Page 4 of Romance Languages

Seamus stepped into my classroom. No matter what the temperature was outside, his outfit was constant: a polo tucked into a pair of chinos, black Chuck Taylors on his feet. He hadn’t quite gotten the memo about teacherly dress code, and he was all the better for it.

“I have to do inventory of our baseball equipment. The season is starting up soon. Somehow, we lost like a hundred balls last year.”

“Home runs?”

“I guess so.”

Seamus was the baseball coach for South Rock. Knowing him was the closest I’d gotten to playing sports since I was forced to play soccer for two years as a kid. Because I was on the bigger side, I was always stuck playing goalie. The coach—a real, actual human adult—thought it was good strategy telling the fat kid that since he was bigger, he naturally covered more of the goal area.

“Do your students ever jump up and hit the doorframe?” I asked him. “I feel like every guy in my class does that when he leaves. And when they miss, they shuffle away.”

We shared a chuckle. Our students had no idea, but they were our biggest source of entertainment.

“I’m putting that in my next video.” Seamus sat on the edge of my desk and knocked on the wood. He was close enough that I could smell his citrusy, musky scent—some alchemy of cologne, soap, and his natural Seamusness.

“So Jules, can you help me with something?”

Seamus was the only person who called me Jules. I didn’t know how it had started, but every time he said it in his thick Staten Island accent—heavy on the U—my stomach did a flip like a rickety Coney Island roller coaster.

“I’m having trouble saving my lesson plans on the new system. It’s not saving, even though I hit save.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of confusing. I don’t know why the administration insists on making life more difficult for us.” I pulled my laptop from my bag and opened up the program Cyllabus—with a C, because the tech world must always be different. To improve transparency with parents and students, we had to upload lesson plans regularly to the Cyllabus portal. It was supposed to help kids stay on top of assignments, but like most educational software, it had zero impact and only led to more work for us teachers.

But at least it meant that Seamus could come in, sit on my desk close to me, and ask for help. I turned the laptop so he could see. He hunched closer, our shoulders touching, my stomach flipping. I pointed out how you had to click save, then submit, then save again.

“Why do we have to hit save twice?” he asked.

“I have no idea.”

He let out a raspy laugh. When he found something really funny, like this thing I just said, his laughter cracked in pure joy.

“I hate this system.” He scribbled a note to himself on his pad. Even his handwriting was sexy. It was a messy, boyish scrawl.

Lusting after a straight guy’s handwriting? Ireallyneeded to get laid.

“It takes some time to get used to, but you’ll get the hang of it.”

“Unless they bring in something new.” He flipped his notepad shut. He used it to write down ideas for videos. There was something charmingly old school about him using pen and paper.

“Don’t worry. We’ll figure it out.”

“You’ll figure it out, Jules. You always do. I swear, I don’t know how I’d survive at South Rock without you.”

My heart had the audacity to read more into that than it damn well should have.

I shrugged. “Whatever.”

“Seriously. I remember my first day at South Rock, my first day ever as a teacher. I was so nervous. I had no fucking idea what I was doing.” He looked around to make sure the coast was clear, something he always did when he cursed. Again, endearing and charming somehow. “I thought I was going to faceplant and be outta here by the end of the week. But you showed me the ropes. I’m so glad we wound up in the same department and across the hall from each other.”

“Romance language teachers have to stick together.”

Seamus taught Spanish. How a part-Irish, part-Russian kid from the New York outer boroughs wound up a Spanish teacher was a mystery I ascribed to the randomness of life. That, and he was fucking hot when he rolled his R’s.

“I was happy to do it. You were kind of a lost puppy those first few months,” I said.

Truth was, there was something lost puppyish about Seamus even now. He was kind and loyal, without a mean bone in his body. Even if he wasn’t fit, even if his eyes weren’t impossibly blue, I’d still be hopelessly attracted to him.

“Thanks for everything, Jules.”

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