Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 111089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 555(@200wpm)___ 444(@250wpm)___ 370(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 555(@200wpm)___ 444(@250wpm)___ 370(@300wpm)
I headed out of Mr. Warner’s classroom, smirking like an idiot.
Maybe my senior year wouldn’t be so shitty after all.
3
James
I mashed my thumb on the touchscreen before tucking my tumbler under the dispenser. The soft hum of coffee grinding in the cappuccino machine was music to my ears. I’d finished my last cup at the beginning of fourth period, and my energy was already waning.
“Better make it a double.”
I glanced behind me to see Kendra, another English teacher at the school, holding her own mug, waiting patiently for her own caffeine boost. Kendra and I shared a free period, which had helped us become fast friends over the course of the first week. We finished making our coffees before finding seats in the teachers’ lounge to chat with other faculty members who had some time to relax at nearby tables.
“Figured out which is your nightmare class yet?” she asked, something that was easy enough to spot in the first few days, let alone the beginning of the second week.
“Thankfully, I’ve got some good kids this year. I’m surprised since I was thinking it would be trial by fire my first year at a new school, but everyone seems to be going easy on me.”
“Don’t worry too much,” Kendra said with a wink. “Maybe they just need to warm up to you before they really start driving you over the edge.”
She went on to tell me about her problem class, which I guessed was why she’d brought the subject up to begin with. But truly, I was grateful my classes had turned out to be as easy as they were. No real troublemakers, not even Kyle Forsythe, whom I’d had concerns about after our exchange. Even he’d turned in his assignments on time.
Had I not always been so concerned about the other shoe dropping, I would have allowed myself to relax and see how everything unfolded, but considering how turbulent the year before had been, I knew better than to let my guard down.
After dumping about her class, Kendra and I shifted to school and town politics and gossip, the sort of debriefing I desperately needed since I was out of the loop on all things Wyachet related.
Being in a new town was intimidating as fuck, but when it became overwhelming, I assured myself I had time to figure it all out. One day at a time, I kept reminding myself, as I had so many times before.
After the school day came to an end, I headed home.
Sheila had attempted to call during school hours, when she knew I was working, so I wasn’t in any hurry to call her back. Instead, I tried to push my awareness of her to the back of my mind as I made my way through downtown Wyachet. That old life was behind me now. This was my future.
New town, new life, new me.
There was something liberating about pulling into my neighborhood. Mine. Just mine.
Wyachet had plenty of bigger neighborhoods with hundreds of homes, but I’d found a nice quiet one with just over fifty homes. It had been carved into a thick wood, offering me a little escape from what others considered a suburban paradise. As I rounded the corner, heading down the hill to my place, the last house on the left, I didn’t see that familiar Audi Q8 until I passed my neighbors’ overgrown Leyland cypresses.
As much as I’d been looking forward to enjoying my afternoon, in an instant, the other shoe had dropped.
What the fuck is she doing here?
The blood drained from my face, my throat dried, my hands got clammy.
I hadn’t seen her in over a month, the longest we’d been apart since we married. I sighed the sort of sigh I’d let out a thousand times throughout the past five years, already feeling drained before even having an exchange with her. Memories came unbidden, despite my attempts to chase them away.
As I pulled up in the open space beside the Audi, I turned to the driver, an AirPod visible in her ear as she chatted away with whomever she was apparently mid-conversation with. She turned to me, forcing a smile.
That face was so familiar, one I’d turned to time and time again as a confidante, a voice of reason during tough times. It evoked memories of all those moments when she was there for me, but mostly, of the knives in my back…and my heart.
Muffled, indiscernible words had me questioning who she was talking to…whoever her new man was, I was certain. Sheila wouldn’t have needed more than a few days to move on from me, obviously, since she hadn’t needed so much as hours away from me to find others she could pass the time with.
Maybe it was the last one I knew of: Brent. I grew to hate that name more and more with every day that passed since I found out the truth.