Single Dad Problems

1. Callie

Callie

Printing punching wasn’t a recognized Olympic sport but if it was, I felt like I would’ve taken gold.

Or at least silver, especially if intention and anger counted towards the overall score.

The printer in the teacher’s lounge bested me day in and day out, no matter how much I prepped for war with it.

I hit the side of the stupid thing with the palm of my hand the way I’d seen Coach Jerry hit it and immediately regretted it when my hand throbbed.

I had to bite back a swear that would’ve blown the bangs off of every little girl who’d cut her own hair that week.

I’d meant to print out everything I needed before parent teacher conferences. I’d meant to do a lot of things before the conferences, but every road I ever took in life was paved with good intentions but even more distractions.

“Miss Morgan, shouldn’t you be in your classroom by now?

” Principal Darren “Makes Me Gag” Beauford came into the lounge, arms crossed over his chest, pushing his larger than normal pecs nearly up to his chin.

He stopped right next to me and leaned in.

“Honestly, you should’ve had this done days ago. ”

I nearly choked on the overwhelming scent of his cologne and had to breathe through my mouth to survive. “Yes, sir. I meant to-”

“And I can’t help but notice that once again Oliver is here outside of school hours when he shouldn’t be.” Darren leaned even closer and lowered his voice. “If you had a husband at home, this wouldn’t be the case, would it?”

Had he hit his head while doing his chest exercises that morning? I made a face and leaned away. “What if my husband worked the evening shift? Then I’d be in the same boat.”

“I had a husband who worked the evening shift once.” Marjorie Smith, a woman in her seventies with connections to the founder of the school, spoke up from the other side of the lounge.

She usually pretended she couldn’t hear even if you were standing right beside her, but it seemed like she was making an exception for the moment.

“There was nothing like being woken up by a sweaty, beast of a man after he’d just worked ten hours in a mine.

Too bad I had to get rid of him after he delivered those same services to some bitch named Aileen. ”

I looked over at her and completely forgot about Darren when I saw what she was wearing.

Hot pink bell bottoms, a silk button up blouse in a wild floral print, and platform wedges suited her straight, jet-black bob.

I adored Marjorie. She was my hero because of how she carried herself and pretended to be senile whenever it benefited her. “You got rid of him?”

She winked at me and then cupped her hand to her ear. “What’d you say, sweetheart? I can’t hear a damn thing with these ears.”

I fidgeted with the hem of my shirt and moved towards her. “Sneaky. I like it.”

“Miss Morgan, you do have a job to do, don’t you?” Darren cleared his throat and patted my shoulder. “Stay on task.”

“No. My mom told me to stay right here. Don’t touch me. You smell like brussels sprouts and I hate brussels sprouts.” Oliver’s voice rang out in the hallway, loud but still monotone in the unique way he spoke.

I hurried out of the lounge and saw Karla Chism, the school secretary and Darren’s lackey, holding the back of Oliver’s shirt by his neck. She was pulling him towards the front of the school despite him struggling to stay put outside the library.

“Karla!” I pushed her hand away from Oliver and hugged him to my front. “Are you okay, Ollie?”

Karla was in her fifties, never seemed capable of dying the top two inches of grays that came in, and was always in sepia tone from years of using the tanning bed and smoking Marlboro Reds.

She also had a personality built on hate and pure evil and never got too tired to be mean.

I was pretty sure she hated children and aspired to be Winnifred from Hocus Pocus.

“He has no business being out here on his own. He could break something and then the school would have to pay for your mistakes. Leave him outside so he doesn’t bother me.”

“You’re a mean old lady. I don’t like you. You tried to make me go outside without an adult. That’s wrong. You’re wrong.” Oliver crossed his arms and looked up at me. “Mom, I followed the rules.”

Despite only being eight, he was already almost too big for me to carry but I picked him up anyway. “Karla, you shouldn’t push any kids, no matter the age, outside of the protection of the school. Much less an eight-year-old.”

“Shouldn’t you be doing your job, Miss Morgan?” Karla’s lips twisted and the skin wrinkled, not unlike a butthole. “Take your brat with you.”

My job. Shit. I locked my arms around Oliver and took off at a jog for my classroom. “Okay, Ollie, here we go. Hang on. We’ll talk about telling an adult that they smell like a vegetable later. I’ve got to get to my classroom.”

Oliver grunted. “My lungs are being compressed, Mom, and I don’t find bouncing enjoyable. It makes my head feel strange. Also, you’re not supposed to run in the hallway. I guess you’re not running very fast, though, so maybe it’s okay.”

I stopped outside of my classroom and put him down. “Okay, how do I look? Actually, don’t answer that. You’re a little too honest.”

“Honesty is good, Mom. You always say that.”

I cupped his cheeks and kissed his forehead, then immediately wiped any trace of it away for him. “Wait right here. Mom needs- Oh, shit. I forgot my papers in the printer. Okay, you stay here. I’ll be right back.”

“No running, Mom.”

I didn’t have time to listen. I sprinted back down the hallway, praying my flats didn’t catch a freshly waxed spot of floor and sent me to an early grave.

I cursed myself the whole way for being so forgetful, even though a therapist had once told me that self-flagellation wasn’t helpful.

It just wasn’t like me to listen to good advice.

Thankfully Darren had vacated the lounge so I managed to grab the papers and then run back to my classroom.

Oliver had made his way inside and was sitting at my desk with his hands locked on top of it, looking every bit like a baby professor.

In his navy button up shirt and his black-rimmed glasses, he was the cutest thing I’d ever seen.

I quickly smiled at the blur of parents in my classroom and dropped the papers on the desk and wiped the sweat beading on my forehead. “You want to do the work for me, too, Ollie?”

He frowned and sighed like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. “I’m not a licensed teacher, Mom.”

I laughed at his matter-of-fact attitude and quickly ran my hands over my hair to try to pull myself together. Nothing felt like it was in the correct place but there was nothing I could do.

“Mom, your shirt is open and your boobs are showing.” Oliver’s voice made me instantly aware of the silence behind me.

Sucking in a sharp breath, I cringed as I felt my face burn bright red. I looked down and saw that I’d lost a button and my boobs were indeed showing. I grabbed a safety pin from my desk and fixed it as best as I could before spinning to face the parents waiting on me.

A light breeze could've knocked me over when I saw the three men sitting in the front row.

Oh, son of a biscuit.

Three very handsome, very giant, very muscular men, who I had absolutely had a one-night stand with at a single parent retreat over the summer, were folded into tiny desks built for second graders.

They were the last people I ever would've expected to see in my second-grade classroom. They were the last people I ever expected to see again, period. And judging from their slow grins and the way they were staring at my safety-pinned boob situation, they remembered exactly who I was.

I was going to die.