Her hands are around my neck—my lips are caressing hers. Holding her in my arms right now feels like I’m taking the first breath I’ve taken since that moment I saw her standing in the hallway. Every moan from her mouth and every touch of her hands brings me back to life. Nothing and no one can come between us and this moment. Not Caulder, not my morals, not my job, not my school, not Julia.
Julia.
I clench my fists, fighting against the pull to release her when reality hits. The heaviness of the situation comes crashing back down on me like a ton of bricks, forcing itself into the forefront of my mind. Lake has no idea what’s about to happen to her life, and I’m allowing myself to complicate it even more? With every movement of my mouth against hers, I’m pulling us further and further into a hole we aren’t going to be able to crawl out of.
She runs her hands through my hair and begins to lower herself back onto the couch, pulling me with her. I know once our bodies are meshed together on this couch, neither one of us will be strong enough to stop.
I can’t do this to her. There is so much more going on in her life than she’s even aware of. What the hell am I thinking adding this kind of stress to that? I swore to Julia I wouldn’t complicate Lake’s life, and that’s precisely what I’m doing. I somehow find the strength to tear my lips apart from hers and pull away. When I do, we both gasp for air.
“We’ve got to stop,” I say, breathless. “We can’t do this.” I squeeze my eyes shut and cover them with my forearm, giving myself a minute to regroup. I feel her inching closer to me. She pulls herself onto my lap and forces her lips onto mine again in a desperate plea to keep going. The second our lips meet, I instinctively wrap my arms around her and pull her closer. My conscience is literally screaming at me so loud, I pull her face to mine even harder in an attempt to squelch the internal voice. My mind is telling me to do one thing; my heart and my hands are begging me to do another. She grasps my shirt and slips it over my head, then returns her lips to my mouth where they belong.
In my mind I’m pushing her away, but in reality I’ve got one hand on her lower back, pulling her against me, and my other hand gripping the nape of her neck. She runs her hands over my chest and I have a huge urge to do the same to her. Just as I grasp the hem of her shirt, I clench my fists and release it. I’ve already let it go way too far. I’ve got to put an end to this before I can’t. It’s entirely my responsibility to make sure she doesn’t get hurt again, and right now I’m dropping the ball completely.
I push her off me and back onto the couch, then stand up. I’ve got one chance to prove to her that this is bad. As good as it feels, it’s wrong. So wrong.
“Layken, get up!” I demand, taking her hand. I’m so incredibly flustered right now, I don’t mean for my reaction to come off so harsh, but I don’t know how else to react. I’m so pissed at myself I want to scream, but I struggle with the attempt to calm my nerves. She stands up with a look of embarrassment and confusion across her face.
“This—this can’t happen!” I say. “I’m your teacher now. Everything has changed. We can’t do this.” I can hear the edge in my voice again. I’m trying my best not to come off as angry, but I am angry. Not at her, but how can she differentiate? Maybe she shouldn’t. Maybe this would be easier for her if she were disappointed in me. Easier for her to let me go.
She sits back down on the couch and drops her face into her hands. “Will, I won’t say anything,” she whispers. “I swear.” She looks back up at me and the sadness in her eyes has returned. All the hope is gone.
The hurt in her voice only solidifies the fact that I’m an asshole. I can’t believe I just did this to her—led her on like this. She doesn’t need this right now.
“I’m sorry, Layken, but it’s not right,” I say as I pace the floor. “This isn’t good for either of us. This isn’t good for you.”
She glares at me. “You don’t know what’s good for me,” she snaps.
I’ve really screwed this up. Royally. I need to fix it now. I need to end it now. For good. She can’t leave here thinking this is going to happen again. I stop pacing and turn toward her.
“You won’t wait for me. I won’t let you give up what should be the best year of your life. I had to grow up way too fast; I’m not taking that away from you, too. It wouldn’t be fair.” I inhale a breath and tell the biggest lie I’ve ever told. “I don’t want you to wait for me, Layken.”
“I won’t be giving anything up,” she replies weakly.
The pain in her voice is too much, causing me to have an overwhelming urge to hug her again. I can’t take these emotional swings anymore. One minute I’m wanting to kiss the living hell out of her and take her in my arms and protect her from every tear that’s about to come her way, then the next minute my conscience kicks in and I want to kick her out of my house. I’ve hurt her so bad and she has no idea how much worse her life is about to get. Just knowing this makes me hate myself for what I just allowed to happen. Despise myself, even.
I grab my shirt and pull it over my head, then move across the living room to the back of the couch. I take a deep breath, feeling slightly more in control the farther away I am from her. I grip the back of the couch and prepare an attempt to rectify a nonrectifiable situation. If I could just get her to understand where I’m coming from, maybe she wouldn’t take it so hard.
“My life is nothing but responsibilities. I’m raising a child, for Christ’s sake. I wouldn’t be able to put your needs first. Hell, I wouldn’t even be able to put them second.” I raise my head and meet her eyes. “You deserve better than third.”
She stands up and crosses the living room, kneeling on the couch in front of me. “Your responsibilities should come before me, which is why I want to wait for you, Will. You’re a good person. This thing about you that you think is your flaw—it’s the reason I’m falling in love with you.”
Whatever was left of my heart before those words left her mouth is in a million pieces now. I can’t let her do this. I can’t let her feel this way. The only thing I can do to make her stop loving me is to make her start hating me. I bring my hands up to meet her cheeks and I look her in the eyes, then I say the hardest words that I’ll ever have to say. “You are not falling in love with me. You cannot fall in love with me.” As soon as I see the tears welling in the corners of her eyes, I have to drop my hands and head toward the front door. I can’t watch her cry. I don’t want to see what I’m doing to her right now.
“What happened tonight—” I point to the couch. “That can’t happen again. That won’t happen again.”
I open the front door and shut it behind me, then lean against the door and close my eyes. I rub my hands over my face and attempt to calm myself down. This is all my fault. I allowed her into my house, knowing how weak I am around her. I kissed her. I kissed her. I can’t believe all of this just happened. Twenty minutes alone with her and I somehow screw her life up even more.
Seeing her sitting on the couch just now, dumbfounded and heartbroken because of my actions and my words . . . I hate myself. Pretty sure Lake hates me now, too. I hope it was worth it. Somehow doing the right thing in this situation seems completely and utterly wrong.
I walk to the car and pull Caulder out. He wraps his arms around my neck without even waking up. Kel opens his eyes and looks around, confused.
“You guys fell asleep in the car. Go home and go to bed, okay?”
He rubs his eyes and crawls out of the car, then makes his way across the street. When I walk back through the front door holding Caulder, Lake is still sitting on the couch, staring at the floor. As much as I want to grab her and tell her I’m so, so sorry for this entire night, I realize she needs this to get past whatever it is going on between us. She needs to be angry at me. And Julia needs her to be focused this year. She can’t have Lake wrapped up in us when it might be the last year she ever gets to spend with her mom.
“Kel woke up, he’s walking home now. You should go, too,” I say
.
She snatches the keys off the table in front of her and turns to face me. She looks me straight in the eyes; tears streaming down her face. “You’re an asshole,” she says, her words like a bullet of truth straight through my heart. She walks out and slams the door behind her.
I take Caulder to his room and tuck him in, then walk to my bedroom. When I close the door behind me, I lean against it and close my eyes, then slide down the length of the door until I meet the floor. I press the heels of my palms against my eyes, holding back the tears.
God, this girl. This girl is the only girl I care about, and I just gave her every reason in the world to hate me.
11.
the honeymoon
“I’M SO, SO sorry, Will,” she whispers. She puts her hands over her face and covers her eyes. “I feel horrible. Terrible. And selfish. I didn’t know how hard it was for you, too. I just thought you kicked me out because I wasn’t worth the risk.”
“Lake, you didn’t know what all was going through my mind. For all you knew I was just some jerk who kissed you, then kicked you out of my house. I never blamed you. And you were absolutely worth the risk. If it weren’t for knowing what I knew about Julia, I would have never let you go.”
She pulls her hands away from her face and turns to me. “Oh, my god, and those names. I never did apologize for that.” She rolls on top of me and brings her face inches from mine. “I’m so sorry I called you all those names the next day.”
“Don’t be,” I shrug. “I sort of deserved it.”
She shakes her head. “You can’t sit here and tell me that didn’t piss you off. I mean, I called you thirty different names in front of the entire class!”
“I didn’t say it didn’t piss me off. I just said I deserved it.”
She laughs. “So you were mad at me.” She lies back down on her pillow. “Let me hear it,” she says.
regrets
I’VE GONE AS slowly as possible. I’ve called on each student, never rushed them, never even timed them. Usually they don’t spit them out this fast. Of course, as soon as Gavin finishes his poem, there’s still five minutes to spare. I have no choice but to call on her. I waited until last, hoping the bell would ring. I don’t know if I’m trying to spare her from having to get up and speak after what happened between us last night, or if I’m scared to death about what she might say. Either way, it’s her turn and I have no choice but to call her up.
I clear my throat and attempt to say her name, but it comes out all mangled. She walks to the front of the room and leaves her poem on her desk. I know for a fact she didn’t write a single word yesterday in class. And considering the events that transpired in my living room last night, I doubt she was in the right mindset to even write one. However, she appears unwavering and confident and has apparently memorized whatever it is she’s about to perform. It sort of terrifies me.
“I have a question,” she says before she begins.
Shit. What the hell could she possibly need to ask? She left so angry last night, I wouldn’t be surprised if she outs me right here and now. Hell, she’s probably about to ask me if I kick all my students out of my house after I make out with them. I nod, giving her the go-ahead for her question . . . but all I really want to do is run to the bathroom and puke.
“Is there a time minimum?”
Jesus Christ. She’s actually asking a normal question. I breathe a sigh of relief and clear my throat. “No, it’s fine. Remember, there are no rules.”
“Good,” she says. “Okay, then. My poem is called Mean.”
The blood rushes from my head and pools in my heart as soon as the title flows from her mouth. She turns toward the room and begins.
According to the thesaurus . . .
and according to me . . .
there are over thirty different meanings and substitutions for the word
mean.
(SHE RAISES HER voice and yells the rest of the poem, causing me to flinch.)
Jackass, jerk, cruel, dickhead, unkind, harsh, wicked, hateful, heartless, vicious, virulent, unrelenting, tyrannical, malevolent, atrocious, bastard, barbarous, bitter, brutal, callous, degenerate, brutish, depraved, evil, fierce, hard, implacable, rancorous, pernicious, inhumane, monstrous, merciless, inexorable.
And my personal favorite—asshole.
MY PULSE IS pounding almost as fast as the insults are flying out of her mouth. When the bell rings, I sit stunned as most of the students make their way past my desk. I can’t believe she just did that!
“The date,” I hear Eddie saying to her. The word “date” snaps me back into the moment. “You said you’d have to ask your mom?” Eddie says. They’re standing next to Lake’s desk and Eddie has her back turned to me.
“Oh, that,” Lake says. She looks over Eddie’s shoulder and directly at me. “Yeah, sure,” she says. “Tell Nick I’d love to.”
I’ve never had a problem with my temper before, but it’s almost as if the day I met Lake, every single emotion I had was multiplied by a thousand. Happiness, hurt, anger, bitterness, love, jealousy. I’m unable to control any of it when I’m around her. The fact that she apparently had been asked out by Nick before our little incident last night somehow pisses me off even more. I glare at her, open my drawer, and shove my grade book inside it, then slam it shut. When Eddie spins around, startled at the noise, I quickly stand up and begin wiping the board.
“Great,” Eddie says, her attention back to Lake now. “Oh, and we decided on Thursday so after Getty’s we can go to the slam. We’ve only got a few weeks, might as well get it out of the way. You want us to pick you up?”
“Uh, sure,” Lake says.
Lake could have at least had the decency to agree to a date when she’s not standing five feet from me. As much as I want her to be pissed at me, I never thought I’d be pissed at her. But she seems intent on ensuring that that happens. Once Eddie leaves the classroom, I drop the eraser and turn back toward Lake. I fold my arms across my chest and watch as she gathers her things and heads toward the door, not once looking in my direction. Before she exits, I say something I regret before I even say it.
“Layken.”
She pauses when she gets to the door, but doesn’t turn around to face me.
“Your mom works Thursday nights,” I say. “I always get a sitter for Thursdays since I go to the slams. Just send Kel over before you leave. You know, before your date.”
She doesn’t turn around. She doesn’t yell. She doesn’t throw anything at me. She simply walks out the door, leaving me feeling as though I’m every single one of those names she just yelled in my classroom.
After fourth period, I sit at my desk and stare at nothing at all, wondering what the hell has gotten into me. I usually go to the teachers’ lounge for lunch, but I know I can’t eat right now. My stomach is in knots thinking about the last two hours. Actually, the last twenty-four hours.
Why would I say that to her? I know her poem stirred something in me unlike anything I’ve ever felt. It was a mixture of embarrassment, anger, hurt, and heartache. But that wasn’t enough for her—she had to go and add jealousy on top of all that. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about today, it’s that I don’t handle jealousy well. At all.
I know I thought the best way to help her get over me was to make sure she hated me, but I just can’t do it. If I want to keep my own sanity, I can’t let her hate me. I can’t let her love me, though, either. Shit! This is so screwed up. How the hell am I going to make this right?
•••
WHEN I REACH their table in the lunchroom, she’s not even joined in on the conversation taking place around her. She’s staring down at her tray, oblivious to the world. Oblivious to me. Eddie and I both try to get her attention. When she finally snaps out of her trance and looks up at me, the color runs from her face. She slowly rises from the table and follows me to the classroom. When we’re safely inside I close the door and walk past her to my desk.
“We need to ta
lk,” I say. My head is spinning and I have no idea what I even want to say to her. I know I want to apologize for the way I reacted earlier in class, but the words aren’t coming. I’m a grown man acting like a blubbering fourteen-year-old boy.
“Then talk,” she snaps. She’s standing across the room glaring at me. Her current attitude coupled with the fact that she just agreed to go out on a date with another guy right in front of me infuriates me. I know everything about our situation is my fault, but she’s not doing anything to help it.
“Dammit, Lake!” I spin away from her, frustrated. I run my hands through my hair and take a deep breath, then turn back to face her. “I’m not your enemy. Stop hating me.”
I swear she chuckles under her breath right before her eyes fill with fury. “Stop hating you?” she says, rushing toward me. “Make up your freaking mind, Will! Last night, you told me to stop loving you, now you’re telling me to stop hating you? You tell me you don’t want me to wait on you, yet you act like an immature little boy when I agree to go out with Nick! You want me to act like I don’t know you, but then you pull me out of the lunchroom in front of everyone! We’ve got this whole façade between us, like we’re different people all the time, and it’s exhausting! I never know when you’re Will or Mr. Cooper and I really don’t know when I’m supposed to be Layken or Lake.”
She throws herself into a chair and folds her arms across her chest, letting out a rush of frustrated breath. She’s eyeing me sharply, waiting for me to say or do something. There isn’t anything to say. I can’t refute a single word she just said, because it’s the truth. The fact that I haven’t been able to keep my own feelings in check have done more damage to her than I ever imagined.
I slowly walk around her desk and sit in the seat behind her. I’m exhausted. Emotionally, physically, mentally. I never imagined it would turn into this. If I had the slightest clue that the decision to keep my job over her would have this kind of effect on me, I would have picked her, despite whatever is going on with Julia. I should have picked her. I still should pick her.
I lean forward until I’m close to her ear. “I didn’t think it would be this hard,” I whisper. And that’s the truth. Never in a million years did I think something as trivial as a first date could turn into something so incredibly complicated. “I’m sorry I said that to you earlier, about Thursday,” I say. “I was being sincere—for the most part. I know you’ll need someone to watch Kel and I did make the slam a required assignment. But I shouldn’t have reacted like that. That’s why I asked you to come here; I just needed to apologize. It won’t happen again, I swear.”
I hear her sniff, which only means she’s crying. Jesus. I keep making this worse for her when all I want to do is fix it. I lift my hand to stroke the back of her hair in reassurance when the door to my classroom opens. I immediately pull my hand back and stand up, a hasty move that reeks of guilt. Eddie is standing in the doorway to the classroom holding Lake’s backpack. She glances at me, then we both simultaneously look at Lake. Turning her head away from Eddie and toward me, I finally see the tears streaming down Lake’s cheeks. The tears I put there.
Eddie sets the backpack in a desk and holds her palms up, backing out of the doorway. “My bad. Continue,” she says.
As soon as the door is closed behind her, I begin to panic. Whatever Eddie just witnessed, it obviously wasn’t a conversation between a teacher and his student. I’ve just added yet another shit-tastic thing to