Over the next few weekdays, I did not see Joan at school and I started to get concerned. Under normal circumstances it would not have been uncommon for a teacher to take a couple of days off due to sickness this time of year, but these were not normal times for her.
For one thing, I knew that Joan was under a lot of stress given the fact that she was going through some marital issues with her husband and secondly, she and I had some intense sexual encounters at the end of last week. Now, she did not seem bothered by the latter, at least at the time, but I worried that guilt may have caught up with her.
There was no way that I could make contact to check on her without it appearing inappropriate, so I knew that I had to be nonchalant about it. One of the other teachers, Marcy Smith, whom she seemed to be fairly close to, was in her classroom a few doors down from Joan's classroom, so I casually made my way there, just in time to see her getting ready to leave for the day.
She saw me approaching, smiled and said, "Oh, hi, Steve. Do you want me to leave my room unlocked?"
Now Marcy was probably closer to my age, having heard her say before that she had been teaching for almost thirty years, and still had some physically attractive features. She had silver hair, and was tall, thin, small breasted with cute ass that filled the jeans she always wore pretty nicely.
She was called "Ms. Smith" by the students so if I could guess, since I had never gotten that deep into her personal life, I would say that she either divorced, or never married and had no children.
I returned her smile and said, "Sure, Marcy, that'd be great, because I was just about to get to your room after I do Joan's room. Speaking of which, I noticed that she has not been in class the past few days, did something happen?"
"Steve, all I know is that she's out sick, but I'm sure she'll be okay. Thanks for asking, though, you are always so pleasant towards us and you seem to genuinely care, unlike your predecessor who you could barely get a grunt out of," Marcy said, chuckling at the last part.
I smiled and said, "Well, at my age, everyone else here seems younger than me, so I guess I just have that caring 'big brother' type of mentality and I genuinely do care about all of you."
Marcy's smile grew, as she said, "Aw, thanks Steve and if I hear anything more about Joan, I'll let you know. See you tomorrow and have a good evening."
"You, too, Marcy, have a good night."
Marcy turned and headed down the hallway after our parting pleasantries and I returned to finish my cleaning of Joan's classroom. I seemed to have pulled it off with Marcy but I still did not feel much better inside as I continued to worry about Joan. Yeah, I wanted some more hot sex from her, but I really did care about her wellbeing, too.
Another day passed by and Joan had still not returned to work. The same substitute teacher was there in her room as I passed by the door, only elevating my concern for Joan, while I continued on to my custodial closet. I unlocked the door to it and just as I pulled out my cleaning cart, I heard Marcy call my name from her door. I turned and smiled as she motioned for me to come over.
When I got to her door, she motioned for me to follow her in and said, "Close the door, Steve, I'd like to talk to you about Joan."
Marcy went over and sat down at her desk, so I closed the door, followed her and sat down in a chair across from her and said, "What's up?"
Marcy looked at me for a moment then said, "Joan told me that her husband had left her over the weekend. I guess she was right about him having an affair with another woman and when Joan finally confronted him, he told her that he had had enough of Joan and walked out. Well, you can just imagine that she is devastated and is most likely going to be out the rest of the week."
I pretended as best as I could to act ignorant of what Joan had been going through as I said, "Wow, that must be really hard for her."
Marcy looked at me over her glasses and said, "Well, Steve, I think you already knew that she was having troubles, didn't you?"
Okay, so I guess I was not going to try and lie about it so I said, "Yeah, Joan confided in me about her husband and the fact that she thought he may be having an affair."
Marcy nodded and said, "I can see that you are a trustworthy man, Steve, as am I a trustworthy friend to Joan because if she had not given me the go ahead, you and I would not be talking about this right now."
I nodded back at her and replied, "Well, that's good, Marcy, because it seems that Joan is going to need as many trustworthy friends as possible now to help her get through this."
Marcy looked at me again and did not say anything for a few moments before she got a slight grin and said, "Joan also confided in me about something else."
"Okay, is it something I should know or not," I asked?
Marcy looked down at the floor and then looked back up with a grin.
"Joan told me that you and she had sex."
Wow, I did not expect that at all. I stood up and walked over towards the windows looking out onto the school yard with my head going a million miles a minute.