A/N: So here's the chapter you have all been waiting for. Sorry it took longer than I expected to get this out. RL is really stressful right now, and trying to find the husband a job and move at the same time is crazy. Anyway, enough with the chatter, and on with the chapter. Thanks to my wonderful beta, VampLover1 for looking this over, fixing my mistakes and giving me a confidence boost!! As usual, I own nothing.
Chapter 3: Sex and Sleep Alone
EPOV
"Alexander the Great was born in July 356 B.C.E. in Pella, the capital of Macedon." I clicked to the next slide of my Power Point lecture that showed a map of Macedon, with a mark where Pella was located. Alexander the Great was my hero, so I always went all out when I lectured about him. I tended to rush through the material leading up to Alexander, and then take my sweet time teaching about him. Typically two to three weeks of lectures and activities revolving around the awesomeness that was Alexander the Great. I mean seriously, the guy was undefeated in battle, spread Greek culture around the world, and then died at thirty-two—the guy was a god! "He was the son of King Philip II and his fourth wife, Olympias. Alexander was a member of the Argead dynasty so he was able to claim that he was descended from Heracles," cue the picture of Heracles. "And also Achilles on his mother's side," and there's Achilles. See what I mean? The guy seriously was a god!
I glanced around the room and all twelve of my students were actively scribbling down every word that I uttered. I moved into describing Plutarch's version of Alexander's conception. As I talked, I noticed that one of my female students kept glancing up from her notes to flash me a smile and a wink. I was used to this. I was pretty fucking sexy, and all women, whether they were fifteen or fifty, noticed. But I wasn't stupid. I would never fuck around with a student. I loved my job and I would never do anything to jeopardize this position. But still, I couldn't help it if a female student or two winked, flirted, smiled or even grabbed my ass. It came with the territory.
I glanced up at the clock and realized that I was running short on time. I gathered up a pile of papers. "Your assignment tonight is to read this passage from Plutarch and write a response. It's due tomorrow. Pick it up off of my desk on your way out the door. See you tomorrow."
As the students filed out, I quickly threw my stuff in my briefcase and went down the hall. I had three sections of American History to cover, since the teacher had quit—again. I smirked at the thought. It wasn't my fault the school couldn't keep a teacher. Well, not completely my fault anyway.
I have been teaching at The Renaissance School for six years now. I moved to Italy from Sweden to get away from my overbearing parents. The fact that I was a teacher drove them crazy. They always wanted me to be a lawyer or a doctor or some other corporate sell-out. I always wanted to give back to society by teaching our kids about the past so that they could learn from our ancestors' mistakes and try to make the world a better place. I followed my heart, and became a history teacher, and my parents never let it go. I stayed in Sweden, my home country, and taught in my birth town of Stockholm for a year after University, but I felt my freedom disappearing—rapidly. My mother didn't know the meaning of "boundaries," so the first thing I did was rent my own apartment, on the other side of the city. My space was very important to me, but my mother didn't get the hint. It seemed like she was always there, in my apartment at the most inopportune times, and she was really beginning to cramp my style. It was really hard to score with a chick when you had to worry about your mother being at your apartment unannounced.
My reputation bothered her. She didn't like that I was a one-night, love 'em and leave 'em kind of guy. I lived like my hero, Alexander the Great, who once said, "Sex and sleep alone make me conscious that I am mortal." And sometimes I would forgo the sleep part in favor of sex. And my mother was a hindrance to the sex part, and it bugged the hell out of me! She would whine about settling down and grandkids and shit like that. Stuff that I was really not ready for, being fresh out of college. The last straw was when I brought my latest conquest back to my apartment, and there was my mother, waiting for me. Needless to say, we had words, and the next thing I knew I was Googling "international teaching positions."
That summer I was on my way to The Renaissance School to teach European History, and for the first four years it was great. I had my own dorm and there was nobody to invade my space. I finally had the freedom I had craved in Sweden. Plus, I had made pretty good friends with the American History teacher, Tray Dawson. The two of us were pretty tight for a while. We organized a history fair together, and built up the history department to become pretty awesome. And after school, we would go out for beers and pick up chicks together. After four years, I considered Tray to be my best friend, and I'm pretty sure he felt the same about me. Well, we were best friends, until last summer.
I arrived back to my dorm after summer break, to find the room had been rearranged to house two people. Confused, I went to Sophie-Anne, who explained that due to the increased enrollment, the teachers now had to share rooms with another person in their department. That meant that Tray and I would be roomies. This was a problem. If I shared a room, it was like Sweden all over again. Good-bye freedom and privacy, hello to an extra person in the room and less sex. With Tray rooming with me, I wouldn't be able to bring women back to the room as often as I would like. That meant I would be focusing much more on the sleep aspect of my mortality and less on the sex. This was not going to be fun.
For the first semester, things were actually okay. Tray and I figured out a way to live with each other without killing one another. We even came up with a "sign" if one of us was getting lucky, so the other one would leave and come back later. However, even though things were working out, I still missed my privacy, and the freedom to do whatever I wanted in my own space. It was the reason I came here in the first place. I wanted my room back, so I decided to take a lesson from my hero, and began to wage war.
I figured that if I drove Tray crazy enough, he would get fed up and move to housing outside of the school, allowing me to have my room and sex life return back to normal. In order to motivate me in my "war," I printed out pictures of Alexander and placed them on the wall on my side of the room and wrote the sex and sleep quote on my white board. Typically I'm not a deliberately mean person, but I wanted my privacy back so much, I made an exception. It didn't matter if the person I was waging war against was my best friend, I didn't want to live with him, and I would do anything to make him move out.
Looking back, I guess I was being kind of a baby about the whole situation. We got along just fine, and Tray was a great roommate. But I can be an ass when I don't get my way, so "Operation Make Troy Move" began. It started off very innocently. I would leave my towels on the floor of the bathroom. I made a mess on my side of the room, even though it totally bugged me to do so, and when that didn't work, I moved my mess to his side of the room. Let me say, Tray was a saint. He didn't complain once about the mess. He would scoot everything back onto my side of the room and just shrug it off. My "acts of destruction" did nothing to faze him. By March, I decided that maybe I should just grow a pair and accept that I would just have a roommate. However, at the end of March, one month before the end of term, I did something Tray deemed unforgivable.
Ironically this act of betrayal wasn't one hundred percent my fault, and it wasn't even my idea. Tray had been seeing a literature teacher, Amelia Broadway, for a couple of months, and this Amelia was a looker, and a shameless flirt. Every time we went out together, she would find an excuse to grab my ass or touch my shoulder, or something like that, and in my defense, I didn't encourage her flirtation; it's not my fault I'm hot. One day, I came back to our dorm and Amelia was in the room, in some frilly lingerie. I thought she was in there waiting for Tray, so I apologized and went to leave; that's when things turned weird. She told me that she wanted to fuck me because she heard I was a good fuck. I tried to protest, but then she was naked, so I fucked her. On Tray's bed.
That's when Tray came home. To say he was furious would be an understatement. He was yelling. Amelia was crying. The bitch actually started saying things like I was the one who came onto her, and that I forced her to fuck me. I tried to defend myself, but Tray wasn't listening. He packed a bag and left the room. The next day he had resigned his position and moved out. I felt like shit. I didn't intend for things to get this bad. I just wanted him to move to an apartment off campus, not resign. I didn't want to lose him as a friend and colleague. To top it all off, Amelia started spreading lies about me—like how I tricked her into fucking me when she was in the room to meet Tray. Those rumors spread not only through school, but also through the town. I finished the term getting decidedly less sex than I thought I would get by rooming alone again, and then went and spent the summer in Rome, where no one knew who I was.
I returned in September to find Bob in my room. Bob was the new American History teacher, and my new roommate. Fuck this shit. Bob wanted to be my friend, but he was annoying as fuck and always in my space. I decided to declare war on Bob and get him the hell out of my room. So far, like Alexander, I was undefeated in battle. I was going to get rid of Bob as quickly as possible; I just needed to figure out what made him tick. My answer came one week into the semester when I learned that Bob had started fucking Amelia. I pulled Bob aside and told him that I had a thing for Amelia and I had heard that he was now screwing around with "my woman" (I almost gagged on those words, since I fucking hated Amelia), and if he knew what was good for him, he would end it or I would murder him in his sleep. Then for good measure, I showed him my replica of a Greek army sword. Bob resigned his position and moved out the next day. I covered American History for the next week.
One week after Bob quit, I came home to Chow. He was much, much easier to get rid of. All I had to do was play with my sword around him, and act a little unstable. He resigned his position and moved out. It only took three days. This time, Sophie-Anne blew a gasket. She told me that I needed to stop driving our American History teachers away. I explained that I just wanted my own room. Yeah, that didn't go over very well. Sophie-Anne yelled, fucking yelled at me to grow up, get over it, or she would find someone who was willing to compromise. The kids deserved a qualified American History teacher to last the whole year. She was going to give me one more try, and if the next person she hired quit, she would automatically let me go too.
That night, before I headed back to my room, I stopped by and visited my new friend, Pam Ravenscroft, a new literature teacher this term. We became friends when I tried to convince her to sleep with me, and she informed me that she only fucked women. She was snarky and sarcastic, and we hit it off right away and became fast friends. The only downside to this new friendship was that her roommate turned out to be that bitch Amelia. I made Pam promise me that if I started to try and get rid of whatever guy they made me room with next, she would stop me. If I got fired, I would have to go back to Sweden, and have the worst roommate of all—my mother.
So I spent the next week teaching my classes as well as the American History ones. The fact that we started discussing Alexander in my classes today greatly improved my mood. I had decided that I was going to be on my best behavior with whomever they put in my room next. I had already put away the sword, and erased my score keeping on my whiteboard (Greece 3, Persia 0) and cleaned my side of the room meticulously. I was ready to play nice, and make a good first impression.
After my last American History class of the day, I stayed and graded papers, and made notes about what I did that day. I needed to make sure when they hired a new teacher, he would be able to take over the class. I looked out the window and noticed it was getting dark, so I sent a text to Pam saying that I would meet her for dinner, but first I had to go back to my room and drop off my stuff.
I arrived at my room, and before I could open the door, my phone beeped, indicating that I had a text message. I looked and saw that Pam couldn't meet me for supper because she had a date—with Amelia. Fuck. Now Amelia was infiltrating her way back into my life again. Couldn't that bitch just stay away from people I was close to? I took my frustration out on the door by slamming it shut. I threw my briefcase on the floor, flipped on a light and turned around and was shocked by what I saw. There on the extra bed was a beautiful blonde woman, giving me a very confused look. Who was she, and why was she here?
Then the answer came to me. Amelia. She must be trying to get in my good graces again since she's trying to date Pam. That bitch could be so annoying. I couldn't help the anger that rose up in me. Blondie just sat on the bed staring at me, not speaking. I was too wrapped up with the fact that Amelia sent a girl to my room to really pay attention to the suitcase in the middle of the floor. I was too busy getting annoyed that this woman wouldn't speak. I stalked towards her and she started just a bit. "Who the hell are you?" I yelled. I know it was a bit harsh to yell at her, but I was in a mood, and I had to take it out on someone. I waited for her to reply, but the poor girl looked like a scared rabbit. I looked at her expectantly and waited for her to reply. But she took too long, and that just annoyed me even more. "Look, I'm really not in the mood to fuck right now, please go tell Amelia that this was out of line and that she can't just expect that because she gets me a girl to fuck we will be friends." Okay, the girl looked really upset now, but she actually looked like she was finally going to talk.
Blondie took a deep breath and answered me in a shaky voice. "Um, I don't know who Amelia is." She paused. "To answer your first question though, I'm Sookie Stackhouse, and I'm the new American History teacher."
Fuck.
A/N: peeks out* Okay, what did you think? We've finally met Eric, and we know why they haven't been able to hold an American History teacher. The good news: I've written part of chapter 4, the bad news is my husband has a job interview Monday that we're going to prepare for all weekend. I'll try and write during the week, but I'm not promising anything.
