Letting Loose

  FACE TO FACE

  A black Range Rover pulled up to where I was standing. My heart lurched, then my stomach tightened. He was taller than I thought he would be. Darker than in his picture. He had cut his hair. He looked neat and handsome. Crisp white T-shirt, blue shorts. Tevas. Oh. My. God.

  I don’t know when or how I ended up kissing this guy I’d never met before, but that was just how it went down. I guess I was that kind of girl, after all. When I finally came up for air, he looked at me and laughed. “How was the flight?”

  “Long,” I said, embarrassed.

  Then he kissed me again, this time harder…

  Books by Joanne Skerrett

  SHE WHO SHOPS

  SUGAR VS. SPICE

  LETTING LOOSE

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  LETTING LOOSE

  Joanne Skerrett

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  For both my grandmothers—who, like Dominica,

  were sweet and fair; rich and rare.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to the Almighty for creating such an amazing place and all the blessings that come along with my heritage. Thanks to my family, friends and colleagues for your continued love and support. And, of course, my most talented editor, John Scognamiglio, and my agent, Frank Weimann.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  “Ms. Wilson takes it from the back!”

  I whirled around from the chalkboard. What the…?! I knew that voice and its owner was going down today! I’d had it with these little brats.

  “Who said that?” I wanted to scream, but I’m the adult here, the professional.

  The classroom of thirty ninth graders rippled with repressed giggles, but no one was going to answer my question. They looked at me, none trying to appear particularly innocent or guilty. They knew and I knew that Treyon Dicks said it. Since he came back from his third or fifty-ninth stint in juvenile detention hall, Treyon’s been cruisin’ for a bruisin’ from me. Sometimes I think I’d like to let him have it, jail sentence be damned. But listen to me; who says “cruisin’ for a bruisin’” anymore? That’s the problem right there. These kids don’t respect me. I’m just not “down” enough.

  I could walk into any of my colleagues’ classes right now and there’d be a lovefest going on. They’d probably be sitting in a circle, holding hands, and reading Proust out loud. But that never happens in Ms. Wilson’s class. It’s like my kids can sniff the eau de wannabe public school teacher that I wear every day. I’m supposed to be a refugee from a posh private school who doesn’t really want to be in this vast urban educational complex. But I do. I really do. Sometimes. Yes, I miss the genius students at my old school, the two swimming pools, lacrosse games, landscaped grounds, parents who care—at least the normal ones. But I don’t miss the awful incident that brought me to this place. And I shouldn’t even think about that right now. I need to just fit in and do a good job. Shape up or ship out, like my father used to say.

  The rows of chairs and desks facing me were beginning to rock with laughter. I searched their faces, trying to affect my most serious warning face. No one would speak up.

  Speak to me! But I got only averted eyes and giggles because I was freaking Amelia Wilson, lover of Shakespeare, Milton, Donne, Morrison, Hughes, Walker, Countee Cullen, Nella Larsen. I don’t get Donald Goines or Jay-Z. I keep misspelling Ludacris. It’s ludicrous. And I’ll never gain my students’ respect although I’ve been in this school for over a year. I’ll just keep getting dissed (do people still say that?) day in and day out. But I can fight back!

  “Okay, Treyon.” I put the eraser and the chalk down on the desk. I’d give him a chance to apologize. If he gets suspended again, God only knows what kind of trouble he’ll get into. The last time he pulled something like this—he drew a picture of two people having sex, doggy style—he was kicked out of school for three days. It was three days of relative calm and serenity for me; my twenty-nine other kids come with their own myriad problems. But I did worry about Treyon. I worried that he might get into a fight because he wasn’t in school. That he might get hit by a bus. That he would come to some violent, tragic end and it would have been all my fault because I had gotten him suspended. But I just didn’t know what else to do with this kid…. I didn’t tell him, but I was quite impressed with the quality of the drawing, though.

  “You can apologize or you can go to the principal’s office.” I tried to smile, mainly to mollify him. What I really wanted to do was leap across the rows of desks and chairs, grab his skinny neck, and throw him out the window.

  “I ain’t apologizin’.” His head lifted in defiance. “I ain’t said nothin’.”

  Okay. This was how it was going to be. I had my instructions from Mr. Bell and I would follow them. This was last period and I was not going to make the last few minutes of my day go up in a plume of angry smoke.

  “Fine. Go to Mr. Bell’s office then.”

  He got up from his seat, grumbling as he gathered up his heavy goose-down jacket. He’s lucky I didn’t have the burly security guy escort him out.

  “Bitch!” he mumbled, slamming the door hard.

  The rest of the class went silent.

  I took a deep breath and went back to writing down the homework assignment on the chalkboard: Read the first four chapters of The Grapes of Wrath. I didn’t care that they thought it was too much. I didn’t care if they hated me and were plotting my death at the bus stop every day. I didn’t care. I didn’t care. All I knew was that when I was in ninth grade, my teacher would assign us the whole book, not four measly chapters.

  “We go’n have a quiz or sum’n?” asked Tina, a pretty girl who was actually one of my better students but who also thought her street cred was more important than maintaining her B average.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Just be prepared.”

  They groaned and rolled their eyes. “Ms. Wilson, you so mean,” one of them said.

  I didn’t answer. I’d heard it all before. Then the bell rang.

  Chapter 2

  There seemed to have been a blizzard since lunchtime. My little Beetle was completely submerged under what looked like a foot of snow; I couldn’t see the lime green paint. I considered the white mound and weighed it against my aching back. That same back I’d almost put out after a murderous spin class at 6:30 this morning would not hold up to all of this shoveling. I looked around the parking lot. Maybe there was some student I could pay…. But the few boys who I saw walking toward me had nothing but hate in their eyes. They must have gotten the memo: Ms. Wilson is not cool, and she is mean. I sighed.

  As I started brushing the snow off the top of the car, I saw that Miguel, Mira Gutierrez’s live-in boyfriend, had driven up and was
cleaning off her car. Hmmm…Well, isn’t that nice. Five minutes later, Lashelle Thompson’s scary-looking boyfriend pulled up in a huge SUV, a Ford Expedition or something equally awful, thumping some bass-heavy music (Ludacris?), and started shoveling around her car. What the heck? I’m Amelia Wilson and I’m a loser who shovels out her own car, while my colleagues have their significant others do theirs.

  In a high school parking lot, full of cars belonging to students and teachers and God knows who else, I seemed to be the only woman shoveling. Could this be real? Was there some implicit genetic code, like a computer command, that I was not aware of that automatically prompts men to show up to aid women whenever there’s heavy snowfall? Or if I were one of those women who possessed such a thing as a boyfriend, would I have to call him and order him to my place of work for shoveling duty? Was that how it was done? And would I ever get to participate in this ritual? From the looks of things, it was highly unlikely. And that was especially sad for all the men out there because, according to Treyon, I would “take it ‘from the back.’” The memory of the Treyon debacle prompted me to stab my shovel into my back tire a little too forcefully. He’d gotten sent home for a week. And this time I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. As a matter of fact, I was hoping that he’d be buried in a snowbank. Well, not fatally.

  I have to get rid of this snow before my back breaks, I told myself. I was panting and huffing, and that really came as a disappointment. For a whole month—it was number one of my New Year’s resolutions—I’d been going to spin class three times a week. Granted, I could only make it through a half hour of the class. But I was trying! I shouldn’t be all out of breath because I was doing a little shoveling. I was actually sweating. Then panic hit. I remembered the news stories I’d read about people who’d had heart attacks while shoveling after snowstorms. Oh my God! I’d better slow my pace!

  I was so tired, but I had to keep going. I told myself: You’re taking one for the team—the big girls’ team. You’re a strong, independent, smart, single woman. You can shovel out your own darned car. You don’t need a man to do that.

  But then Lashelle’s boyfriend waved at me with an apologetic smile that said, Sorry you don’t have a big, strong man like me to do this for you. Then he went back to shoveling her spot. I felt exposed, cold, wet, and depressed. But I dug my shovel in, inches to go before I sleep.

  Thirty minutes later, Lashelle, Mira, and their men in waiting had all left and I was still shoveling when the tow truck rolled by.

  “Hey, sis, you need some help?” It was my brother, Gerard, who rarely did anything right, except for right now. Driving a truck with a snowplow was one of the many short-term jobs he’d managed to keep for the past two years since he’d gotten out of prison.

  “I’m almost done, Gerard. Where were you a half hour ago?” I held my aching side with one hand, the shovel with the other.

  “I just did a couple of driveways down Melville Park.” He showed me a roll of bills. At least he wouldn’t be asking me for any money for another week. “I’ll plow around you so you can pull out this space,” he said.

  I waited in the car as he cleared the snow around it. It felt nice and warm and toasty. Even the little daisy on my dashboard looked happy. My back was sore, but I would live. At least it was Friday. I’d have all of Saturday to recover. Oh, and this half hour of shoveling meant that I was off the hook tomorrow. No spin class. Yay!

  My cell phone rang just as I waved good-bye to Gerard. I popped it open and my heart vaulted over some invisible inner crossbar.

  “Amelia. How are you?”

  It was my bête noire. My one indiscretion in life that had cost me my cushy private school job, the respect of my students, and most of my self-esteem. I would also like to blame him for my weight gain, though admittedly I’ve always had a weight problem. But maybe if I’d never met him it would have already ceased to exist….

  “I’m doing just fine.”

  “Can I see you?”

  “No.”

  He sighed heavily, like he was expecting me to say something different. We’ve been having this same conversation for the past year!

  “I really hope you can…”

  “I really hope you can work on your marriage and leave me alone,” I said and hung up. I held my chest. Good girl. Good answer. Now breathe easy. I am not a loser. I deserve more than he could ever give me. But I had to hear it from somebody else.

  “Whitney,” I wailed to my best friend, “he called again.”

  “Jeez! Amelia, why don’t you use the block on your cell?”

  “I don’t know how!” This was true. I was no good with technology.

  “Whatever. If you really wanted ol’ dude to stop calling, you’d find out how.”

  “You never showed me!”

  “I didn’t show you how to screw him either, but you managed to learn all on your own.”

  “Thank you, Whitney. What are you up to?”

  “It’s snowing so I’m actually working late…. That lawyer guy is coming over later.”

  “What lawyer guy. Duncan?” Whitney’s dates were as interchangeable as pop stars and usually almost as pretty.

  “Yeah, Big D is what I like to call him.”

  Of course. Whitney had an endless supply of Big D’s in her life. “Well, have fun. I’m going home.”

  “Tell your roommates I said peace and love.”

  “Very funny.” I hung up. At least she’d taken my mind off bête noire briefly. Ugh. Good sex, bad times, bad memories. Not going back there.

  Chapter 3

  My roommates Kelly and James were back from another of their two-week “research” vacations. I could tell that before I even pulled into my parking space in front of our apartment. Their van, which I liked to call the peacemobile because of the assault of bumper stickers launched on every available space, was out front, and they had shoveled a space for me behind it. I loved those two, even though they were strange. Not that I had the right to be calling anyone strange.

  The apartment was a cluster of warmth and comfort. Yummmm…Kelly was making chili. I sniffed the air for meat. No. Kelly only made vegetarian chili, or no-guilt chili. When I make chili, there’s plenty of meat. And guilt.

  “Ames? That you?” Kelly called out from the kitchen. Like all the white girls I’ve come into contact with in my 27 years, Kelly found a way to shorten my name. My college roommate at Simmons, Wilhelmina Williams (yes, her parents did do that to her), called me Amy the first day we met and so did every professor and every other person I knew on campus over those three years. Even in graduate school and in the one year I flailed around in a doctorate program, I was called Ames, Amy, and Amester. I never objected. It’s not that big of a deal. I prefer Amelia but I’m not militant about it.

  Kelly and I met in the doctoral program at Boston College. I quit to go back to teaching and she stayed. I would have finished, but from what I’ve read in my extensive self-help book collection, I have a fear of success. Anyway, I love to teach. It may not show when I’m facing a roomful of angry ninth graders, but I really think it’s my calling to get kids to fall in love with great books the way I did when I was a kid….

  “Come in here, see what we brought you,” Kelly said.

  The smell of the chili overpowered my will to do anything but follow its scent, and my aching back was now forgotten. All I wanted was a bowl of the stuff. If I did not eat now, I would surely die. I felt like Esau at this point. I would have given up my birthright, if I’d had one, for just a taste of this chili.

  I hugged Kelly. “Welcome back, girlie. Gimme a bowl of that stuff. I’m starvin’ like Marvin.” The first time I’d used that expression, James (Kelly’s husband who is also in the same doctoral program) had asked very genuinely, “Who’s Marvin?” But then he’d started saying it himself later on. It was funny that they thought I was hip and in the know. My students could set them straight on that.

  As I settled down at our kitchen table with a bow
l of almost-done chili, I listened to Kelly talk about her and James’s trip to yet another sunny hotspot. They were researching primary education in former colonies, thus the frequent exotic trips. This time it was to Dominica, a tiny Caribbean island that supposedly had a boiling lake and some great hiking trails. That was the type of thing that Kelly and James did. After the tsunami hit South Asia, they promptly booked a flight and flew down to volunteer with some relief organization. They brought back some great pictures of themselves on the beach, looking tanned and happy with some brown-skinned, black-haired children. They believed in causes and lived for big political issues, unlike me who was just willing to let things slide as long as they didn’t affect me personally.

  James and Kelly hated gas-guzzling vehicles, George Bush (father and son), consumerism, designer clothes, and rightwing Christians. They loved to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, uplift the downtrodden, extol the virtues of diversity, discuss ways to improve urban education, write poetry and smoke weed, and have noisy sex on the weekends when they thought I was asleep.

  “Oh, Ames, you really should go down there! You’d love it! Lots of cute guys, great weather, and great food! You know, when our plane landed in Boston this morning and they said how much snow was going to fall, I thought, James and I need to move to somewhere warm. Permanently!” Kelly said as she stirred the pot.