Pupil: Inspired By a True Story

by Zoey Long

  “What does that mean, sir?”

  “I want you. I love you. I also want to keep my job. I don’t know how realistic this all is, but I am going to damn well try.”

  As soon as the sentiment leaves my lips, I know how true it is. I’ve never allowed myself to so clearly articulate everything I want. At least not out from behind the camera. We’re in for a hell of a ride.

  Chapter 13: Carrie

  His hands are all over me by the time we make it back up to the hotel room, and if I didn’t want his hands on my bare skin so badly, I’d never want to take this dress off. I’ve never felt so regal in my life. The dress fits, but just barely. I can’t inhale too deeply or I can feel my chest strain against the fabric, and everyone knows satins and silks have no give.

  He said he loves me. I’ve heard of professors falling in love with their students, hell, I think I even had a high school teacher who ran away with one girl when she was of age. It was quite the gossip. They’re married now and have two daughters. It happens, but never to me. This entire weekend has been a whirlwind, but I know this for sure: I’ve never felt this strongly about anyone before.

  Adam places me in front of the mirror and outlines my body with his hands, the dress still on.

  “You’re the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen” he whispers in my ear as he traces my neck with his lips. I close my eyes and fall back into him, stop worrying about how the hell he’s going to get this dress off of me. There’s a part of my brain that’s prepared for this to all go away once we’re back at school. Maybe we’re living in a fantasy world for just this one weekend where we both know we’re perfect for each other and once we’re back at Earnsley it’ll evaporate like rain water on hot pavement.

  “Over your head?” he whispers, trying not to laugh.

  “What?” I breathe, opening my eyes. I see that he has the dress to my waist and he’s trying to figure out how to get it off of me.

  I stifle a giggling fit and help him remove the dress, yes, up and over my head, very carefully.

  “If it fits over my hips it will fit over my head.”

  He grabs a fistful of hip on both sides once the dress is off. “I love your hips.”

  We both realize the dress should be hung up immediately, it slinked to the floor like it was made of liquid. He crooks a finger through one of the spaghetti straps and lifts it off the floor, opens the closet and hangs up the dress. It’s the only thing hanging in the hotel closet, a shock of blood red against the white wall, aside from the complimentary terry cloth robes.

  He closes the closet door and turns back to face me, kissing me as I reach between his legs, excited to feel him stiff and bulging. He inhales sharply when I touch him there, pulling back and tracing the outline of his erection with my fingertips. I undo the buckle on his belt. The sound of the metal clanging together excites me and I pull down his pants. I put my palm back over his erect cock and it easily slips out of his boxers, hot in my hand. I lick my palm and touch it again, gripping it firmly.

  “Please don’t stop doing that,” he begs, and I start rubbing him harder, jerking him off quickly so that his cock is throbbing in my palm. He pulls me in close and his fingers press against my pussy, teasing my clit with his hands. Suddenly he puts both his hands through my hair and cradles my face strongly in both hands. He kisses me so deeply I struggle for breath, his hot cock pressed against my torso. When he breaks from the kiss I whisper in his ear, so softly I’m not sure he can hear me.

  “Make love to me…”

  He lifts me up off the ground and I wrap my legs around his waist. We’re kissing wildly, and I can feel the wetness between my legs rubbing slickly against his torso. He takes a few shuffled steps over to the far wall of the hotel room, still holding onto me, and presses me flush against the wall. It’s cool on my back and buttocks but I don’t care. His pants are around his ankles, cock out, shoes still on. He holds me steady against the wall with just his left arm, and with his right hand he inserts himself expertly inside me.

  “Fuck!”

  I exhale loudly, receiving him. As he begins to thrust inside of me, my ass is rubbing against the painted wall, my tits are bouncing up and down with every hard thrust. My shoulder blades and upper back are scratching against the wall with the friction. I’ve never been fucked against a wall before. It turns me on that he is strong enough to hold me up like this, to hold me steady in just one arm while he puts his cock in me with the other hand. I feel almost weightless as he pounds my pussy, heat building between my legs, my clit tingling, my insides clenching around his maddeningly erect cock.

  “Harder,” I hear myself say, and suddenly my ass is full on slapping up against the wall. His breath is quick and exciting, he’s moaning louder and soon he’s basically withdrawing the entire length of his cock from me only to slam it back into me again to the hilt.

  “That’s…that’s…so...good…” I cry out, biting my bottom lip and grasping him around the shoulders as he keeps going.

  “Please…” I beg him, but it’s all I can get out. Sex has never felt this intense before.

  I press my eyes closed tightly and all I can think about is how badly I don’t want him to stop. I want him to keep going just like this, I’ll beg him to keep going if I have to. I’d promise him anything, just so he keeps hitting that exact spot, please, please don’t stop. Just like that, exactly like that. His cock is hitting a place of inside me that seems to light up, to electrify, every time his cock touches it, which is every single time he thrusts fully forward. Every time he thrusts fully into me, my clit rubs against his torso at the same time. Waves and shocks of intense pleasure begin from inside my pussy, from the spot he’s hitting, and radiate out to my clit, travel down my engaged legs, all the way to the tip of my toes. There it bounces back again, through my feet, up the legs and thighs, back inside my pussy and then through the top of my head as he keeps fucking me.

  “Come on baby. That’s it. Just let go,” he whispers. I can see him smiling. I almost want to yell at him to shut up, if only to not break my concentration.

  Then it’s all warmth and rushing between my legs, my muscles contract and spasm so that I can no longer be expected to hold myself up. I fall against him but he’s still spearing me, my legs trembling with release. I come down so hard that I see colors behind my closed eyes, blue and then a deep red.

  He’s still fucking me and I know he’s close to coming because his breath changes to the same staccato rhythm I had just moments before.

  “Do you want me to…” he begins.

  “Yes.”

  I never want guys to come inside of me, even though I get tested all the time and have an IUD. It just seems gross to me. Unnecessarily intimate. Back at school, the guys I have had sex with, I’ve asked them to warn me first, always to use a condom, pull out, jerk themselves off. I never came with them anyway so why should I be a part of their final release? Not so with Adam. I want all of him, every part of him, as close to me as possible. When he comes, it turns me on so much my pussy aches, and there’s something beautiful about experiencing his orgasm as it happens inside of me.

  He comes with a slightly high-pitched exhale in my ear, biting the space between my neck and shoulder. I gasp sharply, shivers flooding my body, originating from where he bit down on my skin.

  “I love you,” he says, as clearly as ever, still holding me up, our bodies still connected.

  “I love you, too,” I return, and it scares me to realize once again how much I really mean it.

  ***

  I’m lying down naked on the king sized hotel bed, listening to the rhythmic sounds of the shower running just feet away from my head. I love listening to the sounds of the water hitting the floor, coupled with the changing sounds of Adam moving in the stall, washing his hair, sudsing his body. My hair is wet, I’ve showered already. I declined to shower together, saying that he’d just get me wet all over again.

  “And what’s
wrong with that?” he asked, smirking.

  I rolled my eyes and laid down on the bed. My phone buzzes from inside my bag, the little foreboding ding I’ve been ignoring all weekend, for the most part.

  With Adam in the shower, I grab it. Five text messages and two missed calls. Not that bad, actually. While he was slinking his fingers under my red satin dress in the hotel restaurant, I imagined my parents were in the middle of blowing up my phone, asking me to come home to Massachusetts and visit.

  Nothing from my parents. There’s just four texts from Alexis, and one from my roommate.

  “Girl, where are you? I have so much to tell you! Did you fall in a theater hole? GOSSIP.”

  Alexis must have met a new greasy-haired bass player at The Bitter End. She’ll forget his name by next week. Nothing new. I quickly text Michelle that I’ll be back sometime tomorrow. Just then, as if on cue, my mother starts calling. I blink a few times and the big white letters that spell out “Mom.”

  I can hear the squeak as Adam turns the shower knob off, the water slows from a loud spray to a continuous drip, the sound of him toweling his body, stepping out onto the bathmat. MOM is still flashing on my phone and I hold it in my hands, transfixed. I wonder what my mother would think if she saw me right now. The call goes to voicemail before guilt or panic could set in.

  “Hey,” Adam says from behind me. The fresh smell of soap wafts toward my nostrils, the plume of warm air from the bathroom hitting my skin.

  “My mother just called,” I say, laughing. The phone is still in my hand. I’m lying naked on my stomach still looking down at the lit screen.

  “You didn’t pick up, did you?” Adam asks. I turn my head around and see him standing there, beads of water running down his arms and chest, his face looking visibly uncomfortable, as he re-wraps his plush white towel around his waist tightly.

  “Of course not! I haven’t heard from her all weekend, although I expected to. I wouldn’t know what to say to her if I did pick up.”

  My voice sounds strained, I’m speaking quicker than usual. Adam picks up on the tension. I do some quick math in my head and realize that my parents were my age when they met. I don’t know how that helps the fact that Adam is older than me and my teacher, but the sum soothes me for a moment.

  “I guess anyone would feel weird if their mom called when they were naked.”

  That sentence makes me sound twenty. Adam seems satisfied with it, however, because he removes the towel from his waist and gets into bed with me, pulling the crisp white sheet up and over us. We’re hiding entirely under the sheet, it feels like this space is our own little world. I wonder if he feels the same way. His body is warmer than mine and I snuggle into him. I rest my head on his chest, straining to hear the beat of his heart.

  “Don’t be an idiot,” I keep saying to myself, willing myself not to get attached to him, although I know it’s far too late.

  “You know I won’t...nothing is going to change on Monday.”

  It’s like he read my mind. I look up at him.

  “Some things will have to change, Adam. Don’t be naive. You can’t treat me like your girlfriend when we’re back on campus. We can’t be affectionate. We can’t spend too much time together. I don’t think we should spend any time together, really. Like, at all. Outside of class, of course.”

  I’m firm with him, thinking I sound like the more mature one. His chest shakes with a small eruption of laughter.

  “I know. I know we have to be careful at school, I know all of that. I just mean I won’t pretend like this didn’t happen. Like nothing happened.”

  His hands are in my hair again, softly and tenderly running his fingers close to the scalp. It’s quickly becoming one of my favorite ways for him to touch me. It’s eminently comforting. It makes me feel calm immediately.

  I close my eyes and listen to the sound of his heart, the rhythm of his breathing. His smell fills my senses, especially under the sheets like this. I wish I didn’t care for him so much. It scares me.

  “If you don’t screw me over, I won’t screw you over. You respect me, I respect you,” he says, in a very measured, matter-of-fact tone.

  “We have to trust each other,” I say softly, completely high on him. My eyes are closed, I’m blissful, resting on him, feeling like I am falling in and through his firm chest.

  “Exactly,” he asserts, kissing my cheek. “Trust. And we’ll be fine.”

  Chapter 14: Adam

  I can’t sleep. Even though it’s only Saturday night and I don’t have to return her until tomorrow. That sounds callous, but this entire weekend has been like a dream. With Carrie on my arm, I feel invincible. We fit together so effortlessly. Everyone we pass can see it. And it’s more than that. I care for her. It doesn’t hurt that our sex is indescribable. My heart feels heavy thinking about the coming week. I want to trust her, but she’s twenty. I think of myself at twenty years old and wince. Was I trustworthy? If I had an affair with a teacher, would I fuck them over? I laugh to myself at the consideration, but the truth of the matter is, if I were sleeping with a college professor of mine, like that film professor I had with the amazing eyes, Ms. Piretto, I would have done anything short of walking over hot coals to ensure it continued.

  I look over at her, and once again she’s fast asleep, like she doesn’t have a care in the world. That call from her mother gave me pause for a moment, but neither one of us are thirty yet, who are we hurting? My mind is hamstering uncontrollably. Sleep is the last thing on my mind.

  I slink out of bed as silently as possible, grab some clothes, and go down to the lobby. The hipsters from the afternoon have all but disappeared, all there is now are a few night owls in tortoise shell glasses sitting in front of laptops, typing feverishly before taking breaks to wipe their eyes with real linen handkerchiefs.

  I’ve gone over and over Sunday in my head since we decided to go to sleep. How will this go exactly? Do I just send her back on an afternoon train to campus? With a kiss? How ridiculous. I walk into one of the bar areas, there are a few people there. It’s Saturday night after all. Do I look like I have a twenty-year-old girl stashed in my hotel room, I wonder?

  “Can I get a whiskey soda?”

  I ask the tall, thin male bartender. He smiles and nods from behind his brown, thin-framed glasses. Is everything about this guy thin? Even his suspenders look like thin black sharpie marker lines.

  I take out my phone. I really want to call Lana. I know that’s probably the dumbest thing I can do right now, given the fact that I tried so hard to keep things from her in the lingerie store. My fingers dial her number anyway. Her hard, raspy voice answers on the first ring.

  “Hey,” she says sternly. I think to myself immediately that she knows everything. I try to decipher whether or not she knows I fucked Carrie against the wall this afternoon, that I’ve been parading with her all over town all weekend. Thin guy puts my drink down on the bar. I pick it up and take a sip. It burns going down.

  “I’m at the Spade hotel.”

  Lana clears her throat. We’ve been friends for so long I can tell when she’s thinking really hard about something, when she’s surprised. Right now it’s the former.

  “With the student?” she says finally.

  Blood pools in my cheeks. I can hear my heartbeat in my ears. I take another gulp of whiskey.

  “How?” is all I say.

  “You forget how well I know you. Stay there. I’ll be there in twenty minutes. I can hear your glass clinking. You’re at the bar.”

  She hangs up before I have a chance to protest.

  Lana has always been like that. She makes proclamations. I focus on my glass of whiskey and drink most of it by the time she shows up at the Spade bar. The bartender brings me another drink as I watch Lana clip-clop on her heels toward me. She’s in an eggplant-colored dress and black pumps. There’s a feather in her hair, which is pulled back into a graceful chignon.

  “You lo
ok like shit,” she says to me, taking the empty stool next to mine at the bar.

  “Where are you coming from?” I ask, but I should have known better because she’s not going to tell me. That’s not why she’s here.

  “So where’s the girl?” her eyes are intense and large, searing into the back of my skull.

  “Upstairs.”

  She breathes heavily and rolls her eyes before asking the bartender for the same drink I have. She does this by simply pointing to my glass, then to the empty space in front of her face.

  The bartender gives her the same small smile he gave to me, but his eyes are all over Lana. She smiles at him only long enough to take the drink from his hands, and she takes a gulp bigger than any I’ve taken while sitting here. She’s only about five foot one, I don’t know how she holds so much liquor.

  “Okay, so… you have to just stop.” she orders me. I feel anger start to rise.

  “Lana, you don’t understand. I need to know how you found out about this in the first place? It’s not… from anyone on campus is it? Oh Jesus.”

  My stomach flips at the thought.

  “No. I saw you in the lingerie shop. Both of you. She’s not exactly stealthy, statuesque giggly thing that she is.”

  I breathe a small sigh of relief. That means it stands to reason that Lana is the only person who knows about Carrie and me.

  “Dude, this is a serious fucking problem. She’s underage.” She takes another drink and almost finishes the glass.

  “She’s not. She’s twenty-one.” Lana’s perfectly arched eyebrow raises about an inch. “Nearly.”

  She laughs. “Do you know what a fucking cliche you are? Do you know what you even sound like right now? You’re grasping at straws to make her drinking age.”

  “I love her.”

  Lana’s eyes widen so big that they take up half her face.

  “If we weren’t in public, Adam, I swear to God I’d smack you across the face right now. I thought this was all about your dick, which, I have to say, doesn’t really surprise me, but...”