It's the summer break, and for the first time in his life, Mike would rather stay in the bloody classroom.<br><br>It's wedding season, and Mike is doomed to spend all summer sipping cheap champagne and pretending he likes tiny portions of posh food. From the passive-aggressive torment of Mike's mother-in-law to the insulting incredulity of his colleagues over what his mysterious husband actually looks like, Mike would voluntarily teach sex education to fourteen-year-olds for the rest of his life if it would only get him out of one more wedding. Even his husband in a kilt isn't going to save this one.<br><br>But there's nothing like watching someone else get hitched to remind him of where he's come from ... and where he's determined to go from here.

Married Ones

But then Mike had left to go to the academy, and Stephen had stormed out of a meeting with the headmasterafter parents had complained about the queer teacher running the swimming club and taken up his currentposition in a fit of anger, and things had changed. Stephen’s new school didn’t have the first clue who he was or where he’d come from, and Stephen had kept it like that. They hadn’t asked, he hadn’t told, and he was getting along famously.


But Mike’s new colleagues were gossips.


The moment the female contingent of staff had found out that his wedding ring belonged to a husband and not a wife, they had swarmed around him like flies to a carcass, supremely and mystifyingly interested.The rest of it, Mike knew, was really his own fault and had come on the heels of Emma Mayhew’s coming out. The head of the science department had asked him to start an LGBT group for any other pupils like Emma that they might have, and Mike had been reluctant.


Chapter 15