Page 8 of Resisting the Running Back

It’s just not in the cards for us. Instead, I sneak out of bed to take care of the problem in the shower.

The relief of a release helps, but the ache is back the second I step out of the bathroom and see her sitting in the bed we slept in together. She’s rubbing the sleep from her eyes as she talks on the phone.

“I understand. Thank you for the call.” She hangs up, lowers the phone from her ear, and stares blankly at the phone.

“Everything okay?”

She glances up at me, her brown eyes misty as she shakes her head. “That was my department chair. They’re just starting their investigation, but she’s not very optimistic things will work in my favor. I mean, people have kept their jobs in worse situations, but this was advertising a personal side hustle to kids.”

I sit next to her. “I’m so sorry. What do you want to do?”

She sighs and averts her gaze to the window. I can’t help but study her in the natural light coming in the window. She’s gorgeous even with no makeup, her face fresh and bright despite the desperate situation she currently finds herself in. She sighs and glances back at me. “I don’t know. Get breakfast?”

I nod, and we head down to the restaurant in the hotel.

CHAPTER 4: Sophie Summers

New Job Isn’t on the Menu

I stare at the menu as I try to figure out what I want to order. Since “New Job” doesn't appear to be on the menu, I settle for two eggs, bacon, and toast. We both opt for a cup of coffee along with a glass of orange juice, too, and Miller asks the waitress if they have Cholula.

I giggle. “You still put hot sauce on everything?”

He nods. “On everything. Not Tabasco. It has to be Cholula.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “New life goal unlocked. Get Miller Banks hooked on a new hot sauce.”

“Pfft,” he scoffs. “Like that’ll ever happen.”

We settle into easy conversation as our coffee is delivered to our table, and I’m debating whether to bring up the promise we made at the beginning of our sophomore year of high school or not. For some reason, I woke up thinking about that promise, but I feel like it was just something fifteen-year-olds say, not something they really intend to act upon.

“Does Tanner still not drink coffee?” I ask instead of the real question on my mind.

It's funny how Miller and I have always been so close, and while Tanner and I were always friendly, we never made that same connection.

There's a pretty good difference between the brothers. I love both of them dearly, but Tanner was always a little more on the wild side than his brother. He was the one who went crazy at parties, doing the things he shouldn't, while Miller was the more responsible one who drove us home.

I would see Tanner making out with different girls in the corner at every party, breaking hearts all over Phoenix, while Miller was always a little more dependable and responsible.

“Yeah,” he says. “He's on a pretty strict diet, and I should be too, but it's the offseason.” He gives me a wide smile, and it's that smile that always causes my chest to flutter just a little bit.

Has he always been this cute?

I've never looked at Miller as anything more than a friend because it felt like he never was looking at me that way. Plus, our timing just never seemed to work out. I wanted to ask him to homecoming, but I was too nervous. Then Bryce asked me, and the rest was history. Somehow, we slipped into an easy friendship that neither of us ever wanted to ruin with anything more than that, and now I genuinely can't imagine my life without Miller as my best friend.

“What are you thinking?” he asks.

I lift a shoulder. “To be perfectly honest, I have no idea. I’m about to lose my job based on what my department chair told me and…” I trail off.

“And what?”

“I don't know where I go from here. If I'm getting fired because I told minors to buy an erotic romance novel with explicit sex scenes and admitted my name in a single post…how doyou come back from that?”

I won't get a job anywhere because this will be on my record. An English teacher telling students to read a book with sex in it? I never would've thought to say anything about it to my students at all. They don't even know I've published books. Or, they didn’t, anyway. And neither do my parents. I love my family dearly, but they are much more conservative than I turned out to be.

Besides, it’s kind of embarrassing to admit to your mom and dad that you write explicit sex, no matter how proud you are of the product you produce. We never talk about sex in my family, and it’s always felt like a taboo subject. Maybe that’s why I write about it instead.

But now they'll know. Everyone in the conservative community in which I grew up will know. I teach at the high school I graduated from, and my colleagues are my former teachers. Nobody around here will understand, and anytime I even have a conversation with a colleague about what I like to read in my spare time, I get the same sort of reactions I got from Tyler.

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