Page 2 of The Rest is History

Charlie

EIGHT MONTHS LATER

I t’s her neck that gets me, you see.

Every. Fucking. Time.

Not the indisputable fact that she’s classically beautiful. Nor the clear green of her eyes. Not her long, straight nose. Killer figure. Or even that dark, glossy hair—hair I’d kill to wrap around my fist.

Nope.

It’s her slim, pale, swanlike neck that does me in.

The rest of it is a bonus. The rest of it I can handle. I have a perfectly natural biological reaction to physical features we’re all hard-wired to crave.

The curve of a hip.

Of a breast.

Of a mouth.

Even if that mouth is snarky as fuck.

Granted, my ‘perfectly natural biological reaction’ has forced me to scoot my chair further under the table in the staff room on occasion. Just as it’s caused me to spend far more time in the shower with my fist than I’d wish of an evening.

Perhaps I should swap the t-shirt last year’s GCSE class bought me—slogan: I HAVE A HARD-ON FOR REVISIONIST HISTORY —for one saying I HAVE A HARD-ON FOR A SUBSTITUTE TEACHER.

None of this is ideal, obviously. Or admirable. Or even advisable. But at least I can comprehend it.

Which is more than I can say for my reaction to her neck that first day, in the conference room.

She was already sitting down when I entered, you see. Her back was to me. Her hair up in a loose knot. And the neckline of her dress scooped elegantly, just enough to showcase a shapely column of pale, flawless skin. The faint outlines of the bumps of her spine. And wisps of baby hair.

The best way I can describe it is that she happened to me. In that moment, understanding hit me with visceral weight. That slim neck of hers made immediate sense to me, even though I wasn’t able to define that sense until I was at home alone later.

It exuded the oddest mix of grace and vulnerability. And the way it made me feel, the way she made me feel when she turned around to greet me and I saw that the rest of her very much lived up to the promise of that neck, was a reaction that plagued me for the entirety of that dratted interview.

Not that it was a feeling I’d had before.

It wasn’t.

But it was a feeling I recognised as having been spelt out for me before. One I’d read about, and mulled over, and struggled to imagine. Even if it had previously eluded me.

Until that moment, in an airy conference room in the school that was my second home.

And later, a good pinot noir in hand, I stared into the translucent liquid as it swilled around an oversized glass.

My subconscious rewarded me by dredging up the emotion I’d struggled to identify and chucking it at me, as if it was an old shipwreck yielded by a previously inscrutable sea and tossed onto the beach.

The way I felt when I came upon Elodie Peach and her swanlike neck was the way I’d always imagined the great King Henry VIII to feel when he was first granted the blessing—or the curse—of seeing her.

Anne Boleyn.

The woman he would have burnt the world down for.

The woman for whom he broke with Rome. Razed monasteries to the ground. Pillaged their treasures. Executed men who failed to procure a divorce for him.

The woman whose magnetism plagued him day and night until she allowed him to consume her. Own her. And even then, his joy was short-lived before his agony began again.

Because we all know how that ended.

We all know the desperate, hideous lengths his jealousy and torment drove him to.

And somehow, all these unarticulated thoughts swirled around in my brain at the very moment that my eyes alighted on Elodie’s neck.

As if the sight of it was portentous.

As if my subconscious was trying to warn me that this was the beginning of something way above my pay grade.

Historians have pondered and argued the nature of Anne Boleyn’s appeal for centuries.

She bewitched Henry, and countless others, and the main conclusion we can draw seems to be that she exuded her own particular brand of charm: a concoction of sex appeal and sophistication and exoticism and striking features whose combined allure was basically fucking kryptonite.

Elodie Peach’s charm is more straightforward.

While no one can agree on how classically beautiful Mistress Boleyn was, Elodie’s beauty is undeniable.

And yet, in that first moment, it wasn’t her beauty, but some trick of her physique and her posture, that transfixed me.

That caused a kind of alchemy in my veins, the like of which I’d never felt.

And that night, as I swilled my excellent Otago pinot and beseeched its depths to bring me clarity, a thought struck me like a fucking sledgehammer.

Elodie had a little neck.

Anne Boleyn had a little neck. She’s reported to have commented on that very feature on the eve of her execution.

I’ve never been able to tell if such a comment showed extreme pragmatism, resignation to her fate, or a devilishly dark sense of humour.

I’d like to think it was a combination of all three, though we know a chilling amount about the emotional rollercoaster ride Anne’s nervous system treated her to in those tense final days of her life.

And yet. Henry Tudor cut off her fucking head.

The thought practically stole the air from my lungs.

I couldn’t equate the force of the feelings Elodie’s neck aroused in me today with the idea that Henry must have had some sort of similar reaction to Anne Boleyn when she first crossed his royal radar.

Nor with the knowledge that, despite all that, he had her butchered.

Decapitated. Despite there having been a perfectly acceptable alternative of divorce.

Despite the fact that her trial was a farce.

Her power over him was so great that he needed her dead to be rid of it.

The man was a fucking monster.

Obviously, by now you will think I am a total loon. A psycho, even.

I’m not.

I’m a guy who admittedly spends too much of his time caught up in the intrigues of half a millennium ago. Who sometimes feels like he’s empathetic towards those flawed humans of yesteryear but utterly intolerant of their equivalents today.

And I’m a man who had a reaction to a woman. A reaction I’ve never had to anyone else, before or since (don’t tell my ex-wife that).

But I’m not deluded.

Just like I’m not deluded as to why the merest mention of Elodie Peach’s first name makes me think of music. It’s basic word association; I am aware of that. Elodie sounds like melody . I’m far more basic than I’d like to admit.

Nor why her surname gives me an uncomfortably clear visual of biting down on the gorgeous curve of her bare, smooth ass cheek.

I won’t insult your intelligence by spelling that one out for you.

And, seeing as I’ve already exposed myself to your ridicule, I’ll throw myself the whole way under the bus and admit that it’s not solely her surname that’s to blame for that particular fantasy.

Her toned, peachy ass takes most of the blame by itself. That and its relationship with the small of her back. The idea that some guy may get to put his hand possessively on that dip, that precious space, when he’s out in public with her, makes me go fucking feral.

And the idea that someone may get to put his face to her slim, white neck? Inhale that soft skin? Press his lips to it? Lick his way down her spinal column, when he has her in private?

That is not a thought I can allow myself to entertain. At all. When I’m in the shower, fucking my fist, it’s only me and her.

I have no idea if there’s a guy in her life beyond the fact that she goes by Miss and that her left hand is bare. Because despite everything I’ve just admitted to you, or, rather, because of it, I’ve been scrupulous about building precisely no relationship with her.

There’s no middle ground.

The options are binary. Outward frosty indifference, or kneeling in front of her, thrusting my face between those long legs of hers and begging her to spend the rest of her life with me.

Spoiler alert: the first option is what I’ve chosen, these past two terms since she started. The second option not being an option at all.

Because I’m damaged goods. And Elodie Peach deserves perfection.

A cosy, friendly working relationship, though?

Not an option either.

I can’t do it. I’m socially inept at the best of times (I have no fucking clue why I’ve chosen this profession) and I’m incapable of buddying up to her, of gossiping with her and Zara, the third leg of the History department, on a Monday morning.

Of chummily exchanging news and teasing her about her dates.

Enquiring about her mysterious family issue, which, after that first, terse interview, I’ve never heard her raise.

I did hear her tell Zara the other day that she needs more cash. I don’t know if the two are related.

It’s not just that I’m physically incapable of that kind of small talk at the best of times. It’s that I can’t allow myself any knowledge of her. I’m a fortress, and Elodie Peach’s extensive charm is the sworn enemy. The daily threat.

It’s enough that I have to look at the woman.

It’s enough that I have to hear pupils and colleagues alike sing her praises.

It’s enough that I’m required to keep a close enough eye on her teaching practices (far more perky and informal than mine, though I’m sure you guessed that) to know she’s killing this substitute teaching gig.

I say it’s enough, but it’s too much. My starving heart clings to every nugget. The picture it builds of her grows more and more vivid. More beautiful. More nuanced. And I can’t do a fucking thing about it, except to firm up my fortress against additional, gratuitous information.

And I say it’s a fortress, but it’s a bloody Jenga tower.

One false move, and it’ll collapse, pulling me under the rubble.

I won’t survive.

And despite being a smart enough fellow, despite the torture of having her around me these past two terms, I’m about to make a move that will have that fucking Jenga tower obliterate me faster than the blade of that French sword fell on Anne Boleyn’s little white neck.