I cock my head, my mouth pulled up at one side as I formulate a response.
“I’m fucking with you, Kerouac,” she says.
“Good. I was about to lose all respect for you.”
“I don’t know what I want to do with my life.”
I begin to offer her words of comfort when Abbott’s daughter stands at my door, dressed in a skirt much shorter than what’s appropriate and a white blouse that’s damn near transparent.
“I have to go.” I hang up on Absinthe, shoving my phone in my pocket. “Bree. Come in.”
Bree tucks a strand of hair behind one ear before placing her purse on the edge of my desk. Taking a seat, she crosses her legs, letting her panties flash—not that I’m looking, but they’re hard to miss out of my periphery when they’re neon fucking pink.
“So excited.” She claps her hands together, and I imagine she’s the girl who tries too hard to fit in. She’s the girl who doesn’t get invited to parties, doesn’t get asked to prom, but latches onto the “cool” crowd because she refuses to believe for a second that those people don’t want to be friends with her. Girls like Bree don’t take social cues like everyone else does. They see what they want to see, believe what they want to believe.
She’s completely unfit to be an administrator in this field.
Leaning forward, she tilts her non-existent cleavage in my direction. “What are we working on today?”
“Just going through some old paperwork Principal Waters left behind,” I say, avoiding eye contact with any part of her body.
“Anything I can do to help?”
“These are confidential.” I shove them aside, working on another pile. “Thought you just wanted to shadow me?”
“I do.”
“Then you’ll need to sit back and watch. That’s what shadowing is.”
“Oh?” She sits up, frowning. “I thought I’d be helping you with stuff?”
“That would be an internship.”
“Where does the mentoring come in then?” she asks.
“After you’ve completed your masters’ degree.” And hopefully I’m long gone by then.
“Oh.” Her shoulders slump, but I feel her watching me. “I like your watch.”
“Thank you. It was my grandfather’s.”
“My necklace belonged to my grandmother.” She tugs on the little pearl pendant around her neck, only the clasp snaps and the dainty chain falls between her breasts. “Ha. Whoops.”
She giggles, digging around, nearly exposing her tits in the process.
“Excuse me for a moment, Bree.” I show myself out, needing physical distance from her so she gets the hint.
I’m disinterested.
Wandering the halls for a few minutes, I pass a maintenance worker and a teacher using the computer lab. When I get back to the main office, I stop outside the door and get a drink of water. Whatever kills time.
Bernie, the custodian I met at the staff meeting a while back, passes by, pushing an empty trash can, and I ask him to step inside the office with me and wait outside my door while I deal with a student. One of the things that’s been instilled in me since the beginning of my career is that it never hurts to enlist a witness when you’re approaching a formidable situation.
Bree Abbott is, without question, a formidable situation.
Returning to my office, I stop in my tracks when I find her perched on the edge of my desk, legs crossed and her little skirt pulled to her upper thigh.
I called it.
“Principal Hawthorne.” She hops down. “I was wondering if you were coming back.”
“Does your father know you left the house like this today?” I force a breath through my nostrils, arms crossed.
Bree rolls her eyes. “Negative. He had a seven AM tee time.”
“One of the things we need to go over if you wish to continue shadowing me, Ms. Abbott, is professional dress,” I say. “As well as a professional code of conduct. Sexuality has no place in the school.”
“So, I take it you like my outfit?” She pretends to be shocked, placing her hand over her breasts before giggling. “About time you noticed.”
“Absolutely not,” I say. “And it’s not like you gave me a choice.”
“All those things I wore when I babysat your nephew,” she says, “those were for you. And you didn’t even act like you cared.”
She pouts like a sullen child.
“This is highly inappropriate,” I say, jaw flexing. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
Bree exhales, sauntering toward the door. “Fine. I guess I’ll just tell my father you don’t want to work with me because you’re having difficulty maintaining professional boundaries in my presence.”
Stepping outside my office, I motion for Bernie to come closer. Bree’s jaw falls when she sees him.
“Just making sure you’re hearing this entire conversation,” I say.
“Haven’t missed a single word,” he says, arms folded as he gives her a hard stare.
Her eyes turn glassy, and she glares at me, as if I’ve committed the ultimate act of betrayal, and without saying another word, she pushes past me and disappears out the door.
“Thanks.” I place my hand on his shoulder. His thick gray hair and hunched posture suggest he’s pushing closer to retirement with each school year.
“Wasn’t the first time. Won’t be the last,” he says, showing himself out. Before he leaves, he stops and turns to me. “That one’s trouble. I’d keep your distance.”
“Thanks for the head’s up, Bernie.” I close my door. Returning to my desk, I hold my head in my hands and breathe out. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
Chapter Eighteen
Halston
“What are you reading?” Kerouac asks. It’s a rainy Tuesday night in August, three weeks until school starts.
“Rebecca.” Lightning flashes outside my window. “For the fourth time. Started it again a couple weeks ago, then I got busy. It’s crazy how much time you have when you’re not working though. I might read it a fifth time just for the hell of it.”
“A classic. Read to me.”
“Why? So you can jerk off this time?” I chuckle.
“No,” he says. “I did that a half hour before you called.”
“Were you thinking about me?”
“You and only you,” he says in such a way that I wholeheartedly believe him.
I smile, cracking the spine of Rebecca. “I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say.”
“Have you ever loved anyone, Absinthe?” he asks.
“Not in any remarkable kind of way.” The roll of thunder in the distance rattles the windows.
“Has anyone ever loved you?”
“Not in any remarkable kind of way,” I echo, chuckling once. “Plenty of guys have claimed to have loved me. I’ve yet to say it back to anyone. I don’t want to say it until I know for sure that I mean it. What about you? Have you loved anyone?”
“Not so much that I couldn’t live without them,” he says. “So, in a way, no. Because if you truly love someone, you can’t stand to be without them. I’ve never felt that about anyone.”
“Mr. Complicated.”
“Always.” He sighs. “Love is overrated anyway. But sex? Sex is … everything.”
“My thoughts exactly.” I play it cool, neglecting to inform him that on the nights when my body refuses to rest, I lie in bed thinking of the two of us. And when I think of us, I think of the prospect of love—something I’ve yet to think about with anyone else.
And maybe it doesn’t make sense. But it means something. I just don’t know what.
“As much as I’m at odds with the idea of love, I can’t help but find myself in love with the idea of you,” I blurt.
It comes out of nowhere. I didn’t rehearse it, didn’t give it a second thought before allowing it to leave my lips. It felt like the right time to bare my sou
l, a decision I may come to regret in the immediate future because my words are met with dead silence.
“Absinthe,” he says an endless moment later, speaking the way a teacher would scold a student for talking out of turn. “You’re idealizing me.”
“And what’s wrong with that?” I ask.
“You shouldn’t idealize anyone. That’s how people get hurt. Hearts get broken.”
Pretty sure my heart is titanium or elastic or whatever Sia sings about.
“You’re giving yourself too much credit, Kerouac,” I say, trying to cover the quick bruising of my ego. Rain beads gentle on my window. Outside the storm is passing, but inside it’s only getting started. “You’re just a voice on the other end of a phone. A faceless man with a dirty mind and a love of books. I might be in love with the idea of you, but trust me, you could never break me.”
Many have tried.
None have succeeded.
If he only knew what I’ve been through, he’d know it would take a lot more than an innocent crush on an Internet stranger to damage this heart. My entire life, nothing’s ever come easy. The kinds of simple luxuries afforded to everyone else seem to have skipped over me.
Some people are born with silver spoons. I was born with a rusted paring knife.
And still, it didn’t break me.
“Maybe we’ve crossed a line.” He exhales.
I sit up.
His single sentence takes this entire conversation in a completely different direction.
“No,” I say. The room begins to tilt.
“This was supposed to be phone sex and meaningless conversations,” he said. “I think we took it too far.”
“Why are you saying this?” My chest burns, swells. A moment ago we were talking about Rebecca. I want to go back. I want to go back to that so I can take back what I said.
“Because I feel the same way about you—I’m falling in love with the idea of you, of you I’ve dreamed you up to be.”
I exhale, sinking into my pillows, relief washing over me. He feels the same way. We can work with this.
“So what now?” I ask, drawing in a cleansing breath. My mouth curls into a gentle smile. “I’m in love with the idea of you. You’re in love with the idea of me. Sounds like the premise for an amazing F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, don’t you think? Now we just need a good twist and a couple of complications.”
“This is the end, Absinthe.” He says the last words I expected to hear, going in a completely different direction than the one I anticipated.
My eyes blur, fat tears dripping down my cheeks, leaving cold, itchy tracks. I’m at a complete loss for words for the first time with him. In fact, I can’t even breathe right now.
“Absinthe,” he says after a bout of silence.
“Seriously? Just like that … you don’t want to talk to me because you’re feeling something?” I manage to fire back at him. “This is bullshit.”
“I told you I was complicated.”
“You’re not complicated,” I say, teeth gritted. “You’re a coward.”
“I’d only hurt you.” Kerouac exhales. “I hurt everyone. That’s just how it is.”
“So, we can’t even talk on the phone? You just … you just want to cut ties? Walk away like this never happened?”
“No.” His voice is louder. He’s never taken this tone with me. This man, this Kerouac, I don’t know him. “That’s not what I want. But if we keep talking, one of these days I know I’m going to give in. I’m going to meet you somewhere. I’m going to fuck the hell out of you. I might even convince myself that I’m in love with you after a while. And then I’m going to break you. And I don’t want to do that to you. You mean too much to me.”
“You’re so full of shit.” I release an incredulous laugh. “And you don’t know that’s how it would go.”
“I do,” he says. “You’re not the kind of woman I could just fuck and not think twice about the next day.”
“And that’s a bad thing?!”
“It’s a bad thing if you’re me.” He’s quiet for a moment. “I don’t do commitment, Absinthe. Never have. And even if I did, I’m not in a place in my life where I have the time to dedicate to a relationship.”
My heart sinks. It feels like a breakup, but it hurts a hell of a lot more. The physical sting radiating through my body, the gasps of breath in my lungs, the weight on my chest … it’s all too much.
“Fine.” My voice shakes with that one little word. “Goodbye, Kerouac. It’s been nice talking to you. I hope someday you find exactly what you were looking for. I’m sorry I couldn’t be your exception.”
Kerouac says nothing, but I hear him breathing on the other end, almost as if he’s second-guessing his decision, not yet wanting to end the call.
So I hang up first.
Because … fuck him.
It takes a moment for me to catch my breath, to accept what just happened. When I finally come to, I add him to the long list of people who’ve left me, people who’ve decided for whatever reason that they want nothing to do with me.
My parents, a long list of foster families, a few friends here and there along the way, and now some faceless internet stranger I had no business fancying into the man of my dreams.
The tiniest fraction of my heart squeezes as it clings onto what might have been, refusing to accept that it’s over, that I meant nothing to Kerouac, and that everything he ever told me was probably a lie.
But the rest of me wants to move on, pretend like he never happened.
Besides, what choice do I have? It’s not like I have a face or name. It’s not like I’d even know him if we ever did cross paths. The fact of the matter is, Kerouac doesn’t exist.
He’s not real, at least not in my life.
And not anymore.
Pressing my finger against the little green Karma app, I wait until it begins to shake and then I press the little ‘x’ in the corner.
Goodbye, Kerouac.
Chapter Nineteen
Ford
3 Weeks Later
“You wanted to see me, Principal Hawthorne?”
I know that voice. I’d know it anywhere.
Glancing up from my desk, I find a girl in skintight athletic leggings and a low-cut tank top standing in my office doorway, her full lips wrapped around a shiny sucker and a familiar electric jade gaze trained on me.
It’s her.
The woman I spent most of all summer chatting with under the anonymous veil of a dating app—one specifically meant for adults seeking connections but not commitment. I purchased a stock photo for seven dollars, chose a pseudonym, Kerouac, and messaged a woman by the name of Absinthe who quoted Hemingway in her bio when everyone else quoted Nickelback and John Legend.
Fuck.
Me.
“You must be Halston.” My skin is on fire. I stand, smooth my tie, and point to the seat across from me. I never knew her name, but I’d know that voice anywhere. I can’t even count how many times I came to the sound of her breathy rasp describing all the wicked things she’d do to me if we ever met, reading me excerpts from Rebecca and Proust. “Take a seat.”
She takes her time pulling the sucker from her mouth before strutting to my guest chair, lowering herself, cleavage first, and crossing her long legs. The tiniest hint of a smirk claims her mouth, but if she knows it’s me, she’s sure as hell not acting like it.
“You want to tell me what happened with Mrs. Rossi?” I ask, returning to my seat and folding my hands on my desk.
I may be a lot of things; overconfident prick, allergic to commitment, red-blooded American man …
But I’m a professional first.
“Mrs. Rossi and I had an argument,” Halston says. “We were discussing the theme of The Great Gatsby, and she was trying to say that it was about chasing the elusive American dream. I told her she missed the entire fucking point of one of the greatest pieces of literature in existence.” She takes another suck of her candy before continuing
, then points it in my direction. “The real theme has to do with manipulation and dishonesty, Principal Hawthorne. Everyone in that book was a fucking liar, most of all Jay, and in the end, he got what he deserved. They all did.”
My cock strains against the fabric of my pants. It’s her voice. It’s her goddamned sex-on-fire voice that’s doing this to me. That and her on point dissection of classic American literature. Sexy, intelligent, outspoken. Three elusive qualities I’ve yet to find in another human being. Until her. And knowing that now, I couldn’t even have her if I wanted her, isn’t doing me any favors. If I don’t compose myself, I’m going to be hard as a fucking rock.
“Language,” I say. The room is growing hotter now, but I keep a stern, undeterred presence.
She rolls her eyes. “I’m an adult, Principal Hawthorne. I can say words like fuck.”
“Not in my office, you can’t.” I exhale. “And not in class either. That’s why Mrs. Rossi sent you here.”
“The jackass behind me was drawing swastikas on his notebook, but I get sent down here for saying ‘fuck.’” Her head shakes.
“I’ll discuss that with Mrs. Rossi privately.” I scribble a note to myself and shove it aside.
“You’re really young for a principal.” Her charged gaze drags the length of me. “Did you just graduate from college or something?”
Six years of school and two years of teaching place me in the budding stages of a career shaping and educating the minds of tomorrow’s leaders, but I refuse to dignify her question with a response.
“My age is irrelevant,” I say.
“Age is everything.” She twirls a strand of pale hair around her finger, her lips curling up in the corners. The cute-and-coy shtick must work on everyone else, but it’s not going to work on me. Not here anyway. And not anymore.
“I said my age is irrelevant.”
“Am I the first student you’ve ever had to discipline?” She sits up, crossing and uncrossing her legs with the provocative charm of a 1940s pin up. “Wait, are you going to discipline me?”
I take mental notes for her file.
P.S. I Hate You Page 30