by C L Walker
I hadn’t spoken out of turn all week since Monday so I didn’t think I was in trouble, but I didn’t know why else he would need to speak to me.
I reluctantly made my way towards his desk and waited quietly.
“It’s about your memory paper,” he said.
He dug through some papers and pulled mine out, there was no grade on it unlike all the other papers I saw in the stack.
He held it in his hands and looked it over with a sigh.
When he didn’t explain I grew nervous. “Look can I rewrite it then? I really don’t want to fail an assignment.” I reached for the paper, but he pulled it back.
“I think you write well, and I enjoy your honesty as it’s not often that you hear people say romantic things such as you have anymore.” He bit his bottom lip and I averted my gaze to the clock before I looked back at him and acted like I was growing impatient waiting for his point rather than trying not to stare at his mouth.
“But the things you implied were a little inappropriate for school,” he said.
He looked into my eyes sternly but after a moment his confidence slipped as if he weren’t sure if he was doing the right thing. It seemed to me that he was as embarrassed as I was feeling over what I wrote.
What I implied wasn’t the some of the memory though, it was a tiny part, and it was necessary to get my point across.
Still he seemed to be uncomfortable with the knowledge I had shared in such a small hint.
The answer was obvious, but I asked him anyways. “So, what part do I need to fix?”
The whole thing seemed silly, it’s not like any of it was graphic, maybe his imagination was a little too wild.
He ran a hand through his hair and cleared his throat before he read, “’When lips parted with heavy sighs and words laced in the sweetest sugar swirled into my ear, I knew then I was happy to give him my all.’ And a bit of the following sentences.”
I already knew which part he was talking about, but I pushed him to say it anyways and I got a sickening amount of satisfaction out of it. I wanted to see how far I could push him, simply for the sake of unnerving a teacher, or him to be more accurate.
“Okay I get where you’re going with this, but I didn’t directly say anything. You’re assuming I slept with him, right?” He nodded his head. “But that’s what writing is about, its subject to interpretation. It’s an assumption on your part.”
He looked at me sideways and the coldness dropped slightly as he thought my words over and perhaps realized that I had a good point.
“I guess you’re right it was I who assumed. I apologize if I brought this awkward situation on us for no reason.” He chuckled lightly and set my paper back with the others.
Shit!
I wished I didn’t feel the need to be honest all the time, it was a real drag.
“No need to apologize you weren’t wrong, I did sleep with him and I was referring to it. But I felt it was necessary to understand the relationship we had. I wasn’t trying to be inappropriate so that’s why I made it vague so that people could make of it what they wished,” I said.
His smile faltered with my confession and he handed my paper to me. “I need you to change it.”
“There’s no integrity in lies Mr. Tanaka, I can’t change what happened,” I said.
His hands curled into fists as his frustration grew. “I understand that you used it as a means to describe your uh passion, but this is high school and when I grade papers I’d rather not have to read about children having sex.”
I wondered if he was so unprofessional with other students or if he only failed to hide his frustration with me.
“Yeah sorry to break it to you but most of us are in fact having sex and we aren’t children. So, I’m not going to act like I don’t understand adult concepts.”
“Regardless, I can’t allow it. Change it now,” he said none too kindly.
That was the end of the argument, and I knew it was useless to try and convince him, so I stood there and stared at him in disbelief.
I didn’t see what the big deal was, I could probably find something more suggestive in the library if I looked hard enough. He was being petty and sensitive towards me and he didn’t see it.
“Fine,” I said, when my stare failed to crack his composure in the slightest.
I took the paper and sat down at the nearest desk and I crossed out the sentence and rewrote it, so it was less suggestive. Then I slapped it down once again on his desk.
“There, please make sure it’s PG enough for your delicate sensibilities Mr. Tanaka, I wouldn't want you to have to imagine me having sex.”
He looked up and irritation shone in his eyes, there was something to be said but he clearly refused to say it and I could tell it was killing him. Instead he read what I changed and took his pen and wrote A+ at the top.
“Thank you, it was beautifully written, and I enjoyed it immensely, you’re a lot deeper than I would have guessed,” he said.
“Whatever dude,” I said, before I turned to leave.
There was no point in complimenting something he forced me to change as it was no longer authentically me.
“Miss Nilsen,” he said, and I stopped without turning around. “You earned yourself detention next week, I don’t appreciate the attitude you’ve been giving me.”
What the hell?
I gritted my teeth, and it took all of my self-control to contain my fury that had been slowly building since the day at the library.
He was the most frustrating man, he was rude to me, swore at me and made me change my work because he couldn’t handle the realization that teenagers had sex. Who wouldn’t give him attitude when he had made no effort to hide how much my mere presence even in a crowded room annoyed him.
I turned around with a fake smile plastered on my face that was so forced it was painful. “I’d be truly honored sir, what day?”
His eyes slid over to me slowly, his eyelids looked heavy and I cursed him for the lazy, sexy look he always had going on that threatened to disarm me on the daily.
He smiled in return. “I’m glad my offer has been met with no objections.” As if I had a choice, what a jerk. “It will have to be on Wednesday, you get to help me sort through papers.”
Get? His word choice was really grinding my gears.
And of course, he chose my birthday.
“Sounds peachy keen jellybean.” I gave a slight bow and watched one of his eyebrows hitch in annoyance. “Have a good weekend Mr. Tanaka.”
How we had come to a point where there was so much tension between us in such a short amount of time was confusing to me.
Two weeks we had known each other, and already I wanted to slap him as much as I wanted to do naughty things to him, and I wasn’t going to be able to do either.
“You too Miss Nilsen,” he said.
After he wished me a good weekend, he went back to ignoring my presence as he looked something over on his computer.
I peered at him longer than was necessary and aside from his clenched jaw that always gave him away you’d think he didn’t notice me.
I didn’t know why I got to him, whether it was because he didn’t like me or what, but it was fun nonetheless, well aside from getting detention.
Welp.
Sora's POV (>^.^)> <3
My eyes snapped to her once she had turned around to leave as I thought of all the ways I would have responded to her if she had been anyone else other than my student.
It had become a habit of mine to watch her whenever I was free to do so and it was a struggle every day to not respond to her antics the way I wanted to.
She was something else.
In any other setting I was sure I would have been chasing her no matter where she went because there was something about her, she was like a thousand colors rushing by and all I could do is stare in wonder.
She had asked me what my type was, and a few weeks ago I would have said I didn’t have one, but the reality is I
didn’t know what it was. I wasn’t picky about girls, and I didn’t search them out as they had always sort of fell in line and I simply went along with it.
I wasn’t looking for anything serious and I didn’t meet with girls I wanted to put time and effort into. I had dated every type imaginable but none of them stuck. I had other things to deal with, building a career, taking care of my mother, and I was trying to find a sliver of happiness wherever I could.
Then I saw Kyla as she tried to sneak into class, with her long purple hair that trailed down her back and her brilliant emerald eyes and I immediately thought that she was something I wanted to get my hands on.
For what purpose, I didn’t know but I wanted her, nonetheless.
She was an enigma to me. One moment she was calm, serene, inviting in every sense of the word, then the next she was a hot mess rolling around in children’s pajamas.
She was excitement, she was danger, and she was a worthy opponent with that mouth of hers.
She was the kind of girl I could never get bored with because simply talking to her was enough to forget who I was, where we were and the glaring fact that she was probably underage.
I kept telling myself that she wasn’t lovely; her smile wasn’t radiant, and her laugh wasn’t contagious.
But I was a liar.
It was a wonder how instant the attraction was, and it was getting harder to deny every day. If I didn’t find a distraction soon, I was a goner, because if two weeks in was hell for me, a few months and I’d be drowning in her.
It was the stuff of nightmares being attracted to a student because I wasn’t a pervert, I had never looked at an underage girl like that since I became an adult, I wasn’t that guy.
The way she acted and responded to me did little to help the situation.
I should have been more intimidating to her like the rest, but she wasn’t afraid to argue with me or put me in my place and as much as I didn’t enjoy someone having one up on me, I knew I’d let her have her way sometimes if I was in a position to do so.
I’d love to play give and take with her.
I also knew the second she walked into my class that she was trouble; she was right about that, but she was my kind of trouble.
My stomach had tightened at the mere sight of her, and when she gave her excuses for being late all I could think about was how seductive and low her voice was, so unlike many other female voices.
She was achingly beautiful, but I thought it’d be okay, she was just a beautiful young girl. They were everywhere I reasoned. I could handle that in a non-perverted way.
But regarding her the same way I would an actual child didn’t hold up. Especially when she appeared before me in that red dress that hugged every delicious curve of her body the night, I had dinner at her house.
It had been the quickest game over for me, and I had to fight the rising heat as I sat at the dinner table with her family. It was uncomfortable.
I had went upstairs that night after she left and promptly pleased myself thinking about taking that dress off her and touching her pale skin.
I thought of her pretty red mouth and her green eyes that made me think of magic -if it was real it was in her- she was a fiery girl that spoke of wild things that was quickly turning me into a dreamer.
What a load of mushy bullshit!
She pranced around like a seductive little sprite, weaving her spells that turned me into a sentimental asshole.
She had no right, and I had no right thinking that way because she was my student.
I wasn’t even sure how old she was; it was the beginning of the year, so I reasoned she was probably seventeen. She was a senior though so I knew she’d most likely be eighteen by the end of the school year but what did that say about me in that moment?
I blew a load in my hand over a seventeen-year-old girl, for fucks sake, I was out of my mind.
I knew it was shitty of me to even consider it, but I was desperate to get lost in somebody. I had to, because if I was getting butterflies from a teenage girl there was clearly something wrong with me.
I had been deprived for far too long and my reactions to her physically had to be a result of being without a woman for so long.
It was pathetic, it was the asshole thing to do but I wasn’t beyond being that guy to forget about the girl I had no business thinking about.
So, I called Red.
She was the only friend I still talked to from college and she had also moved up north to work so we had planned on seeing each other once I was settled. We were never interested in each other but there were many times she tried to hook me up with her friends and I was finally considering her offer.
I called her up and invited her out for coffee at the café in town that was holding a poetry reading. She was a journalist but she wrote poetry and short stories in her free time so I figured it’d make her happy, as well as give me an opportunity to let her know I had an interest in dating again.
Or I could always straight up beg her to send someone my way that would be a worthy distraction from Kyla if that was possible. Not that I could tell Red about her because then I would be admitting that I had become some creep over the course of one day, the first day of school mind you.
My first year!
What an idiot I had become.
Clearly, I needed to be around other women before I became some asshat and let a teenage girl become the center of my universe.
Chapter 7
Kyla
Amber came over after school so we could get ready for our double date together.
Jake and Mikey were going to pick us up at six and take us out to dinner and then to The Blue Cafe for a poetry reading which I was always excited about no matter who the company was.
I enjoyed listening to others express themselves and more often than not I went home with inspiration for my own work, that I hadn’t yet worked up the courage to share.
So, it was a typical Friday night for me aside from the blind date that I was hoping went smoothly enough even if we weren’t into each other so I could enjoy my time.
I was nervous but knowing Amber would be with me the entire time eased some of my worries.
The most important part was of course the outfit because getting dressed up and feeling good about yourself was sometimes more fun than whatever event followed.
“Should I wear the black one or the white one?” I asked, as I held up two different dresses to my body for Amber to compare.
She pointed to the black one. “No wait, why don’t you wear pants, we wear skirts all the time.” She was sitting at my vanity applying a smoky eye and nude lipstick that looked amazing with her coloring, she looked sleek and ready to conquer.
She had a point, so I put my dresses back and pulled out my faux leather leggings and a black tunic and I paired it with my thigh high suede boots.
Black was our go to shade when we went out in the evenings because you can’t go wrong with a simple all black outfit, it was sexy, and it didn’t scream for attention either.
We munched on snacks as we got ready, and we had Skrillex on and it blasted from my speakers so loudly we couldn’t hear each other unless we yelled.
It was just the way we liked it.
‘Concert Amber and Kyla,’ as my mom liked to call it, was always in session while we were together.
We often put music on to sing and dance to for an hour or so to get exercise in before we lounged around for the rest of the day and ate junk. It was one of my favorite things to do and I couldn’t imagine a time in our lives when we wouldn’t be doing things like that, even though I knew deep down that our time together would be limited in the future.
Maybe being an adult wasn’t something I wanted.
I walked over to the vanity and put my arm around her neck, I hovered my phone above us and took a picture and set it as my home screen.
She glanced up at me curiously. “Have you been watching Mr. Tanaka still?”
I walked to my windo
w and peeked outside and found nothing of interest as I replied to her question. “Nope.”
It had been almost a week and I hadn’t seen a single ab. “If he caught me at this point, he would understandably be an even bigger ass so I’m playing it safe, for now anyway.”
I dropped the blinds and swung my arms out wide as I sprayed perfume around me and stepped into it. “Nothing to see here folks!”
“Right, except an extremely hot figure of authority,” she said, as she gathered our purses off the bed. “But pretending otherwise is obviously in your best interest.”
“It doesn’t help when you say things like that then tell me to get over it,” I said, as I took my leather purse from her hands. “You’re actually mean.”
She winked at me and opened my door.
“But it’s so much more fun this way.” She giggled and headed downstairs in front of me. “Besides imagine how insufferable you’d be without me around to shut you down on occasion.”
As usual she had a good point, we balanced each other well, we were two halves of a very strange whole.
“I love how our friendship is built on such conflicting foundations,” I said, “On one hand it’s open hostility and on the other its honesty and loyalty.”
We were like sisters in that way, well the way I imagined sisters should be because our relationship was certainly better than the one, I had with Mya.
“You mean to say it is built on perfection. People dream about having friendships such as ours,” she said loudly, as she had already reached the bottom of the stairs and I was still at the top.
“Obviously,” I shouted even louder, and got a snap of her eyes in response.
I ran down the stairs with a snicker to catch up with her and looked at my phone, we had ten minutes to spare.
“Bye mom,” I said, as I opened the front door.
“Bye, be home by midnight girls,” she said.
“Okay,” Amber and I said at the same time, like we did every time and yet my mother still had to remind us of the curfew.