Student Seduction

by Caisey Quinn

  Every morning, I spent fifty solid minutes practically writhing in my seat in the back of the room before bolting out of there the second the bell rang. When our gazes did accidentally happen to collide, it was painfully apparent that we both had the same memories in mind.

  Drew stopped flipping through blouses and gaped at me. “So it’s not the hot for teacher syndrome inducing your behavior then. Hmmm. Emersyn Elizabeth Tyler, are you doing drugs and not sharing with me?”

  I laughed. “I’m not on anything.” I chewed the side of my thumb and laid a pink silk tank over a black pencil skirt. “I just feel a little unsettled around him after everything. He’s too young to be a history teacher. I feel like history teachers should be old and gray-headed with a belly hanging over their belt. He makes me so…”

  “Horny?” Drew offered.

  “Gross. I hate that word.”

  He shot me a pointed look. “You’re not denying it.”

  I rolled my eyes. “It’s confusing.” I lowered my voice to a hissing whisper. “We’ve slept together. I can’t just forget. There’s this arrogance about him that grates on me. Like he knows my every thought.”

  “Yeah, it turns you and all the other females in the class way on.”

  That was accurate. Kelsey Atwell and her trio of dance team minions were always strutting back and forth in front of Aiden’s desk. Asking him to clarify ridiculously simplistic parts of his lecture—like yesterday, when she asked if it was called the Cold War because of the weather. One of them was usually leaning way, way too far over trying to shove her cleavage in his face. He not only ignored it, he appeared annoyed by it. So much so that Kelsey, and her minions, Annika and Meghan, had begun circulating rumors that he was gay.

  He wasn’t. But only I knew that for sure.

  From what I and everyone else could see, he appeared to be completely immune to their advances. Watching him ignore them and their excruciatingly obvious attempts at getting his attention every day only made me respect him more.

  Which made me want him more.

  Which made me wish he wasn’t so respectable and would cross the lines I needed him to in order to give me the relief I craved.

  It was fucked up. I realize this.

  Occasionally he’d meet my gaze when I stared too long and he’d wink. Or smirk. Or both.

  A reminder that we had a secret. One that was burning me alive from the inside out.

  “I’ve seen him wink at you,” Drew said casually when we’d laid out all the viable outfit options on the bed. “And if I’ve noticed, it won’t be long before Kelsey or one of her bobble head twins does. If that happens, I can only imagine the shit they’ll spread around.”

  There was a bitter edge to his tone. I wasn’t sure if it was directed at me or them.

  Apparently we weren’t as discreet as I thought.

  I’d never had a secret from Drew before. And now, whatever it was that was happening between Aiden and me, I wasn’t telling him. Mostly because I didn’t know what it was. It was such a new, foreign feeling. The longing, the deep ache, the anticipation of wondering what would happen if we were ever alone again.

  “Drew, I promise, nothing is going on. I sit in the back so I don’t get riled up by him. I tease him in passing about his groupies and when they start moving in for the kill I give him this look and sometimes, yeah, he winks at me because he knows they’re shallow, transparent, attention whores.”

  Drew snorted. “You’re riled up just talking about it, Em. Maybe you can keep lying to yourself, but I’ve never heard you get that worked up over Kelsey and she’s been doing this kind of shit since middle school. So whatever. Maybe you’re in denial. You can lie to yourself if you need to. But please, stop lying to me.”

  “I’m not lying to anyone,” I protested.

  “Yeah, okay.” His tone worried me. “We’ll see.”

  “What do you mean, ‘we’ll see’?”

  Drew narrowed his eyes. “Exactly what I said. You keep a keg full of gunpowder close enough to an open flame and sooner or later, shit’s bound to blow up. My money is on sooner.”

  “You don’t have any money,” I retorted, unable to come up with a better argument.

  Drew didn’t respond and even though we came up with half a dozen decent outfits for me to wear, I had trouble sleeping that evening, tossing and turning all night.

  He was planning something.

  Something that would tell him if he was right or not.

  Something I probably wasn’t going to like.

  5

  Emersyn

  The next morning Drew moved in for the kill.

  I wore one of Stacy’s dresses to school. Nothing fancy, just a navy and white thin-striped halter-style with my white Converse because it was warm and my shorts were all dirty. Between washing mom’s bedding and Ethan’s baseball uniforms and practice clothes, I was behind on my own laundry.

  Just before first period, Aiden was standing outside his classroom beside my locker, speaking with the young, female art teacher. Miss Copeland, or Lisa, as I heard him call her. She was new this year like him, young and attractive. Free-spirited with an infectious laugh. She’d had several books of her art and poetry published and honestly, I enjoyed her class and kind of hoped to be her when I grew up. But watching her flirt with Aiden stirred something ugly in me.

  Jealously.

  His reaction was different from when Kelsey and the others annoyed him.

  He was enjoying the attention. Smiling until his illusive dimple showed. Laughing. Ducking his head in this charming way he had. Flirting back.

  It had me picking her apart like a lion polishing off a gazelle carcass. Her neck was too long and the colorful scarves she wore didn’t hide it. Her ass was wide and her chest was as flat as a twelve year old boy’s.

  And I was a terrible, despicable human being.

  She was adorable and petite and I needed to calm the hell down. Stupid, petty, estrogen overload.

  I had no right to be getting so emotional over the exchange, but I was. I looked around for a distraction, for anyone or anything to take my mind off what was happening before I stooped lower, like making a desperate play the way Kelsey and her minions did to interrupt his conversation. Before my eyes landed on anything substantial, I was in the air, being spun around by someone with their hand on my ass.

  “What the—”

  “Morning, baby,” Drew said loudly. “Damn! You look good today.” He leaned in and planted a damp kiss on my cheek. “That dress is going to look ah-mazing on my floor later.”

  Several students laughed on the way past us and a few of his lacrosse teammates whooped at him.

  “Drew,” I hissed at him once he’d put me down and our audience had moved on. “I thought you said we weren’t doing that this year? What was that for?”

  We’d staged similar encounters intentionally last year when some guys starting getting suspicious and calling Drew names. But this was completely unplanned and uncalled for.

  “Just leveling the playing field, sweetheart.” He nodded at Aiden who watched us intently before patting me on the ass once more.

  Aiden eyes tightened, the woman next to him forgotten as questions flashed across his face. Maybe I was imagining things, but his flawless facial features seemed contorted in a mask of anger. Or possibly pain.

  Maybe I wasn’t the only one wrestling the green-eyed monster after all.

  “Mr. Echols,” he addressed Drew as we headed toward him when the bell rang. “In the future, please keep your public displays of affection private.”

  Drew grinned. “Come on, Mr. S. You see her. If she was yours, would you be able to keep your hands off her all day?”

  He might as well have slapped him across the face. Aiden’s mouth opened for a split second but no sound came out. His eyes widened, then narrowed.

  I stood there in shock as Aiden glanced from him to me and back again. He was speechless. So was I

  All I could do was
meet his stare and hope he could read my mind. See? How do you like it?

  “Take your seats. Both of you,” he bit out eventually.

  Drew waggled his eyebrows at me and mouthed “told you so,” as he took his seat.

  I kept my head down for the entire period, as if I couldn’t get enough of the random profane graffiti that had been etched into my desk over the years.

  Watching him flirt with Miss Copeland had sucked, for sure. But I was nowhere near as angry as he was.

  He gave an impossible pop quiz, then made us all study our notes in silence for the last twenty minutes of class when everyone failed it.

  He paced like a caged animal the entire time. Glaring at me. Glaring at Drew.

  Hating the entire room as if we were all to blame.

  I grew so hot from his scrutiny I had to place my mass of wavy hair into a high ponytail to get it off my damp neck. My pulse thrummed steadily until I was certain it was visible. My hand shook as I wrote.

  I could feel his unwavering gaze on me. Heat flared everywhere it touched. My face, my chest, my neck.

  I was ready to sprint out of the room when the bell rang. But when he said my name, I was cemented to my seat.

  “Miss Tyler, stay just a moment. I need to speak with you.”

  Drew made a dick sucking motion with his mouth and hand on his way out the door and I made a face at him. Ass.

  Once everyone was gone, I focused on my breathing.

  Aiden shut and locked the door. The click echoed, reverberating loudly off the walls and into my skull.

  I couldn’t force my throat to swallow properly, so if he really did want a blow job, now was not a good time.

  “Why is Drew Echols grabbing your ass and talking about getting your dress on his floor?”

  His words ricocheted through me like perfectly aimed bullets. I stared straight ahead silently. Like his pop quiz, there was no correct answer to this. And we both knew he had no right to ask.

  He folded his arms across his chest. “Is that why you blew me off? For him? I thought you said he was…not like that with you.”

  I sucked in a lungful of air. “I’m unclear as to how this is relevant to history class, Mr. Singleton.”

  His glare fixated on me like a laser beam. “Answer the goddamn question, Emersyn. Did you lie to me, or did you start fucking your friend recently?”

  “That’s two questions.”

  He leaned so close I could smell the mint gum on his breath. “Are you fucking him or not?”

  Shock made my face tingly. I allowed my eyes to meet his ignited glare. “Why do you care either way?”

  He smacked his fist on the desk beside me and I jumped. “You’re driving me crazy. Faster and farther every damn day. Your body. Your smile. The way you carry yourself. The way you look at me. The way you seem so above the drama all of your peers are constantly caught up in.” He was nearly panting. “I’m trying. So help me, I’m trying to behave myself. Trying to forget what we did. I am. But I’m twisted up six ways to Sunday trying to figure out why you’d be sleeping with him when you’ve been looking at me like…like…”

  I leaned forward in my seat, riding the high working him up like this gave me. “Like what, Mr. Singleton?”

  “Don’t be cute, Emersyn. And don’t be coy. It’s not you.” He walked over to his desk and sat on the edge of it. “Find the girl from last week, the one that boldly told me to go fuck myself the first day of school. When you do, tell her to come by because I’d like to talk to her.”

  “Do you have a class this period?”

  He frowned. “No. It’s my preparatory period. Why?”

  This was it. I could make a move, a real move, now, taking something I wanted, or I could cower down, back into my hiding place where I’d been just surviving my life for the past few years.

  I stood and walked slowly to his desk, pulling that girl he wanted closer to the surface with each step.

  When I was close enough that our chests were nearly touching, I stopped and looked into his glorious face.

  “That girl is always here, Mr. Singleton. Drew was messing with you. He notices things. He thinks we’re hot for each other and I’ve repeatedly denied it. He saw me get jealous of the art teacher you were flirting with. He was proving a point.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  His jaw flexed and I reached up instinctively to touch him. His stubble tickled my fingertips. When he didn’t respond, I dropped my hand.

  “You’re the only man who’s ever been inside me. I’ve only had one boyfriend, ever, and we never made it that far. My life is…complicated. It doesn’t allow for boyfriends, multiple sexual partners, and normal teenage stuff. Partying and makeup and Instagram or whatever it is you think I do in my spare time. The truth is, I have no spare time.”

  He relaxed finally and exhaled softly. What sounded like relief. Then his eyes were tight again. “Complicated how?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters to me.” He stared at me intently. So deeply that it seemed like he could see past who I tried to appear to be and all the way to the little girl in me that really just wanted her daddy to come home and take care of everything. “Because of your mom?”

  I didn’t like it.

  “Because of everything.” I took a step back and he placed a hand on my waist and pulled me closer.

  “Complicated how, Emersyn?”

  I couldn’t move. Couldn’t break eye contact. And couldn’t lie to him.

  “Like I told you before, my dad left us. Besides Lupus, my mom is the proud owner of a violent temper. She takes it out for a spin regularly. I’m all my little brother has. I got an internship in downtown Charlotte and I have to take the bus right after school twice a week, while coordinating a way for my brother to get to and from fall ball practice and make sure he has dinner. I get home late and make sure he’s eaten, bathed, his homework is done, and he’s in bed. Then I take care of my mom until I can finally crash myself. The nights I don’t have my internship, I work at High Octane until close. I wake up at five thirty every morning and do it all over again.”

  My anxiety ramped up my speech and heart rates. I left out that sometimes my mom messed the bed and I had to clean her and that up also. She deserved her dignity. Even if she didn’t, I wouldn’t disrespect her like that.

  Aiden flinched. “And here I was thinking you were some flighty party girl who always seemed to be running late because she couldn’t be bothered to give a shit.”

  “You couldn’t be further from the truth.”

  He breathed heavily before giving me a truth of his own. “Drew was right. If you were mine, I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off you.” He closed his eyes. “Seeing him handle you like that made me crazy. I’m not usually this way.”

  “Didn’t look like you were too worried about who I belonged to or who had their hands on me this morning. You were otherwise occupied.”

  His brows dipped inward. “I asked Lisa about you. I didn’t mean to. Your project was on display when I subbed for her in the art room yesterday during my prep period. It was amazing. I asked who sculpted it and she told me it was you. I’d never seen anything like it and she could tell I was too interested, too intrigued, and asking too many questions, so I shifted the topic to her and her art.”

  “That’s the sculpture I submitted that got me the internship.” Okay, so maybe I could forgive him.

  “Seems like you have a lot going on. Do you absolutely have to have an internship?”

  I nodded. “One of the four interns gets a ten-thousand dollar scholarship to a school of their choice. I need the money. I won’t be able to afford my first year of school without it. And I’m afraid…”

  “Afraid of what?”

  At this point, I didn’t have much else to hide. “Afraid I’ll take a year off to save up for college, then never end up going. It happens to lots of people around here. Camille’s cousin Charity got a job cleaning offices to s
ave up for school when she graduated, then she got an apartment and a live-in boyfriend, who got her pregnant. Now guess where she works five years later?”

  “Still cleaning offices,” Aiden offered dejectedly.

  “Yep. At night. Days and weekends she waitresses at a truck stop gas station diner, because guess who didn’t stick around to help with the baby?”

  “That won’t happen to you, Emersyn. For one, you have more drive and talent than anyone I’ve ever known. And two, you ghosted the only guy you ever slept with so I doubt unplanned pregnancy is in your future.”

  The bell rang, signaling that I was late for second period. I stepped out of his arms.

  “That’s the scary thing about the future, Mr. Singleton. It’s not like history. None of us really knows what it holds, do we?”

  6

  Emersyn

  The Southeastern Museum of Modern Art was situated in the center of downtown between two larger buildings. The courthouse and the municipal building. Tucked away, further from the street than the other structures, you could almost walk right past it without realizing you’d missed it.

  While the outside was tinted glass and stucco, modest for the most part, the inside was grand. Marble that looked as if it had been polished to shine day in and day out from floor to ceiling. A grand winding staircase and lights illuminating the areas where the displays sat in each nook.

  When I was seven years old, my dad had brought me here to see a display on Aesop’s Fables.

  I stood, my small hand in his larger one, feeling secure and certain that my daddy would always keep me safe. We admired sculptures of the lion and the mouse, the tortoise and the hare, and the boy who cried wolf surrounded by wolves.

  The wolves were crafted with such beautiful detail that their teeth frightened me, prompting me to hide behind my father’s leg.

  Instead of letting me hide, he told me that it was important to face my fears, so I would know they had no power over me. He let me touch the porcelain even though the signs said not to, so I could see that they weren’t real. That my fear was unnecessary.