Once that was done, only then did I hear the roar of his truck start up.
Hurrying to the window, I looked outside and watched him back down my driveway, and then accelerate down the street.
Sighing in defeat, I flipped the lights back out, and then hurried to my bedroom.
After stripping off my beer and blood-stained pants, I walked to the shower and hosed myself off, hating that I had to wash the scent of Ezra off my skin.
Moments after getting out, I heard my phone ringing from my pants pocket where I’d left it, and hurried to it, putting it to my ear before I’d even looked at who was calling.
I smiled when I heard his voice, but frowned moments after that when I realized that he hadn’t meant to call me.
Had he meant to call me, he most assuredly wouldn’t have called me while also talking to another woman at the same time.
Ezra was a lot of things, but a mean person wasn’t one of them.
And it didn’t take a magic 8-ball to see that I cared for him.
“I’m sorry, Ezra,” an achingly familiar voice said quietly. “You look rough. Are you sure you don’t want to catch a drink?”
Shuffling noises sounded, and then I heard Ezra speak, but I couldn’t make out what the words were before the woman’s voice started to fill the line again.
“Or we can go get ice cream.”
And it was then that I realized that I was definitely a jealous hag.
Ezra and I hadn’t made any promises to each other whatsoever. However, whether he realized it or not, I’d given him one.
It was just sad that I would likely never get one from him.
“…Ice cream,” I heard Ezra reply.
I frowned, pulling the phone away from my ear, and wondering what I should do.
I, of course, had many options. One major one being hanging up and hoping he didn’t butt dial me all over again.
The other option was to listen to what was being said, and not say a word.
I did what any sane woman would do.
I listened.
To every. Freakin’. Word.
“I’m glad that you’ll come,” I heard Coach Casper say. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
My mind went wild as all the possible scenarios went through my brain, and the only logical one I could come up with was the one I kept going back to.
I’d heard Ezra agree to a date with Coach Casper, the one person in the entire school that I’d never get along with.
It was kind of hard to when Coach Casper—I refused to call her by her real name because it was stupid—picked on me all through my informative years.Chapter 11Eat more hole foods.
-Donut marquee sign
Ezra
“It’s a good thing that we get to go home early today,” I heard Raleigh say to another teacher, Ms. Holdenbrook. Ms. Holdenbrook was the art teacher and was clearly hanging on Raleigh’s every word.
Then again, Ms. Holdenbrook was the third-newest teacher at Gun Barrel ISD, and so new and green that she hadn’t even gotten her teaching certificate in the mail.
Lucky for her she was young, and likely wouldn’t be too traumatized by her class of students that she’d taken over when the old art teacher—Mrs. Rosemary—had retired after she’d had a major heart attack.
“Why is that?” Ms. Holdenbrook asked.
“Because a few of the kids thought it’d be hilarious to toilet paper my trees,” she muttered darkly.
The sweet little woman I’d left on her doorstep last night was gone. In her place was a raving woman who’d much rather geld me than kiss me.
What the hell?
I didn’t know what happened between last night and today, but something sure the fuck had.
She was staring at me like I’d run over her dog right in front of her, and I didn’t know what the fuck had happened.
I couldn’t even ask her what the fuck was wrong because the goddamn auditorium where we were all shoved was filled to the brim with people.
“I’d like to discuss first the morale in the school,” Mrs. Sherpa started with, as she fucking did every single time she started a stupid staff meeting.
We had a hundred thousand things to do today as we got ready for the standardized testing we were starting come Monday, and she wanted to bore us to death with student morale.
“Mrs. Sherpa,” one of our veteran teachers, Mrs. Golden, interrupted. “I’m going to be quite honest with you. Morale is absolute shit because we’re having to teach to this stupid freakin’ test and not to what they should be learning. They’re being told if they fail, they won’t graduate. They’re also scared shitless because they should be planning graduation and getting excited about prom, not whether or not they’re going to pass this asshole test.”
My lips twitched.
She was right.
I never worried about these tests when I was a kid, and I’d had to take them.