Lessons in Love

by Jerry Cole

  “Lessons in Love”

  M/M Gay Romance

  Jerry Cole

  © 2018

  Jerry Cole

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This book is intended for Adults (ages 18+) only. The contents may be offensive to some readers. It may contain graphic language, explicit sexual content, and adult situations. May contain scenes of unprotected sex. Please do not read this book if you are offended by content as mentioned above or if you are under the age of 18.

  Please educate yourself on safe sex practices before making potentially life-changing decisions about sex in real life. If you’re not sure where to start, see here: http://www.jerrycoleauthor.com/safe-sex-resources/.

  This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner & are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Products or brand names mentioned are trademarks of their respective holders or companies. The cover uses licensed images & are shown for illustrative purposes only. Any person(s) that may be depicted on the cover are simply models.

  Edition v1.01 (2018.09.14)

  http://www.jerrycoleauthor.com

  Special thanks to the following volunteer readers who helped with proofreading: Bailey H.S., Penny T., Lea B., and those who assisted but wished to be anonymous. Thank you so much for your support.

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  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Authors Note

  Books by Jerry Cole

  Chapter One

  It was Monday morning. Victor Walker, head of the math department and only math teacher at Reagan Primary Academy, was not impressed by Mondays. Mondays meant trying to gather his senses and piece together his sanity, ready for a sudden change of routine after a relaxed weekend. Mondays meant remembering that he had forgotten homework and quickly marking it in the teachers' lounge, praying the bell wouldn't ring before it was time to show up to class. Mondays meant hearing another week of the same excuses and criticisms, the same whining, every single damn day, until Friday, when with one final whine, the kids would protest their homework before leaving for the weekend.

  Of course, he still loved his job. At least the good parts. He loved seeing kids' faces light up, their excitement when they learned something new... but this was rare.

  Younger students still seemed to have some excitement reserved for getting things right. They didn't enjoy the process, but the thrill they got after getting perfect marks in their homework or a test was what kept them focused.

  Older students didn't even have that. They would rather be watching TV, playing sports or gossiping.

  Most of them failed to understand the value of math. In many cases even the parents did not understand, and would come in complaining why their child had geometry homework, or why they had to learn long division, when "every phone has a calculator on it now."

  Most days it felt like nobody was on Victor's side.

  The fact was, only other weirdos liked math. And Victor was decidedly a weirdo. He had gotten shit for it his whole life. Even before he knew he was bisexual, he knew he liked things which other boys thought were girly.

  As he entered puberty, rather than retreat into himself, he decided to put himself even more on show. If people wanted a freak show. Then he would give them one. He got piercings and tattoos as soon as he could, including hand tattoos of, what else, mathematical formulas.

  He knew he was stared at, but he took some comfort in knowing people were judging him more for things he had chosen, like his hair and tattoos, than his sexuality, which he could not change.

  With time he grew to love it, though. It was anything but a phase. It was who he was and how he wanted to be. He felt comfortable. He knew that his spiked blond hair, piercings, muscles toned from the gym and hand tattoos gave off a menacing vibe, and he knew that this was sometimes the only thing that stopped people from saying things to him when they saw him with a guy, or at a Pride event.

  His parents, clueless about his sexuality, but more than aware of his alternative looks, were worried that all he was doing would interfere with his employability. So he worked even harder to ensure he got the jobs he wanted, which he did.

  Sure, maybe a few generations ago the goth kids and the punks had to change the way they dressed or be passed up for promotion. Today, when most people had a tattoo or piercing of some description and alternative fashion was increasingly mainstream, employers could not turn someone away for not looking like a clean-cut 1950s businessman.

  There was no denying that Victor Walker was an educated mathematician and a skilled teacher, and his students' results spoke for themselves. At twenty-eight, he had worked in a secondary school and two middle schools, and in all three the parents had gone from being wary of him, to commending him for his great work with their kids.

  Only the other teachers ever seemed bothered by him.

  He would have liked to think life was a bit more meritocratic now. A hand tattoo might get you turned away from a job at the bank, but people judged a lot less. Most people knew that how a person dressed, who they loved, or what faith they practiced did not reflect on their ability to teach something as apolitical as mathematics.

  Yet he had also been proven wrong more than a few times. People were not always so kind or thoughtful. Some people believed that children should not be allowed anywhere near someone who did not believe the same things as their parents did, and through their angry tribalism they did everything in their power to get rid of Victor and anyone like him.

  One thing he had used to his advantage was his parents' wealth and connections. They had enough influence
to help get him places and keep him there… not that he always wanted to stay. Victor finally settled into Reagan Primary Academy, a school with a name that was as outdated and pretentious as some of the parents' beliefs. Still, it paid well and nobody put in any complaints about Victor. At least, not enough to make his days hell. Just about enough complaints to give him the anger he needed to get through the day. Something about standing up to discrimination spurred him on.

  Although he was not always treated as the skilled adult he was, at least he was not treated as a leper. All he got were looks that seemed to see his clothing as an extension of some sort of trauma, related to his bisexuality or his liberal leanings. Which was fine, it wasn't too far from the truth. However, when even the principal of the school treated him that way, it got a bit boring.

  Mrs. Vanessa Heeley. She smiled at him the way all baby boomers looked at him, her brown eyes showing almost pity for his unfortunate fashion choices. Victor would have thought that she, of all people, a larger African-American woman who wore clothes inspired by her Jamaican grandparents, would understand the need to make yourself visible when you were a minority. Apparently though, she seemed to think his particular fashion choices were misguided, and had on more than one occasion asked him to take out piercings or go home and change, like he was one of the students for her to boss around.

  At least the kids liked the way he looked. If anything, he had converted a few to liking math through his edgy looks. They saw him as a bit of a rebel, and, when they realized that the whole world hated math, they seemed to take up studying math as another way to rebel against the average person. Victor liked that. He liked reframing math as rebellion, rather than nerdiness. Math was in everything, everyone hated it, but all of society relied on it. It truly was countercultural to embrace it.

  He adored seeing kids working hard on their math worksheets, even when they personally did not like the class, just so that they could stick it to the average Joe who was bad at math because he never focused in school, just so they could become part of the future, stand a better chance of becoming programmers, artists or field biologists. Victor felt excited when he saw kids making the discovery that this class was a stepping stone to the rest of their lives. When he saw them happy about a great result or frustrated with their own lack of effort, he knew he was shaping their future.

  Life would be much easier if he could just get on with it without people annoying him over petty things that only mattered to them. Like, how many piercings were appropriate for a teacher to have, or whether his spiked hair and tattoos were "too aggressive" for kids to see. As if somehow seeing a math teacher with Fermat's theorem on his knuckles would scar them for life and make them rush out and start buying heroin at age ten.

  In the teacher's lounge, he saw Mrs. Heeley, waiting for him with her usual mellow smile, and hoped it would not be about the band t-shirt he was wearing. Sure enough, she asked him if the band in question happened to have any controversial lyrics, or if parents might be upset if their kids looked the artists up. Victor explained that they were a fairly mild rock band, nothing that you wouldn't hear on the radio anyway. Mrs. Heeley still did not look impressed.

  "Even so, I am not sure it is in the professional spirit for a teacher to promote any brand, even if it is only music," she said. "I will overlook it for now, but no band t-shirts or other branded logos in the future please, Mr. Walker."

  Victor nodded. "Of course, Mrs. Heeley."

  "Oh, Mr. Walker," Mrs. Heeley said, as though it were an afterthought. The tone of voice told him that she was all but casual about this. "We have a new teacher coming on Wednesday."

  He smiled. "Sounds good. Where are they going to be working?"

  "Mathematics," she replied plainly.

  A new teacher. He stared at her blankly. "We don't need another math teacher, do we?" he said, raising an eyebrow in suspicion. "I mean, I'm doing my job just fine. When will they be arriving?"

  "After the first lesson," she said. "Well, he’ll be here before then, but he needs to get his bearings around the school."

  Victor continued looking at her, wondering if she was going to say it was all a joke, that there was no new teacher. "Are you sure we need a new math teacher?" he insisted.

  "I think you can trust me to know how to do my job, Mr. Walker," she said with a sigh, shaking her head, her soft cheeks wobbling a little. "I’m telling you because he will be working with you for a while at first, to get used to everything."

  Victor paused and shrugged. "I’m not saying you don’t know how to do your job, I’m just asking questions."

  "Questions which would take far longer to answer than the five minutes until class begins," she said.

  "You could have told me earlier, then," he said. "Last week, maybe."

  She looked at him blankly. "If I knew he would be here any earlier, I would have told you earlier. His first day has been sped up a couple of weeks. Any more questions about my job?"

  Victor shook his head. "Sorry."

  "Good, now you go do your job, Mr. Walker," she said, returning to her office.

  On his way to his classroom, Victor chewed the inside of his cheek and lip, tugging on the back of his piercing slightly with each bite, feeling the outer part of it pressing into his skin and then releasing.

  Of course she had a point. She, like he, was doing her job to the best of her ability. She was not out to get him, she was not plotting his failure, she was simply doing her job. And yet, didn't he have a right to have his questions answered?

  And, he had so many questions.

  A new teacher? Why did they need a new teacher? Of course, there was only really one reason. If their current math teacher was going somewhere. Victor had not planned on going anywhere, at least, not voluntarily. He was quite happy with his current job position, his salary and his students. Sure, life could be a bit easier, he could have better coworkers, but he felt that the salary he received as head of mathematics more than made up for the social isolation he felt in the teacher's lounge.

  So was Mrs. Heeley conspiring with the other teachers to fire him? Was she bringing in a replacement as a matter of urgency to make sure there was a replacement for him?

  She couldn't get rid of him. He was basically integral to the school structure. Or maybe he just thought that? Maybe he was being allowed to think it? After all, what easier way of keeping him working in the classroom until his replacement was properly integrated? If she said he was going to be fired, he'd have time to look for a new job, possibly to leave before they were ready to fully replace him.

  He knew the world did not often work like that. But sometimes it did. Sometimes people were vindictive and hateful. Sometimes people treated the people they did not like in unfair ways. He had only experienced such problems a couple of times in his life, but a couple of times were enough to learn from.

  Paranoia was eating him up. He set his books down on the table and glared at the usual troublemakers, arriving late. They were a mere shadow of what they'd be in high school, but he believed in nipping it in the bud. They shied away, like a dog that knew it had done something wrong, and made a point of focusing on their books as the lesson began, in a big show of being "good kids," so he wouldn't give them detention for slacking.

  Everyone in the class knew about Victor's three strike rule, and arriving late was one strike. They were still of an age where detention still meant something to them, which was nice. Many kids stopped caring about detention after a while, which made them tougher to handle.

  He couldn't focus. They were supposed to be learning fractions, but he couldn't focus at all. Instead, he brought out some pop quiz sheets saved specifically for such a day when he couldn't get on with work. He'd expected it to be a day where he was ill, or busy with paperwork, though. Not a day where he was stressed about his job security because some random newcomer was invading his department.

  After handing the papers out, he sat down, wondering if he could handle it if he were to lose
his job. Sure, his parents would step in and rescue him. However, he'd lose the apartment and be out of work a while. Plus, he might not get such a good salary for the next few years. Not to mention how embarrassing it would be.

  He had to meet this new guy. It wasn't until Wednesday, but he needed to see what Mrs. Heeley was replacing him with. He was swept by an urge to scroll social media, or log into the school's main system to find out who this guy was, where he was coming from, whether he would be as experienced or as good a teacher as Victor was.

  No, not unless he was much older. And if the new guy was much older and more experienced, then he'd be charging far too much for an academy.

  Victor did not feel relieved. Of course nobody could match up to him. That was why he would be training his own replacement. That was why Mrs. Heeley had not told him at first and wanted him to work alongside the new teacher. Because that way this less experienced, probably cheaper teacher could be polished up, ready to do Victor's job. Then Victor would be fired.

  He wasn't sure how he felt so confident of this. He had been persecuted so badly and so often for much of his life, due to how he acted, how he dressed, who he dated and where he came from. People had treated him worse than this before. So why not now? It was always the same damn story.

  Chapter Two

  Nate Thompson looked at the school. His curly hair cut so short it looked almost painted on, his thrift-store suit stitched up and adjusted to fit him, his plain blue shirt clashing a bit with his dark skin, the lump in his throat making his shirt collar feel too tight. He was ready to begin work here, at Reagan Primary Academy, today.

  The school was nothing particularly impressive. Walls covered in murals. A small, messy, but clean garden. A playground with some old rides. It was not too different to the elementary school he had once attended, possibly a bit better than the one across town where his little brother would be beginning his own school day already.