Page 10 of Rock Bottom Girl

Roger returned with my water and beer. I thanked him by name as if I’d come up with it myself, and he offered a smile that was missing a canine tooth. I skipped the hydration and dove straight into the alcohol. So what if I had a second practice today?

“Is that so?” I finally asked, coming up for air.

He laughed. “Small towns, man. So what’s your story? I’ve heard that you got divorced and are running from your ex. That you got fired from a big important job for sexually harassing an underling. And that you’ve decided to come home to find a husband and plant roots even though your eggs probably aren’t viable anymore.”

“Glad to know things haven’t changed that much around here,” I groused. “It’s none of the above, by the way. I lost my job and broke up with my boyfriend. Culpepper is a pit stop.” I was claiming responsibility for the ending of my relationship with Javier though it had been a mutual decision—that he mentioned first—to go our own ways. That happened twelve hours before my job went down the shitter.

“Well, happy to have you even if it’s just for the semester. Otterbach was nice and all, but it’ll be fun working with the talk of the town for a couple of months.”

I wondered if it would be acceptable to order a second beer, then decided against it. My every move was probably being dissected and catalogued.

Roger came back for our orders, and I made an effort at friendly small talk asking about his sister. He muttered something about nieces and nephews and then wandered away again.

“So what’s it like being a gym teacher?” I asked Floyd.

He swiped his beer mustache away with the back of his hand. “Best damn job in teaching. None of that testing bullshit, no homework to grade, papers to read. Just hang out with the smelly little hormones and try to keep them from killing each other during gym class.”

Huh. That didn’t sound too hard.

“Okay. What exactly does the job entail?”

We talked shop about fall fitness, what to do with the pregnant students, how grading worked.

“Then there’s the less physically gifted,” Floyd waxed. “Every class has its annoying athletes. Everything is a piece of cake to them. Nothing challenges them. Then there’s the ones who stand in the corner of the volleyball court and pray the ball doesn’t come near them. I like to think of my job as finding the balance between knocking the piss out of the smartass athletes and giving the wobbly ones a little bit of confidence in their physical abilities.”

“That’s very Zen of you. So are there any teachers I should watch out for? Any students?”

“Definitely watch out for Amie Jo Hostetter. And the Hostetter twins. Those idiots are God’s gift to sports, but they are dumber than a pack of glue sticks. Amie Jo has a tendency to go mama bear on any teacher that tries to actually make them do any real work. She keeps an eagle eye on things at school and won’t hesitate to report anything she doesn’t like to the administration.” He shuddered.

Twins. Of course they were twins. I doubted that Amie Jo would settle for anything less.

“Wait a minute. She’s a teacher?”

“Home Economics and Life Skills.”

“You have got to be shitting me.”

“I shit you not,” he promised. “Is this because she stole your high school boyfriend out from under you?”

Floyd was remarkably well-versed in ancient gossip.

“Is that what she’s saying?” I asked wearily.How in the holy hell was I supposed to survive an entire semester in the same building as that banshee?

“She may have brought it up once or seventeen times.”

“I only accepted the job yesterday.”

He shrugged. “Word travels fast.”

“She didn’t steal Travis away from me. I broke up with him, and then she ensnared him.”

“Interesting. Very interesting.” Floyd stroked his beard.

“It’s not that interesting,” I countered. I needed to find a strategy that would let me fade into the background as a coach and a teacher. The sooner, the better. I didn’t want to be thrust into the small-town spotlight. I was going to do my time, collect my meager paycheck, and then move on. Maybe I’d finally find the job, the cause, the meaning I’d been looking for.

“I’m sure you’re up on all the Hostetter news,” Floyd said expectantly.

“Actually no.” When I’d left for college, I’d given my mother a list of people whose names I never wanted to hear again. Travis, Amie Jo, and Jake Weston’s names were at the top. And while she’d talked my ears off about everyone else in town, she’d honored my request. “I just realized yesterday that they live next door to my parents.”