away, so it seems like a win-win to me. Do you own stock in an animal repellant company or something? I’ll buy your brand, just say so.”
“I do not.”
“So what’s the problem? I wasn’t going to make you carry it, if that’s what you were worried about. I wouldn’t want you to tax your muscles and mess up your workout schedule.”
“Alexandra . . .”
“Yes?” She blinked her big blue eyes up at me.
“We’re not going to see any bears.”
“Ha. That’s what the last guy said, and he’s not here to say ‘I told you so’ because the bear ate him.”
I assumed she was joking. Most people would be joking.
For now, I told myself the retreat would be fine. I wasn’t worried about having Ally as my sidekick for three days because we’d be distracted by the students the entire time. We’d be lucky to string five words together at a time with each other. It would be like school. Normal.
I was a little more concerned about the little campout in my yard that I’d insisted on. Mainly, I’d done it because she seemed so ill at ease, and I wanted to make that crease in her forehead disappear. I wanted to allay her fears.
But with that came more time alone with her and that terrified me. Not because I didn’t trust myself to keep my hands to myself. I was a grown man. A grown, hot-for-teacher, horny-as-hell man who was half-hard just thinking about being alone in my yard with her. Two days of ignoring her had done nothing to get rid of those urges. If anything, I’d made it worse because now I couldn’t stop looking at the milky skin at the hollow of her throat and noticing how it curved to meet her collarbones. I couldn’t stop thinking about how it felt to hold her against my chest and feel the flutter of her heartbeat keeping time with mine.
But I had to stop. So I would.
“We won’t see bears, most likely. And if we do, I promise we won’t get eaten. That doesn’t really happen.”
She started to laugh, a carefree sound like tiny glass wind chimes in the breeze. After setting her coffee down, she leaned back so far the chair almost tipped over. I lurched off my seat to stop her from falling, but she righted herself before I reached her.
The accusing, puzzled look on her face told me she thought I was crazy, and maybe I was. She’d unleashed something in me earlier in the week that I’d kept buried for so long I’d left it for dead. Big mistake. Apparently feelings like mine don’t die.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I just wanted you to think I was pulling my weight and being prepared.”
“I’m not worried about that. You’ve got my back on the first aid stuff. That’s helpful enough. Let me handle the camping part. And the teaching of camping.”
“So...we’re really doing this? The dry run? Because I thought maybe I could just read a book or look at the internet or something and take a virtual camping trip this weekend. I’ll watch episodes of Naked and Afraid or Alone and then I’ll know more than even you.”
I’d watch you naked in the woods.
I shook that errant thought from my brain before Ally saw evidence of it all over my face. “Don’t watch those.”
“Why not?”
If she watched either one of those shows, she’d never agree to set foot in the wilderness. I’d seen both and the people on them were survivalists. She’d take one look at someone losing a toe to frostbite or ice fishing with a stick and run for the nearest beach chair with an umbrella drink.
“Those shows won’t teach you what you need to know for a school retreat. I’ve got this. I promise.”
Voices down the hallway reminded me we’d been here talking for far too long. Ally seemed to realize it at the same time, checking the time on her phone. “I need to get to class. Yearbook’s in shambles because we’re using a new company this year, and their page templates are all different. As in, we can’t just plug in new photos—we have to redesign everything.”
“Whose idea was it to change companies?”
Ally waves a hand. “That would be me. It’s cheaper, and the money the school saved allowed us to keep more in the budget for our special ed teacher, which we need.”
“Got it. Okay, don’t want to hold you up.” Ally grabbed her coffee and moved toward the door just as Witty came in with a muffin on a paper plate. Hijacking the toaster, he pulled out my bagel, which I’d forgotten about.
“This yours?” He held it up with two fingers.
“Don’t touch people’s food,” Ally scolded. “We’ve talked about that, Witty.”
He shrugged, tossed my bagel on a paper towel, and went ahead warming his muffin.
“Don’t watch those shows!” I called after Ally.
“Yes, sir!” she called back.
I dropped into a chair and took a bite of my now-cold toasted bagel, devoid of cream cheese. It tasted how I felt.