“Laugh, James. I know what I saw. The boys have even been talking about it. She passed Pixie over for you. I watched her as much as I did you. Cora didn’t look at Pixie. She was more interested in you. That’s never happened before.”
James stopped laughing. He licked his lips as her concerns were right on the mark. “I’m not going to fall in love with her. We’re sleeping together, that’s it.”
Teri placed her hand on his knee. “I’m here for you.”
“Don’t do that, Teri.”
“I told you years ago, James. I’m not in love with you. We’re friends. You just don’t see the difference. We can be friends without love.”
James had pulled away from Teri a couple of years ago when he believed she was getting a little too close. Teri had told him numerous times that she wasn’t in love with him. Over time, he’d started to believe her. There wasn’t really anything else he could do. He couldn’t argue with her over her feelings.
“I see the difference.”
“If you don’t know, you will with Cora.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve got a feeling there’s a chance you could fall in love with her.”
James wasn’t worried about that. Part of him already had.
Chapter Five
Back at work on Monday and Cora was catching up on everything she’d missed Friday that Sharon had wanted her to do, from writing letters to checking up on exam scores. She never took her work home with her as the paperwork wasn’t allowed to leave school premises, and so she always called Monday “catch-up day”. Cora didn’t need to take her work home. As the principal’s secretary, she usually got everything done in school hours. Besides, she didn’t want to have any files on the kids in the school at home. Sharon was locked away in her office with another bad boy of the moment, who liked to drink, smoke, and cause fights. He wasn’t much of a bad boy. Cora recognized the bad boy type, and Ryan Weston wasn’t one of them.
Sure, he brought alcohol into school and smoked cigarettes, but that was as far as the bad boy image went. Not once had he stunk of booze. Ryan may bring everything into the school, but he wasn’t drinking it. He sure was smoking, but there you were. Kids smoked, and tried to rebel, and Cora didn’t take that shit seriously.
Pushing the latest practice SAT scores into the files, Cora then placed each file into the cabinet. Sharon liked to keep a file on every student at the school. Once the senior year left, they all had the option of retaining their file or they burned it. Everything was loaded up onto the computer network anyway, but Sharon liked to have paper copies just in case. Even though everything was done on the computer, Sharon liked it done a certain way.
Cora wasn’t going to complain. When the computers crashed a year back the high school remained operational throughout, and Sharon didn’t even break into a sweat. There was a benefit to having a backup file that wasn’t located on a computer.
The door to Sharon’s office opened. “You’re going to need to have a long think about what you’re doing with your life, Mr. Weston.”
Sharon glanced toward her. “Can you keep any eye on him? I’ve got a call to make, and it’s very important.”
Ryan muttered something.
“Sure.” Cora didn’t have a problem with keeping an eye on the kids. If they tried anything, she’d soon teach them not to with a thirty year old woman who knew how to handle herself.
They were alone a second later. Cora hummed to herself while watching Ryan. His arms were folded over his chest, and his bottom lip stuck out. She couldn’t help but laugh, then tried to cover it.
“What ya laughing at?” he asked.
“Nothing at all.”
Cora ignored him, staring down at her files. Some of the boys today really thought they were so tough. They’d never had it so easy. Mobile phones, video games, cars, the internet, all the crap wasn’t really available to her growing up. She was of the old school of using that historical finding, pencil and paper, the shock. Cora missed those days. She’d seen some of the bad shit that happened with all the modern techs with some of the girls in school.
“You know, they have a whole school network for that shit. Paper is so outdated,” Ryan said, pointing at what she was doing.
Raising her brow, she turned her stare toward Ryan. “You think paper is so outdated?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool, I’ll let the principal know.”
&n
bsp; “Please, she wouldn’t change it.”