by Coralee June
I’d fought too hard to control my existence to let anyone or anything fuck it up.
So instead of pulling her into the hallway and asking what put the storm in her beautiful green eyes, I conducted class, as usual, making sure not to drag my eyes over the way her long legs crossed beneath her desk. I told myself that I only half-heartedly noticed how she kept running her nimble fingers through her long blonde hair.
I briefly went over the syllabus. One of the perks of working at a school for geniuses was that they were more than capable of reading and taking charge of their education. The first day of school was all about going over the curriculum. Most of the kids in my class probably already studied the syllabus and had read the first five chapters of the textbook.
“Tomorrow starts our first lecture. You need to have chapters one through seven read beforehand.” Blakely grimaced. Even though I was trying not to stare at her, the flinch caught my eye. Maybe she was just anxious about school? I was positive that the course load here was much more than she was used to but also understood that she was more than capable of rising to the challenge. Maybe I needed to have a conversation with Rose about her hours. She couldn’t be working all night if she had the rigorous schedule we signed her up for.
“Will there be a quiz over the reading?” Taylor asked. She was one of those students that shot her hand up while already asking her question, too impatient and eager to wait for me to call on her. It really pissed me off. Blakely turned to look at Taylor, the wide-eyed stare telling me everything I needed to know. She found the girl just as his annoying as I did.
“As you remember from last year, Taylor, I don’t particularly like to give a warning on whether or not I have a quiz. You’ll just have to come prepared.” I didn’t like giving my students a heads up, not that they actually needed the incentive to do the work—they were generally good students. Either way, I enjoyed keeping them on their toes.
“It says here that we’re going to have a lab? Will we be assigned partners, or will we get to choose them?” Taylor asked, once again not waiting for me to call upon her. I gritted my teeth, imagining Maximillian and Blakely working late hours in the lab.
“This year, I’ll be picking lab partners. You need to learn how to work with anyone. In the professional world, you won’t always get to pick your coworkers, but you always get to pick how you handle working with them. Consider it a life lesson.” I was pulling that reasoning straight out of my ass, but most of my students seem to buy it. Good. I was confident that if they knew my real rationale, they would no longer look at me with respect.
The bell rang, and I resisted the urge to hold Blakely back to ask why she had a frown on her face. She slowly gathered up her belongings, packing her textbook into the messenger bag Lance gave her this morning.
I’d been thinking about her reaction to his gift all day, wondering if she wasn’t used to getting gifts. It almost made me want to give her a present every morning. And no, I didn’t mean that sexually, although my dick had other plans.
Maximillian stopped at her desk, asking if she wanted to go to lunch with him. “You go ahead, I need to ask Mr. Harris something.” I was surprised that she wanted to talk to me at all, considering she hadn’t looked at me once since coming here.
Maximillian was like a puppy dog, eagerly nodding as he responded. “Sure thing, I’ll save you a seat.”
“Thanks,” Blakely replied. Maximillian walked out of the classroom after giving me a knowing look I wanted to punch right off his pretty-boy face. Once he was gone and the door was shut, Blakely stood up and marched over to my desk.
“Did you tell people about my mother?” she asked, her voice somewhere between a growl and a tremble. That question surprised me. Of all the things she was going to say, that was the last I would’ve expected.
“I told the enrollment counselor. I have to be transparent about my living situation, and when I vouched for your entrance here, I told them how I knew you and how you came to live in Memphis.” Although Blakely was more than qualified to attend school here, I might not have been entirely forthcoming with how she got into MAMS.
“I thought we had an understanding,” she sneered before slamming her palm down on my desk. “I’m not here for three hours, and already the rumors are flying. Why did you approach me in the hallway? Why did you tell everyone I’m some charity case?”
I felt my face sour like bad milk. Blakely wasn’t some damn charity case. She was a survivor. She was intelligent and deserved a spot at the school. I tried to be transparent so that the administrators understood why I wanted her here and my relation to her. However, it didn’t take away from the fact that she had earned a seat at that desk.
“I should’ve told you that the teachers here knew about your situation. But you aren’t the first person to walk through these doors with a peppered past, and you won’t be the last. As far as our living situation? Lance is your guardian and my best friend. Nothing is going on, so I don’t understand why it would bother you so much.”
I watched her beautiful face bloom a vibrant, angry shade of red as she stared at me. The storm in her green eyes had become an inferno that no amount of water could put out. Her anger was intoxicating but beautiful, despite it all.
“It’s nothing? So I suppose it would be fine if I told Lance that you walked up to me and announced to the entire school that we lived together? Especially since I was talking to the first friend I had made.”
Shame and turmoil were raging in my chest. Both emotions fought for dominance. One part of me wanted to call Lance and apologize, and the other part of me wanted to show her that I had every right to stake my claim—even though I knew damn well I didn’t.
“What are you insinuating?”
She tilted her head back and let out a hollow chuckle that echoed with fury. “I’m not insinuating anything, Mr. Harris. I want to have a normal life. I didn’t just run here because I had no other options; I was running away from everything that reminded me of Mama. I can’t do that if everyone in this goddamn school looks at me with pity. I’ve already had a lifetime of sympathy for being Sharron’s daughter. I didn’t want it here.”
I felt like shit. When I had told Blakely that we had a lot in common, I meant it. I could understand wanting to run away from your parents’ toxic shadow. It’s why I was in Memphis instead of Chicago. Yes, I loved the slower pace coupled with a vibrant city, but the best part about being in Memphis was that people didn’t care if I was Jack Harris’s son. And I knew that she didn’t want to be known as the poor girl whose shitty mother died of cancer.
“So what do you suggest?” I asked. “Everyone already knows.” It was a dick thing to say, but I couldn’t change what people thought or already knew. The only choice now was to move forward. I didn’t want her stuck in the victim cycle; I wanted her to overcome it.
She folded her arms around herself and looked at the door. We could both see students eyeing us warily through the small window. “I don’t know.”
“You could always ignore it. Fuck their narrative. You’re here because you’re brilliant. Get good grades. Have fun. And don’t worry about me. So what if people know our living arrangement? I won’t treat you any differently than any of the other students here if you continue to get shit done.”
Green eyes looked back at me, and I had to take a steadying breath to stop myself from leaning over and touching her soft skin. “Okay,” she choked out.
I wanted to reach out and squeeze her hand reassuringly or offer her a hug. I knew first hand that this shit wasn’t easy. I craved to kiss away the furrow on her brow.
But instead, I nodded toward the door and started rustling through papers on my desk, wordlessly dismissing her because I knew I didn’t have the strength to tell her to go. For some fucked up reason, I wanted her near me. It wasn’t until the door to my classroom shut that I felt my spine relax and the tension in my body release.
Blakely had to become nothing. So nothing was what she’
d get.
13
Blakely
“Baby girl, you look like you need to break something.” Rose stood up from behind her desk and walked over to me. She’d called me into her office after catching me toss a customer one of the biggest fake smiles of my life. I was trying, I really was. But the kindness didn’t meet my eyes, and Rose, being the intuitive annoyance she was, noticed right off the bat.
My first day at school had been hard. Surprise, surprise.
“I had a rough day,” I replied cryptically as she ran her fingers along her white desk.
“I can tell. Your aura is so angry right now,” she murmured while picking up a vase and tossing the wilted flowers housed in it on the floor. “Toss it. It’ll make you feel better,” she added before handing the glass to me.
“I’m not doing that,” I replied with an eye roll. I wasn’t in the mood for my boss’s eccentric personality.
“Throw it on the ground,” she ordered again before taking a step back. I eyed my boss wearily, taking in the tight jeans that hugged her curves and the off the shoulder smock draped across her frame. Her eyes were wild, and her lips were stained a berry color.
“I’m not throwing your vase on the ground,” I affirmed before setting it down on her desk. I almost called in sick to work, my stomach swirling with anxiety. Memphis Academy for Math and Science was intense. I felt incredibly out of my depth with the course load and was embarrassed by all the sympathetic looks my teachers gave me. Word had spread about my living arrangements, and by the end of the day, I had girls asking if I wanted to work on homework together. Something told me they just wanted an invitation to Mr. Harris’s house.
“Why not?” Rose asked while crossing her arms over her chest. Her smile had slipped some as she threw me a sassy look.
“The vase didn’t do anything to me. It doesn’t deserve to be broken.” I took a step back, needing to be away from her demands. However, the back of my sneakers hit a filing cabinet, stopping me short.
“Interesting. Do you feel like a vase, Blakely? Do you feel like you’re broken because of other people’s whims?” Rose asked as her light brown eyes brightened. I felt like a project.
The worst part about all of it was that she was right. My mother broke me because she hated her life. She tossed me on the floor in some experiment to work through her issues, and there was no one left to pick up the pieces. “I feel like sleeping. I’m tired, Rose.”
Rose picked the vase up again and thrust it out toward me, the cold glass colliding with my chest. “Throw it on the ground,” she ordered. “Do it, or I’ll fire you.”
I gritted my teeth, so angry at the world and her that I didn’t know what to say. I clutched the glass and lifted it. If she wanted me to throw the damn base, I would do it with vigor.
I slammed it at the earth like shattering it was the only thing keeping me alive. I watched the glass crumble and crunch on impact, slicing across her marble floors and scattering around our feet. Slivers of glass crashed into my ankles as I heaved air in and out of my deflated body.
I didn’t enjoy it.
“How did that feel?” Rose asked. She wasn’t smiling anymore, and something in me wondered if she was prepared for the level of commitment I exhibited while throwing the vase at the ground.
Some people would’ve felt satisfaction at breaking something. But I felt indifferent. I felt nothing. The things in my life I wanted to break were unbreakable.
I wanted to break my mother’s influence on my new life. I tried to break the hold that Decker Harris had on my mind, body, and soul. He was so strange today, and I didn’t understand it. It was like we were back to being strangers meeting in the hall for the first time.
I wanted to break my resistance against building a relationship with Lance, and I wanted to annihilate my tendency to fuck things up. “I didn’t feel anything,” I replied in a shaky voice before bending over to pick up the pieces.
Rose simply watched me. She didn’t warn me about slicing my finger, nor did she offer to get a broom. I cupped the shards in my palm and thought about my mother. Maybe Rose wanted to make some metaphor comparing the broken vase and my life. But I didn’t feel like the broken glass on the floor. I felt more like the displaced flowers without a home. “Go home, Blakely,” Rose said while crouching down to meet me at eye level.
“I would really like to work tonight, Rose,” I whispered. I didn’t want to go home and talk to Lance about my first day of school. I didn’t want to run into Decker and feel the nothing we both promised each other. I didn’t want to start on all the readings I’d have to catch up on and feel inadequate for this school. I didn’t want to check my phone to see if Maximillian had sent me a text. I wanted to work.
“Go home, hon. I’ll pay you for the day. You need to rest. Cope. You’ve been working your entire life, child. Take a day off. That isn’t a suggestion.”
“I don’t know how to rest,” I admitted before tossing what few shards I had in the trash and sitting down. Rose let out a hefty sigh before sitting on her desk, crossing her legs and resting her chin on her fist.
“Okay. Get it out,” Rose said with an encouraging wave.
“I hate that everyone at this new school knows about my mama. Back home, I was always known as Sharron Ramone’s daughter. The daughter of the woman that slept her way through east Texas. The mama that couldn’t afford food because she was too self-absorbed to remember to save for groceries. I don’t want to associate with that anymore.”
“So don’t be her daughter anymore,” Rose offered.
“How? How can I escape something imbedded in my blood?” I picked at my skin to emphasize the point. “How can I just escape her? She’s dead but still alive and breathing her toxic venom into my new life, and I hate it. I hate Decker for telling everyone my story. It wasn’t his to tell.”
Rose nodded. “Decker likes to focus on other people’s lives because it’s easier than sharing his own,” she explained. “You’re angry that he told the school where you’ve come from, right?” Rose asked, seeking clarity. I hadn’t precisely explained everything and was thankful she didn’t make me spell it out. Rose was more intuitive than I’d initially given her credit for.
“He made me out to be this sob story for the admissions department. One of my teachers patted my shoulder and said if I needed anything to call her.”
“That doesn’t sound like something Decker would do. That man repels pity like citronella candles fight off mosquitos. He’s potent.”
“So why did he tell them?”
Rose reached out to tuck a blonde strand of hair, the gesture something a mother would have done to comfort her child. Tears welled up in my eyes. “I think you’re letting other people’s assumptions determine what you think happened. Decker was just telling them what is going on. You can’t blame him for the fact that you have a past. You can just prove to them that you’re a fighter. That you’ve overcome the stigma your mother thrust on those proud shoulders of yours.”
“I know. I know,” I groaned.
“You say she’s in your blood, right?” Rose asked before hopping off the desk and bending over to pick up a shard of glass. “Give me your palm,” she demanded while stretching out her hand. I cautiously extended my palm, peering up at her with confusion.
Dragging the sharp glass across my skin, she drew a crimson stain that made me squirm in discomfort. It wasn’t necessarily a painful cut, I just hated seeing the evidence that Mama was very much alive within me. “See this blood? It’s yours,” Rose said before dragging the blade across her own palm. “And this is mine.”
She thrust our hands together, and the cut stung where our blood mixed. “Now you’re my blood. I’ve got some good blood, Blakely. Strong. Cunning. A dash of crazy. It’ll hit your veins and tarnish everything that was her and turn it into something else.”
I stared at our joined hands, feeling like this was some pagan ritual. It was strange and unsanitary, but it felt right. “I’
m your blood?” I asked, looking up at Rose with a mixture of awe and amusement.
“Damn right, you are. Now go home and meditate. Tell Lance about your first day of school. He’s got good blood, too.” I stared at my hand for a little longer before pulling away.
“See you tomorrow?” I asked.
“Sure thing. No more fake smiles.”
Outside, the rare summer Memphis breeze licked at my soul. I saw the world in a different light, breathed in the barbecue-tinted air like it was a drug. Maybe Rose’s blood was magical. Perhaps it was a placebo for happiness. Either way, I smiled all the way out of her office and on my walk home.
“You’re home early!” Lance exclaimed while pulling a casserole out of the oven. The moment I stepped foot in the loft, the smell of taco seasoning hit my nostrils full force. I breathed it in.
“It was a slow night. Rose sent me home,” I lied.
Decker was sitting at the kitchen table reading over a stack of papers. No longer sporting his sexy suit but a pair of sweats instead. His eyes snapped to me the moment he heard my voice. We had a silent standoff for a moment, the earlier disappointment fading away like dust in the wind. “Hello, Mr. Harris,” I said with a grin. Lance coughed, drawing my eyes back to him.
“How was your day?” my brother asked.
“Awful. I’m not half as smart as those other kids, and I’m already behind,” I replied with a wince. I already had homework in chemistry thirteen pages long, intended to test my aptitude to see if I can place in the advanced class.
“Do you need help?” Lance offered. “I can google like a champ.” I smiled at his willingness to assist.
“I already looked it over, and I think I’ve got it covered. I’ll just be up all night determining the major organic product of reactions. Where’s the coffee?”