Hissy Fit (The Southern Gentleman #1)(42)

See, the thing about teenagers, they knew damn well when someone was lying—like I was doing right then.

Yet, none of them called me on it.

Without another word, I walked out of the room and told myself I wouldn’t cry.

I managed not to until I got to the staff bathroom and shut the door.

Then I cried for as long as I could without it being more than obvious that something was wrong.

I came out to find Camryn stuffing a donut into her face.

She was mid-chew when she got a load of my puffy eyes.

“What’s wrong?” she asked in alarm.

I looked down at my hands. “I got a student/parent complaint. They said I made a sexual advance toward a student, and that I will not be teaching that class any longer.”

Her mouth fell open. “They what?”

I nodded. “Yep.”

“You wouldn’t do that!” she cried out. “Out of any teacher in this school, I’d expect it from all of us before you!”

I would, too.

Yet, there was nothing I could do about it.

“What are you going to do?” she questioned.

I walked over and took the rest of her donut. She gave it up without a fight.

“I’m going to teach my other classes and enjoy my new free period I guess,” I muttered, stuffing the entire bite into my mouth without another word.





Chapter 15


Hold on. Let me overthink this.

-Text from Raleigh to Ezra

Raleigh

Getting in trouble did not sit well with me.

Hence the reason I was sitting in a bar, drunk off my hiney, with Camryn at my side just as drunk.

I couldn’t tell you why this bar in particular.

Honestly, neither Camryn nor I were much into drinking, so it didn’t take much to garner our attention.

And when we read ‘real life rodeo bull inside,’ we’d decided that this particular bar, ‘Ride Em Joe’s,’ was the one we’d be drinking at that night.

We were a town over in case things—or we—got out of hand, and neither one of us were feeling any pain.

Well, Camryn hadn’t been feeling much pain to begin with since she wasn’t the one in trouble.

Me, on the other hand? Well, I was feeling pain, but I was able to forget about it while I drank nasty beer after nasty beer.

I’d never been a fan of beer before, but after the fourth watered-down cup, I didn’t particularly care anymore.

It all tasted the same, and Camryn was getting funnier and funnier by the second.

“Do you think that Ezra will have boy children or girl children?” Camryn questioned.

I swiveled my head to stare at her where she was perched on the barstool next to me.

“I would think that it’s possible to have both genders,” I paused. “Why are you asking me that?”

Camryn shrugged. “Because I can. Do you think your brother will get married one day?”

Croft, the man that my best friend had a crush on since we were in college together. All it’d taken was one single time of Camryn coming home with me over the holidays for the crush to become concrete.

Seemed we were both doomed to only fall for one man, and one man only.

And like Ezra, Croft didn’t even know that Camryn was alive.

Logically, he of course knew that she was a person, and my best friend. But he didn’t see her as anything but that. It didn’t matter what Camryn dressed like, or how much she put herself out there. Croft was so freakin’ focused on whatever the hell Croft focused on that he didn’t even see her.

Just like Ezra didn’t see me—not until he’d knocked me down and bloodied my nose, anyway.

“Oh, boy.”

I looked over to Camryn, blinking to try to get the haze out of my vision.

Unfortunately, it seemed like it was there to stay, because I couldn’t make it go away.

But, since I was drunk, I also didn’t care.

“I don’t know,” I told her honestly. “My brother is a pain in the ass…we should just call him.”

Camryn giggled. “Your brother doesn’t answer your phone calls…what makes you think he’ll answer this one?”

I knew that.

Croft only responded to text…hours after they were sent to him.

But, since I had nothing else to lose tonight, and I was feeling quite wild, I dialed his number, put him on speaker phone, and then waited for him not to answer.

I’d had grand plans to leave him a long, drawn-out voicemail.

However, to my surprise, as well as Camryn’s, he answered.

“’Lo?”

I gasped. “You answered!”

There was a long pause where I could practically envision Croft contemplating hanging up on me, but since he’d answered, I knew as well as he did that he was stuck talking to me.

“I didn’t mean to,” he admitted. “I was going to send the call to voicemail and reply with a text, but my fat fingers pressed the wrong button…where are you? It’s loud.”

I looked around the bar.

For a Thursday night, it was quite restrained. In fact, I wouldn’t even call it very loud.

I mean, I could hear him. That was an indication right there as to how loud it wasn’t.

“I’m at a bar.” I licked my lips. “Croft, do you think you’ll ever get married?”