Last Christmas (Private 0.60)

could make it up to you?"

176

She pulled his tie from around his neck, tossing it on the floor. Her hands flew expertly over the buttons on

his shirt, across his belt buckle as he ran his fingers through her hair. She slid onto the table and pulled him

toward her. Ariana heard his breath quickening in the dark as Isobel edged off his shirt and let it fall to the

floor.

Oh. My. God.

Ariana closed her eyes and sank back underneath the staircase next to Thomas. This couldn't be happening.

Mr. Holmes would never have an affair with a student. He couldn't. Everyone at Easton knew that he was a

good guy. A guy with a wife at home, a pregnant wife who sometimes made biscotti for him to bring to class.

He wouldn't do this to her. There was no way.

Of course, the slobbering kissing sounds coming from the other side of the room suggested otherwise.

Ariana's stomach turned. She was even more disgusted with Isobel. She'd been dating her boyfriend, Jack,

since freshman year. Was almost as attached to him as she was to her morning latte. Ariana had once caught

her doodling the name Mrs. John Staton in the back of her spring issue of Vogue, and knew that the two of

them were serious. The spring issue was Isobel's prize possession. It was common knowledge around Billings

that any girl who so much as looked at her copy of the issue before Isobel read it cover to cover twice would

never live to tell the tale.

And yet here they were, Mr. Holmes and Isobel, devouring each other like a pair of horny, rabid dogs in the

Drake basement. Ariana felt her hands beginning to shake, and she didn't bother to stop them.

177

It wasn't just the fact that they were hooking up, or lying about it, or breaking all sorts of state statutory rape

laws in the process. She was more pissed at herself for being so naive as to believe that they were good

people. That they were incapable of doing something so wrong. She had underestimated them, just like she'd

underestimated Daniel. She'd been at Easton long enough to know that nothing was ever exactly what it

seemed. Apparently, she hadn't learned the lesson well enough. She felt her hands curling tightly around

Thomas's wool coat, and rage churned in the pit of her stomach.

She noticed Mr. Holmes's Dockers out of the corner of her eye. Isobel had whipped the pants toward the

stairwell, and they were almost within reach. A phone peeked out of the back pocket, and Ariana glanced

down at her own cell, dead on the floor next to her.