Seeking Mr. Wrong

by Natalie Charles

  By the time I pulled into the parking lot, I’d calmed down. I was human, and so long as I didn’t run into Brunhilda—who didn’t tolerate being human—I’d be okay. I grabbed my bags and hauled ass into the school. Twenty-five minutes late. Damn.

  I smiled when I opened the classroom door and saw Eric reading my kids a story. It wasn’t story time, but whatever. I gave him a wave, but he looked up only for a second before returning to the story. Well, fine. I’d unpack quickly and let him get back to work. Surely he was thinking that he didn’t want to let on that anything was amiss. He was sweet.

  While he finished the book, I wrote a few sight words on the board so we could practice. The Winter Concert was in half an hour, but I could get a quick lesson in before it was time to head to the auditorium. When Eric shut the book, I walked over to the reading area and said, “Thank you, Mr. Clayman. Class, can we all give Mr. Clayman a round of applause?”

  The children clapped in a circle, faces beaming, while Eric sat there with a polite but definitely tight smile on his face. Weird.

  “My pleasure. I’ll see you all at the assembly in a little while.” He was avoiding eye contact.

  “Yes, we’ve been practicing hard.” I admit by that point, I felt a little desperate for him to look at me. When he rose and started walking out without so much as a glance in my direction, I grabbed him gently by the elbow of his navy suit jacket. “Hey. Thank you. I’m sorry I was late. I appreciate you covering.”

  He paused and turned, but his expression remained cold. “Gretchen was looking for you earlier. We were supposed to help set up for the concert.”

  Oh, shit. I winced. “I completely forgot about that.”

  “Clearly.” His jaw was set, his eyes still avoiding mine. “It’s been taken care of.”

  I put my hand over my heart. I felt like a mess. “Thank you. I’m really sorry. That’s not like me.”

  Eric looked me straight in the eyes. “To be honest, I don’t think I know what’s like you, Lettie.”

  It was like being slapped. “Hold on. You’re not actually angry with me about this, are you?”

  He opened his mouth and then closed it, looking back over his shoulder at the students. “We’ll talk later. I have to go.” And he walked out of the classroom without another word.

  I attempted to pull myself together, to conduct a lesson and lead my students to the auditorium all while remaining composed, but I wasn’t. When Eric had left the previous night, everything had seemed fine, and now he was angry at me. If he was upset about my tardiness, well—it struck me as an irrational level of anger, all things considered. I couldn’t help but think there was something else going on, and it reminded me of the way I’d fallen through a trap door when James had told me he was gay.

  I felt blindsided.

  I felt sick.

  THE WINTER CONCERT went very well, and the parents seemed to enjoy the performance. I saw Mrs. Dellacourt there, and she actually came to the classroom afterward to give me a hug. “Thank you,” she said softly into my hair.

  I limply reached up to pat her on the back. “You’re welcome. For what?”

  She pulled away, and I saw the tears brimming. “I know you’re the one who got me and Oscar help. I don’t know what I was thinking. I was so scared—”

  “Oh.” My forehead creased. “But I didn’t do anything. Eric, uh, Mr. Clayman said he talked with you—”

  “Yes, but unless you’d noticed that picture, it never would have happened.” She smiled weakly. “Things are okay now. My husband is back in prison. I’m filing for divorce and full custody. Oscar and I will be moving in a few weeks. We’re going to my sister’s place.”

  “Close by?”

  “Oregon.”

  “Oh.” My heart hurt. It was hard enough to say good-bye to my students at the end of the year. It was harder when they suddenly moved out of state. Like I said, I was only human. “I’ll miss having Oscar in my class.” Damn, I was choking up.

  “And he’ll miss you. He loves you very much.”

  Double damn. I bit my cheek and blinked to keep the tears back. “Thanks for stopping in, Mrs. Dellacourt.”

  It felt like a sad, gloomy cloud was following me around that day. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, but between Eric’s bizarre behavior and Mrs. Dellacourt’s lovely thank-you, I was feeling emotional. I spent the rest of the afternoon waiting to go home, but just after I’d sent the last child off on the bus and returned to my classroom to pack up, my classroom phone rang. “Ms. Osbourne?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Sue in the main office. Dr. Hauschild would like to see you.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes.”

  Cheese and rice.

  I hung up weakly. I was tired, but I told myself that I’d done nothing wrong. I mean, okay, I’d forgotten about setting up for the Winter Concert, but that was technically before school hours. Eric had covered my tardiness, and it was fine. As I walked into the principal’s office, I told myself that I was safe. But the moment I saw them, I knew I wasn’t.

  Brunhilda was at her desk, waiting for me with her hands folded in front of her and her gaze fixed on the doorway. Eric was there, too. He was in one of the seats in front of the desk, his ankle resting on his knee. I could tell by the way he was staring at the floor that this was not good. “Ms. Osbourne,” Brunhilda bellowed before I had the chance to speak. “Please shut the door.”

  There was a stone in my throat as I meekly obeyed and then took a seat beside Eric. I crossed my ankles and folded my hands on my lap and I refused—refused!—to look at him. Everything about the expression on his face, from the downcast gaze to the tight mouth, told me that Eric was preparing to betray me. It was only a question of why.

  So there I was, Oprah. In the principal’s office. I’d allowed myself to fall in love after a terrible betrayal only to find myself betrayed again. Isn’t life grand?

  “Do you want to tell me why you’re here?”

  Brunhilda’s eyebrows—I’d never noticed them before. They were shaped like spear tips, unnaturally sharp arrows that pointed to her hairline. “I don’t know why I’m here,” I said. She wasn’t getting a thing from me.

  Brunhilda glanced at Eric and then turned back to me. “There are rumors that the two of you are in a relationship.”

  I looked down at my skirt, the classic guilty move. My cheeks started to burn. “I don’t—”

  “I’ve told her it’s a complete lie.” Eric’s voice came through loud and tinged with anger. “Ugly gossip, that’s all.”

  I started at the ferocity of the denial. “I— Who is saying these things?”

  Brunhilda tightened her lips with obvious disdain. “It doesn’t matter. This person came to me in confidence.”

  My stomach rolled. I’d only told Mindy, and there was no way she’d tell Brunhilda. No way. I looked at Eric, but his jaw was tight.

  “I’m not going to file a formal complaint,” Brunhilda said with an air of grandiosity. “It’s your word against this teacher’s word. But if there’s anything going on, it needs to end, got it?”

  “Got it,” I mumbled.

  Eric fired me a look. “There’s nothing to stop. Because there’s nothing going on.”

  Ouch. Allow me to remove this dagger from my back.

  I bit the inside of my cheek, hard. It hurt a lot less than my heart did right then. “Is that it?”

  “No.” Brunhilda turned her chair. “You were late this morning, and you didn’t notify me.”

  I swallowed. “I’m sorry. I overslept. It was an accid—”

  She cut me off with the lift of one finger. “Not following protocol was not an accident, Aletta. It was deliberate deception. Not only did you miss setup for the Winter Concert you helped plan—which forced some of your colleagues to fill in for you—but you were twen
ty-five minutes late to school. I saw you running through the parking lot.” She tightened her lips. “The rules are clear. If you are going to be late, you notify me or Mr. Clayman. Understood?”

  I stared down at my own hands folded in my lap, brimming with shame. “I understand.”

  “Now, we have no choice but to write this up in your file.”

  “What?” I inched closer to her desk. “You’re going to write me up for this? It was a one-time thing!”

  Having this in my file could put me in jeopardy of not receiving tenure. I could be stuck looking for another job at the end of the year, and God help me there. The right job in the right school system was very difficult to find, and competition was fierce. I couldn’t hold back any longer, and tears started streaming down my cheeks. “I made a mistake. Please don’t do this to me.”

  Brunhilda was unmoved. “I’m afraid I have to follow the rules. All of this is required by the handbook.” She turned to Eric. “You’ll take care of that, please.”

  He looked genuinely shocked. “You want me to write her up?”

  “Yes. And we’ll all sign it. The three of us.” Her beady blue eyes were cold. “You both tell me these rumors of your relationship are false, so it doesn’t appear to be a conflict of interest.”

  I bit my lower lip but the tears kept coming. I was going to lose my job. Silly me, I went and fell in love with someone incredible and stayed up too late one night, and now I was going to be unemployed. “C-can I go, please?”

  Brunhilda nodded tightly. “Yes. We’re finished.”

  I couldn’t get out of that office quickly enough. I could have died from the embarrassment alone. I took off at a run, and when I turned the corner to my classroom, I couldn’t hold back any longer. I started sobbing, heaving and blubbering like a teenager who’d been stood up at prom. But that’s what it felt like, actually—a humiliating betrayal.

  I was a mess. I couldn’t show my face to the world like that, not even to climb into my car and head home. I fumbled through my desk for a packet of tissues and finally found one in a superhero design. I was blowing my nose when Eric had the gall to darken my doorway.

  “Hey,” he said. “We should talk.”

  “I’ll start. Go to hell.” I tossed the tissue into the wastebasket and reached for another one. “You shouldn’t be here. Someone might think we’re sleeping together.”

  His face was still hard as he watched me. “How could you tell people about us?”

  “I didn’t. How could you even accuse me of that?”

  “Who did?”

  I crumpled the tissue in my fist. “I don’t know what happened, but I didn’t say anything, okay?”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “Keep your voice down.”

  “Like it matters! I’ve got to brush up my CV. You’re writing a formal letter for my file because I overslept this morning.” I fought the urge to kick the wastebasket across the room. “Of all stupid things—”

  “I’m not going to write anything bad,” he said. “It will be fine. Harmless. Gretchen will sign it.” He folded his arms. “Why were you late this morning?”

  “My alarm didn’t go off.”

  His gaze was level, his shoulders tight. “You sent a file to me. At four in the morning. I’m guessing it was by accident.”

  The blood whooshed to my feet. In my exhaustion, I must have started typing the wrong e-mail address when I’d gone to send the manuscript to Marcy. I was so relieved to finish, I hadn’t noticed that the wrong address had auto-filled. Oh no. But then again . . .

  “So what? So I write erotica. My publisher was sold and I had to fulfill my contract. That’s not illegal.”

  “Aletta. You don’t just write erotica. You write erotica about us.”

  “No one would figure that out.”

  “That’s not the point.” He stepped forward then, lowering his voice. “I went through that manuscript. I was curious. You have things I’ve said to you in there, things we’ve done. And you never even told me you were writing this.”

  I lifted my chin. “What I write is my choice. It’s fiction. All of it. No one would ever be able to identify either of us.”

  “But you lied.”

  “Now wait a minute.” I set my hands on my hips and looked him straight in the eyes. “I never lied to you about this. Lying would be you asking me if I write erotica, and me denying it.”

  “And your pen name. Coco Claibourne.” His face scrunched in discomfort. “You even combined our last names.”

  “You’re reading too much into it. That’s pure invention.” I fluttered my arms. “I had to come up with a pen name.”

  “It all makes sense.” A shadow crossed his face. “You told me you needed to broaden your horizons. You needed to sleep with a bad boy. Now I find out that all that time, you’ve been using me to write your books. Even worse, you’ve turned me into some ass-slapping bully. Or, what’s the term? Alpha. Because I guess I’m not good enough. Being a nice guy isn’t enough for you.”

  I started at the pain in his voice. “No. You’ve got it all wrong.”

  “Yeah?” He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. “Then correct me.”

  “I can’t.” I couldn’t explain how he was at once completely wrong and completely correct. Yes, I’d set off to broaden my experience, but then I’d found someone I’d truly connected with and none of that mattered anymore. It all happened naturally. “Did you even read my book?” I whispered.

  “Some of it.”

  “Read all of it. Then you’ll see that it’s a love story, not a sex story.” I rumpled my own hair in my fists. “I mean, jeez, Eric. I didn’t steal anything from you or from us. I didn’t try to change you. You inspired me. It’s the highest honor.”

  For the first time, his face softened. “But, Lettie, you can’t—”

  “Don’t tell me what I can’t do. Please. You don’t make those decisions. I do.” My shoulders sagged, and I realized that this was the end. We were finished. But I had to unload my own grievances. “Why didn’t you just tell Gretchen the truth? That you and I have a relationship, and that it won’t affect our work, and you’re leaving the school anyway as soon as the board hires a replacement. Why didn’t you tell her?”

  He looked down at the floor. “I thought we agreed we were going to keep this between us. You’re mad at me . . . but you wrote a book about it!”

  “I’m really sorry that I put parts of our life in that book without telling you, but truly, no one else but us will see the similarities. What guts me is that you’re ashamed of it. You’re ashamed of me, and you’re ashamed of being with me. And I’ve just found myself, Eric. I finally like who I am.” My chin trembled and I was shaking with anger. “I refuse to be with anyone who’s ashamed of me.”

  He stood watching me, frozen in place. I’d had enough. I picked up my bags and my coat. “I’m going. Please lock up when you leave.” I headed out the door.

  MINDY DROPPED everything to come over to my house to be with me. I was curled up on the couch under a chenille blanket, and she was sitting beside me on the floor, scratching Odin’s belly. “I promise you,” she said, “that I’ve never breathed a word to anyone about you and Eric. Never ever.” I believed her.

  I’d been turning it over in my mind, and I remembered once when Eric was kissing me in the supply closet that someone had rattled the doorknob. We’d locked it, of course, but then we’d emerged a few minutes later, looking guilty, and Evelyn Pierce had been down the hall. “It was probably Evelyn. She doesn’t like either of us.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, Evelyn doesn’t like anyone.” Mindy was wearing bright pink leggings with purple lightning bolts and a white tunic sweater. I couldn’t tell whether the leggings were meant to be ironic.

  “I accidentally e-mailed him my manuscript.” I leaned my head back and shut my eye
s, trying to seal out reality. “It was four in the morning and I was half out of my mind with sleep deprivation.”

  “He didn’t know you wrote erotica?”

  “No, but I think he was more upset that I used some of our experiences in the book.”

  Mindy’s forehead creased and she stopped petting Odin. He immediately lifted his head and pawed at her leg. “Of course you used your experiences. What else are you supposed to use?”

  “Exactly. But he said that I made him too alpha, and then he accused me of thinking he was boring.”

  She fluttered her lips and shook her head. “And then you reminded him that your book is fiction, right?”

  “Yeah, of course. It is fiction.” I didn’t understand why he’d taken personal offense to my writing, but it hurt. His willingness to reject me hurt, too. “He could’ve told Brunhilda the truth. He was so quick to deny that we were together.”

  “I’ll never understand men.”

  “Yeah. Good riddance.”

  That made Mindy rise to sit beside me on the couch. “No. Listen to me. You found a good thing with Eric. It’s not over yet. You can’t think of it that way.”

  “Mindy, it’s so over. As long as we’re both in the same school, we need to stay away from each other.”

  “There’s got to be a better answer. I’m still trying to manifest a new principal.”

  I curled into the fetal position, and Odin took the opportunity to come over and lick my face. “A new principal would be a great start. You let me know if that works out.” I wasn’t holding my breath.

  The experience was disorienting. For the rest of the evening, as I made dinner and climbed into bed, I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn’t to contact Eric. As I went about the next week, I had to remember that I wasn’t to tell him about the funny story I heard, or the new restaurant I wanted to try with him. Because there was no “us” anymore. There couldn’t be. I used the side entrance to the school to avoid having to walk past the administrative offices.