Spellman Ch. 03

"Let me see it." I reached my hand out for her phone. Indecision danced across her features, but after a moment she sighed, unlocked her phone, and handed it to me. It was open to a text conversation with someone named "T" with a gold heart next to it. At the bottom of the conversation was a photo of me from behind as I stretched up to staple something to the wall. I had to admit, it was a good picture of my butt, and showed off my arms, back, and shoulders decently as well. Underneath the picture was a single word message. "Dibs."

"Dibs, huh? What, is this place so full of cute, young, single women that you felt the need to stake your claim early?"

"Well, let's see... Mrs. Allen is married, obviously. Miss Jackson has a long-term boyfriend, they're practically engaged. Then there's Mrs. Mitchell, Mrs. Basilio, Mrs. Brown, Mr. Brown, Mr. Thomas, Mrs. Carey, Mrs. Fulmer, Mr. Bermudez, and Mrs. Yoon. Besides them, yeah, mostly cute, young, single women." She gave me a wink.

That was encouraging news, but maybe also a bit dangerous. I had never done it, but I'd heard plenty of horror stories about what happened when you "dipped your pen in the company ink." Especially if there were multiple women who would theoretically be open to some kind of relationship. If I started something with one of them and things went poorly, it could cause all sorts of problems, and that's leaving aside any already-existing politics and personal dynamics among the staff here that I wasn't aware of yet.

"I don't know exactly how the rules of your Girl Code work out, but I do respect the sanctity of the Dibs. So we'll let it stand for now...on one condition."

"What's the condition?"

"You help me get my door decorations set up. I'm mostly hopeless at this arts and crafts stuff. One of many reasons I started out teaching high school."

Melissa beamed and stuck her her hand out to shake. "It's a deal. So you taught high school before?" I nodded. "What subject?"

"Mostly history, but I had a few government and economics classes."

"And now you're teaching fifth grade. How'd that happen?"

"It's a long story, but the short version is that I needed to move and get a fresh start. Mrs. Mitchell is my mother's best friend, practically my aunt, and when Mrs. White had to resign suddenly she reached out to me about filling the position."

Melissa's cheerful demeanor was suddenly replaced with a downcast expression. "It's so sad. Bethany, Mrs. White, is such a wonderful woman. She wasn't my direct mentor, Mrs. Allen is my partner teacher and took me under her wing, but she was still always there for support and advice. I'm really going to miss her."

"I've heard nothing but good things. I'm glad to be here, but obviously I wish the circumstances were different." Not wanting to stay on such a depressing topic, I changed the subject. "So, if you're such a proud Duck, why don't you take the Ducks and I can have Dragons?"

"No way. My kids always love being dragons. I've got all sorts of stuff to go with it already. Sorry mister, but the dragons are mine."

"It was worth a shot. Maybe I'll just go with Dragon Slayers, do a knights theme."

"No way!" She affected being offended but I could tell she was joking. "I know! What about Desperados? Cowboy hats and bandanas, the whole bit."

I stroked my chin. "That's not a bad idea. Dillon's Desperados. And I can be the sheriff, keeping those little varmints locked up in this here hoosegow," I said in my best (that is, absolutely terrible) Texan accent. Melissa cringed and laughed at the same time. "Thanks for the idea, Deputy Dixon."

"Deputy Dixon doesn't sound half-bad. Do I get a badge?"

"Sure, why not? I should probably grab a few, it could be a nice little reward for good behavior in the classroom."

Melissa smirked. "What about handcuffs?"

"Those can be a nice little reward for good behavior outside the classroom." Melissa blushed again. Damn she's adorable. I was already walking a dangerous line flirting with a colleague like this, but to be fair, she started it. I needed to keep in mind that I was going to be one of only very few men working here, and as far as I knew the only one who was single and of approximate age to Melissa and many of the other single teachers. The picture and text proved that they were already playing little games over me. It was entirely possible that a few of the women might try to flirt and play games with me just as a sort of status competition amongst themselves that had very little to do with actually being interested in me as a person. They might just want to see who could best capture my attention.

Click.

"Another one?"

"Sorry, she wanted to see you from the front," she apologized, completely unapologetically.

"Let me know if she wants one with me shirtless, I'm sure we can work something out."

"Not a bad idea. But we should get started on your Desperados. Do you have brown and red construction paper?"

"Yeah, let me grab some." I went over to the large storage cabinet to grab the paper, along with some scissors and glue.

I heard the sound of someone outside running down the hall towards my classroom, and then Melissa's voice. "Go away, T! I told you that I had dibs!"

A familiar voice responded, "Sorry hun, but I actually have prior claim on him."

"What do you mean you have prior claim? He just got here!" Melissa said, sounding very confused.

I turned around to see a beautiful brunette posed sensuously against the doorway, her olive complexion paired perfectly with her big brown eyes. She was wearing shorts that showed off her long legs, wonderfully toned from years as a high-level soccer star. Her legs had always been my favorite part of her.

"Holy shit. Tori? Is that really you?" I could hardly believe my eyes.

My high school sweetheart grinned like a maniac and ran across the room, leaping into my arms and giving me a very enthusiastic kiss (no tongue though). She pulled back from the kiss to smile up at me. "Sorry, I probably should have checked if you were unattached before I did that, but I couldn't help myself."

"Um, yeah, very unattached. Wow."

Melissa cleared her throat. "So I take it that you two already know each other?"

Tori untangled herself from my arms and turned to face Melissa. "Yeah, you could say that." She winked at me. "Ryan was my high school sweetheart! Took each other's cherries and everything. We dated for three years, until he graduated, leaving poor little me behind in high school so he could go chase college babes."

"Hey now, if I remember correctly, you were the one who broke up with me."

"Yeah, and what an awful idea that turned out to be," she said, frowning. "Anyways, I know you called dibs, but isn't there a rule about not dating your roommate's exes?"

"I didn't know he was your ex!"

"And now you do."

I held out my hands. "Ladies, ladies, settle down. Tor, I'm pretty sure there's a statute of limitations here. God knows I'm happy to see you and I can't wait to catch up, but I haven't seen you in what, six years? Seven? You don't get to hop to the front of the line just because we dated in high school." I winked at Melissa. "We have to respect the sanctity of the Dibs. If we can't respect the Dibs, what other pillars of our society will start to crumble? Besides, I'm pretty sure we're all just having a little fun here."

Tori pouted in an obviously overexaggerated way. "So you mean we can't just pretend the last seven years didn't happen and we're still together so you can take me home and screw me silly?"

"That's exactly what it means. Sorry Tor." I leaned down and gave her a quick kiss. "I really am so glad to see you, though. Absolutely blown away. Apparently the last seven years have been really good to you, you look even hotter at twenty-four than you did at seventeen."

"They've had their ups and downs, but thank you, that's very nice to hear." She looked over to Melissa. "Oh come on, stop being so serious. You know I'm just messing around. Maybe I was a little overeager when I saw him, but I'm obviously not just sweeping in here to steal him away. You can keep flirting with him. I'm sure it was going well."

"It was, she's very cute. I think we were making good progress." That brought Melissa out of her funk and returned the sunshine to her face. "Speaking of progress, we were just getting started on my door decorations before someone rushed in and decided to start kissing me. Are you here to help with that, or are you just going to be a distraction?"

"Oh, I'm definitely a distraction," Tori said. "I have some things I need to work on myself, but I just couldn't help but run over when M sent me your picture."

"It's still so crazy that you're here. I didn't even know you had gone into teaching. Apparently I'm very bad at keeping up with people."

"You are extremely bad at keeping up with people. Probably because you don't have any social media. But yes, I've been teaching here for two years now. Fourth grade. I'm over in 4B."

"I'm surprised Mrs. Mitchell didn't tell me you were here."

Tori laughed. "Ryan, I'll be honest, I'm pretty sure she doesn't remember me from high school at all. She's never mentioned it once in the time I've worked here."

"How is that even possible? We were together for three years, you were both over at my house for parties and such all the time."

"To be fair, we never really directly interacted, and when I was at your house we were usually...otherwise occupied." She covered her mouth with one hand and stage whispered to Melissa, "We were fucking. Pretty much all the time." Returning her attention to me, she continued. "Besides, I don't think she even processed me as a person back then. I was just 'that girl who is keeping Ryan away from my daughter, his soulmate."

"Mrs. Mitchell's daughter is Ryan's soulmate?"

I shook my head. "She is absolutely not my soulmate. Good luck convincing our mothers of that, though. We were best friends as kids, but we weren't very close in high school. I haven't even seen her in about five years now."

"Anyways, I should get going," Tori said. "I'm so happy you're here, Ryan. This year just got so much better." She gave me another kiss and then looked over at Melissa. "Mmm, he's good at that. You should try it sometime."

"Bitch, I was working on it!" Melissa huffed. "Please go away so we can get back on track, you dibs-ignoring hussy."

Tori laughed as she walked towards the door. Just before she stepped out, she turned back around. "Oh! Ryan, you should totally come to our place for dinner! M is a fantastic cook and I'm sure she'd love to make something for you."

Melissa nodded vigorously. "Absolutely! I'll need to run to the store and grab some things first, but that would be great!"

"Are you sure? I feel like a burden. First I drag you into helping me with this door thing, and now you're going to cook me dinner?"

"It's no problem at all, really! T's right, I love cooking, and I especially love having an excuse to make something really nice."

"Well in that case, thank you, I'd love to come over for dinner," I said.

"Great, then I'll see you tonight," Tori said. "Oh, do you still have the same number?"

I shook my head. "No, I actually just got it changed a couple months ago. Here, put your number in my phone, I lost all my old contacts when I switched." I handed her my phone.

She put her number in and then handed my phone back to me before giving me one more kiss. "All set. Ta-ta for now! See you soon, Ry-guy," she said as she left the room, using one of her old pet names for me.

I shook my head. "Wow, I still can't believe that she's here. What a small world. Well, I guess that's what happens when you move back to your hometown. I was bound to run into some old faces eventually."

"I haven't seen her that excited in months. She's actually been a bit of a downer recently."

"Really? What's been going on with her?"

Melissa's lips tightened. "Oh, you know, just...stuff." She was quiet for a moment, then smiled up at me and clapped her hands together. "So! Dillon's Desperados! Let's get to work, shall we?"

The project flew by quickly with Melissa's help. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that she actually did most of the work. I glued the pieces together, but Melissa was the one who drew the design and cut out all of the pieces. She even hummed the melody to "Desperado" while she worked, which I thought was extremely cute. Then she ran off to her classroom to grab a laminator while I logged into my computer to print out my class roster so I could write their names in Sharpie on each of the paper cowboys. Soon I had all twelve of my Desperados finished, my own little "Dirty Dozen." Angie Sanchez, Elijah Young, Jana Carroll, Elisa Alexander, Inez Green, Dean Newman, Manuel Garcia, Susan Lynch, Santiago Aguilar, Cindy Conner, Joshua Garza, and Rosemary Carlson. Five boys, seven girls.

When we finished cleaning up after ourselves, I pulled Melissa in for a hug. "Thank you so much for your help with this, I really appreciate it. I don't even want to think about how long it would have taken me to do this on my own."

"It's no big deal at all, I was happy to do it. We're a team here at Spellman!"

"Still, you didn't have to." I checked the clock on the wall. Just after eleven-thirty. "I know we're already doing dinner at your place tonight, but can I buy you lunch? Just as a way to say thanks for helping me this morning." I had just told myself a couple hours ago that I was going to need to limit the eating out, but I liked Melissa and wanted to do something nice for her. Besides, she was going to make me dinner tonight.

"I'd love that, thanks! Let me grab my purse." She practically skipped out of the room, returning a minute later with her purse. "Do you mind if I ride along with you? T and I actually drove here together in her car this morning."

"I wouldn't have it any other way." I offered her my arm and she took it with a smile. We walked out to my car together and I opened the door for her to climb in. I decided to stick with something light and easy for lunch, since I didn't know what she had planned for dinner, so we went to Panera.

We kept the conversation light throughout lunch, mostly just touching on our backgrounds. Melissa was actually a year older than me, and this would be her fourth year at Spellman. She had taught second grade the first two years, and then switched to fifth last year. Born and raised in Oregon, she had gone to college up there but then moved down to the San Diego area after graduation with her boyfriend at the time, who was a Marine. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately for me?) they broke up about a year ago after she discovered that he had been cheating on her for most of their relationship, with multiple women. That was when she moved in with Tori. I told her that I had just broken off an engagement in May.

"Oh no. Was she cheating too?"

I shook my head. "No, she wasn't. She..." I struggled to figure out how to phrase things. "I think Amanda had always been a bit insecure in our relationship, and some things happened that made it clear that deep down she didn't really trust me or have faith in us together. It was a really tough time for me, and I needed her to be someone I could go to for that rock-solid support you're supposed to get from a wife, or at least a soon-to-be wife, but it turned out she wasn't capable of being that person for me. That's when I knew we couldn't get married."

"I'm sorry Ryan, that sounds really rough." She placed her hand on top of mine.

"Thanks. It's alright though. Life goes on. That's a big part of why I moved back down here, to get a fresh start away from all of that." I turned my hand over to grasp hers and give it a light squeeze. "And now I'm making some great new friends."

We finished up our lunches and I drove us back to the school to drop her off, where she gave me another big hug. "Thanks again for lunch, Ryan. I had a lot of fun today getting to know you."

"The pleasure was all mine. You were a real lifesaver. And I can't wait to join you for dinner tonight. Can I bring anything?"

"Oh no, don't worry about it, I've got everything. Just bring an appetite!"

I laughed. "That won't be a problem at all. Thank you again." I gave her a hug and then leaned down to kiss her cheek. "See you tonight at six-thirty."