Them (Him #3)

by Carey Heywood

  Watching Sarah with Calvin leaves me with no doubt she’d be a great mother. She has this internal strength that my mom never had. When my sister died, my mom gave up on life and made no attempt to do anything other than go through the motions of living. It didn’t matter that I was still around and needed her.

  Sarah would never do that and even if she tried, I’m sure if I couldn’t snap her out of it Sawyer would swoop in and kick her ass. If I wasn’t so anti-snow I could see us having a blast living near Sawyer and Jared. Brian would probably veto the whole idea, though, and Mrs. Miller would guilt-trip me considering she’s been on cloud nine having Sarah back home. Seems like we’re here to stay in Atlanta.

  Even with the pit-stop to drop off my sample, I still manage to slide into school before the first bell. I love being a teacher. Having summers off is a huge perk. Downfall to that is it means I get almost zero personal time during the school year. This includes sick days, and not picking up something is sometimes impossible considering I teach walking Petri dishes.

  Good thing I load up on hand sanitizer at the start of each school year. Another thing I’ve learned over the years is to look away if a kid looks like they’re about to yawn, because nine times out of ten it means there’s a sneeze on deck.

  My first period class is an intro to art. There are some kids here who struggle drawing a stick figure. We’re only three months into the year, though, so there’s only so much magic I can do at this point.

  What’s fun about this class is since it’s an intro, we jump around and focus on all different types of mediums. Those kids who struggle with stick figures tend to excel in something else. Being there to watch as they recognize their own untapped creativity bloom is pretty sweet. At the end of the day, it’s the reason I teach.

  Right now, we’re doing a section on watercolors and impressionists. The kids love the concept of what looks like a mess up close coming into focus and becoming more beautiful as they step away.

  It’s fun but messy; by the end of class, my floors are looking rough. The moment the kids file out, I grab the Swiffer Wet I keep in the class to tackle the floors. There’s three minutes before my next class starts, so I have to be quick. I’m just over halfway done when there’s a knock on my door.

  “Yes?” I lift my head.

  “Mr. Price. Do you have a moment?” It’s one of the PE teachers, Mr. Garrison.

  “Sure. What’s up?” I glance at the unfinished floor and figure it doesn’t look that bad, so I put the Swiffer away.

  “Would you be interested in assistant coaching the Decater High JV Lacrosse team?”

  Didn’t see that coming. “When would you need to know by?”

  “Take the weekend and if you can let me know by Monday, that’d be great.”

  I nod and he leaves just as my students begin filing in.

  Coach lacrosse?

  Some of my happiest memories from high school, outside of the time I spent with Sarah, were playing lacrosse. Looking back, the aggression I was able to get out on the field had to have kept me from going off the rails. There was no reason to get into fights when I could wait until practice and whale on someone instead. As long as I didn’t get too many fouls, I was good to go.

  Coaching might be fun. It’s something I’ll have to talk over with Sarah because I know what a commitment time-wise it would be. There’d be practice every day after school and then games on Friday nights.

  My next class is working on a project, so other than answering the off-question or doing a lap around the classroom to make sure the kids stay focused, I’m free to let my mind wander. The more I think about coaching, the more I want to do it.

  Lunch is next period, so I can call Sarah and get her thoughts. Once the bell rings and my classroom empties, I grab my phone.

  “Hey, honey. How’d the drop-off go?”

  I laugh. “It was weird. I should have made you go with me.”

  “What, you didn’t want to be alone as you spread your seed around?”

  “That’s just wrong, woman.”

  She laughs and I look up to see Logan hovering in the doorway. I motion him to come in.

  “Hey, the PE teacher stopped by this morning and asked if I’d be interested in assistant coaching the JV lacrosse team over at the high school. I told him I’d think about it because I wanted to talk to you first.”

  “You would be the best coach ever. You should totally do it.”

  “Totally,” I tease.

  “Yes.” Somehow, even on the phone, I can tell she’s rolling her eyes at me.

  “Cool. I wanted to run it by you first before I agreed to anything. I’m going to hop, though, since Logan is here for lunch.”

  “Okay, babe. See you tonight.”

  When I look up, Logan’s eyes are on me.

  “You know how to play lacrosse?” he asks.

  I nod. “Heck yeah. I played lacrosse in high school and for University of Georgia.”

  His mouth drops. “You did?”

  I grin and stand. “I might have some old black and white pictures. Want to see?”

  “That’d be awesome.” His excitement is palpable.

  As I walk over to a storage cabinet, I ask, “Do you play?”

  He shakes his head. “No, but I always wanted to learn.”

  Once I find the album I’m looking for, I head over to his table. “If I get the coaching job and it’s cool with the main coach and your dad, do you want to come to the practices and learn to play?”

  “That’d be amazing, Mr. Price.”

  It’s been a few days since I’ve asked about his dad. “Things going better at home?”

  The smile he gives me is halfhearted at best. His grandfather passed away two days after his dad came back.

  “I miss my grandpa, but my dad got to say goodbye and spend time with him. My grandma isn’t doing so well, so my dad and I are visiting her a lot. It’s getting better. I’m just so happy my dad is finally home.”

  I pat his shoulder. “I’m glad you’re doing better.”

  “I told him about you.” He pauses to suck in air. “How you helped me while he was away. He wants to meet you, to thank you.”

  Talk about an emotional punch to the gut.

  I gulp, reaching up to give his shoulder a squeeze. “I would love to meet your dad.”

  I leave the album for him to flip through as I walk back to my desk to unpack my lunch. At this point, I don’t even ask if he wants to eat anymore. Pulling out one turkey sandwich and an apple, I walk back over and set them by his elbow. As cool as getting back into lacrosse sounds, Logan inviting me to meet his dad means so much more.

  Speaking of news, my results should be back in forty-eight hours. I need to think of something to keep Sarah’s mind off the waiting part.

  “Mr. Price, is this the picture you won that award for?”

  I stand and make my way over to him to see.

  Nodding, I ask, “Do you recognize the street?”

  All of my students get a kick out of knowing a place they see every day was the setting of my award-winning image. You can’t see the school in the shot since my back was to it. I had been standing in the parking lot, about to leave when across the street, a little girl fell while riding her bike.

  “Yeah. That’s so cool.”

  “Are you looking forward to the photography section?” I ask.

  He grins. “I am. I got a camera last Christmas.”

  We spent the rest of lunch talking about cameras and ideas on what the kids could take pictures of during our photography lesson. When I was in school, we had cell phones but none of them had built-in cameras. It’s incredible to think that one technological advancement could make such a drastic change to the way we document our lives. Statistically, today we take more photos every two minutes then were taken in all of the 1800’s.

  I’m teaching the selfie generation. My students all have Instagram accounts and spend more time worrying over whether they should use Vall
encia or Hudson to filter their images. It’s easy to shrug off the things that appeal to them as idiotic, but I can’t.

  There is a lesson in the fact that they are currently more focused on how their lives are represented online than actually living them. The importance that is placed on how many followers they have or how many likes their pictures get is staggering. It’s also a reminder how lucky I am that I grew up during a time where my teenage years weren’t documented for public consumption frame by frame.

  I took more pictures than the other kids I was in school with, but that camera was my shield. The difference between me and the kids today is there’s only one person who saw all the pictures I took, not the whole internet.

  Part of my lesson this year is the dangers and things they need to be aware of when posting pics. The fact that one person on Twitter can post a picture of a cute check-out boy at Target and set off an entire web storm is astounding. This kid, who lived in virtual obscurity one moment, went to having hundreds of thousands of followers and an interview on the Ellen show in the same week.

  In his case, it was a flattering pic and the fandom that’s blowing up in his honor has been mainly positive. What these kids don’t understand is that virtual popularity is a double-edged sword. What is the draw of being adored by faceless, nameless strangers?

  I hope to gain some insight into their motivation during our discussions. Nobody understands pop culture trends better than your average middle school student. When the bell rings and my next class starts to file in, I have to get my mind back to the subject at hand.

  We’re wrapping up our watercolor week. Each Friday, we have a quiz covering the mechanics of what we covered over the week. We have some topics that take more than one week in total. Then at the end of each marking period, we review and retest over everything we covered during that time.

  While the kids work on their quiz, I try to come up with ideas to distract Sarah. It’s been a while since we’ve gone anywhere, just the two of us. That’s an option, packing the car up and heading toward the coast. It’d be a better plan if it wasn’t so cold. November was definitely making its presence known.

  I’ve never been a fan of scraping ice off my windows. Sarah surprised me last Christmas with a remote starter for my car, so now I have a cup of coffee and watch the ice melt away from our living room. She’s better than I am at presents. I think it’s because she’s detail-oriented and observant.

  She’s in charge of birthdays and Christmas presents for both sides of our families. When the answer comes to me, I feel stupid for not thinking of this right away. Sawyer would know what to do or get her. I type out a quick text and get an even faster response.

  ~ She needs a puppy.

  I reply ~ What? Is this a joke?

  ~ Nope. Not joking. She needs something to take care of.

  Something to take care of?

  ~ Will she think it’s a baby replacement?

  ~ Who cares. She needs company.

  A puppy.

  We’d talked about getting a dog after we got married but never got around to it. What Sawyer wrote about her needing company makes me pause. I had never thought about it that way. During the summer, when I’m home, we’re together. Now that I’m back at school, she’s alone all day long.

  I have six periods of students to distract and fill my day. She has work that is, in her own words, ‘not enough to fill her days.’ A puppy might be perfect.

  ~ Thanks. You’re the best.

  ~ Anytime, dude.

  Since I promised her a date night, I know exactly where we’ll go now. Sarah would never want a dog from a breeder. She starts tearing up every single time a story about a puppy mill comes on TV.

  Once my final class is over, I don’t linger. Depending on how busy my day was or how much I was able to accomplish over my lunch period, I usually end up staying at work for an hour every day to load grades or prep supplies for the next day. Not today, though; Mrs. Price and I have a date to go on.

  She’s still in her office when I get home, which is rare these days. “Everything okay?”

  Her face lifts from her screen and a lazy smile spreads across it. No matter what else is going on in the world, knowing my wife is happy to see me every day when I get home from work is all I truly care about.

  “Hey, honey. Everything is fine.”

  I cross the room and sit on the edge of her desk, leaning down as she tilts her face toward mine, offering me her lips.

  After a gentle, loving kiss hello, I lift my head. “You’re working later than normal.”

  She presses a few keys before pushing away from her desk and standing. “I watched a movie after lunch and was checking my email to make sure no one sent me anything.”

  My legs open for her to come stand between them as she drapes her arms around my neck. “Watch anything good?

  Nodding, she grins. “I loved it, but it was a period romance so you would have hated it.”

  “Were there any boobs?”

  She laughs and I lean forward to kiss her neck.

  “No boobs,” she replies, her breath catching as my hand slides down her back and into her yoga pants to grip her delectable ass.

  “You’re right. I probably wouldn’t have liked it.”

  My other hand slides under her shirt to palm her breast. Crap, sports bra. Sarah owns four types of bras: lacy ones which are sexy as hell, cotton ones which are still sexy but not as much as the lacy ones, old sport bras which are a breeze to slip my hands into, and then these sport bras. These bras are like the Fort Knox of boob protection.

  I hate them. Here I have my sexy wife rubbing against me while my hand is on her ass and I can’t get to her breasts. The elastic is practically glued to her body. I enjoy undressing her, but she’s going to have to handle that bra herself.

  Giving up, I move that hand to join the other on her ass, kneading her cheeks as I kiss my way back up her neck. “Have we ever fucked on your desk?”

  I had a dream once we had sex on my desk at school. The classroom was full of people watching us, but instead of my students it was Congress. I think it was around election time. Old dudes watching me bang my wife was weird, but I remember that image of her laid out across my desk and how hot it was.

  She shakes her head. Oh, it’s on.

  Sarah

  I’m never having sex with Will in a weird place again, no matter how sexy and good he makes it sound.

  “I’m sorry, babe.”

  He would have sounded more convincing if he hadn’t been laughing.

  He’s not the one with a blue ass.

  Somehow, in our excitement, we broke a pen which leaked onto the top of my desk calendar. The one Will sat me on as he went to town on me. I was so turned on I didn’t realize the excess wetness wasn’t from us until we were done and I stood up.

  Not only do I have a blue ass, but there are also blue ass prints all over the top of November. Good thing the month is almost over. Knowing my luck, it probably bled through to December. I forgot to check between Will laughing his ass off when he saw mine and spending the last twenty minutes in the shower trying to de-blue-ify my butt.

  My cheeks have gone from a deep royal blue to a grayish, cold blue. At least it isn’t summer. My bikini bottoms wouldn’t cover this.

  Will leans against the bathroom counter, all handsome and stuff. He’s so annoying. I stick my tongue out at him as I pass him on my way back into our room.

  “Still the sexiest ass I’ve ever seen.” He tries and fails to keep a straight face as he says it.

  “I should make you wait for sex until the blue is all gone,” I grumble.

  At that, he at least pales.

  He sits on the edge of our bed as I get changed. “Where are you taking me tonight?”

  Rubbing his hands together, he gets that look in his eyes when he’s about to talk me into something. It was the same look he had before he suggested desk sex.

  “I was thinking we could head over to the re
scue center and pick up a puppy.”

  My shoulders sag and I still. “Are you suggesting we get a dog because you think I’ll never get pregnant?”

  He stands, crossing the room quickly to wrap his arms around my towel-clad body. “Not at all. We’ve talked about getting a dog in the past. I hate that you’re here all alone while I’m at work. I thought you could use a partner in crime.”

  “A substitute baby,” I argue.

  His finger slips under my chin, lifting my eyes until they’re locked with his. “We’ve only just started working toward having a baby.”

  “I’ve always wanted a puppy,” I admit.

  “And I’ve always only wanted to give you everything you’ve ever wanted,” he replies, dropping his lips to mine.

  I push him away with a grin. “No funny business. We need to get to the shelter before it closes.”

  Hurriedly, I get dressed in some jeans and a comfy sweater. I tug on my boots and pull on my coat once we’re downstairs.

  Will drives as I suggest dog names.

  “What about Sam?”

  “That’s a people name,” Will argues.

  “Aren’t most pet names also people names?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “Duke, Bruiser, Tank, Spot, Yeller.”

  “Yeller?” I laugh.

  With a shrug, he turns into the parking lot. The animal shelter is a one-story brick building not far from the grocery store where we shop. I gave him a hard time for suggesting a puppy, but to be fair it’s something we’ve talked about doing more than once over the last couple of years. At first, we held off as I struggled to find a new normal work-wise.

  I don’t miss the stress, but I do miss how full my days were back then. I know I started this company, and I’m proud of how well it’s doing, but I’m not used to making money off the actions of other people. I’ve structured my company so efficiently I’ve made myself redundant.

  There are plenty of people, I’m sure, who would have no problem sitting back and collecting a paycheck. That isn’t how I’m wired, though. I love the feeling of accomplishment my work used to give me. I miss it. I have no idea if introducing a puppy will fill that hole, but it’s clear that Will hopes it will. I hate worrying him.