“Haha. I can hear you smiling.” I could hear his amusement. The laughter always present in his voice.
“You can hear me smiling, huh?”
He was the only one—the only one—who didn’t walk on eggshells around me, and I damn near killed him for it a few times, but now I barely did anything without him. “I told you,” he pointed out. “We’re connected. It’s spiritual and shit.”
I let out a little grin he couldn’t see. “I fucking hate you.”
Idiot.
Will, Michael, and Kai were my friends, and I’d walk through fire for any one of them. Will was the only one, though, who I was sure would walk through fire for me.
“So, what is she wearing?” he asked.
I kept my eyes on her, following her as she left the copy room and
started down the hallway. “An engagement ring.”
“Kinky.”
I laughed to myself and took a step and then another, matching her pace as she walked down one hallway and me another. “Be even kinkier if she were wearing the wedding dress, too.”
“I’ll take a piece of that.”
“You’re welcome to it. I’m good about sharing.”
And sometimes sharing was necessary. When it came to women, I didn’t always keep my promises. Will finished them off if I lost interest.
She was approaching the corner and would turn left. It was almost time.
“Gotta go,” I told him. “Meet you in the parking lot at seven-thirty.”
“Yeah. I left my gym bag in your car, so I need to get it before practice. See you—”
I didn’t let him finish. I pulled the phone away from my ear and hung up, never taking my eyes off her. She rounded the corner and reappeared through the windows perpendicular to me, making her way closer and closer. Pulling to a stop, I slid my phone back into my pocket, leaned my shoulder into the wall, and slipped my hands into the center pocket of my hoodie, waiting for her.
She took another left, briefly disappeared from sight, and reappeared again, stopping as soon as she spotted me.
“Mr. Torrance,” she said.
I nodded once. “Miss Jennings. You wanted to see me?”
She took a step back, looking around her. I wasn’t sure if it was instinctive or if she was confused, but it amused me. She wore a short-sleeved, black V-neck dress that hugged every curve, far from the little cardigans and floral, knee-length skirts she wore at the beginning of the school year. A first-year teacher who started out looking very much wife-of-the-town-pastor seemed to like the lustful eyes of her teenage male students on her and couldn’t help but dress for it now. She still wore her glasses and her hair in tight, little buns, though.
She swallowed, a blush crossing her cheeks. “Um, during school hours, yes. I’m, uh…” She dropped her eyes, shifting in her black heels, and I held in my smirk. While she dressed sexier now, she was still shy.
And I loved that. Confidence annoyed me. I didn’t like being hunted.
“Well, you’re here, I suppose,” she said, giving me a curt smile. “Come in.”
I followed her into the classroom, feeling the blood suddenly pump a little warmer through my body.
This was what it took for me.
There were any number of girls downstairs right now. Girls my own age. The cheerleaders, the gymnastics team, the work-study students in the cafeteria… I could get laid in five minutes if I wanted to, but sex for me had little to do with my body.
It was right here. With my eyes on her back. With the door I closed and locked behind me. With the fear and the attraction and the danger I felt rolling off her at being alone with me. With the idea that she’d have to look at me every day for the rest of the year until I graduated, knowing what she’d let me do to her today and the panic that she let it happen but also the desire of wanting it to happen again.
Sex for me was in the head. Almost entirely.