Mistletoe Kisses

Clearing my throat and shifting uneasily, I want to glance back and make sure no one is paying attention to our interaction, but that seems too telling. If anyone is paying attention, that would come off as suspicious.

Looking back up at Mr. McLaren, I offer a compromise. “A fictionalized account, right? I should change names for the sake of… I mean, you don’t care who I hung out with, so I’ll just rename the…”

As I trail off, he sits forward, appearing to rapidly lose interest in what I’m saying. Tone distinctly bored, he says, “Do what you feel comfortable with, Miss Harper.”

He hates when I’m comfortable, so that means if I do that, he’s basically calling me a coward again.

Fine. If he wants to drop his name in a written account of him committing fireable offenses, then I will. Straightening, I watch him grab his stupid red pen and lift a couple sheets of paper so he can add a note he must have forgotten to a middle page. Probably just a crude sketch of a chicken with an arrow pointing to it and my name overhead.

Ugh, he’s such a jerk.

“Fine,” I offer, a little shortly. “When is this homework due?”

“Well, that depends,” he drawls casually. “You’ll need adequate time to work on it. When do you work this week?”

“I have a shift later tonight, then Wednesday after school, then I have a shift on Sunday, too.”

“Thursday we have early dismissal,” he points out. “You’re free Thursday, then?”

Oh my God, is he seriously…? Shaking myself, trying to control the heat on my face, I nod. “Yes.”

He nods decisively and jots one last note on the paper before dropping his pen and closing the packet of papers. Lifting it and holding it out to me, he meets my gaze. “Then give it to me Thursday.”

Since early dismissal means the school day ends at 11am that day, I point out, “I won’t see you Thursday.”

“Ah, right. My mistake.”

He offers nothing more as I take the paper. I wait for him to give me a new deadline, but he doesn’t, so I take the hint and his wordless dismissal, turning without another word and heading back to my desk. I do steal glances at the people in the nearest seats on my way to see if they’re looking at me funny, but no one is paying any attention.

Once I’m seated at my desk, my attention shifts to the assignment he handed back. I don’t have any papers due back so I don’t know what I expect it to be, but it’s my Dickens paper—the one he called ungradable and technically good, but too safe. He already gave me that paper back—and it didn’t have a single note on it, let alone a grade—but we submit papers in his digital drop box, so it would have been easy enough for him to print off a second copy.

This is the same paper, but he actually graded this one. Despite his criticism of it on Friday, right at the top of the page is my grade: A. I flip through it, skimming the margins, and see he made notes in this copy like he usually does when he grades a paper.

I should feel pleased that I got a good grade after all, but I find myself frowning. I don’t know if he gave me this A because he legitimately thinks I deserve it, or because he had a hand between my legs a couple nights ago, and if it’s the latter, then I don’t want it. I want to earn my damn grades—I’m more than capable.

Unsettled and dissatisfied by my own uncertainty over the merits of a paper I thought excellent when I handed it in, I leaf through more slowly so I can review his notes. None of them are terribly severe, which is confusing given his hatred of this paper only a few days ago.

That adds to the unsettled feeling in my stomach. If he thought this paper was trash on Friday but now he’s being nic

e about it in the comments and giving it an A, then it’s not my work that’s changed his mind.

My brow is knitted together, my lips pressed in a firm, grim line as I finish reviewing his notes and come to the last one. In the blank space after the paper was finished but before my citations page, he jotted, ‘Lesson two: Thursday. Same time and place’.

I drop the pages and the paper flattens. I glance back up at Mr. McLaren’s desk.

I feel like I need to say something, but I don’t know what to say. I want to spend time with him, I even want to cross a few lines if we can without him getting in trouble because he’s incredibly sexy and smart and a little mean, but I don’t know, it kinda works for me. I don’t know how to say, “Look, you can feel me up all you want, but if I don’t deserve an A on an assignment, don’t give me one.”

I guess I could just say that, but then if somehow this grade is authentic, he might be offended that I think he would let me exchange sexual favors for better grades.

I don’t know what to do. He has me all topsy-turvy. I can’t email him about it because that would leave a clear paper trail of our activities and be good grounds for firing. I can’t say that to him on school grounds. I also can’t wait until Thursday, because the anxiety will eat a hole in my stomach and I’ll be hung up on it every day until I can get an answer.

I wish I had his number. My tummy flutters thinking about calling him, but that would be a far better way of reaching out without leaving an obvious footprint. Sure, there would be a record that I called him, but it could have been about an assignment or something—no one would know what we said to each other.

When class is over, I try to hang back so I’m the last one out. It very nearly works, but then Percy fucking Bennett—the second to last person to leave the room—stops in the aisle right next to me and leans back against the empty desk.

“Hey, Noelle.”

Oh my God, go away.