by K. B. Nelson
The fire casts ominous shadows upon the dark room, highlighting our faces in lingering intrigue. I’m waiting for my moment to strike, to throw a curve ball at her, all the while praying for the best. Before she was the vice principal, she taught algebra for a year. She’s articulate and calculated, and she’ll either hand me the keys to continue what I’m doing, or stop me dead in my tracks.
Tonight, my fate is in her hands and she has no idea. Tonight, she is the puppet master holding the strings above my head, and I’ll dance however she wishes me to dance.
“He was worried sick about you.” She throws her hand against her chest, a failed attempt to hold the laughter in. “Her car is in the parking lot,” she says, mimicking my husband. “Of course, I didn’t know where you were, but I’ve been there with my ex-husband, so I calmed him down and assured him that you were with me.”
“He called, twenty to thirty times.”
“Where were you?” She leans in close, waiting for the dirty gossip, but I’m not prepared to spill the tea yet.
“Somewhere safe,” I assure her. “I needed to be by myself after I got the phone call Friday night.”
“What’s green and has wheels?” she questions me, inciting my favorite joke since I’ve been in the third grade. “Grass,” she laughs hysterically, hardly able to spit the punch line from her tongue. “Grass. I lied about the wheels.”
I stare her down, unamused.
“You need to laugh more.”
“I wish I could go to the funeral tomorrow,” I change the subject, and jump back on track, reigning in control of the conversation.
“I wish you could, but you can’t. Do you know what people would say?”
“If you were me, would you care?”
“Honestly?” she arches her brow. “I would, but we’re not the same person.”
“Coach and I aren’t together,” I spit out. Judging by the shock scribbled across her face, it’s a juicy bit of information.
“You’re joking, because if you weren’t, I’d know.”
I stare her down.
“You’re being serious.” She exhales a nervous breath. “What happened?”
“We fight all the time.”
“About Nathan?”
“You know what he did.”
“It’s a messy situation.” Her eyes retreat away from me. “I know you want me to condemn him for it, but he wasn’t in the wrong. He was doing his job, and sometimes that gets us into trouble.”
“Like I was doing my job when I got into that car?”
“Life is full of split-second decisions. We make a thousand choices a day, and sometimes they lead us down a road of unintended consequences. We can’t focus on the past. We have to keep moving forward.”
“Do you ever wonder who he was?”
“The other boy?”
I nod. “I know it doesn’t change anything. It’s an insatiable curiosity, though. Sometimes, it keeps me up at night.”
“Do you think he goes to our school?”
I shake my head. “Coach didn’t recognize him.”
“Coach?” she questions with a furrowed brow, her eyes full of judgment. “It’s that bad, huh?”
“It’s worse.” My fingers dig through my hair as I stare at the carpeted floor. “When we fight, it’s like we’re wielding knives.”
She sits her drink down on the table and places her palm on my thigh, comforting me. “Has he hurt you?”
“We hurt each other all the time,” I sigh. “It’s never been physical, though,” I continue, hurling a white lie. In the traditional sense, our fights haven’t escalated into physical fights, but the way he stormed after me the other night was frightening. I don’t mention this for two reasons; I refuse to be his victim any longer, and I unequivocally provoked him, pushing him to the point of madness with a simple, but vicious attack of my tongue.
“If you ever need a safe place,” she caresses my leg, “you know you can come here at any time.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” I sit up straight in the couch and take a long gulp of wine, finishing the glass. “I think I’ve found a safe place.”
“You’re being cryptic.” Her eyes twist. “What does that mean?”
I place the empty glass on the wooden table next to her half-full glass—or half empty, pick your poison—and stare up at the ceiling, inhaling a long breath, trying to work up the words I’ve assembled in my head so well, but I’m terrified will come out like jellyfish.
“Jesus, you look like a ghost. Do I need my drink for this?”
“How do you feel about infidelity?”
Her eyes bulge. “You know I love my romance novels, so that’s a hard one for me.” She leans to grab her glass from the table and takes a sip. “But, I’ll let you know in a minute.”
“It’s new.” My tongue swaths across my lips, wetting them as I reach into the far reaches of my mind, trying to remember my carefully crafted speech, but I remember nothing. I’m a high school student in speech class, my entire body shaking with nerves. “I never saw it coming, and it’s not something I was searching for. He came out of nowhere, and he saved me.”
“Saved you?”
That wasn’t part of the planned speech. The emotions from Friday night are still too real, and too raw. “It’s complicated,” I say dryly and sink into the couch.
“Uncomplicate it, then.”
My lips purse and my heart runs haywire, scratching for release from its mortal cage. “Please don’t react, but for a brief moment, I thought about taking my own life the other night.”
Her eyes sink. Her throat tightens.
I continue, speaking the most uncomfortable of truths. “I might have pulled the trigger if it weren’t with him.”
“You should have told—“ She stops herself and throws her arms around me, suffocating me with a tight hug that threatens the integrity of my ribs. “Don’t ever do that again,” she whispers against my ear.
“I’m good. I promise.” I pull away from her and force a smile. “You don’t have to worry about me like that, so please don’t. It was a moment of extreme weakness, and nothing more.”
It’s never that simple though. Right now, I’m weak, with the walls caving in on me everywhere I step, but somehow Kemper gives me strength. He carries me upon his shoulders as I try and navigate this tired world.
“As long as you promise not to go back down that road, I won’t bother you about it,” she says, “but if I see something suspect, don’t close yourself off when I start asking questions.”
“I promise.” I lock my pinky finger around hers. “Now about the affair…”
“I can’t approve of it.” She tilts her head and presses her tongue against her cheek, contemplating my actions. “I can’t condemn it, either.”
I let out a sharp exhale of relief. “Thank you.”
She didn’t give me her full blessing, but she’s not burning me at the stake, so it’s good enough.
“Who is he?”
“That’s a conversation for another day, perhaps sometime around June.” June 2nd to be exact, the day Kemper will walk the same walk across the same field I walked across just six short years ago. Whether the fire burns out before then, or continues to burn hotter than the sun, is irrelevant. She can never know the truth until he’s no longer a student.
“Do I know him?”
“I think you’ve probably met him a time or two.”
“Great,” she huffs. “Now, I’m really not going to be able to sleep.”
If you knew who he was, you wouldn’t sleep for months.
“Can we please lighten the mood now?” I suggest and hop to my feet. I uncork the bottle of wine to fill up my glass and top hers off. “Is there any teacher-lounge gossip I’ve missed?”
“Oh.” She bursts to life, jumping to her feet, and ripping her glass out of my hand. “You’re never going to believe this shit.”
I glide back into a seating position, one eye focu
sed on Ashley as she spills the proverbial tea, and the other keeping a close eye on the dying fire.
20
I’m minding my own business on an uneventful Wednesday when Kemper swings the classroom door open and shuts it behind him. My eyes shift to him as he spins the lock on the door. It’s the first time I’ve seen him since Sunday, which amounts to a little under seventy-two hours if my calculations are correct, but I’m no math teacher.
He’s freshly shaved, and looking all around clean, but I know better.
“What are you doing?” I scold him, and rise from my too-comfortable chair. “You can’t be in here.”
“Why the hell not?” He motions behind him and drops his backpack to the floor. “Isn’t this your free period.”
“Yes.” I straighten my skirt and pace toward him. “It’s the one hour of the day I get to myself.”
“I’ve been going crazy since I dropped you off at your car the other night.”
“Yeah, I’ve been pretty crazy myself, but for different reasons.”
“Care to share?”
“Not particularly.” I step past him, but he stops me with a strong hand gripped around my arm.
“It’s your husband, isn’t it?”
“Stop doing that,” I break away and wag a finger at him. “Stop getting inside my head.”
“He wasn’t too happy when you returned home, was he?”
“Well, I don’t know Kemper.” I shrug. “Why don’t you fill me in on how that night went?”
“I’m assuming the two of you fought.”
“That’s really none of your business.”
“Stop doing that, Stassi,” he shoots my words right back at me. “You have an awful habit of deciding what is and isn’t my business.”
“That’s because it’s my life.” I feel I need to remind him, a life that is riddled with more obstacles than the path to a State Championship. “What are you doing here?”
“If I’m being honest.” His hand trails to his crotch where he chokes his hand around an erection stretching against denim. “I kind of thought—“
“Absolutely not.” I race to the door and peel it open a crack. Nobody seems to be in the hall. I gently close the door and spin around to check the clock. We have four minutes until the next bell. Before I can turn back to Kemper, his lips are pressed against my neck and one hand is trailing under my skirt.
“You taste so fucking good,” he growls against my ear and then chews against my flesh, forcing my toes to curl in my heels. “I want to fuck you right here. Right now.”
“You’re—“ I push him away and straighten my skirt once more. “You’re insane if you think this is happening.”
His eyes blink and he scratches at the back of his head. “I’d like to think we’re both insane, or we wouldn’t even be in this position in the first place.”
“We wouldn’t be in this position if you didn’t lie about who you were.”
“We wouldn’t be in this position if you didn’t put a gun—“
“Stop talking,” I command with a finger to his face as I make my way to the door. I twist my hand around the knob, but I’m pushed deep against the door as he maneuvers his body behind mine, pinning me in place.
He breathes fire against my neck and his hand travels underneath my skirt and against my panties. I push my body back against his, craving the friction only he can provide. I throw my arm behind his head, pulling him deeper against my neck and digging my fingers through his tussled hair.
“This is every man’s dream,” he groans, “fucking his teacher in her own classroom.” He pushes his hand down the front of my panties and runs his palm over my pussy, wet and wanting. He pumps his hand over my opening, pushing me to the limits of sanity, and just when I think about giving in, someone throws themselves against the outside of the door.
I flinch backward, knocking my head against his. He rips his hand from my panties and massages his face. “Oww,”
“You should go,” I say, panting as I turn to face him.
“This isn’t over,” he promises me and exits the classroom. I watch him as he leaves and wait for him to disappear around a corner down the empty hall. I search with my eyes, looking for whoever it was that was thrown against the door, but there’s nobody to be seen.
Perhaps I’m going crazy.
Perhaps I crossed that threshold a long time ago.
Then I look down and see his bag, left abandoned on the classroom floor.
I race down the empty hall, my eyes searching for Kemper. When I turn the same corner he disappeared around, I stop in place, my heels squealing against the ancient wood floors.
A hand is thrown around my mouth and I fight back, sinking my teeth into my attackers finger.
“Shit,” Kemper yelps.
I spin to face him. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Shit,” he repeats, his eyes narrowed in on the classroom door behind us, and the doorknob spins. He drags me toward a door, rips it open, and pulls me inside.
It’s dark and damp, musky and chemicals burn through my nose. There’s a click, and a light bulb shatters above us, exploding shrapnel of glass around us. Then, the room is lit with the soft glow from his cell phone.
In the particular lighting we’ve found ourselves in, he looks dark and sinister with a cracking smile reminiscent of a demon from the latest paranormal film at the cinemas.
“I knew you’d come for me,” he whispers as he leans close and props his phone against a jug of bleach. His hand trails to my ass and he pulls me in close, dangerously close to the erection in his jeans.
“Because you left your bag.”
“Why’d you think I left it?”
“Because you’re burning so many calories maintaining that permanent erection,” I pout, grieving the loss of his brain cells, “that there’s not enough calories left to think straight.”
“No, because I wanted to get you alone.”
“You had me alone.”
“Nobody is going to interrupt us in here.”
“Are you insane?” I throw my hand up. “Don’t answer that question.”
“It’s private, and it’s…” He glances around at the setting, and grimaces. “Nice enough.”
“I’m not fucking in a janitorial closet.”
“I see you’ve made your mind up already.”
“That’s some astounding, sleuth work.”
His teeth sink into his bottom lip and he braces one arm against a metal rack. “How about a blowjob?”
“Goodbye, Kemper.”
Just as I’m about to push the door open, the bell rings and I must think quick on my feet. I dart out of the closet and into the center of the hall as a row of classroom doors are thrown open, giving way to a stampede of students, and a chorus of idle gossip. Soon, I’m surrounded in the thick of the herd, and when I glance over my shoulder at the janitorial closet, I spot Kemper sheepishly merging into the traffic with flushed cheeks as students watch him with curious amusement.
Serves him right.
I cleaned up my desk in a hurry and stuffed a pile of papers in need of some serious red pen work into my bag before shutting off the classroom light. I leave the door open so the janitor can clean the room, and make my way down the dim-lit hall.
My phone vibrates in my oversized purse and I reach down to retrieve it to see a notification from Mrs. Benson, the haughty gym coach.
Benson: We need to talk. Please meet me in the boy’s locker room office.
I briefly consider not going. After all, I had texted her on Monday to see if she could cover my detention shift, to which I received no reply, but I have no other plans for the evening outside of avoiding my husband, who should have wrapped up football practice forty-five minutes ago.
Any excuse to avoid gong home is an excuse I’m willing to give credence to. I text her back:
On My Way!
The locker room is dark and humid, with no evidence of anyone present. The football p
layers are long gone, but the steam from the showers linger.
“Hello,” I call out as I pace through the darkness and toward the dimly-lit office. “Mrs. Benson?”
A shadow shifts in front of me, darting across an opening and into a row of lockers. I freeze in place and squint my eyes, trying to get a better view as I make my way toward the lockers.
Someone jumps out in front of me and I scream. The light is flipped on and Kemper stands in front of me with a mischievous grin plastered across his face.
“You shouldn’t be in here,” I scold him. “What the hell are you doing in here?”
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
“What?” I scoff. “How did you even know I’d be in here?”
“What are you doing here?”
“I’m meeting Mrs. Benson, so you need to scram before someone sees you.”
“This is fucking great,” he snickers and throws his palm outward, bracing himself against the side of a purple locker. “I don’t think she’s coming.”
“And why is that Mr. Brightside?”
“I’ve been here alone for the last twenty minutes.” He angles his eyes at my phone. “Maybe you should try calling her?”
“Would you be quiet?” I scroll through the recent contacts on my phone and raise the phone to my ear. It rings once. Kemper grins. It rings twice. His phone rings. My eyes shift to his pocket as he pulls his phone from his pocket and answers it.
“Mrs. Benson, speaking.”
“I’m going to kill you.” I toss my phone into my purse. “Why do you have her phone?”
He squints his eyes as if it’s a confusing question, and rotates his phone in one hand. “This is my phone.”
“This makes no sense.”
“When you were sleeping the other night, I slipped into your phone and added my number under her name so we could talk without raising eyebrows.”
