“This was amazing. But I should head back. If whoever is hall monitor or whatever finds out I snuck out, I could get in-- well, you know”, I explain.
“Right”, he chuckles. “I hate to repeat myself, but I do believe that for this to work, that we have to not see each other as often. I know it’s difficult and frustrating, but that’s the only way we’ll come out of this unscathed.”
Zach leans in towards me to kiss me goodnight. We share a kiss that I wish would last as long as that law class did earlier today. He walks me to the door so I don’t have to crawl back out into the campus field through the window. I run back towards my dorm as quickly and silently as possible, likely looking as if I just stepped out of the ministry of funny walks. To my surprise, I find Scarlett roaming the hallways.
“Have fun?”
I swallow some spit before answering, taking that moment to think about my answer. “I wasn’t doing anything”, I unconvincingly confess.
Fuck.
Chapter Thirteen - Kayla
The second the 5am alarm goes off, I ready myself and shoot out from the dorms over to the instructors’ dorm. Zach isn’t around. Damn it. He must have gone back home for a change of clothes, or maybe left campus to get some breakfast. The only chance I’ll get to talk to him will be during class and it might be too late by then.
Seeing Scarlett walk out of the administration building and shoot a malicious smile towards me certainly didn’t instill any hope in me.
But with no other choice left, I had to endure an entire day at the academy with crucial news I couldn’t relay to the only other person involved until 2pm.
Each class lasts longer than the last. Whenever I pass Scarlett through the campus, she shoots the same knowing grin at me, driving me further into madness each time I’m forced to see it. How unlucky that the most annoying person at this damn academy happens to be the one recruit that happened to be strolling the hallways at 1am, without a care in the world, only to find someone in an incriminating situation.
Have fun?
Fuck you, Scarlett.
I’ll be seeing her in my next class. We’ll settle things then.
I wait outside of the classroom to ensure I end up sitting next to her. Scarlett spots me waiting for her, and I watch her bitchy confidence melt away with each step she took towards me.
“We need to talk.”
She looks over my shoulder. “We need to be in class, Kayla.”
“Like you give a shit about class. Come with me”, I demand, not giving her much of a choice as I grab her by the collar and drag her into the women’s bathroom. “What are you doing, Scarlett?” I don’t want to further incriminate myself by admitting I was doing anything I wasn’t supposed to be doing, since I don’t know how much of my absence Scarlett is aware of.
“I saw you leave the instructors’ dorm. Mr. Clark was the only one there. I ran into him a bit before he went to sleep. So I reported Mr. Clark”, she admits.
Scarlett tries to leave but I kept her held down against the linoleum bathroom wall.
“You reported HIM? Why didn’t you report me?”
She scoffs. “He chose you over me, that’s why. Fuck him. And fuck you. Don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll try to shift the blame onto you so he can keep his job.”
I’m frozen in place thinking about in one act of affection, I have single handedly ruined my chances of moving ahead in life, and fucked Zach’s position as an educator and member of the force. Scarlett wriggles her way out from my grasp and exits the bathroom, leaving me alone.
“Oh, hey, Mr. Clark”, I hear Scarlett loudly shout in the hallway.
I follow her outside and find her walking away from Zach who is looking confused by Scarlett’s enthusiastic greeting.
“What was that about”, he asks.
“Don’t mind her, we have to talk”, I warn him.
He continues walking and moves past me, “Sorry, Kayla, I just called up to the administration office. Also, aren’t you supposed to be in class?”
“Yes, but you can’t-- fuck. Scarlett saw me leaving your dorm last night. She reported you”, I confess quickly. “I don’t know how much she knows or what exactly she told whoever she spoke to, but I’m sorry. She’s a fucking bitch, and this is my fault, I should have been more careful.”
I look up at Zach and give him a moment to react to what I’m telling him.
“Goddamn it, Kayla. I warned you. I warned myself. Why did-- Fuck. So I’m basically going to walk into an execution?”
I shrug. In all honesty, I have no idea.
“Maybe they’re calling me for something unrelated. What if Scarlett is just fucking with you”, he asks. “She could have just been fucking with you, right? Fucking with us? Like, she wasn’t in there. She doesn’t know what happened. You could have just been asking for extra tutoring or something”, he stammers rapidly.
“Zach, calm down”, I beg.
“Call me Mr. Clark, Kay-- recruit. Fuck. Does it even matter at this point?”
Again, I have no way of knowing. I’ve never been in a situation like this.
“What are you going to do?”
Zach Clark fastens his pants up, and takes a deep breath. “What else can I do? I’m going to go in there. Play it cool. See what they’re calling me in for and play it by ear. Fuck. So much for coming out of this unscathed.”
Chapter Fourteen - Zach
“Sit down, Zach.”
“You got it, Maude.”
Maude Strauss stood at 6’1” and despite being one of the nicest women on campus, was wildly intimidating. Her experience and physique made her a women everyone agreed should not be trifled with.
“Do you know why I’ve called you in here today”, she asks me.
Playing dumb, I tell her that I don’t have any idea why I’ve been called into her office.
Maude sighs wearily and gets right down to business, “I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, someone who tolerates sexual harassment. And today, it was brought to my attention that someone is claiming that you sexually assaulted a recruit. What do you have to say to that?”
“Maude. That’s absurd. I can see why someone might think that, but I was merely helping a recruit deal with some internal problems they were having. It just happened to be past curfew. They snuck out of their dorm to speak to someone and I was the only person around”, I explained carefully.
“What recruit, Zach?”
I clear my throat to clearly answer her. “A Ms. Kayla Thomas.”
Strauss nods her head. “And she’d corroborate this story?”
“Absolutely.”
She stands up and walks over to me. “Well, that’s a relief. I’d hate to lose you, Zach. Unfortunately, we still have to have an investigation. I’m going to ask that you take a temporary paid leave until the investigation is over. You know how it is. Whenever a formal complaint is filed against an employee, we just have to do this whole rigmarole, my hands are tied. But I wouldn’t worry much.”
“Right. So should I head back to my class or--”
“No”, she answers with a raised voice. “Leave campus immediately. We’ll find someone to cover for you. Like I said, don’t worry so much.”
Maude starts patting my back as she walks me out of her office. “Now, I do have to have security escort you out, but again, it’s just for show. Don’t worry about it and more importantly, don’t talk to anybody about it. The last thing we want is rumors popping up, right?”
“Right.”
Chapter Fifteen - Kayla
He’s being escorted out by security.
Scarlett really did report him, and now he’s being fired. Holy shit. Just last night, he was begging me to be strong for us and endure the loneliness in order to graduate police academy unscathed. And I wasn’t even able to do that.
I was so needy and selfish that I got the man I love fired from the only job he’s ever enjoyed.
“Oh shit, that was fast”, Scarlett says laug
hing. “Good riddance, right?”
The only reason Scarlett must be so unabashedly malicious must be because she knows no recruit will start a fist fight with another recruit if they want to stay in the academy. She’s right. I may know how to throw a punch but I know I can’t just start throwing hands the second the opportunity presents itself. Even with a face as punchable as Scarlett’s.
I watch Zach drive away from campus and can only imagine what’s going on through his head. If he didn’t hate me before, he certainly must now regardless of the progress we’ve made.
There are now 8 hours of daylight left that I have to suffer through. Alone. With no hope of seeing Zach anytime soon.
“Ms. Kayla Thomas”, a fellow recruit poking his head into the classroom calls out. “Phone call for a Ms. Kayla Thomas, from your father.”
The instructor allows me to leave the class and follow the recruit to the administration building, where he points a rotary-style phone to me, instructing me to pick it up.
“Um… Hello?”
On the other side, I expect to hear Zach’s voice.
“Kayla, it’s me.” Thank fucking Christ. “So here’s the deal, if you end up being called into Mrs. Strauss’s office, tell her that you snuck out of your dorm into the instructors’ dorm to talk to someone about how depressed you are. That’s the best I could come up with off-hand, and Strauss seems to have bought it. I won’t be allowed back on campus until the investigation is closed but… I don’t think I’m fired? I don’t know. Strauss was a bit vague on that, unfortunately.”
I was relieved to hear that he wasn’t outright fired for whatever Scarlett reported to Mrs. Strauss, but I still feel guilty about Zach getting in trouble for something that shouldn’t have happened.
In a hush toned, I reply to him. “Zach, if your job is on the line, I give you my permission to throw me under the bus. Really. I was the one who snuck into your dorm, you had no say in what happened. It was all me and if anybody needs to get blamed for what happened, it should be me.”
“You’re not the only one to blame, Kayla. We’re both at fault and should it come to point where one of us has to be thrown under the bus, I’ll happily take the fall. I told you I was going to help you make Dad proud and I’m a man of my word.”
With him elsewhere, I felt comfortable enough to let some tears flow. “Thank you, Zach. As soon as you’re cleared, I swear I’ll have more self-control. No more fuckups.”
“As will I, Kayla. This will blow over quickly. And we’ll get right back on track”, he promises.
To avoid repeating myself, I think to bid him farewell and voice my hopes to see him soon. But something keeps me from ending the conversation in such unchallenged terms. The partnership we’ve created is special to me, but may be too much of a risk to continue at this time.
“Wait, Zach. No, I was wrong. Let’s…”
Fuck. I can’t bring myself to do it.
“Let’s what?”
“We should break up.”
“You cannot be serious”, he exclaims. I feel my body tense up at the sharpness of his tone. “Why would you say that, Kayla? We just agreed, if we stay away from each other, we’ll be fine. This whole investigation nonsense will blow over and everything will go back to normal.”
“It won’t”, I correct him. “This isn’t normal. Having to hide our relationship from the world is not the slightest bit normal. We shouldn’t have to do this.”
I hear him groan and slam whichever one of his fists he has free on his steering wheel. “We don’t really have the liberty to be holding hands and skipping down campus. There are rules against that between two subjects of a very clear power imbalance. Keeping our relationship hidden is our only option.”
Once more, I correct Zach. “It’s not. Breaking up is an option.”
In the silence, I visualize my frustrated lover looking around the car as if he’ll be able to find an object that’ll help him win this argument.
“Look, you can think of it as a break. Just until I graduate. I’ll see what I can do about transferring out of your class to avoid any temptation from either end”, I suggest.
He frantically starts to sway the argument his way. “Stop, stop, stop, don’t be ridiculous. You don’t have to do any of that, alright? We can make it work.”
I sharply snap at him still maintaining my hushed voice. “You, stop it, Zach. I don’t care how upset this makes you. This is what has to happen. It’s the best option for the both of us. Otherwise, you run the risk of getting fired and I run the risk of dishonoring my father.”
“Again with this honor thing”, he angrily groans. “Since when do you care so much about honor? Never in my life have I heard you talk about honor. Dad dies, and it’s immediately ‘honor this’ and ‘honor that’?”
“Can you take one moment to listen to yourself, Zach”, I manage to ask without screaming at the top of my lungs. I realize I’m gripping the phone unnaturally hard, tensing up even more so with each word that escapes the irate man’s mouth.
In one pathetic attempt to keep me from ending our relationship so abruptly, he tries to shoot for my empathic side. “You want us to go back to not talking at all? Until you graduate? You realize that’s nearly half a year of not speaking? We just undid years of emotional distance and you want to ruin it all now?”
“This is what’s happening”, I tell him decidedly. “We’re done as of right now.”
Zach sighs. “So you don’t want to be with me anymore? You’re serious about this?”
It’s not that I don’t want to be with him. Quite the opposite. But unfortunately, the timing is all wrong. Once I’ve graduated we can try again, if everything lines up as it should. But for the moment, “We’re done. I’m serious. And I’d like it very much if you could respect my decision.”
He hangs up.
Chapter Sixteen - Kayla
Each day since Zach’s unceremonious departure from campus has been filled with paranoia.
There is an ongoing investigation regarding the sexual misconduct Zach has been accused of. Yet four days have passed without being called into Mrs. Strauss’s office even once. From my understanding, Mrs. Strauss should be well aware that I was the one and only student to have snuck out of their dorm to talk to ‘Mr. Clark’ that night.
Focusing on academic work has grown incessantly difficult every day that I’m not called in to give my side of the story. Every time a faculty member or stranger peeks their head into a classroom, I turn by instinct thinking they’re going to call my name and escort me to the office of the dreaded Mrs. Strauss.
This has started to affect me so much that I’ve grown nauseous at the thought of having to speak in front of Strauss. People don’t typically speak of her unless it’s to regale others with a traumatizing story of her ruthless ways. It makes me sick. Literally sick. Be it the anxiety or the fear, I physically feel affected by these stories of my peers who have had the unpleasant luck of having to confront the head of the disciplinary board.
Finally, it seems that my time to step up to the gallows has arrived.
“Is there a Kayla Thomas here”, a familiar recruit asks the class instructor. The teacher points me out.
I gather my belongings and stand up but the recruit just places a sealed letter on my desk and walks away without saying a word on the matter. I sit back down, slightly embarrassed at the tepid laughter I hear from my classmates, but am intrigued by the letter that rests in front of me. I wait until after I’m finished with all of my classes for the day and run back to my dormitory, rejecting some kind peers who invited me to go and eat out with them. I could barely hold down any food, at the moment anyway, and I had much more pressing matters to tend to.
The letter has very little information. All I can take from it is that I have two more days to worry about being face to face with Mrs. Strauss.
A wave of relief flows over me. At the very least, I now know when I have to save my stress for.
The rel
ief escapes me shortly and without warning, my stomach flips and sends the small amount of food I had in me shooting back through where it entered. I’m unable to hold it down but thank my lucky stars that a trash can was in my immediate proximity. Not a drop of puke lands outside of the trash receptacle, but nevertheless, I’m left to worry.
Thinking back on it, I realize that a considerable amount of time has passed since my last period.
Just what I needed. A new problem.
Two Bad Groomsmen_An MFM Menage Romance Page 21
