by Tess Harper
He flattened out the sheet on the table. “I didn’t think I was going to get my paper back until next class, Emily. Isn’t that against Professor Hepburn’s policy?”
It was, and it kind of pissed me off that he noticed. “Miss Vaughn,” I corrected.
“Hmm. Miss Vaughn.” He leaned back, gazing at me darkly, his eyelids heavy, like he was thinking about something perverted. “You know, people are going to think I’m trying to hit on you if I’m the only one in class calling you Miss Vaughn.”
I pushed my knees together. Damn, why did his voice make me squirm? “Aren’t you trying to hit on me?”
He grinned. “Damn straight I am. I just didn’t know you minded if our relationship was so…public.”
“There is no relationship between us. That’s what I came here to tell you.”
“I don’t know. It looked like there was something between us last month.”
“That was just…” I glanced down at the table, heat flaring from my stomach to my cheeks. I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
He set down his pint. “Just sex?” He offered.
I nodded as I stared at the table, unable to meet his gaze. It was a nice table, made out of beautiful, solid wood.
“Well, it was pretty good sex. Usually when that happens, you have it again, at least a few more times.”
I felt my entire body flushing. “Is that why you followed me to Boston?” I snapped.
Jack frowned. “I didn’t follow you.”
“Then why are you at the university I teach at? Why are you in my Freshman orientation class.”
“I got accepted last Fall. I signed up for the class over the summer—before I met you.”
“You really expect me to believe that this is all just a coincidence?”
“I prefer to think of it as fate.”
“Fate wants us to have sex again at least a few more times?” I scoffed.
His gaze darkened. “Yeah.”
God, was it possible to be more embarrassed? What if someone in this bar heard us talking like this? There were so many people around. You couldn’t just talk about something like this with so many people around. I squeezed my legs together tighter.
“I can hear your legs moving against each other under the table, Miss Vaughn. Is there something you want to tell me?”
My head whipped up. “No,” I squeaked. What was he thinking I was doing? And what the hell was I doing, exactly? How had I lost the upper hand so quickly? Had I ever even had the upper hand? What was wrong with me! Why did I freak out like this every time I saw him?
I needed to get out of here.
“I have pretty fond memories of your legs, you know. It all came back to me during class, when you dropped all those papers in front of me on purpose so I could get a look.”
“It wasn’t on purpose,” I corrected, voice breathy.
“Alright, so I was just hoping it was on purpose.” He was smiling. It looked like he was enjoying himself, almost. His eyes were a little distant, though. A little sad. “Your legs mean a lot to me.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. They were the first thing I saw of you, running on the beach all alone in the morning.”
“That isn’t creepy at all.”
“Well, I wasn’t the only one looking.”
“That just makes it even more creepy.”
He laughed. “I’m just saying I liked ‘em, Miss Vaughn. They looked real nice. And I had a feeling I’d like the girl who owned a pair of legs like that.”
Did he start crushing on me because of my legs? This was just getting worse and worse. This guy was so young. He had no idea what life was like, what relationships were like. “Jack, this is so ridiculous.”
“The first time you wrapped them around me,” he continued, “I thought you were never going to let go, like you were an octopus or something.”
“That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard.”
He laughed. “No, not disgusting. You were squeezing me so hard I thought I was gonna die.”
“Oh God, do I really have to listen to this?”
“Sorry.” Though he stopped laughing, he didn’t look sorry. “I liked it. I’ve never seen a girl as strong as you before. It totally turned me on.”
For a second I couldn’t move. He looked at me like he was about to devour me, and a part of me, an extremely foolish, horrifying part, wanted to rip the table out of the floor, throw him down on the floor, and wrap around him like…an octopus.
“I need to leave,” I whispered, grabbing my purse. I need to get the fuck out of here and check myself into a psychiatric ward. Something is seriously wrong with me!
“Why did you leave, Emily?” His voice was soft. I wanted to trust it. But I couldn’t. He was so young, he had no idea what he wanted yet. His entire life was ahead of him. And after a few days, you couldn’t just go talking about forever.
I pushed myself back into my seat and shut my eyes. “I just came here to say we have nothing to talk about. That’s all. Now I’ve said it.”
Here is my exit, I thought. I’d already given him back his phone number. I’d said my piece. Now we could just go back to being teacher and student. Strangers, like we were before, and like we basically were after. I mean, nothing had happened. Just a few beautiful days and one unforgettable night. But for some reason I couldn’t get myself to stand up.
When he still didn’t say anything, I asked, “Why do you even care?”
Briefly, his hands curled into fists. “How can you say that to me?”
“Jack, you’re incredibly attractive, smart and young. You must have girls falling at your feet.”
He worked his jaw, his blue eyes flashing as if I’d slapped him. “Are you suggesting that what happened meant nothing to me? Do you think I say shit like that to girls just for the fun of it? I meant every word I said to you that day, and when I returned you were gone.”
Oh God, this was getting bad really fast. “Jack, we barely knew each other.”
“I know how I felt about you. I know you’re what I want.”
I glanced around the room. “It doesn’t matter, especially not now. I’m your teacher!”
“For like, what, four months? We’ll just meet in secret. I’ll fly you out to New York and we’ll stay in my Penthouse and carry on a forbidden affair, or I’ll climb up the outside of your building and sneak into your window at night.”
Fly out to New York? He owned a Penthouse? Who the hell was this kid? “You’ll break your neck if you try to do that.”
“No I won’t,” he grinned. “It will be like Romeo and Juliet.”
“Romeo and Juliet both killed themselves.”
“Then it will be like the Disney version of Romeo and Juliet.”
“There is no Disney version of Romeo and Juliet.”
He smiled, and something about the fact he’d just made a Disney reference and the youthfulness of his smile made my stomach drop. “How old are you?”
“My age doesn’t matter.”
Oh God, he didn’t want to tell me? “It sure as hell matters.” And then I had a horrific thought. He was in an art survey course. A course a lot of freshmen were in. “You’re not seventeen, are you?”
“I told you it didn’t matter—”
“Oh my God, you’re seventeen. I just committed a crime. What the hell are you doing in a bar?”
“Keep your voice down,” he said, reaching across the table.
My hand darted back to my lap as if his hand were a flame. “Please tell me you’re not seventeen.”
“I’m not seventeen,” he said evenly, looking into my eyes.
“You’re not lying, are you?”
“No. I’d never lie to you.”
My heartbeat started to return to normal. And then he dropped the bomb.
“I’m eighteen.”
Time stopped. Eighteen. Eight fucking teen. Barely legal eighteen. Can barely buy cigarettes eighteen. First time voter eighteen. �
�When did you turn eighteen?”
He looked down. “June.”
So he’d only been eighteen for two months before I’d met him? I’d slept with a baby! “Oh God,” I breathed, holding my head. I was going to Hell.
“Look, you didn’t do anything wrong, alright? I’m an adult in every way that matters.”
An adult in every way that matters? He couldn’t even buy a drink yet! “What are you doing in a bar?”
“I have a fake.”
Was this for real? I’d slept with a guy who made Disney references and had a fake ID! “This can’t continue. You are way too young, and I am your teacher. There isn’t a person on this planet who wouldn’t look at this situation and think I wasn’t taking advantage of you.”
I had him there and he knew it. “Look, if it bothers you that much, I’ll just drop out of the class.”
Drop out of the class? My blood turned to ice. “No. You can’t drop out. Whatever happens you can’t drop out.”
He frowned. “Emily…”
“You can’t change your life for me, do you understand? You can’t give up your dreams for someone else! You just end up hating the other person when you do that, and when it doesn’t work out because you’re miserable and pretending to be something you’re not, you just end up hating yourself.”
I panted for three seconds before realizing how loud I’d been. The bar seemed a little quieter. The people at the pool table had stopped playing. They were looking at us. No—more precisely, looking at me, the crazy lady who’d started ranting.
“Alright, I won’t drop out.” Jack shrugged. He just shrugged. I’d practically had a breakdown in front of a room of people, and he just shrugged.
“Look, I didn’t mean to come on so strong before,” he said.
He didn’t mean to come on so strong? He’d proposed marriage after knowing me for only a few days, and just moments before, he’d suggested that this bizarre infatuation had started when he saw my legs on my morning beach run. “I need to get a pair of sweatpants,” I muttered.
“Now that would be unfortunate.”
I glared at him. “I’m sure you’re really sorry.”
“I am, and I am trying very hard not to be too pushy now. We can go slow.”
Not to be too pushy? Slow? He’d just mentioned flying all over the place in his private jet, and meeting in secret locations so we could carry on an affair. “This is so not slow.”
He ran his hands through his hair, working his jaw again. “If you knew what I wanted to do right now, you’d think it was pretty fucking slow.”
There was something in the intensity of what he said, and what he didn’t say, that frightened me to the core. I stood. “This relationship is inappropriate and I’m not going to allow this to continue. That’s all I wanted to say, and now that it’s said, I’m going to leave.”
“It’s too bad you changed your shirt, Miss Vaughn.”
“It needed to be washed,” I replied between my teeth.
“Are you still wearing that sexy red bra?”
I whipped around. “How did you know?”
“Unfortunately, I think everyone in the class knew,” he said, not quite meeting my eyes. And then I realized he was trying hard not to laugh. And failing.
I fumed. Had I thought for a second he was capable of being mature about this entire situation? Ugh. He was just a stupid frat boy. “Don’t make me hit you again,” I said as whipped back around.
“See you on Thursday, Miss Vaughn.”
I didn’t reply as I stomped out of the pub.
Chapter 11
I really wish I could say that Jack’s presence in class didn’t affect me.
I really, really did.
But it did.
I wanted nothing more than to put everything that happened over the summer behind me, but such things were impossible when he was sitting right in front of me every Tuesday and Thursday morning with those annoying, bright blue eyes and hair mussed so perfectly that I swear it must have taken over forty minutes to style. I mean, people didn’t generally emerge from their beds naturally in a state of perfection, right?
And then I remembered how hot he’d been when I’d woken up to the sunshine beaming down on his perfectly mussed dirty gold hair that fateful morning.
He’d looked pretty damn perfect. Sans styling. Sans anything.
Well, at least he couldn’t cook.
I collected the papers from my latest tutoring session and said goodbye to my students. Tutoring sessions were one of the few things that I truly looked forward to. Professor Hepburn was…well, I respected him as an academic, but he was difficult to work with. However, the students were wonderful.
Many of them had started coming because they’d fallen behind, didn’t pay attention in class, or were afraid of getting low scores on their papers. This nonchalant attitude towards one of my favorite subjects didn’t bother me. In fact, each time a student came to a session with a bored look on their face, I saw it as an opportunity to change how they viewed art. I loved nothing more than seeing their distant eyes fill with passion, or to have them relate artistic terms and the ideas behind artistic movements to video games, advertising techniques, books, and other things in their everyday lives.
But despite this, things weren’t going as well as I hoped. My worries were multiplying. I was falling behind in my own graduate work. I’d have to present my research and topic of study before Christmas Break, and I still hadn’t even narrowed down my topic.
And I was still letting Jack get to me.
It wasn’t his fault. He was a student and I was his teacher, and after that night at Kel’s when he’d suggested that he was still going to pursue me, he’d respected those boundaries. It was me who was having the problems. I kept expecting him to do something, but he was a model student in the classroom.
I just didn’t get it. I told myself that this wasn’t something I had to get and I should just forget about it, but I couldn’t. I thought about him all the time.
“Thanks for today, Ms Vaughn!” Molly called out with a smile.
My mind came back into focus as my head whipped up. “It was my pleasure. Remember to email your paper to me before Sunday, Molly, so I can get comments back to you on Tuesday.”
“Alright.” She gave me a guilty smile. “Thanks for understanding.”
I nodded. “We all get behind sometimes.” Most of the TA’s I knew didn’t accept late papers. ‘There are no do-over’s in life’ seemed to be the University motto.
It made sense. There weren’t do-over’s in life. And some mistakes you had to live with every day. But sometimes such restrictions didn’t make sense. As long as Molly got her paper to me before I started grading, I didn’t see a problem. I was a practice run for Hepburn, not the real thing. And besides, was I in any position to judge a student who was behind when I was so messed up myself? I mean, I was a 24-year-old woman obsessing over an 18 year old boy. It was pathetic and creepy.
I sighed and looked at my wristwatch. I had about four hours before the museum closed. If I hurried, I’d have time to re-inspire myself and clear my head in one of my favorite places in the world.
The honks and shouts of traffic greeted me on the streets outside. They were so loud that I almost didn’t hear my phone go off.
I frowned as I phished it out of my pocket. I didn’t recognize the number, but it was local.
Could Jack, somehow, perhaps, maybe he got my number and…
My hand trembled as my heartbeat kicked into overdrive.
Alright, what the hell was wrong with me? Yeah, Jack was an asshole, but he’d never done anything to make me think he’d hurt me, and while he pushed my boundaries way too far he’d never done anything truly frightening like stalking me. So why was I acting like I’d just gotten the creepy, killer, cursed ringtone from that silly Japanese horror flick One Missed Call?
I wasn’t going to let that cocky dick have so much power over me. I was also going to stop getti
ng so mad that I used redundant descriptors for that…cocky dick. Whatever! If Jack was on the other line, I was going to give him a piece of my mind. I swiped my thumb across the screen defiantly.
“Hello?” I growled.
There was a heavy intake of breath.
“Hello? Who is this?”