I hated that he was treating me like a victim. Someone he needed to make reparations to.
“What about you?” I said, propping my hip against the desk, folding my arms. “What happens if it gets too weird for you? You just get to pack up and leave?”
“It’s not like that.”
“What is it like?”
“And it’s already too weird for me,” he said, ignoring my question. “I have no memory of this week. There was the moment you walked into my class, and there’s now. Nothing else.”
My mouth opened, an involuntary breath coming free.
“But I don’t want to impose that shit on you. It’s not your problem.”
“Impose,” I said.
He winced. Put a hand on his desk, leaned into it. The space between us was finding ways to close, even with solid objects intervening.
“I don’t want to screw your life up, Maise.”
“Do you have a class fourth period?”
“No.”
I unfolded my arms and before he could do anything, I took that open collar in my hands, lifted on my toes, and kissed him across the aircraft carrier he called a desk. He didn’t fight. He kissed me back, oh so lightly, lips barely parting. Careful. He tasted like mint creme, kind of like Bailey’s. His face felt somehow rougher without stubble.
“This is dangerous,” he said against my mouth.
“I know,” I said.
He pulled me onto his desk and I swung my legs across to his side. We never stopped kissing. One hand at the back of my neck, the other gliding between my thighs. My legs tightened but my mouth opened in response, as if my wires had crossed. I thrust my hands into that hair I’d wanted to mess up so badly. I was short of breath but kept kissing him anyway, not getting enough of that creamy mint, those lips that were somehow firm and yielding at the same time, opening me, parting me. Giddily I thought, have you been eating mints on the off chance this would happen? Have you been obsessing about this as much as I have?
A knock at the door.
Hands instantly demagnetized. I hopped off his desk, smoothed my shorts. He dropped into his chair and crossed his legs. “Yes?” he called, deep and steady.
I stepped back to an appropriate distance, but our eyes never left each other.
Thank f**king god, it was just some random kid. “You got the projector in here?”
“No,” Mr. Wilke said. “It’s in 208.”
“Sorry.” The door closed.
We both breathed audibly.
“We can’t do this here,” he said.
“Where can we do it?”
He laughed. “Nowhere,” he said, but his words were at odds with his eyes.
“Don’t give me the fake Boy Scout routine,” I said. “You’re sitting there with a hard-on.”
My bravado was slightly spoiled by my breathless delivery. The way he looked at me from under his eyebrows, slightly sheepish, slightly intense, turned every girl part in me to jelly. I clenched my hands to keep them from idle evil.
“What happens now?” I said.
“I don’t know, Maise.”
Say my name. God, keep saying it.
“You won’t break me,” I said, my voice low. “I’m not a doll. I’m not fragile. And you can’t possibly screw my life up any more than it is.”
That furrowed look, the mournful angel observing human tragedy. “It’s not just about damage control. It should be more than that.”
“Then give me more,” I said.
The fourth period bell rang.
I walked out, but my heart stayed right there where I’d planted it, a tender little seed waiting for sun.
Friday looked like rain. That sneaky summer rain that waits for a still moment and sucks the air out of the world Backdraft-style and explodes the sky into water. For the first time in eons, Mom drove me to school. We sat in the van like strangers on a plane, making awkward small talk.
“You still talk to Melissa?”
“Who?”
“That Melissa girl you went around with. The blonde.”
“I haven’t talked to her since freshman year.”
“Oh.”
Traffic light. Yellow. Red.
“Got lunch money?”
“Yeah.”
“Where you get it?”
“Turned a trick.”
“Watch your f**kin’ mouth.”
Green.
“Can you get out here? I got a pickup.”
I opened the door wordlessly.
“Babe.”
I looked at my mother. She had my face, under crayon makeup. She had the hick accent I’d ironed out of my voice. She had the dead-end future I would never, ever have.
“Let’s go out this weekend. You and me.”
Drop dead.
“I’m going to be late,” I said.
“Love you.”
I slammed the door. Pictured it closing on her face. The clown stamp she’d leave on the glass.
You wondered why I lied to you, Mr. Wilke? Because I’m never going to be her.
“We’re going to do things differently in this class,” he said.
I sat next to Wesley, my attention drifting outside. A big old granddaddy black oak shivered in a sudden breeze, a thousand leaves clicking dryly, like castanets. The smell of gunsmoke drifted through the open windows. The world was tense and desaturated, waiting for the catharsis of rain. I knew exactly how it felt.
Wesley filmed Mr. Wilke. Mr. Wilke said it was okay, as long as he had the subject’s permission. Permission was very important.