Hello Again, Sir {s/t - complete}

What About Now?: 11.

               “You know, you shouldn’t let Toby take you out at the weekends.” Angie said, ranting away in the seat next to me as I drove her towards the town centre to drop Theo and Ashlye off. Angie was taking them shopping because they both wanted new pens and Ashlye wanted to pick an instrument out. Lately, she’d wanted to learn to read the sheet music on her own. She just couldn’t choose what instrument to now play. “You look really rough.”

                “Trust me,” I replied, “I feel worse than I look.”

                “And Hanna was there.”

                What did she have to go and bring Hanna up for? She wasn’t even there so I don’t know how she knew. It’s not like I told her. I just dropped her home with Jolene yesterday and then took Toby back to his so he could recover in the comfort of his bed. Angie hadn’t seen her, so how could she have known I had seen Hanna at the weekend. Not that it mattered, really, the weekend shouldn’t have happened. I’m a teacher, strictly professional. Hanna doesn’t really want to talk to me anyway.

                “Alex?”

                “What?” I snapped, turning to look at her. “What is it?”

                “Your fists are going white. Don’t grip the steering wheel so hard.”

                “Who told you?” I snapped, loosening my grip so I was just driving now. My hand suddenly tingled a little bit but I had to control the fact that I couldn’t get angry over this. It was just purely a drunken misunderstanding catching up with our pasts.

                “Toby did. He’s concerned.”

                “About what?” I looked in the rear-view mirror at the kids. They were asleep. Theo, apparently, had toothache all weekend, as kept the household up. Now they were catching up for lost time. It was early morning and still quite dark, so I didn’t blame them for falling straight to sleep. Although, unlike many, I was never one to feel sleepy in a moving car.

                “You and Hanna. Apparently you were in his room or something.  He’d just woken up because you were both mumbling about something. He was going to get up, but didn’t want to disturb you both. Apparently you had a lot to talk about.”

                “We did.” I murmured. “I wish I hadn’t have gone out with him. I should have just stayed with Leidy.”

                “Who’s Leidy?”

                “Hanna’s sister. I saw her at the cemetery. I was talking to her when Toby rang. I just… I wish Hanna had just gone to that part her friend was talking about. Now it’s not only going to make work awkward but I can’t hang around with Toby for a while. Not until this all cools off.”

                “Because Hanna’s friend… he’s now dating her?”

                I turned to look at her, furrowed my eyebrows before I turned back to the road, putting the indicator on, showing I wanted to go left. “She’s called Jolene.”

                “So I’ve heard.”

                “Toby tell you that too?” I asked, realising that if Toby talked about Hanna and myself, he was bound to then spill out something about the girl he had woken up next too. Although his predicament wasn’t as complicated as mine. In fact, I was the only one of us in a predicament. He wasn’t a teacher. Jolene was over sixteen. He wasn’t breaking the law. Out of those three options the only one that matched mine was how Hanna was over sixteen.