I look around for my dress before remembering I left it in the kitchen. Great. I’m going to have to hobble through my teacher’s house naked.
Loche lies on his side, his hair tousled and sweaty, looking at me. “Where are you going?”
He has welts on his arms from when I’d clawed at him during my first orgasm. I vaguely remember doing that, but I was half out of my mind at the time. I feel like I should apologize, but that seems a little awkward. Thank you for giving me the best finger fuck of my life. I mean, wasn’t that the point of all of this?
“Back to my dorm,” I say, trying to maintain some semblance of grace even though right now I just want to flop down on the bed, spread my legs to let the cool air in, and just revel in the afterglow of amazing sex. Believe it or not, after all of that, I could still go another round.
He laughs and rolls onto his back. “I see how it is. Use me for sex then leave,” he says, mocking insult.
I feel myself blush. “I’m not familiar with one-night-stand etiquette. I don’t know what happens next.”
This time he actually does look hurt. “One-night stand, huh?”
It’s difficult to maintain eye contact while I’m butt-ass naked and trying to cover myself with my arms while not being obvious about it, but I manage. “Isn’t that what all this was?” I ask.
He ignores the question and pats the space on the bed next to him. “You can at least lie here long enough to catch your breath.”
I tell myself not to do it. Just go back to the dorm and normal life before I get sucked into something I’m not ready for. I don’t want to develop feelings for someone I can’t have. We had a fun night. That’s it. Just walk away.
But I don’t walk away. As much as I know I should, I can’t.
I nod and climb under the covers next to him. He kisses my neck, then my lips, and then we’re at it again.
I wake up at dawn, the sun yawning above the trees outside the window. Loche has his arms around me. The room still smells like sex and it’s turning me on. We’re spooning. The clock by the bed says it’s not quite six in the morning. It takes me a full ten minutes to unravel myself from his arms. Somehow I manage to break free without waking him up. Our marathon must’ve worn him out. I’m exhausted myself, but it’s hard for me to stay now that I’m awake.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, I watch him sleep for a moment. The covers had come off some time in the night. His flaccid dick lies across his leg. Even soft it’s bigger than most get when they’re fully erect. I’m so tempted to reach out and touch it.
His cheek is pressed against his pillow, giving him fish lips, and he snores lightly. He’s so adorable. I want to lean over and kiss him, but I’m afraid to wake him up. I need to get out of here before things get awkward.
Creeping down the hall, I grab my dress and put it on, holding my stiletto heels in my hand to keep them from clicking against the tile. I can’t find my underwear anywhere so I decide to leave it, and lock the door behind me when I leave.
Instead of calling a cab, I walk. It’s a comfortably cool morning, and I take that time to think about the crazy night I had. I’m sore from the pounding I received, but it’s a good kind of sore. The kind of ache I could get used to. Unfortunately, it was only one night. I can’t imagine a world where I could actually have a relationship with my teacher. Though I’m over the legal age of consent, there are rules against student-teacher relationships and we broke every single one of them last night. I can’t afford to lose my scholarship over a tryst.
The cold cement feels nice on my feet. Something cool between my legs would be nice at the moment too. Some salve or balm, a frozen bag of peas, maybe. We ended up having sex two more times before falling asleep. I couldn’t get enough, and if it weren’t for the limits of my body, I would’ve gone all night with him.
As I’m turning the corner, around a wall of perfectly trimmed shrubs, I run right into Serena. Takes me a minute to realize who it is I’m looking at and why she looks so familiar. When it finally hits me, my breath catches and I fight the urge to run the other way. She’s wearing a baby-blue, velour tracksuit, her hair pulled up in a messy bun on top of her head, while a Yorkshire terrier at the end of a leash shits on someone’s lawn. I look at the dog with its flashy blue collar and top knot, the blonde fur with dark roots, then at Serena. They look oddly similar.
Figures that she’d live in this neighborhood. That must be how Loche knew she and Chad were spoiled rich brats. They’re practically neighbors.
She immediately bursts into laughter when seeing me. “Oh my god, are you doing the walk of shame right now?”
I have a feeling my face is as bright as my dress. “No, I always walk around in heels and a dress at six o’clock in the morning,” I say, my voice dripping with sarcasm. There’s no sense in denying what’s so completely obvious.
“Who could you have possibly hooked up with in this neighborhood? It’s all soccer dads and retired people.”
“And Chad,” I say, raising an eyebrow. I’m only guessing he lives in this neighborhood. It’s the only neighborhood of its kind in this town, and by the expensive clothes Chad wears, I doubt he’s living in the slums.
Her smile immediately shifts into a snarl and I know that I’m right. “Chad wouldn’t touch trailer trash like you with a ten-foot pole.”
“Are you sure about that?” I say. She glares at me as I walk away. I can feel the heat of her gaze burning a hole into my back until I’m finally off that street.
It probably wasn’t a good idea to poke a coiled snake, but I’m in no mood for her crap this early in the morning without caffeine.
When Loche was just my teacher, I never really thought about him outside of the classroom except to wonder what he would think about the work I’ve turned in. But now, after everything, I can’t get him off my mind. This is why I don’t date. It’s distracting. There’s a pile of work on my desk that needs to be finished for my English and math classes. But instead, I find myself pacing the floor, wishing he would call. Takes me a while to realize that he doesn’t even have my number and I don’t have his. The only number on file at school belongs to my parents, and if a teacher were to call looking for me, they’d get worried, and then they might go through my bills wondering if I’m in some sort of trouble, which would lead them to my credit card statement and my recent pornography purchase. Now I’m pacing the floor, hoping that he doesn’t call.
I need to get him off my mind. I do that by spending the weekend cleaning my dorm, and catching up on my to-be-read list of books I’ve been putting off. It helps a little. I meet up with my study group and finally whittle down my pile of homework. Things are getting accomplished. There’s hope for me yet. Maybe I could actually focus on school and date someone at the same time.
Stop thinking like that, I scold myself. I cannot start something with my teacher. Besides, he probably wouldn’t want to anyway. He has his shit together. What would he want with some struggling student when there are probably a ton of women out there with great jobs and no student loans to contend with, and no nagging parents waiting in the wings? I would be a handful. A burden. Those thoughts take the fire out of me for a while. But it doesn’t last long.
By the time Monday rolls around I’m more excited for school than I’ve been since I started kindergarten. I have to suffer though my other classes before it’s time for chemistry. Loche isn’t there yet, so I go to my desk.
Serena and her minion boyfriend are in front of me. They twist in their seats, making it impossible for me to ignore them.
“So,” Serena says. “Did you manage to sneak a peek at Mr. Johnson’s Rocket Cock, or what?”
I look down at my book so they can’t see me flush. “No, I didn’t. And I’m not interested in your dare anymore. It’s obviously not him in that video.”
“I think you did,” Serena says, with a taunting lilt in her voice that instantly puts me on edge. She takes my pencil, rolling it around on the desk. “I was t
hinking about you this weekend, wondering whose house you could’ve been leaving that morning. You trying to make me think you might’ve been with Chad was so obviously a diversion tactic to get me off the scent of who you were really with.” Chad smiles at me and waggles his brows. I cringe and look at Serena, who watches me carefully.
She continues, “My mom knows everyone in our neighborhood, and my dad is the head of the neighborhood watch. At first I thought maybe you were hooking up with some married man, but that doesn’t really seem like your style.” Her expression flirts somewhere between mischief and curiosity. She’s so clearly the predator and I’m her prey, like I’m trapped in some kind of web but don’t know it yet, and won’t until I realize there’s no escape.
“And since I know everyone our age living in the neighborhood, and they would never keep their dumpster-diving exploits a secret from the rest of us, I know it wasn’t them. Imagine my surprise when I learned that Mr. Johnson lives in my neighborhood. Weird, right?” she says, feigning surprise. “Who would have thought a teacher would live among the elite?”
My stomach drops onto the floor, then bounces right back up into my throat.
“I don’t care what you think, Serena. I wasn’t with Mr. Johnson,” I say.
It’s so obviously a lie, but I refuse to give in to her. She can’t prove it, and I’m not about to throw Loche under the bus.
Just then he walks into the class. He immediately looks in my direction. I keep my head down, not wanting Serena to see the emotion impossible to hide when I see his face, the longing I’ve felt since I left his home Saturday morning.
Her laughter trails behind her as she turns around to face forward, and I’m finally able to exhale.
I’m able to ignore Loche for the entire period, even though I want nothing more than to see his face again. I just can’t risk it. The way Serena keeps looking back, I know she’s trying to catch me in the lie, witness me giving him some longing look or a furtive smile. I look at her from time to time and I finally see some doubt in her expression. I give her the universal wide-eyed look of “what the hell do you want?” before she turns around to face forward.
At first I think we’ve gotten away with it. That is until the end of class while people are starting to leave and Loche says, “Georgia, could you stay behind, please? I have some questions about Friday’s assignment.”
My shoulders fold downward and I hang my head.
“I knew it,” Serena says, chuckling. “Have fun with your boy toy. I can’t imagine what Dean Meyer will think about this.”
My head snaps up. “Don’t say a fucking word, Serena. No one will believe you. I’ll deny everything and it’ll look like you’re just some evil bitch spreading vicious rumors.”
She shrugs with a smirk spread across her face. “We’ll see about that.”
When everyone is gone, Loche closes and locks the door and shuts the blinds.
“You shouldn’t do that,” I tell him.
He closes the last of the blinds. “Why not.”
“Serena knows about us. She saw me walking through your neighborhood, back to the dorms after we—you know.” My face heats up with the mention of that night.