The Trouble with Bree (Spotlight #1.5) by Kristen Strassel

since I’d been in school, almost five years. I was pregnant in my junior year, and after a couple of months I realized it was easier for me to get my GED. Now I understood why I needed to take this seriously.
    The professor had put up four videos to watch and I was relieved to find that online classes were easier than sitting in a regular classroom. I was actually interested in what I was listening to, which made all the difference in the world. If I missed something, I could back up and listen to it again. Once I finished the videos, I started my reading, with Lucas snuggled in my lap.
    It felt really good to do things for me this week. The pole dancing and school made me feel different already, and I liked it.
    Josh was nowhere to be found when I picked Landon up. I tried not to take it personally. I was no different here than the fifty-nine other parents whose kid started school today.
    Miss Kate didn’t regard me as warmly as she had first thing this morning, but whatever her bitch was with me, she didn’t hold it against Landon. “He’s a really good listener and he made some new friends today.”
    “Good job!” I held up my hand so Landon could slap me five.
    Once we got to the car, Landon told me all about his day. How they played on the slide, colored pictures, and that Miss Kate kept a turtle named Tito in the classroom. But nothing else to report about Josh.
    I needed to stop it. Josh wasn’t his teacher, he was an administrator. He wasn’t some sort of Head Start spokesmodel, and the last thing my kid needed to be worried about at school was my boyfriend. But for some reason, seeing Josh at work, surrounded by his peers, brought back a familiar feeling that I fought so hard against for the last couple of years. The one where I wasn’t good enough, just because I was me.

Chapter Thirteen
    The end of the first week of school deserved a celebration. We’d all been working hard. Every day, Landon came home with a backpack full of papers, I was shocked at how much they were actually teaching him. I remembered preschool as play time. Maybe the magic was that the teachers made it seem like play. There were art projects, too. One of the teachers knew how to make balloon animals, and the one Landon brought with him didn’t even survive the ride home.
    Today Landon couldn’t wait to give me a wooden slab with his hand cut out of fabric and a piece of paper with a poem about how he wouldn’t be little forever glued to it. “I love it,” I told him as he beamed with pride. We hung it in the kitchen as soon as we got home.
    I’d forgotten about homework. Landon didn’t have it yet, but I sure did. Both of my classes required a ton of writing. English, I expected that, but not in psychology. We had to do case studies, which was actually kind of fun. When Josh came over tonight, I was going to ask him what he’d do, to see if I got it right.
    Yeah, right. I was going to jump his bones the minute I had a chance, after pizza and pigeon stories. He hadn’t been over here all week. We’d exchanged a couple of smoldering looks in the hallway of school this week, and it was really hard to behave myself when all I wanted to do was run my fingers through that hair. It had been a mess every time I saw him. I knew he played with his hair when he was unsure of himself. We hadn’t talked except to make plans for tonight.
    Josh showed up with the pizza and a bottle of wine. The boys did a pizza dance around him as I kissed his cheek and took the wine from him. “That has to wait until later.”
    It took forever to get the boys to bed, all hopped up on pizza and Josh. They demanded that he read to them, no girls allowed. It hurt my feelings for about a minute, but then I realized I had actually had some time to myself. I poured us both a glass of wine, bringing the bottle back to the couch with me.
    “That took you a while.” I accepted Josh’s kiss when he came back to the couch.
    “We read three books. Lucas