Page 113 of Ex Marks the Spot

The room erupts into laughter when she joins Rhett holding a blue-and-orange Xtreme Quest tutu.

Court turns to me with a playful scowl. “Did you know about this?”

“Gianna and I might’ve hatched a plan with Paul after I invited him to the wedding.”

His eyes flash with mischief as he leans in and nips my earlobe. “You’re going to pay for this later.”

“Is that another promise?” I tease.

He answers with a brief and surprisingly heated kiss before rising from his seat. “I hope everyone knows you’re all signing an NDA before you leave.”

“Worth it!” Boyd calls from his table, cueing another round of laughter.

While my co-conspirators help Court into his tutu, I’m hit with an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the irony of our lives this summer compared to last summer—Court’s still in Green Valley and he’s about to be a teacher. I’m marrying my college ex and I’m still painting walls. It’s literally everything we never wanted a year ago and we couldn’t be happier.

Want more of the Teachers’ Lounge series? The series continues with Past Tents by Stacy Travis.. Read on for a sneak peek!

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Baking Me Crazy -- She's an independent tomboy and he's been in love with her for years.

No Whisk No Reward -- He's the town pariah and she's only in town for a little while, but she's determined to find out why.

Sneak Peek of Past Tents by Stacy Travis

Ally

“Another one down.” John Witty’s voice hung in the teachers’ lounge like a cloud of perfume. Witty always spoke in a scandalized stage whisper, even if he was just commenting on the weather. Always with his round wire glasses slipped down his nose, so his fierce blue eyes made direct contact.

I just wanted to eat my salad in peace, but instead, the lettuce and cherry tomato hung suspended just outside my mouth while I waited to hear what had Witty’s boxer briefs so utterly twisted.

Rubbing a hand over his dark beard Sherlock Holmes–style, Witty shook his head like the end of planet Earth might be near.

I wasn’t worried. Yet.

Witty had a flair for the dramatic, appropriate since he was the drama teacher, but he sounded like the town crier warning that the sky was falling. Last week, the cafeteria substituted brownies for layer cake, and he made it sound like nuclear winter.

“Another one? Another what?”

“Diamond’s home with the stomach bug.” Witty tilted in his stiff-backed chair, patted his rounded stomach, and adjusted his bowtie. He wore a neat little clip-on every day, and today’s featured tiny rubber ducks on a blue background. The wispy brown hair on top of his head blew gently with the overhead air-conditioning.

Meanwhile, I felt sorry for Loretta Diamond, who’d worked as the school nurse for almost two decades. After a few years on the job, most teachers develop a hardy resistance to any and all vermin that students hurl our way. I hadn’t been sick in two years, despite having one-on-one sessions with several kids who didn’t tell me they had budding colds and flus.

Loretta, however, was the opposite. Anything that even hinted at infecting a student at Green Valley High ended up felling Loretta like a beetle-infested tree.

Unfortunately, a spate of stomach bugs had been sweeping through the school ever since we all enjoyed a faculty lunch a couple days ago. There were rumors—and there were always rumors at Green Valley High—that patient zero wasn’t actually a patient, but instead, a tainted batch of chicken salad.

“Oh, no. Poor thing.” I cast a futile look around the teachers’ lounge. Clara and Nick were the only other teachers there. Sitting in stiff-backed chairs, they chatted away at one end of the table and shared a bag of salt-and-vinegar potato chips. It would have been way more comfortable for them to sit on the couch, but no one sat on the green couch against the wall.

Not ever.

Not since it was rumored that two faculty members had sex on it. One was further rumored to be our principal, and that was too much information for me.

Clara and Nick were so besotted, they didn’t seem to register Witty’s dire news. I could see Nick’s index finger curled around Clara’s underneath the table, and it gave me a warm feeling to think about those early days of budding love. The early days that were nothing but rainbow skies and cartoon hearts floating all around. Steamy late nights that plastered a satisfied grin on a girl’s face for days.

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