Chapter 14
chapter
fourteen
Jules
Six weeks later, I have learned several important things about Payton Blankenship.
One, he is extremely good in bed.
Two, he takes direction well, which is an underrated quality in a man.
Three, he has apparently never met a household repair he can ignore.
And four, he does not understand the generally accepted parameters of a booty call.
We have an arrangement. A casual, mutually beneficial, extremely naked arrangement.
It works.
I text him. He comes over.
There are no dates. There are no expectations. There is absolutely no emotional attachment.
There is, however, a new garbage disposal under my kitchen sink. I told him not to fix it.
He said the noise it was making was bothering him.
I pointed out that he didn't live here.
He said, "Exactly. Imagine how bad it must be if it's bothering me."
And a junk drawer slowly filling up with receipts and sticky notes signed —P that I am absolutely going to throw away. Any day now.
The man also has an irritating habit of staying after the sex is over. Talking. Laughing. Lying on my couch with his enormous bare feet propped on my coffee table while he tells me stories about his siblings.
I've had to kick him out twice.
Three times if we're counting the night he fell asleep during a movie.
Which I don't.
Because he wasn't technically spending the night. He was unconscious for twenty-three minutes.
There's a difference.
And nobody knows. Not Hope, who thinks my sudden good mood is a new vitamin regimen. Definitely not Cora, who is twenty weeks pregnant with his brother's baby and has become a woman who cries at insurance commercials and tells Mimz everything.
The point is, everything is under control.
I have successfully maintained a casual sexual relationship with a twenty-two-year-old cowboy for six weeks without developing so much as a single inappropriate emotion.
I'm very proud of myself.
"Miss Long?”
I blink and look down.
Sophie Martinez is standing in front of me holding what appears to be a purple octopus with seventeen legs.
At least, I assume it's an octopus.
Second-grade art requires interpretation.
"Yes, ma'am?"
"Can mine have eyelashes?"
"Absolutely."
"But Noah says boy octopuses don't have eyelashes."
"Tell Noah that gender norms have no place in cephalopod portraiture."
Sophie stares at me.
"Tell him yours is a girl.”
"Okay."
She skips back to her table.
I smile and go back to sorting brushes.
This is why I love my job. Adults are complicated.
Children mostly want to know whether they're allowed to put eyelashes on sea creatures. I'll take the children.
My classroom door opens.
"Jules?"
I glance over to find Melissa, one of the third-grade teachers, sticking her head inside.
"Hey."
"You have a second?"
I look at the clock. Four minutes until I need to herd twenty-two small artists into the hallway.
"Very literally."
"Mrs. Donnelly finally found someone to cover for Mrs. Ball.”
"Thank God."
Mrs. Ball, or Luna as I call her, is the fifth grade social studies teacher.
She just got put on emergency bed rest in the middle of her second trimester.
She says she’s doing fine, but is still following her doctor’s wishes, which means she’ll be out at least until after the new year.
We've spent the last week hearing increasingly desperate updates about the district's substitute shortage.
"Great. I’m glad they finally found someone because I was getting tired of having Assistant Principal Gomez poking her head into my room every five minutes to ask me a question about something.”
Melissa grins.
I stop sorting brushes.
"What?"
Her grin widens. "He's really cute."
I roll my eyes. “Aren’t you married?”
She giggles. “Yes. But you aren’t.”
“I am single by choice.”
“But he’s really cute. Has this aw-shucks-ma’am kind of cowboy thing going for him.”
My hand stills.
There are thousands of young cowboys in Texas. Millions, probably. I’m pretty sure Texas manufactures them in a secret facility somewhere outside Fort Worth.
"You should come meet him.”
"I have a class."
"They're lining up."
Sure enough, the room behind me has erupted into the particular chaos that means seven-year-olds have sensed an impending transition.
"Miss Long!” someone yells. "Noah put his octopus in your coffee cup!"
"It's swimming!" Noah yells back. "Octopuses live in the ocean!"
I glance into my coffee cup, and sure enough, there is an orange octopus “swimming” in the remnants of this morning’s coffee. “That is not the ocean, Noah."
I get everything cleaned up, and manage to line up my class with only two arguments and one missing glue stick.
By the time I walk them down the hall, I've forgotten all about Melissa's hot substitute.
Mostly.
I deposit my students with their homeroom teacher and head back toward the art room.
There's a man standing in the doorway of the classroom next to mine.
Tall.
Broad shoulders.
Dark hair curling slightly at the collar of a pale blue button-down.
Khakis.
I'm so used to seeing him in jeans, or considerably less, that it takes my brain an extra second to process what I'm looking at. But I know that body. Know the perfect ass encased in those khaki pants.
Then he turns. Blue eyes find mine. And his entire face lights up.
Oh.
Fuck.
No.
He glances at the laminated sign beside my door, then back at me, and his grin goes positively wicked.
"Morning, Miss Long.”
I stop dead in the middle of the hallway.
Six weeks. Six weeks of that man in my bed, in just about every position possible, and he just learned my last name from a sign the PTA made with a Cricut.
Payton Blankenship smiles at me.
My booty call is wearing a lanyard. He’s holding an attendance clipboard. And he is standing outside of Luna’s fifth-grade classroom.
This cannot be happening.
I walk directly toward him.
"What are you doing here?" I hiss.
His eyebrows lift. "Good morning to you too."
"Payton."
"Jules."
I look around quickly.
There are children everywhere. Teachers. A couple of room parents. A custodian pushing a trash can.
This is not the appropriate environment for the conversation I need to have.
I grab his sleeve. "Come with me."
His grin gets bigger. "That usually ends well for me."
"Do not make this sexual in an elementary school."
"I didn't. You did."
I drag him into my art room and shut the door.
Then I turn on him.
"What are you doing here?"
He frowns. “Substitute teaching."
"I can see that."
"Then I'm confused by the question."
I narrow my eyes.
He smiles.
I hate that smile. I especially hate knowing what that smile looks like approximately six inches above my—
Nope. Bad Jules.
Remember: school, children, professionalism.
I point at him. "You cannot honestly tell me you became a substitute teacher just to see me."
His mouth drops open. "I what?"
"You heard me."
"You think I got a job at your school so I could stalk my hookup?"
"When you say it like that, it sounds unreasonable."
"Because it is unreasonable."
"Did you know I worked here?"
He hesitates. Just for a second, but it's enough.
"Payton."
"There's one elementary school in the entire district, Jules. So, yeah, I knew. I figured we might run into each other.”
I open my mouth. Close it again. That is irritatingly logical.
"You work on a ranch."
"I do."
"You're a cowboy."
"Also true."
"You're twenty-two."
"We've discussed this. Repeatedly. So exactly what part are we stuck on?"
I wave toward the hallway. "The part where you're suddenly Mr. Blankenship."
He sighs. “I have a teaching degree, Jules."
I stare at him. "What?"
"I have a degree in elementary education."
"You do not."
He frowns. “Pretty sure I do. I was there when they gave it to me. Went to all the classes and everything.”
"I asked you what you did. At the taco place. You said whatever needs doing."
"And today, what needs doing is fifth grade." He shrugs. "I told you I was mysterious."
"You told me nothing. You never said a word about it."
His eyebrows lift again. "You never asked. You asked me about my job. I told you the truth. You never asked me about college.”
That shuts me up.
Because it's true. Six weeks. Six weeks of him on my couch, telling me about Addison’s disastrous attempt at sourdough and the time Oliver got headbutted by a goat. In all of that time, I never once asked him a single thing about himself that wasn't safe. I made very sure of it.
That was the whole point. Don’t know too much. Don’t get too close.
It shouldn't sting.
"So you just decided to become a substitute teacher?"
“There was a need. And I figured I owed it to myself to see if I truly want to do this. It feels right to me; it’s why I studied what I did in college. But it would require me to disappoint my family and step away from the family business.”
"What about the ranch?"
He shrugs, but there's something underneath the gesture.
"I like the ranch. I'm good at it. I just don't know if I want it to be the thing I do for the next forty years."
That stops me.
Because this isn't flirting. There's no teasing in his voice now.
He's serious.
Before I can ask anything else, the door swings open. A little boy with glasses peers inside.
"Mr. Blankenship?"
Payton immediately turns toward him. "What's up, buddy?"
“How am I supposed to do number four? Because Mrs. Ball hasn’t taught us about all of the states so how am I supposed to color in Mississippi?”
Payton crouches so they're eye to eye.
"Well, if Mrs. Ball hasn’t taught it yet, I'm thinking she probably doesn't expect you to magically know it while she's gone."
The kid considers this. "What if I try?"
"Then I'll help you."
"Okay."
He disappears.
Payton stands.
I stare at him.
"What?"
"Nothing."
His eyes narrow.
Another child appears in the doorway. "Mr. Blankenship, Ava took my pencil."
"I did not!" a voice shouts from the hall.
"It has my bite marks.”
Payton closes his eyes.
I bite my lip.
He looks at me. "Don't."
"I didn't say anything."
"You're enjoying this."
Immensely.
"You wanted to be a teacher."
"I'm beginning to understand why the district is short on substitutes."
I laugh.
He looks at me.
And there it is again. That stupid expression. Soft. Warm. Like my laugh is something he genuinely loves.
The laughter dies in my throat. "You should go deal with the pencil."
He keeps looking at me.
"Payton."
"Going."
He reaches the door before glancing back. "Oh, and Miss Long?”
"What?"
"I'm here all week."
He winks.
I stare after him.
This is fine. Completely and totally fine.
Payton can be Mr. Blankenship at school. He can be Payton in my house.
Two entirely separate things. Two neat little boxes.
I am excellent at boxes.
From the hallway, a child's voice carries through the open door.
"Mr. Blankenship, do you have a girlfriend?"
There's a pause.
Then Payton says, "That's a very personal question, Jackson."
"So no?"
Another pause.
"No."
For some reason, I don't like that answer. Which is ridiculous. Because he doesn't have a girlfriend. Obviously. That's literally the point.
I stare at the doorway.
Six weeks. Everything has been working perfectly for six weeks.
So naturally, my twenty-two-year-old cowboy booty call has just moved into the classroom next door.
Fantastic.