Average, that's pretty much how I saw myself. Brown hair, brown eyes, busty for sure, but could stand to either lose 20 pounds or grow 4 inches. Nothing particularly remarkable about me but what I lack in the supermodel, standard cutesy looks department, I probably make up for in personality. Great. Just how every woman wants to be described: "she's not really pretty, but she's got a great personality!" Whatever.
I think I'm a late bloomer. I definitely wasn't in with the cheerleader/homecoming queen group. Didn't get asked out by the quarterback or the guy voted best looking either. Getting married fairly young to a man who loved me and provided well made me feel secure, but not particularly attractive or desired. This was especially true as time passed and he became more engrossed in his career. I put him through school and he never hesitated to mention that at social gatherings of our friends or his colleagues, always with a grateful air, but that just put me in a niche as 'the little woman' - it wasn't who I was. After he got his doctorate, I could stop working so hard to pay back student loans and the suddenly mounting debt that we starting acquiring as soon as we became 'Dr. and Mrs.'
Problem being, I wasn't really sure who I was apart from the 'Dr. and Mrs.' In the small southern town in which we had chosen to set up our practice, I was just Dr. Reid's wife. Good enough to sit on every volunteer board in town, but not good enough to just be pals with. The locals expected me to be some kind of bon-bon eating, Suburban-driving princess, who played a half-hearted round of golf at the country club, followed by a grueling 3 martini lunch. Fuck that.
The chance to be just Carly Reid came rather unexpectedly. After a tortuous board meeting for one of the local civic organizations, where I had tried rather unsuccessfully to keep my opinions largely to myself (another by-product of having a business in a small town) I found myself listening as a member of the school board lamented to a couple of meeting stragglers about the lack of available 'support' personnel for the area schools.
I wasn't sure what 'support' personnel meant, but having put myself and my hubby through a collective 12 years of college using my secretarial skills, I figured I might check this out.
Two days later they offered me a job as substitute teacher. What. The. Hell.
Thus started my somewhat dubious career as a part time educator. Scratch that - no offense to anyone who makes subbing their career choice, but I was just a glorified babysitter. And mostly to a bunch of rowdy teenagers because none of the other 'subs' wanted to deal with the hormone-fest that was the local high school.
What should have been easy, though admittedly chicken-shit, money became the reason I got out of bed in the morning. I was suddenly a hot commodity.
On average, the students I was spending time with were born the same year I graduated high school. My school days' memories were more Pretty in Pink and Ferris Bueller while theirs were more Not Another Teen Movie and X-Men.
The girls were sweet and I watched them manipulate the boys rather masterfully. They also seemed to like talking to me when the inevitable 'busy work' bullshit assignment was finished. They asked about what high school was like 'in the old days' and resisting the desire to bitch-slap them, I told them it was all pep rallies and hay rides.
All very much like I assumed it was for those kids that I didn't hang out with.
But these teenage boys were nothing like the ones I went to school with back in the day. All outdoorsy and sporty. Everyone rode 4 wheelers and drove their granddaddy's pickup since the age of 9. And the manners. Wow.
I wasn't used to that. The first time I heard one of them address me as 'Ma'am' I about wet my panties.
And the comments I wasn't supposed to hear. It only made things worse.
They seemed interested in the fact that I'd grown up in a large city - and the beach no less!
"Wow, so did you do Spring Break Mrs. Reid?"
"Does everyone just wear shorts and bikinis all the time in Daytona?"
My favorite was, "were you ever on MTV's Spring Break shows?" - good Lord. And the more I shared with them, mostly harmless stuff, the more personal their sharing became.
The girls were interested in my "big sister" sassy style advice. The boys took me into their confidence. It seemed they valued my opinions on dating and ... other stuff.
It was the other stuff that would get me in the most trouble.
Most of the boys that were brave enough to run scenarios by me were the very ones that couldn't spare the time of day for me back in the day. The jocks, the ones voted best looking and most likely to succeed and the student body president.
Talk about making up for lost time! I enjoyed the semi harmless flirting and figured that as long as nothing went beyond silly talk in the classroom, I wasn't stepping outside the lines. And God, did I love the way it made me feel.
I didn't reckon on Anthony.
Standing just shy of six feet, dark-eyed and darkly tanned, Anthony was the one I unconsciously looked for in my subbing assignments. Bright, articulate, always polite -he was a pleasure to talk to. Almost like a kindred spirit in that his sense of irony and biting sense of humor were developed well above his chronological age.
When I spoke, I felt like he listened. Coming from such a total package, that kind of attention was like catnip and I lapped it up. We joked around occasionally, but he never pushed the boundaries.
Fast forward a few years and I'm wasting time on a social media site. I get a pop up friendship request and before you know it, we have caught up with each other's lives in a matter of a few hours.
Anthony was out of school and starting his career. We talked about current events, politics, sports and movies. Over the next few weeks we chatted and joked around until we got comfortable enough with each other to discuss the topic we couldn't when we were teacher and student.
Before you know it, we were discussing our sex lives in detail. Me sharing what I liked but wasn't getting enough of, him telling me of the girls he'd been dating and his particular likes.
"You know, you were the hottest teacher we had" he mentioned during one late night conversation.
"Well, I'm flattered, but that was a few years ago and you haven't exactly seen me lately", I joked back.
"Yes I have. I saw you last night in my dreams". Fuck. Just reading it sent my heart thumping and I could feel my thighs tense up as my nipples reacted to his typed words.
I wasn't sure how to respond. I'm married, but hell, I'm not dead!
"Oh, you're so sweet," backpedal Carly, get a grip, I'm thinking. "But I'm sure you've got lots of real, live girls your own age. You surely don't need to dream about me."
