Charley
I am not often at a loss for words, but the presence of Mr. MacCallum beside me on a plane flabbergasted me.
He didn’t even look all that much older than me. He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt that was tight enough to show that he still worked out. You don’t get muscles like that without some effort. His tousled reddish-brown hair needed a cut. He had vivid blue eyes, and when I looked up at him, he smiled. It was a genial smile that made his eyes crinkle up in an endearing way.
God, it all came crashing back. I’d been so crazy in love with the man that I’d Googled everything I could find on him, and I remembered it still. I knew how old he was. He’d been fresh from college; teaching at my high school was his first professional job. He’d been single. My gaze checked out his left hand. No wedding ring. That was encouraging.
“Hi,” he said, now that I’d taken off the blindfold. “I’m Harry.”
Why was the idea of calling Mr. MacCallum by his first name so damn provocative? I knew his name, but I wouldn’t have dreamed of using it, even though some of the other girls in school used to call him Prince Harry because he was tall and military-buff and had a reddish sheen to his hair like the real prince.
But he was even better looking than the real prince.
Actually, they’d called him Bad Prince Harry, because Mr. MacCallum came to school every day on a motorbike, wearing a black leather jacket that always got exchanged for a tweedy thing inside the school. We used to joke that he kept the tweed jacket in a locker and donned it to keep up appearances with the rest of the faculty. He had to play the game and behave himself, but out of school, dressed in leather and riding that big-ass bike, he must be a holy hell raiser.
He had tats, too. Not hardcore motorcycle gang ink, but something artful and delicate on his upper arms that peeked out from under the sleeves of his T-shirt when he was out on the field coaching sports.
I wasn’t the only girl with a crush. My best friend Nola, who’d had a good deal more experience with the opposite sex than I’d had at the time, flirted with him outright. “He’s one of those kinky types,” she’d claimed. “He’s prolly got a piercing in his nipples. Or maybe even in his dick.” We’d giggled for days about this and made private jokes about Mr. MacCallum’s gold-ringed nips and Prince Albert dick. Bad Prince Harry had a good Prince Albert. I didn’t even know what that meant until I checked out the Web for pictures of intimate piercings. Whoa.
Jeez, it was embarrassing to remember myself being so young and foolish.
Mr. MacCallum had also had an indefinable air of command that was impressive in such a young teacher. Something about him conveyed the idea that although he could be affable and dedicated to his job, he wouldn’t put up with any shit from anyone. He could break up a fight between a couple of hot-headed athletes with a sharp word and a narrow-eyed look. And he could be arrogant. Really sure of himself. Super-snarky and cutting when you hadn’t done your homework.
I always did mine. I wanted to please him. I wanted a lot more than that, but he’d never even looked at me. Not in high school.
He was looking at me now, though. And obviously waiting for a reciprocal name proffer from me, so I tried to get control of my tumbling thoughts and begin behaving like a normal adult. Someone who was entitled to call a male who was only a few years my senior by his first name.
“I’m Emily.” It was actually my middle name. Charlotte was my real name, but nobody called me that—to my family and my friends I was Charley. That was also what everyone had called me in high school. Well, not Mr. MacCallum. He had called me Miss Pendleton.
He probably wouldn’t remember me. My light brown hair was generously streaked with blond these days, and although I still didn’t care much about stylish clothes, I did try to dress professionally. I wore contacts now instead of glasses. I was slimmer, fitter. Several friends at my five-year reunion last year hadn’t recognized me, so why should he?
“Why are you staring at me?” he asked.
I snapped out of it. “Sorry. I could put the blindfold on again, if you prefer.”
I’d developed a bit of an attitude since graduating from high school.
He was looking more closely at me now, too. “Have we met before?”
I’m sure I blushed. “Don’t see how we could have.” I couldn’t admit it. Not after what happened on his last day at my school.
He’d been fired. And it had been my fault.