Free Thou Shalt Not by Jj Rossum

told her Robin seemed to be doing a lot better.
    “Thank God,” she said. “I know how much she means to you.”
    She then explained to me that her boyfriend Kyle had called during the day, and had begged her forgiveness for his assholery. He said she deserved for him to treat her better than he had ever treated anyone else in his life, and he was prepared to do it. She told me this with relative nonchalance, which indicated she wasn’t all that moved by his spiel.
    “You didn’t bother telling him you shacked up here for a few days, did you?” I asked, winking for the second time that week.
    What the fuck is going on?
    “Yeahhhhh, not so much. I am fairly certain he would have cried.”
    I am not sure why I thought this was funny, but I did, and laughed loudly, and probably for too long. Then I leaned over her and slipped my hand down the front of her shirt, wiping the wicked smile off her face. You can tell a lot from a woman’s eyes. The look she gives you when she really wants you. Her eyes glaze over and there is a raw passion in that glaze. You know exactly what she wants you to do to her from that look. So you do it. Doing it to Holly’s body was my favorite pastime.
    That night, we went to dinner at a hopping little tapas place, and then decided to walk to the nearby theater to check out the latest Reese Witherspoon offering. The movie was pretty lousy, but I didn’t care. I needed a night out to take my mind off of everything. April, Robin, hospitals, Carrie. That asshole Marco.
    He’s probably the nicest guy in the world , I told myself. You’ll meet him and feel like a complete asshole for flirting with his wife.
    We drove home in relative silence, and when we got back to my place, we kissed long and slowly at the door. The bed was our next stop, and after we removed all the necessary clothing, we fell into each other on top of the covers. It was one of our more intense sexual experiences together. Everything felt different that night. It didn’t feel like FWB fucking, but it definitely wasn’t “making love” either. It was somewhere in between, like we were too good of friends and too close to simply be fucking, but we didn’t quite have the romance and love for each other to actually be making love. Whatever it was, it was good. And it made me think that this round of Luke-Holly was likely coming to a close. It always did when things got too intimate.  
    I returned to my classroom early during lunch the next day with the intention of setting out a pop quiz on all the desks to welcome my next group of students to class. They hated when I did that, but they also knew that when I did, it would mean no homework for them over the weekend, so I knew they’d be okay with it.
    April had joined the other teachers for lunch that day, and everyone had spent the lunch period talking about their favorite places to visit. She seemed much more relaxed, and when I asked her how she slept, she smiled and said that she had one of the best night’s sleep in a long time. And, she mentioned how it was nice of me to ask. She seemed comfortable with the teachers, so I left her with them to get back to setting up my quiz.
    The bell hadn’t rung yet, so when the classroom door opened, I hoped it would be April. But, again it was Principal West.
    His eyes quickly informed me that something was wrong before his mouth did. I stood up straight, knowing that whatever was going to come out of his mouth wasn’t going to be good. At first I thought maybe someone had seen me have a mojito at the tapas place and had reported it back to him, but his face promised something much worse.
    “Luke,” he said, with pain in his voice. He was choking up, and my thoughts went a million different directions. “I was down at the hospital visiting Robin. She had a massive heart attack , Luke .”
    An invisible sledgehammer pounded me in the chest.
    “What are you talking about? I just talked to Walt last night. Everything was