But now I freeze at the door, my hand on the knob ready to turn it, wondering if my mother saw something.
If she saw me with her. If she saw what I did to her. How I vandalized her virgin mouth that’s been taunting me ever since I saw her at the bar.
No one’s ever touched me there. Before.
Jesus Christ.
“I thought my son wasn’t a quitter,” my mother continues, and I finally get enough sense gathered to understand what she’s talking about.
She’s talking about her sister, Sarah.
Not her.
She’s talking about the girl I’ve been with for eight years. The girl who betrayed me. The girl who made a fool out of me. The girl because of whom I’m a failure.
As I turn to face my mother, my reckoning, all the peace, all the warmth from the past hour is gone.
Instead, I feel them.
I feel the bugs crawling and scratching at my skin. I feel hot under my collar. I feel the jitters.
I feel the shame.
That’s what it is. This sensation is shame.
This is what my mother always reduces me to and that’s why I didn’t want to come to this house.
That’s why I didn’t want to talk to her.
Because I knew what I would find when I looked into her eyes.
Grave disappointment.
The woman who made me perfect. Who taught me to never make mistakes.
Who hauled me to practices, to all my games until I learned to drive myself. Who would stay up late at night to check on my homework, to make sure that I was prepared for a test, until I could handle it all by myself.
My mother.
“I’m not a quitter,” I tell her with clenched teeth.
I’m not.
She’s made sure that I’m not. It has been her life’s work.
It has been my life’s work.
“Aren’t you? What do you call this then? What you did tonight.” My mother comes forward, shaking her head. “I gave you everything. I gave you all that I could and it was hard, Arrow. After your father’s death, raising a boy all alone was hard. Raising a boy who could walk in his shoes was harder. But I made sure that you did. I made sure that I kept your father alive in you. That I never let him die. I made sure you had every opportunity to succeed, to be the best. To be the kind of son your father and I would be proud of. But look at you now.
“Your career is hanging in the balance. You’re going to therapy for your issues. Issues I didn’t even know you had. And you broke up with the girl you were going to marry. What do you call it, if not quitting?”
She cheated on me.
I want to shout at her.
I want to scream that she fucking cheated.
And she did it with my best friend, and she did it for months.
I trusted her.
I fucking trusted her but she betrayed me. She made a fool out of me and I was blind. I was blind to all of it.
I was going to marry her and I would have. I would have if not for those texts. I would’ve made her my wife and she would’ve made me a fool. I wonder if she would’ve carried on her affair after our marriage too. I know she says that she wouldn’t have but I still wonder.
I still wonder if she would’ve taken advantage of my trust with my ring on her finger.
The ring I stomped on and broke, the day I left LA.
But I won’t tell my mother that. I can’t.
She already thinks I’m a quitter. She’s already disappointed. How is she going to react when she finds out the truth?
That Sarah was fooling me and I didn’t even know it. That her son was so blind and so fucking stupid that he had no clue about it. That her son got cheated on.
It will break her to know that her perfect son isn’t so perfect after all. That her perfect son is a failure.
I didn’t even want her – or anyone, for that matter – to know about the breakup. But I guess the news broke back in LA and my mother found out too.
But that is it.
That is all they’re ever going to know.
It’s better that my team hate me for punching Ben than they think I’m a fool.
Last season, our leftwing striker found out that his wife had been cheating on him and he had no clue. And I wondered how.
How the fuck did he not know?
Shouldn’t a man know these things? It made me wonder about his ability to play on the field. If he’s so clueless in his personal life, how the fuck do I know he’s going to give one hundred percent on the field? And I wasn’t the only one. A few pitied him, others thought that he was stupid.
I’m not going to be in the same position.
I’m The Blond fucking Arrow.
No one is going to question my judgement on the field.
I knew Sarah would never open her mouth because her reputation is everything to her. She won’t have people thinking that she spread her legs for someone else while she was with me. I also knew Ben would never say anything either; it would make him look less of a victim.
Besides, my mother loves Sarah. She is the daughter my mom never had, and I can’t break that illusion for her.
I can’t hurt her that way.
I can’t disappoint her any more than I have.
“Duly noted, Mom,” I reply sardonically even though I can barely keep my eyes on her. “I think you should go back to sleep now or you’ll be late for your flight tomorrow.”
“I was against your relationship with her from the beginning. But you proved yourself. You proved your worth. But I guess I should’ve trusted my gut. I should’ve known that a girl would make you lose focus and screw up everything that we’ve worked for. I’m not going to let you kill your father again, do you hear me? He’s not going to die again because you were foolish enough to lose your focus. Do you understand me? Do what you have to do so you can go back and fulfill your father’s dream,” she says and leaves me in darkness.
My father’s dream.
To play in the European League. The dream that remained unfulfilled because he died.
As I step into the night, I fish out cigarettes from my jeans pocket. I light one up and puff out a huge cloud of smoke into the sky.
Sometimes I wonder if my father hadn’t seen that dream with his own eyes, would it have become mine?
Sometimes I wonder if… if I could ever have other dreams. My dreams.
Or if every son inherits his father’s dreams by default.
There’s a little mailbox outside his office.
It has a thin slot where you can slide the letters and internal office documents and memos in. It also has a little lock on it, a shiny silver lock where he can put his key in to open the box and retrieve all the mail people have left him.
That’s where I plan to leave him a note – a tiny little note – on Monday before classes start.
It’s the first note in a long series of notes that I’m hoping to send him. Notes designed to weaken his resolve.
And seduce him.
Yes, I’ve never seduced anyone. Or at least I hadn’t, not until the night we kissed.
The kiss that rocked my world and turned me into a horny, greedy girl who also humped his leg and came like a firecracker.
But that’s beside the point.
The point is that I don’t really know the art of seduction. Whatever I did that night was pure instinct.
That’s what I’m going to do now too.
I’m going to follow my gut and seduce him by leaving him little notes. That seems like the obvious, most natural choice, right?
I’ve written him letters for years.
I’m used to telling him things on paper, and there are a few things that I’d like to tell him now as well.
Things like he can use me for whatever he wants and that won’t make him an asshole. Or the fact that if he just tells me what he wants in a perfect rebound girl, I’ll give it to him.
Which doesn’t occur to me until I rush upstairs to the second floor where his office is, with the letter in my pocket.
The problem that I’m basically seducing my soccer coach.
The other problems, I was aware of. Problems like my sister would freak out if she knew. She’d call me names and she’d hate me. But she already hates me, doesn’t she?
Or the fact that Leah might have an objection as well.
She loves Sarah and Arrow together, as evidenced by her dinner plan. So she’s not going to like that I – the bad, rule-breaking sister – am planning to seduce her son. It was a miracle she didn’t see us kiss in her backyard, for which I’ve been thanking my lucky stars for the past two days.
But somehow, it had escaped my mind that Arrow is on faculty here at St. Mary’s – however temporarily, but faculty nonetheless – and I’m his student.
Seducing a teacher is definitely against the rules. And for a crime this big – even bigger than sneaking out and harboring secret cell phones – they might definitely lock me up somewhere.
Which makes me realize something else too.
The letters under my bed.
They’re all addressed to Arrow and after years of writing them, suddenly they have become even more forbidden, haven’t they?
As I walk toward his office, the tiny note sitting heavy in my pocket and people giving me more than a passing glance because I’m the principal’s ward, I decide that I’ll hide those letters. The old ones are locked up in my suitcase but the ones that I’ve been writing him now are under my bed. Maybe I can hide them all in the third-floor bathroom where Poe’s cell phone is or something.
I’m not afraid of being punished but I can’t have anyone looking at them.
Those letters are my biggest secret. My absolute most cherished possessions. They contain the longings and confessions of my not-so-witchy heart.
They contain the story of my doomed love and no one can ever know about them.
Least of all the guy I’ve written them for.
He hates love, doesn’t he?
I can’t have him know that I love him. I can never tell him.
So those letters are mine and mine alone and I need to hide them.
I hang around his office for a few seconds, waiting for the coast to clear, and when it does, I rush and slide the note in.
Five minutes later, I’m downstairs, getting my books out of my locker, my heart in my throat and my teeth making a mess of my lips.
I keep imagining the expression on his face when he reads it.
He will definitely frown, for one. He might also clench his jaw and that muscle on his cheek might make an appearance too.
And his eyes might darken.
Yeah, definitely.
I’m not sure what he’s going to do when he sees it but…
Suddenly, I don’t have to imagine his reaction or wonder about what he’ll do because he’s here.
I’m just shutting the door of my locker when he makes an appearance.
He’s standing by the staircase.
The long, wide, concrete staircase with a beige-painted metal railing. It’s located in the middle of the hallway that’s busy with people walking up and down, going about their business.
But standing at the bottom of it, his eyes on me, Arrow is frozen.
And I was right.
His eyes do appear dark. They also appear flashing and bright at the same time, and the way he’s staring at me, I don’t have to guess that he’s read the note.
His entire wonderful body is screaming with the knowledge.
His hands are fisted at his sides, the hands with which he rocked me over his muscular thigh and made me come. The hands with which he squeezed my breasts.
Which wake up, by the way.
My breasts, my nipples. The place between my thighs.
Everything wakes up and pulses. Becomes swollen.
I give him a slight smile and bite my lip.
When he narrows his eyes at me and clenches his jaw like I knew he would, I want to throw my books away and run to him.
I want to kiss his harsh jaw and sharp cheeks. I want to kiss his gorgeous, soft lips and writhe against his stomach in my school skirt while he kisses me back and mocks me for being greedy and bratty.
I want to say the words, whisper them in his ears, the ones I wrote for him.
My Darling Arrow,
Thanks for my very first kiss and my very first orgasm with a boy. It was glorious and hot. Clearly, my own fingers have not been doing the job your super amazing thigh did.
I want you to know that they kept me warm, your kiss and your orgasm, while I was sleeping all alone in my bed. So warm that I actually had to get up in the middle of the night to open the window of my room so I could let the cool air in.
I thought that it would be enough to get rid of this fever on my skin but it wasn’t. Apparently, kissing you was like kissing the sun. And riding your thigh was like riding a fiery halo. So I had to take drastic measures.
I had to take off all my clothes and sleep naked, which was also a first. So thank you. It was oddly freeing.
Yours,
The Rebound Girl
PS: I’m not wearing a bra today either. And I’ve said goodbye to little thongs. They don’t do much anyway. This is better. And more freeing. Have a great day!
I clench my thighs as I feel a throb in my pussy.
In my naked pussy.
I didn’t lie in the letter; I’m really not wearing anything under the mustard-colored skirt. And somehow, he knows that my thighs are clenched.
Because his eyes drop to my skirt and I hug my books to my chest, my nipples so hard and sticking out that they poke through my white blouse and my chunky sweater.
I swear I see a thick vein in his arm pop. I even see him take a step forward, keeping his gaze pinned to my skirt as if he’s coming at me.
As if he doesn’t care that there are people loitering about and that they’re starting to notice that the campus celebrity is staring really hard at the campus bad girl.
The bell rings then and he whips his eyes up, his cheeks flushed dark, the tendons on his neck standing taut.
Just to be naughty, I stick out my lower lip at him while he watches, before mouthing, Bye.
The whole day passes in a haze. I do all my classes in a haze. I talk to my girls and eat lunch and meet Miller for our weekly appointment in a haze.
But when I open my locker at the end of the day, my haze breaks. Because inside, I find a once-folded note. I’m so overjoyed that I don’t even care how he got into my locker in the first place. Besides, who cares? I’ve got a note from him!
Is this another attempt at seducing me, Salem?
Because let me tell you that I was nice to you the first time. Very, very nice. But I’m running out of patience now. So think really carefully before you leave another note for me to find.
Also, you should know that I’m pretty used to girls passing me things secretly. Although I have to say that most of them have been articles of clothing rather than a clumsy sexy note written in the back of a trigonometry notebook.
PS: The equation you had on the back of your note was wrong. Find the correct solution below.
PPS: Do not be late for one-on-one soccer practice tomorrow after dinner.
I grin.
Even though I know I fucked up, writing him that letter on the back of a trigonometry equation, I can’t stop my smile.
He wrote back.
He wrote back!
The guy I’ve been writing secret love letters to for the past eight years, wrote me back. Even though it’s not a very encouraging letter per se. I mean, he’s not falling on me like a dying, desperate man but it’s something.
Something that makes my heart race and makes me write him another note that I leave in his mailbox the next day.
My Da
rling Arrow,
Are you challenging me? Are you saying that I can’t sneak secret articles of clothing into your mailbox?
You should know better by now. You should know that I’m very well capable of leaving my tiny thongs and bras in your mailbox if you want me to.
The only problem is that I don’t wear any, remember?
By the way, you should really stop glaring at me in the hallway. I’m not sure if you know this but it makes you look really sexy. Also it makes me wet. So fucking wet and horny and achy that yesterday, I had to excuse myself from my trig class and go to the bathroom so I could do something about it.
And I did.
I touched myself while thinking about the dark color of your eyes and that arousing clench of your jaw.
Yours,
The Rebound Girl
PS: Thanks for solving that trig problem. Miller was surprised at my fake math skills.
PPS: I’m really excited about our one-on-one session tonight.
PPPS: I want you to know that the orgasm I gave myself had nothing on the one you so very nicely gave me. Also, you were right. My pussy is swollen and tight and pouty. Perfect for a big, fat cock such as yours.
Again, I go through my day in a haze but when the time comes to get on the soccer field, I’m bursting at the seams.
I get there early even, hoping to impress him, but he’s already there.
He stands at the edge of the field, watching me walk over to him, his expression smooth and his arms folded across his chest.
I open my mouth to say hi to him when he abruptly clips, “We’ll work on your running.”
“What?”
“Running,” he says tersely. “We’ll work on it.”
“Why?”
“Because running involves knees. And we need to work on your knees.”
I look at my pale knees. “What’s wrong with my knees?”
He looks at them too but there’s a certain absence of emotion. He does it all so clinically, so professionally that I’m… disappointed.
“You need to lift them up more when you run,” he explains while raising his eyes back to my face. “It helps with the posture, and that helps with striking the ball and making goals. That’s pretty much what soccer is all about.”
He looks so coach-like right now. Like he did back in his office.
My Darling Arrow Page 20