voice is warm, inviting.
“Yes?”
“Where were we?”
“Oh, yes. Your lewd remarks. If you don’t stop them, there’ll be no more story for you.” Pulsating in my nether regions be gone.
“Fine.” He playfully sulks.
“Okay, so, I teach years eight through ten in business technologies and accounting. There’s this one kid in my year-nine class, Billy Bradshaw, who is a pain in my butt. His parents are benefactors of the school. He’s an only child, of course, and he thinks he’s a stud. You should see him walking around the school like he owns the place. The biggest problem I have with him is he never listens, always interrupts, and makes lewd remarks about everything …” I pause for effect “… a bit like you,” I tease. “He, too, is an arsehole.”
Marcus’s top lip curls upwards. “Yeah, I know that type of kid; every school has one. Continue.”
“I’m guessing you were yours.”
“Nope. I was a nerd.” His eyes tell me he’s lying, but I play along.
“A lot of crap went down six months ago in my life. It broke me, to be honest. I really should have taken the day off and not gone to school. I was definitely not in the right frame of mind to be teaching or doing anything. I got super drunk the night before, so there’s a good chance I was still wasted when I actually showed up. You can imagine the other teachers don’t take that lightly.”
His eyebrows lift, yet he doesn’t seem to be judging me.
“Billy just got up in my face. He debated every situation the entire morning lesson. He made me boiling mad. I snapped when he declared in front of the entire class, and I quote, ‘I put Miss McMillian over my knee and spanked her hard last night, didn’t I, miss?’ He then blamed my absentmindedness that morning on my inability to take my eyes off him because he took me so hard the night before.”
“Wow,” he gasps.
“Well, yes, wow. I snapped. I got in his face and began screaming, telling him he was a worthless human being who planned to ride his life out on his parents’ coattails. I threw a white board marker at him and then left the school grounds and my class unsupervised. Currently, I’m on unpaid leave to sort my shit out and will return at the end of January next year if that’s what I want to do.”
“Holy shit!”
“Yeah, I degrade children instead of helping them. Fucking great teacher I am.” Sadness makes my shoulders droop.
“What happened to make you snap?”
“Nothing I plan to talk to you about.”
There’s a sudden and awkward silence, but it soon lifts.
“Okay. I see.” He pauses. “Well, I think his punk arse needed a beating. What you did was a lot less than he deserved.”
“What I did was plain and simply wrong. Regardless of how much of a piece of crap that kid is, he’s only a teenager and I’m an adult. I still don’t know if I’ll return. But hey, there’s the dirt.”
Marcus does that head tilt thing, but soon gazes into my eyes. “Maybe the moment you had with that kid will make an impact on his life. He probably hasn’t had anyone tell him off before.”
“Doubt it. Anyway, enough about me. Let’s talk about something else.” My heart is heavy. My gut swirls. My palms are clammy. I’m opening up, but I’m not sure I want to—Should be—We need to change the conversation now.
“I can tell you about the time I spent the night in the lock-up if it’ll help you feel better?”
“Well, this I have to hear.” The lock-up? Are you a true-blue bad boy, Marcus?
“You’ll have to earn it.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
We laugh and talk the entire night away. Marcus is a great listener, but most of all, he’s funny.
Taking a brief moment to look down at my watch, I see it’s 11:26. “It’s getting late. I really must be going. Thanks for—”
“Do you want to come back to mine for a coffee?” He drums his fingers on the table. His left eye twitches, briefly. Is he nervous?
“I’m pretty sure they have a coffee machine here.”
“No, it’s broken.”
“Really?” I find that hard to believe. What’s his game plan now?
“Yes,” he says with “guilty” written all over his face. “I only live a stone’s throw down the road.” He grabs my hand, pulling me to the railing and pointing down the beach to the Oasis high-rise apartments.
“At Oasis?” No way.
“Yes.”
“Wow! A luxurious high-rise beachfront apartment on an assistant’s