Seducing Sora

by C L Walker

  I knew she would love it because beneath her wild teenage charm was an old soul and it was her soul I thought to appease while ignoring proprietary all together. It was the deeper part, the dark part that was in the depths of her eyes, the thoughtfulness that she hid behind sarcasm. It was the light in her eyes when she looked at her family, the love that radiated from her smooth skin when she embraced her friends.

  It was enough to make me question everything I thought I wanted.

  She was honest and pure, and I wanted to know what that tasted like. I wanted her to look at me like she had finally found her adventure.

  But I couldn’t let myself think about it. Distance. I needed to keep her at a distance.

  But then I stole over in the night, acted like a man with loose morals, and I crept over as if I was after a teenage girl’s heart and I didn’t even have the decency to realize it.

  I had put the book by her door with barely contained excitement before I headed back inside. It took all my might to stop myself from watching out the window for their arrival.

  But I succeeded, I reminded myself that I was a grown man, and that I was acting like an idiot.

  I didn't know why I cared; it was confusing to find that I thought of her more often than not. Thinking about her had become a nightly ritual where I got myself off imagining what she would feel like.

  It was bad.

  That wasn’t even my first mistake, that had been made when I looked at her that first day, I should have averted my eyes as soon as they widened in interest. I shouldn’t have looked closer at the color of her eyes, at the span of the dark lashes on her cheeks when she looked down at her work, or the plumpness of her lips when she was pouting.

  I should have lost interest when she acted like a child, or when I happened upon her in a onesie. A onesie!

  But it was oddly adorable because she did it in such a way, you knew she was just being her and there was no trying about it, she was naturally quirky.

  I couldn’t help but laugh at her and envy her at the same time.

  She was wild and free and because of that she was also terrifying.

  The night that really changed it all was when I went to her house for dinner, it was impossible not to look at her in her skintight red dress and say she wasn’t a woman.

  I saw her walk into the kitchen as soon as she came downstairs and if it weren’t for the attention of her family on me, I wouldn’t have been able to look away.

  When our eyes met across the table, I suddenly had a sinking feeling that she was the beginning of something great and equally terrible.

  Like the ignorant idiot that I am I decided it must be because I needed to get laid. What a typical response from a man who was moved by the wrong girl.

  Having sex never solves the problem, I’d seen that story played out a million times over.

  Sex is just sex and at the end of the day Kyla was still the girl I was thinking about. So, I decided not to bother asking Red to hook me up with anyone, because I didn’t want them, I didn’t want a relationship and it felt shallow to have sex with someone when I couldn’t get my mind off Kyla.

  I was too far gone, as I was thinking about smooth skin and coy smiles that outshined anything else my eyes happened upon.

  I liked poetry, but prior to her I hadn’t seen it in my own life as I wasn’t a sap. So, I was baffled by my own rash actions and alarming reactions to the girl next door but still, she was just so fucking beautiful.

  And more importantly she was my student.

  Damn I’m annoying.

  All the hard work I put in to grow up as fast as I could so I could make something of myself and separate myself from my mother, but also take care of her and that’s what I turn into?

  Some pervert who couldn’t make up his mind.

  But that’s all I really needed to keep in mind as I abruptly steered my mind in the opposite direction every time, she tried to make an appearance.

  She was my student.

  Adult or not it did not matter.

  It would take more than a pain in the ass beauty to pull me off track I reasoned. Besides, it wasn’t uncommon for a teacher to gift a student with something that served an academic purpose. Poetry was a perfectly reasonable gift for an aspiring writer.

  That’s right. Reasonable.

  And just like that my guilt was gone. She was a good writer with the potential to be great, I only wished to encourage her and further her education.

  I nodded to myself like the idiot I was and pushed her out of my mind… again.

  Even though she would be back, because little did I know but she would always come back to me.

  I kept pushing ahead, the most important thing to me was my career. I worked my ass off in college to get where I was at. I wasn’t going to let anything get in my way especially not a woman.

  She was off limits and I didn’t break the rules.

  Of course, after all my self-talk, the day after her birthday I found myself checking the clock throughout the day more often than my students which said something.

  I felt nervous about facing her, I had hoped she liked my gift but at the same time I told myself it’d be better if she didn’t. It would be best if she acted like people assumed was a typical teenager, one who wouldn’t appreciate a book as a birthday gift.

  It would be the reminder that I needed, the reminder that she was still a kid underneath that curvy, soft delicious…

  Student. Student.

  I was so on edge I couldn’t even stomach the thought of sitting through lunch with the other teachers. If I had to listen to Mrs. Miller ramble on about her weak knees due to the cold weather for one more day, I was going to bust her wrinkled caps and give her something to complain about.

  So, I ate lunch in my classroom.

  I was happy to be a teacher, but I’d be lying if I said I had a chance in hell of meeting any friends in my occupation. Almost all the teachers were well into their fifties and the few that weren’t including the art teacher Ms. Lemon who had been pining after me for weeks, were different breeds of people. They were nice of course and I did my best to indulge them in conversations, but we had nothing in common.

  I either felt like a child around the teachers or way more mature than the students who weren’t so far from my age.

  Either way my intellect was not matched, but then I had always felt that way, even as a child.

  I had to grow up fast because my father left us, and my mother had been addicted to prescription pills for as long as I could remember. She was still a good mom though; she just didn’t see how her actions affected me because she was too focused on making sure we had everything we needed and getting through it all alone.

  She worked, cleaned the house, and took care of me like any normal mom would. She loved me and I knew it but there was an underlying chaos that she didn’t see. The drugs messed with her personality and sometimes made her sort of fold into herself and it made me feel unwelcome.

  I did everything I could to make things easier on her, I studied hard, stayed out of trouble, and helped as much as I could, and I tried to be the man of the house.

  I grew up too fast, but I felt young at heart, it was a confusing place to be.

  Despite their obvious immaturity I still had more in common with the students but because of my position I had to keep them at arm's length. I was stuck in the middle but there was comfort in knowing it would get easier as the years went by and I put more age distance between myself and the student body.

  I cleared my thoughts and put on, “Immigrant Song,” by Led Zeppelin so I could focus on something while I ate my sandwich.

  I finally felt at peace as my headphones blasted in my ears and I leaned back in my chair and put my hands behind my head and closed my eyes. If anything was going to ease my mind it was loud music.

  A few minutes later I took a deep breath and the soft scent of fresh cut lilies on a warm summer day assaulted my senses. It took a second for my brain to cat
ch up to what my body already knew and snap into action.

  It was her smell.

  She had walked into my classroom and I didn’t hear her through my music, but I knew she was there.

  Her presence in the room made me feel warmer, I thought that if I kept my eyes closed, I could easily be lulled to sleep by that warmth and by the scent on her skin. It would be a perfect place, a place where she wasn’t forbidden to me, a place I could dare to truly know her.

  No matter how much I tried to reason, the fact was that she wasn’t a kid because a kid couldn’t wreck me like that.

  She was a woman.

  My student, yes, but a woman, nonetheless.

  I opened my eyes slowly to see her standing before me, she was watching me with her head tipped slightly to the side.

  Her lovely red lips were slightly turned up at one corner suspiciously like she had discovered my secret.

  I wanted to ask why she smiled so, but it wasn't okay for me to show interest and I was already walking a fine line.

  She was on the verge of breaking me.

  Her bright green eyes would be the only light in the dark my weary soul needed if I’d only let her be my guide.

  It certainly didn’t help that I knew she wanted me to some extent, in a physical way at least. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been watching me through my window.

  I tried not to think about the fact that she watched me in my underwear, it made me mad at first but as soon as I calmed down, it turned me on because I knew then that she wanted me. Since then my emotions went back and forth almost on the daily as I fought against my physical reaction to her.

  Whatever she thought of me, whatever she wanted from me she’d get over it with time and so would I.

  We had to.

  She didn’t know me so there was no substance behind it anyways. I could wait it out even though the thought of her directing her attention on anyone else made me want to hit something.

  When had I become so irrational?

  When she didn’t say anything, I sat up and pulled my headphones off as I glanced at the clock above the door, she was ten minutes early for class.

  Curiosity got the better of me. “Can I help you Miss Nilsen?” I cleared my throat and grabbed my water bottle for a distraction, and I took a drink and looked away from her.

  There was no way in hell she was ever going to know how much she affected me. She was a fierce woman and God only knows what would come of her wielding that kind of power over me.

  She folded her hands together in front of her and let them rest in the folds of her skirt.

  She seemed nervous which seemed odd to me because normally she approached everything with confidence, even things I wished she wouldn’t, like me for example.

  “I wanted to say thank you Sora.” My name on her lips was the sweetest sound, and I longed to hear her say it as she sighed from pleasure.

  She looked around the room at the empty desks and said, “I figured it was best that I do it before the others were around.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said, then stood up and stretched, unconsciously bringing us that much closer together. “But there was no need for secrecy Miss Nilsen, it was just a book.”

  Just a book that was over one hundred years old and part of my prize collection.

  If my words were a letdown for her, she didn’t show it as she smiled and nodded her head like she understood. “All the same, I appreciate the gesture. I almost finished reading it last night. She was a wonderful poet.”

  I hadn’t notice before because I avoided looking at her with too much interest, but I noticed then that she had dark circles under her glassy eyes. She looked exhausted. It shouldn’t have, but it made me happy that she stayed up all night reading a book I gifted to her.

  I got an almost perverse satisfaction from being the reason her eyes had a sleepy look about them. She was barely keeping them open, and she looked as if one calming touch would lay them to rest.

  I knew that if I could just graze one finger across her soft cheek, she’d melt in my hands with that lovely sigh I was dying to hear.

  But instead I looked down at my phone because I needed a second to pull myself back together. I couldn’t figure out why I was so affected by her, it wasn’t the first time I had seen an attractive woman.

  It was ridiculous.

  Why did it have to happen on my first job? The last thing I needed was to make a mistake of that magnitude and ruin my career before it got anywhere.

  “I am happy you enjoyed it. Take care of it, it’s an old book,” I said, although I already knew she would.

  Similar to how I somehow knew she would understand me if given the chance to, because when I looked into her eyes, I knew she saw me. Just as I saw her.

  Which is exactly why we couldn’t get to know each other.

  She turned away with a hesitant nod and for the first time I saw vulnerability reflected in her face. It was a curious thing to want to know every aspect of a person, she was so vibrant on the surface that I felt almost desperate to see the other side.

  Her sadness, her vulnerabilities, I wanted to know them all, I wanted to see her on her knees in every sense of the word.

  Screwed is what you are!

  I was completely and utterly screwed.

  “What are you listening to?” she asked from where she sat down at her desk.

  She had pulled out a notebook and started writing quickly in it like she had been holding onto a thought and was scared it would escape her before it was recorded.

  “Led Zeppelin,” I said.

  “Classic. So, you’re one of those guys huh. Did you wear skinny jeans and converse in high school? Wash your hair maybe once every few weeks?” she said with a small smile.

  I laughed because she was close. “Well as you can see, I still wear skinny jeans and converse, so I am not going to give you credit for that one. As for my hair I’ve always been more on the clean-cut side. I never fancied myself a Rockstar either, no garage bands for me. I’ve always been an average nerdy guy in chucks.”

  She made a weird noise and scrunched up her nose before she looked up at me, put her pen in her mouth and chewed on it as she considered me. “Average?” she asked. “Forgive me but average in what regard? Looks? Certainly not. Intelligence? Look where you’re standing at your age, so again that one doesn’t play out. Personality? Perhaps, since that has yet to be fully seen.”

  I didn’t know how to respond because by her assessment I was anything but average. But that’s the funny thing about people, most of us don’t see ourselves as being anything other than simply ourselves. I had never done anything in my opinion that made me feel like I stood out. Because the truth is, I always faded into the background, I wasn’t attractive to anyone until high school so the Sora who was too skinny, too Asian and too quiet was still in my reflection on my bad days.

  I knew I had become good looking to others as I got older, but I didn’t see what was so special. I was always focused on my academics and I didn’t have many friends. People didn’t see me, I had been average, in every sense of the word on the surface growing up. And in our world no one cares beyond that, if you don’t glitter then you are not gold, if you’re not shining for all the world to see, then you are not a diamond.

  “You assume a few things too many, one being that the man you see now is how I have always been, and two, that your perception of me is the same as the rest of the world or my own self-perception. Perspective is everything.”

  “But if that’s what I see then why does anyone else’s perspective matter? It doesn’t mean it’s not true for me.” She stopped chewing on her pen and put it down and glanced at the clock. First bell was going to ring any minute.

  “Are you suggesting that your opinion of me should be so important that I look past everyone else’s, myself included?” I laughed rudely and watched with satisfaction as she squinted her eyes at me and lowered her brows.

  She was irritated. “I’m suggesting
that you should recognize what others see in you and use it as the basis in which you build your own self-worth on. Because sometimes people are unnecessarily hard on themselves and if someone says you’re doing great things then you should consider why they think that. I didn’t mean anything else by it so calm down.”

  “Now you make it sound like I don’t know my own worth when I was just merely suggesting that I am more human than you make me out to be. I’m flawed just the same.”

  The bell rang as she opened her mouth and I turned away.

  It was perfect timing because that had been well on its way to becoming an argument, for what reason I had no idea but fighting with her was easy.

  I loved how all my self-talk about treating her like the other students got thrown out the window as soon as she walked in the room. I literally forgot myself and all my intentions because she was consuming my good sense.

  I sat down again as kids started to fill the room and I felt her eyes on me.

  I glanced up and I could tell she had so much more to say as she hated not getting the last word in.

  I smiled at my small victory and relished the roll of her eyes.

  I enjoyed the brawls because I enjoyed every minute of her regardless of what was going on and she was cute when she was being feisty.

  Student!

  Chapter 13

  Kyla

  Amber and I headed into Sora’s classroom after school for our first gathering to discuss our booth for the fright festival. There were going to be a total of ten booths run by students from clubs and the rest of them were to be ran by volunteers such as ourselves.

  We had to choose an idea and run it past the principal before it was final, and then we could move forward.

  Last year we did an astrology booth, but we made up all the horoscopes ourselves and tried our best to make them silly and fun rather than serious. Even though I had a lot of fun writing them I wanted to do something different, and honestly something that would take less effort.