Spellman Ch. 15

"Sure, sounds great," I said. "I hope you can make it."

Cece elected to do her usual solo workout while Paul and I lifted together. He gave me a bit of shit about Cece throughout, but it was all in good fun. When we were done I showered and changed into my work clothes before saying goodbye to Paul for the day.

"Well, you sure clean up nice," Cece said when I met her outside the locker room. "I should have showered here, I feel gross standing next to you now."

"If I had the time I'd probably wait to shower at home too. The facilities here leave a lot to be desired."

We chatted a bit more as we drove. "I don't think I ever asked you what you do for work," she said.

"I'm a teacher."

"Oh, no way! I'll be doing part-time as a school nurse. Where do you teach?"

I felt a sense of dread come over me. There was no way that Cece was going to be working at Spellman too, right? "Spellman Elementary. I'll be teaching fifth grade."

"Aw, that's too bad. We could have been coworkers," she said. I was relieved that we were not. The last thing I needed was another attractive woman as a coworker. "I'll be doing two days a week over at Eastwood High School."

I laughed. "Well, you won't be coworkers with me, but you will get to meet my mother. She teaches English there."

"That's great. I can go to her for all of the dirt on you, then," she said, giving me a playful wink.

"You're assuming there's any dirt to be had."

"Everyone's got something. At the very least I can settle for embarrassing stories."

"She's got plenty of those. How are you going to get to work?"

"I don't start until next Thursday, so hopefully my car will be finished by then. If it's not then I'm going to have some problems."

We pulled up to her house. "Fingers crossed, then," I said. "Let me know about the game tonight. I'll pick you up."

"I'll text you either way," she said as she got out of the car. "Thanks again."

I waited until she made it to her doorway before taking off. Whether that was just to make sure she made it inside okay or to watch her bodacious backside for as long as possible, who could say?

My day at the school was much more free than yesterday had been. I spent most of the morning finalizing plans for the first week of school and making copies of worksheets. Around ten I decided to bite the bullet and walked the few yards over to Riley's classroom. Her door was open, so I knocked on the doorway before poking my head in. She looked up from whatever she was working on at her desk.

"Oh. Ryan. Hi," she said. "What's up?"

"Mrs. Mitchell said she thought Mrs. White might have left some materials with you that I might be able to look over. I'm still not as far along with lesson planning as I'd like to be. I don't think my old ones for high school history are going to be much help." I was doing my best to be friendly and just ignore any potential awkwardness between us.

"She did," Riley said with a nod. "Sorry for not getting it to you earlier."

"It's fine. Do you have it here?"

"Right, sorry." She reached down into her desk and pulled out a massive three-ring binder. It had what looked to be a million different colored tabs. Riley laughed at my reaction. "Bethany was very organized. It should be pretty obvious once you get into it, but if you have any questions about her system just let me know."

I took the binder from her. The thing had to weigh at least ten pounds. "Thanks, Riley. I really appreciate it."

"Yeah, no problem."

I returned to my classroom with Mrs. White's Tome of Fifth Grade Education in hand. The thing was an absolute gold mine and I spent the next two hours digging through it, until Melissa knocked on my door to invite me to join her and the others for lunch. I hadn't noticed until she mentioned it, but I was definitely ready to eat. The seven of us—me, Melissa, Tori, Emma, Becca, Nicole, and Maria—walked about ten minutes down the street to a little Mexican food restaurant that they said was one of their usual lunch spots. I went with half a dozen of the carne asada tacos, which only set me back about nine dollars.

Emma was still flirty, but she had toned it down several notches from where she was at yesterday. I had a feeling that Tori or Melissa-or both-had told her to cool it a bit after everything we had talked about, which I appreciated. While she had come on a bit strong, I found that I did like Emma quite a bit. She was loud, full of energy, and fun to talk to. She really did know her football. Unsurprisingly, she was a Cowboys fan and talked a lot of shit about the Chargers. The Cowboys would actually be in San Diego for a game at the end of September and we made some tentative plans to go.

"Maybe we could even have a little wager on the game, make things a bit more interesting," Emma said.

"What sort of bet did you have in mind?" I asked.

"Oh, I don't know," she said, a mischievous grin on her face. "I'll think of something."

I extended the invitation to go see the Padres to the rest of the group. Emma decided to join us, but the rest declined. Cece had already texted to let me know that she was joining us. I pulled out my phone to text Paul the final count. It wasn't until I had returned to my classroom after lunch that I realized how potentially awkward this combination could be. I was already sleeping with Melissa. Emma had made it pretty clear she was interested in sleeping with me. Cece was someone I was interested in dating. Hopefully things wouldn't be too bad.

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I picked Cece up around six. Her dad had eaten dinner around five and was now just 'puttering around in his room before bed.' I didn't want to pry too much and ask what health issues he was dealing with that had necessitated her moving across the country to be his live-in caretaker. Given that Cece's eldest brother was fifteen years older than her-if I remembered correctly-I figured that her dad had to be getting up there in years, at least compared to my parents. Melissa was catching a ride with Emma, and we'd all meet up with Paul for our tickets at Petco Park.

"Are you a baseball fan?" I asked Cece on our drive over.

"Not really, no. A couple of my brothers played in high school but I was too young to care. I'd go watch some of the minor league games with friends when we were in high school, but that was more just to hang out than watch the game."

"What's the team out there?"

"The New Britain Rock Cats," she said.

"What major league team are they affiliated with?"

"I don't even know what that means," she said with a laugh. "I told you, I didn't really pay much attention to the actual baseball stuff."

"No worries, I was just curious. I'm glad you're coming, even if you aren't a baseball fan. Maybe that just means you're free to become a Padres fan, though I'm not sure it's a good thing to inflict upon you."

"Why's that?" she asked?

"We're just not very good. Never won a World Series. Haven't won a pennant since I was ten or so. But for most of us, we don't choose a team to root for, we're born into it. So a Padres fan I am, and a Padres fan I'll be, until the day I die. Or until the owners do something stupid like move the team. Hopefully that never happens, though."

"Well, it sounds like your misery could use some company. I can't promise to ever care about the team, but I'm happy to join you for a game or two. It'll be good for me to get out and meet some new people."

"I only met Emma yesterday, but Melissa is very cool, I think you'll like her."

"How long have you known her?"

"Melissa? Just a couple weeks, actually, but we've hung out a bit since I've been down here."

"And they both work with you?"

"Yeah, Melissa teaches fifth grade and Emma teaches fourth. Melissa is actually the roommate of my high school girlfriend, though, which is how we really got to know each other."

"Very interesting," Cece said.

"What's that look?" I asked, noticing something in her expression.

"Oh, nothing. It's just surprising that you're still friends with an ex-girlfriend. I can't imagine ever wanting to see any of my old boyfriends again."

"I think it's less that we're 'still friends' and more that we just reconnected. She teaches at Spellman as well, but until I moved down here we hadn't spoken in about seven years. It's not like we broke up on bad terms, though. Long distance just wasn't going to work for us. I'm a year older and left for college, and we broke up over Thanksgiving break."

"That makes a bit more sense, I guess. Do you always end things on good terms with your girlfriends?"

I frowned. "I guess I'm not sure how to answer that. I've only had one other real relationship, and it's probably not accurate to say things ended on good terms given that it involved calling off a wedding."

"You were engaged?"

"I was. If things hadn't ended then I actually would have gotten married this last Saturday."

"Wow," she said. "I assume that you ended things?"

"I did, but why do you assume that?"

"Because if she had done it then I think you'd be a bit more of a mess right now."

"Who says I'm not a mess?" I laughed, thinking of my conversation with Melissa and Tori yesterday.

"I guess I still don't know you very well yet, but you seem pretty well put together to me."

"Thanks. Let's just say I'm working on it. Just because I was the one who broke it off doesn't mean it was easy."

Cece didn't push the conversation after that. I could tell that she was working through some things in her head, probably re-evaluating me a bit, though in what way I couldn't say. We arrived at the stadium not too long after, found parking, then made our way to the gate to find Paul.

When we tracked him down we found him standing with another guy I didn't know. Paul had dressed down to jeans and a Padres t-shirt, but the other guy was dressed like he was going to the club with his hair slicked back and shirt unbuttoned past his chest.

"Ryan, Cece, hey!" Paul said, coming over to greet us. He leaned in close to whisper to me as he shook my hand. "Sorry about this, but another guy I worked with decided to tag along when he heard I was getting the tickets from our block. He's kind of a douchebag." He stepped away and turned to the douchebag in question. "This is Jason, we work together. Jason, these are my friends Ryan and Cece."

Jason looked right past me to Cece. "Wonderful to meet you. Paul didn't tell me he had such a beautiful friend." He took her offered handshake and clasped it in both of his hands, stepping up into her personal space. That immediately got my hackles up. Cece and I weren't together, but Jason had no way of knowing that. We had shown up together, at least.

Cece cringed away from him a bit, giving me a look that cried out something along the lines of 'help me.' I stepped between them and offered my own handshake. "Nice to meet you, Jason."

He looked up at me with a scowl. When he took my hand he tried to do the bullshit macho hand squeeze, but I had at least four inches and a few dozen pounds of muscle on the guy. He winced and backed off. "Yeah, nice to meet you too, dude."

Cece moved closer to me and looped her arm through mine, apparently hoping to use me as a shield against Jason. "So you work with Paul?" she asked him.

"Same bank, but I'm on the investment side of things. They're gonna make me a VP here pretty soon," he said, preening a bit.

"Mmhmm," she replied, obviously already regretting even engaging in the conversation.

"What do you do, Bryan?" He looked me up and down, probably evaluating my clothes or looking for an expensive watch-which I obviously did not have.

I decided to ignore the probably intentional use of a wrong name. "I'm a teacher."

"Oh, that's cool, man. Too bad about that pay though, right? Guess that's why you needed Paul to snag the tickets."

"He offered," I said with a shrug. "Would be silly to turn him down."

"Ryan!" Melissa called out as she approached, Emma in tow. As they approached she spotted Cece on my arm and gave me an inquisitive eyebrow raise.

"Hey Melissa, Emma. Glad you could make it."

"Yeah, thanks for inviting us," Emma said. She gave Cece a forced smile. "Hi, I'm Emma. You are?"

She let go of my arm, a blush of embarrassment spreading on her cheeks. "Claire. I'm a friend of Paul and Ryan's. It's nice to meet you."

"How did you two meet?" Emma asked.

"Oh, we met at the gym. Ryan's been nice enough to give me a ride while my car's in the shop."

"And this is Paul," I said, stepping in and introducing my gym buddy to my colleagues. "And his coworker...ah, sorry, forgot your name."

"Jason."

"Right, Jason, sorry," I said.

Paul shook hands with Emma and Melissa before saying that we should probably be getting inside the stadium. We followed him to our seats, where the first dilemma of the evening began—how would we arrange the seating? Jason was eyeing the chairs and I could tell he was trying to pick out which of the girls he wanted to sit next to and how he could make that happen. Thankfully Paul was on top of things. He ushered Jason into our row along the third base line, situating him on the end. Paul sat down next to him and then beckoned for Cece to take the next seat. I sat down next to her. A silent conversation passed between Melissa and Emma before the latter took the other seat next to me, leaving Melissa on her other side.

The game itself was much less interesting than the interpersonal action in our row. Jason was very obviously put out by Paul's maneuvering. He attempted to chat with Cece a couple times but she acted like she had a hard time hearing him over the game and crowd noise. Melissa and Paul were both content to just watch the actual baseball game. Cece and Emma? Not so much.

Whatever had caused Emma to back off on her flirting earlier today, she was back in full force now that Cece was in the picture. She was constantly touching me, whether that was a playful slap on the arm or a hand on my knee.

Cece did not flirt overtly, but she did her best to keep drawing my attention to her and away from Emma. She'd lean in close to ask me questions about the game, then parlay that into a longer conversation that kept me focused on her.

Around the fifth inning I got up to use the bathroom. Melissa quickly chased me down. "So what's up with the new girl?" she asked.

"Cece? Paul and I know her from the gym. She's new in town, so I invited her to join us."

"You like her, don't you?"

"I barely know her. Yeah, she's attractive, and I'd be lying if I hadn't thought about the possibility of asking her out sometime, but right now I'm just trying to be friendly."

"Well, I know how friendly you can be."

I shook my head. "It's not like I'm going to end up in bed with her tonight, Melissa. Right now we're just friends. If something's gonna happen, I'd rather take it one step at a time."

"If you say so."

When I returned I found Jason in my seat, chatting up Emma. She seemed pretty uninterested until she noticed me coming back, at which point Jason became the funniest, most charming man in the world. I understood that she was interested in me and had probably come to the game tonight mainly for a chance to spend some more time with me—which had been undermined by me showing up with Cece—but I didn't like the blatant attempt to try to use jealousy to get my attention, especially with a douche like Jason.

I decided to leave her to it, switching seats with Paul so I could still sit next to Cece without trying to get Jason to move. At first Emma redoubled her efforts, flirting with Jason just like she had been with me, but when it became clear I wasn't going to rise to the bait she quickly cooled on him. He seemed quite confused by the shift.

The Padres ending up winning the game 4-2. We all thanked Paul for the tickets before making out way out. Melissa gave me a hug and told me that she'd see me at work tomorrow. Emma also came over for a hug goodbye.

"Hey, could we grab some lunch tomorrow? Just us. I want to talk to you about something," she said, much more reserved than normal.

"Sure, that sounds like fun. I'll see you tomorrow, Emma."

"Bye, Ryan."

Cece and I made it back to my car just in time to enjoy the trials of trying to escape a crowded parking lot after a game. "That was fun, thanks for inviting me," she said.

"Of course. I'm glad you came. It's nice getting to know you better."

"I'm sorry if I made things awkward when I was holding your arm earlier. That Jason dude gave me the creeps."

I laughed. "Yeah, I didn't like him much either. Don't worry about it though. I'm happy to let you use me to keep him away from you. Not awkward at all."

"Maybe made it a bit awkward between me and Emma, though," she said. "She definitely seems to have a thing for you."

"I don't know. From what Melissa and Tori have told me, I think she's just kind of like that with everyone. She did the same thing with Jason."

Cece shook her head. "No, that wasn't the same thing. She was definitely just trying to make you jealous."

I knew she was right, but I didn't want to admit it. "Maybe."

"Did she?"

"Did she what?"

"Make you jealous."

"There's not really anything for me to be jealous about. I just met her yesterday. It's none of my business who she wants to flirt with, even if I don't like Jason. Besides, it just gave me more time to chat with you, so it wasn't like it was a problem for me."

She changed the subject after that, so we spent the rest of the drive back to her house chatting a bit about the game and our respective plans for the rest of the week.

Unbuckling her seat belt, she turned to face me. "I really appreciate you inviting me to join you tonight. I hope you'll keep me in mind for any other outings."

"Of course, I'm happy to have you along."

"Great. Well, goodnight Ryan. See you bright and early tomorrow morning."

"Have a good night, Cece."

She leaned over and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek before hurrying out of the car.