Star-Crossed

by Luna Lacour

  Will closed his eyes. I touched his leg. His eyelids fluttered open, lips barely following suit.

  “Can I turn the light off?” I asked him. His smile split.

  You lovely thing, I thought. I know exactly what you’re thinking.

  I loved that, too. How we could go in the span of seconds from student and teacher into just two people that were the crawling the walls with unquenched fantasies. I wasn’t a fool. There are only so many reasons that we invite people into our carefully-guarded castles. It felt as if I was playing the dragon, and he was trapped in the highest tower; a knight without any armor.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because.”

  “Because why?”

  I got up and turned the lamp off anyway, leaving only the faint light through the window streaming in. Car beams and the gentle, white gleam of streetlight touched his face. He didn’t take his eyes off me as I stood in front of him, heart thrashing, wondering if I was insane or insatiable.

  Both, I decided. I was both.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked him, still standing; still watching him as he watched me.

  “You don’t want to know,” he said, making a lip-zipping motion. “What are you thinking, love?”

  Love. I knew why he used that word. He had made a point of telling me, rather bluntly, that British folk didn’t actually go latching the word love to everything. It was a common term of affection, but also a common stereotype. A generalization that Mr. Tennant was rather colicky about.

  “Thinking about you, love,” I said.

  He looked as if he wanted to both grab me - taking me right there on the living room floor - or break down weeping.

  One by one, I started unbuttoning my shirt; watching as his eyes, like an elevator, slowly drop from my chin to that calico fabric.

  “Your tie,” I whispered. “Cover your eyes with it.”

  “Excuse me?” he balked, hands covering his chest defensively. There was an undeniable spark in his eyes, flint on stone. The idea seeped into his face as if I were suggesting he dive into the first sheet of freshly-fallen snow.

  I didn’t give a moment to process my request; instead, placing his glasses aside, I loosened his tie and pulled it up until it obstructed all possible vision.

  He looked panicked; white light flashed over his frame as a car passed. Branches tapped against glass, and the clock still sang as I yanked my jeans down – somewhat clumsily – and climbed on top of Mr. Tennant’s lap.

  Beneath the fabric of the barely-there underwear, I could feel everything. He was already hard; squirming lightly beneath legs that he knew were bare.

  “Unbutton my shirt, I instructed, placing his hands on my chest. His hands palmed my breasts, fingers caressing gently. It was infuriating how badly I wanted to make him writhe. “I want you to touch me.”

  My pulse quickened; heat pooled over my skin. It was hard to believe that this was actually happening; and a part of me was convinced that everything – all of it - was just our imagination. In actuality, we were both asleep; our dreams linked by an invisible thread that joined at the spot between two tainted hearts.

  I shed the shirt like a gossamer shell, revealing nothing but skin. I hadn’t worn a bra, my breasts barely needing one, anyway. There wasn’t more than a handful.

  Mr. Tennant’s fingers ran down my back, catching skin without the nails, and I almost wanted to beg for him to use his claws. I rubbed against him; kissing his neck as he gasped and said my name so quietly that I wasn’t sure he’d said anything at all.

  I kissed his hands, his wrists and fingers; the same fingers used to instruct, to write messages on the whiteboard, to motion gestures in the classroom. The same hands that flipped through papers and made remarks like very insightful or, on some of Tyler’s work, use more adjectives.

  Mr. Tennant was all of them. Every single luminous, beautiful descriptor that existed in every dictionary, in every language.

  “Please touch me,” I whispered. “Please.”

  His mouth was pressed to the slope between my throat and my neck. He kissed my chin, hands gripping my shoulders. I could have orgasmed just by continuing to grind against him; bodies clinging and breath like broken glass.

  He was fully clothed, I was nearly naked. It was delicious, the dynamic of it all. I let him slide his hand beneath the fabric of my underwear, rubbing only the outside. When he tried to slip a finger in, I stopped him.

  “Why?” he asked, a whisper. “What’s wrong?”

  I don’t want pain, I thought. Not tonight. Not now.

  “Just stay like this,” I told him. “Just like this.”

  I kissed him before he could protest, our tongues gentle and moans even gentler. Every so often he would exhale in a way that told me there was nothing more he wanted then to rip off every shred of his fine dark clothing and fuck me, hard.

  I came in waves; my mouth against his ear; my body glistening from sweat and the pale light that blanketed my skin, as if begging me to cover myself up. I was a child, a student.

  Panting, I grabbed my shirt, buttoning it up and contemplating pulling my pants on. I decided against it; pulling the tie from over Mr. Tennant’s eyes and letting him catch that small glimpse of my body. Just my legs. Nothing more.

  I knelt down, tightening the length of black silk over my own eyes until the only thing I could see was a pitch darker than nothing.

  “So this is what it’s like to be totally blind.”

  Will swallowed, nodding. We looked at each other; I was on my knees, he was seated on the settee - a strange but proper signification of our place in the outside world. Both of us were frozen, unmoving; our faces etched with a mutual fear and partial satiation. An unspoken exclamation:

  There’s no going back from this.

  Will scooped me up in his arms, cradling me on his lap; we held hands, drowsy and floating in a post-pleasure stupor; watching hazy stars through the window. For awhile I stayed with my head resting on the curve of his neck; basking in the dark; relishing the feeling of his chest as it rose and fell.

  We had seen nothing. We had felt everything.

  Almost everything.

  It was hard to fall back into reality. But we passed the time easing into other things, things away from the intimate act we had just shared. I begged him to watch a movie, agreeing on The Yellow Submarine, which was a favorite of his. I basked in the aftermath of the blue light, after the film had ended; the projector casting an indigo filter through the entire room.

  It was then I learned that blue was Mr. Tennant’s favorite color.

  He showed me an album from his youth, with pictures that were so obviously nineties it made me grin. There were photos of Will on a boat, sailing with family. Will in school, in his uniform, where he told me that all the girls and boys wore uniforms, too. It was a mandated thing.

  Things I discovered about Mr. William Tennant:

  -Only child. Very similar upbringing. Rich parents, lonely childhood. Spent most of the time with his books, films, acting.

  -He was an Oxford Man. Oxford. I couldn’t believe it, and at the same time it wasn’t a surprise at all. He showed me his diplomas, which he hung proudly in his bedroom.

  I tried not to think about the fact that, even if was barely for a minute, I had stood in his bedroom.

  -Once-upon a time, I discovered, he had played Romeo. At the Globe Theater, no less.

  There were photos of him on stage, performing; dressed in Renaissance costumes and wearing crowns.

  With each page turned, the aged photographs granted me a small glimpse into the far away world that Mr. Tennant had once resided in. A time where his hair was just a little bit longer; his body a bit lankier; his eyes a bit brighter.

  They had darkened some since his youth.

  Turning to the last page, there were several photos of the same girl that lived in the framed photographs. Burnished hair, freckled-nose.

  I looked at Mr. Tennant, his mouth a straight
line. We were floating in that same blue light; suspended in a place between silence and spoken words that neither of us would dare to say.

  “Have you ever had your heart broken?”

  The question drifted quietly into the air, evaporating immediately.

  “Yes,” he said. No pause.

  “When?”

  “Twice,” he said. “Once when I was younger.”

  He touched the photo. A part of me hurt; not because of him, but for him.

  “And the second time?” I asked.

  Mr. Tennant slammed the album shut, eyes heavy; touching his black tie and gazing into the projector’s blue light with a look that said both help me and I can’t be helped.

  He never responded.

  It was raining that Wednesday, and the sound of rainfall rang through chapel that morning. Both of us, Tyler and I, watched as the droplets pelted against a stained-glass depiction of The Virgin Mary, running down in tiny rivers.

  Neither of us really heard the sermon. Mr. Tennant, being a faculty member, was forced to sit in the back rows – Tyler and I sat up front. This admittedly made it easier to absorb the monotone murmurs as I kept my head low, hands clasped in faux-prayer.

  A sopping courtyard left Tyler and I to fend for ourselves in the cafeteria. Which, to be frank, was more of a buffet-style restaurant than the typical plastic-tray and spork setup. Trinity had coined it Tuscana Ristorante. The food was made by hand with legitimate chefs, and you could get anything from a plate of fries to pasta in a fresh, homemade pesto sauce.

  But I was plain. I bought a plate of mozzarella sticks and a bottle of Coke. We split both; hunkering down in a shadowy booth with our legs curled up to our chests.

  “What’s it like to be rich?” Tyler asked, stretching out the two halves of his mozzarella stick. I measured about three inches before the cheese finally snapped, like bubblegum between fingers. “Like, not having to worry about the same shit that regular people worry about. Like how much a gallon of milk costs.”

  “How much does a gallon of milk cost?”

  He blinked, embarrassed.

  “I don’t even know. Like five bucks.”

  “About $3.50,” I told him. “And I’m not rich. My father’s rich.”

  We ate our appetizer in silence for awhile. The sounds of chewing, swallowing, dishes clattering, people laughing. Everything was cast in red and pink Valentine-colored lights.

  “You look sullen,” he eventually said.

  “Twitterpatted,” I echoed. “But no, I’m not sullen. The word you’re thinking of is delusional. I’m swimming in a sea of all-consuming delusion.”

  “You’re rambling,” he said, alarmed. “Jesus, what’s wrong?”

  “I’m just insanely out of it at the moment.”

  “Why?” he wasn’t going to stop pressing. “What have you been up to?”

  A fleeting image of Mr. Tennant, blindfolded, danced around in my head.

  “Nothing really,” I lied. “Just figuring some things out.”

  He leaned forward, his green eyes curious. Tyler Dawson was such a boy. It made me really sad, and really soft, and really happy at the same time. I wanted to be like him. Less selfish and more moon-eyed about everything.

  “About what?” he asked.

  I shrugged, sipping my Coke, stirring the ice around with my straw.

  At the Ristorante’s door, I saw Mr. Tennant laughing along with another faculty member. Some teacher who was in the Science Department; I didn’t know his name, but I knew that he taught the Advanced Biology courses.

  “About me,” I told him.

  Bell rang. Tyler cleared our dishes, and we separated as I caught one lingering glance from both Mr. Tennant and the Science teacher.

  Tyler shoved me playfully, bidding me a temporary farewell; we split like the two halves of a sliced Planarian.

  I went barreling into the theater that afternoon, where Tyler was waiting on stage. Hands hanging loosely at his sides, he smiled at me, already dressed in his street clothes. Mr. Tennant didn’t want us in uniform; he insisted that we dress comfortably, eschewing the distractions that ties and skirts would bring.

  I was wearing a simple black T-shirt and jeans that were loose enough. Black flats.

  I wanted to look like him, in some way.

  “Rain’s still pouring down,” he told me, as if I couldn’t hear it. I could.

  Everyone eventually entered, but I didn’t notice any of them. Even Marius, who rapped his knuckle against my shoulder; he was dressed in khakis and a T-shirt that read Schrodinger’s Cat Is Not Dead.

  When Mr. Tennant took stage, stoic-as-usual, I tried my best to breathe normally. I felt choked, distracted; watching as he moved so normally without the weight of potential consequence. He moved like a grown-up; unaffected by the banter and quiet giggles of teenage inexperience.

  He was an adult. I had to remind myself of this. A growing child when I was born; ten accumulated trips already made around the sun. When I was first learning to form sentences, he was learning what it meant to fall in love. To have his heart broken. To take his first steps on a journey that in my still-growing mind, as a toddler, I was unable to even comprehend.

  The time, no doubt, and the world and sights and people he had seen, had more than likely chilled him out - but I was still a live wire.

  Mr. Tennant clapped his hands, and we quickly fell into the groove of things. Insisting on starting things off with an ice-breaker, Tyler and I were instructed to perform the infamous scene where Romeo and Juliet ditch the masked ball and he proclaims that hooking up with her would be like a religious experience.

  I loved that, in a truly sincere way. Not just in the dynamics of the play, but how lyrical and poignant the entirety of the line was. How mind-blowing it was to be so young and so wound up by one person so quickly.

  Tyler touched my face, and my heart skipped-a-beat. We were beneath the burning light, as close as Leonard and Olivia were when they performed our roles nearly fifty years prior.

  While my prayers affect I take.

  Our lips met to the soundtrack of gasps and clapping hands. His fingers touched my cheeks; my hands were around his neck. Tyler was at least a head shorter than Will, and much closer to my height.

  His gaze was hooded and smile sleepy. When it was finished, we turned to the audience and smiled like two awkward kids who had obviously just kissed for the very first time.

  “Fantastic,” Mr. Tennant said. “Absolutely fantastic. Alright. Now one more time, at the beginning.”

  Again, I thought. So we did it again; this time with more passion, more raw verbosity as we wove the lines like string set fire. There was the inevitable explosion; the giving of sin; the realization of what it meant to fall head over heels into something so wholly unexpected.

  As our lips met for the second time, I imagined that it was Will whose arms held me against him with a desperate intensity. I imagined the students gasping; bags dropping, bodies dropping. Doors slamming in frantic escape to tell someone – anyone - what they were witnessing.

  Tyler was still holding me when it was over; nose pressed against mine; bits of his hair tickling my forehead.

  I love you. I pictured him saying. Even if he didn’t. It would have fit.

  More clapping. More of Will telling Tyler how brilliant he was. Tyler beamed, hand still in mine, the skin of his palms warm and soft.

  We took our seats, and I watched as Marius took the stage alongside the actor playing Mercutio. They yelled, pretending to sword-fight, and during the entire span of time all I could do was watch Will from my spot at the back of the theater; watching as he gave suggestions and ran lines with an emphasis on passion.

  I wondered to myself; head against the back of the hard seat; half-listening to Tyler talk about how he was all nerve-endings and jitters, about what I would be like when I was Mr. Tennant’s age. I wondered how much would change, and how much would stay the same; if I would find happiness in my adult life. If t
here would still be silver-bell laughter and surprises. That explosive awe, like when the person you’ve been long-pining for finally says your name. Those feelings that in your hot-blooded youth you believe will stay sewn into your heart forever and ever, always.

  I wondered, looking at Mr. Tennant in that millisecond of our eyes meeting, if we were doomed to perpetually search for the things we lost somewhere along the way.

  NINE

  Something had happened with Mr. Tennant, approximately half-way between exchanging phone numbers and my walking out his classroom door.

  He had seen, written on a piece of notebook paper, his name scrawled out in purple ink – surrounded by a five-pointed star. I had drawn a series of lines behind it, symbolizing a shooting star; a small wish.

  The worst of it all was that it had meant nothing; I was simply trying to keep myself from nodding off during a horribly boring lecture in Psychology involving Classical Conditioning. And what he couldn’t see was that under the name, I had also doodled a series of buildings and birds. A skinny girl with long hair, and a bunch of little, tiny flowers.

  It was embarrassing, and I felt completely childish. Totally stupid.

  His eyes were locked for a solid minute before he released my hand, smiling tightly while still maintaining a look that seemed both perplexed and mildly disarmed.

  “Enjoy the rest of your day,” he said, each syllable sharpened. Cordial. “I’ll see you on stage this afternoon.”

  “Bye, Mr. Tennant.”

  As my fingers brushed against the dark-lacquered door, he cleared his throat. I waited to see if he was going to say something, but he simply grabbed the stack of papers that had been lazily dropped on his desk – neglecting his request for a neat pile – and sighed wistfully.

  “Goodbye, Kaitlyn.”

  I had scared him.

  Practice went the same. Tyler and I ran through the balcony scene, and Tyler also went up against Marius in the sword fight where Romeo kills Tybalt while avenging Mercutio’s death. Marius, of course, knocked him backward with an aggravated blow.

  “Enough!” Mr. Tennant yelled. The sound vibrated off the walls; a delicious thrill trembling up my spine. “Marius, that was absolutely not necessary. There’s a difference between acting and ego. I don’t need your bravado on stage.”