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"I’ve just got to do what makes me feel right," I told her. "Listen to my gut, and all that."
"Just make sure your gut isn’t trying to convince you that this is bad when there’s nothing wrong with it," she pointed out. I consoled myself with the reminder that if she had actually known the truth of the age gap between us, she would hardly have been as happy about it; he was too young for me, that was for damn sure.
He wasn’t that easy to get rid of, it seemed, much to my chagrin – I had hoped that he might take the hint and just back off and not make this difficult for me, but he reached out a couple of times, confused as to what had happened. Every time a message from him popped up onto my phone, I found myself torn – I wanted to reply to him and talk to him and let him know that I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him in all of this, for better or for worse, but I knew I couldn’t. I had already sent enough mixed signals his way without having to throw that in on top of it.
I had kissed him. If I had just managed to resist the urge to kiss him then none of this would have happened in the first place. I would have kicked him out and he would have been confused about it but he would have accepted it because that was the kind of man that he was. He could have put it down to some crazy mixed signals and that would have been the end of it, and he would never have tried to pick up where we’d left off.
But no. Instead, I had left that door open for him, and he was determined to find some way to cut through it, because he wanted to see me again, and it was like nothing on this Earth was going to stop him from doing that if he got the chance.
I knew that if I’d told him to go fuck himself and never to speak to me again, that he would have left me alone and been done with me; he would have respected that much, at least. But I wasn’t shooting him down – in fact, I wasn’t saying much at all in response to his messages. I was just letting them pile up because I was far too nervous to think about the reality of actually sayingnoonce and for all. I wasn’t ready to close that door, even though I should have been.
I went back to school after the break more or less mortified with what had happened between me and that former student. I knew that if anyone other than Mallory was to catch wind of what had happened between us, every single person in the village would know within ten minutes. That was just how it worked around here, how it had always worked; keeping secrets was nigh-on impossible, especially when it was something as damn juicy as this. I was lucky that Mallory had always been such a loyal friend to me, because I needed to talk to someone about it but I knew I couldn’t go dropping this on just anyone.
Every message I got from him was an assault on what I had tried to convince myself was the truth. That I didn’t want him, that I didn’t need him, that there was no part of him that would have made my life any better – only parts that would have made it worse. But whenever that face popped up on my phone, I felt that certainty waver. I wanted him. God only knew how much I wanted him. I needed to be with him, I needed to be close to him, I needed to feel him near me...
I couldn’t stop thinking about the night that we had spent together. I had never felt so wanted in my entire life. I had been with a fair few guys in my time, but none, not one of them, had made me feel like that. It wasn’t just that he knew what to do with his hands or his tongue or his cock, but that when he touched me it felt like he was worshiping every inch of me. I had never felt more desired in my entire life before, and that was dangerously enticing to me. After so long just hiding myself away and pretending that I had never even heard of having a libido, having him touch me like that had just been...well, it had made my heart ache and my body hurt for him, hurt for the need of him, hurt for the lack of him.
And so, I didn’t cut things off. I just let those messages stack up, let him wait for a response, let him wonder what he was missing out on. And yeah, okay, maybe there was some part of me that enjoyed the attention that he was lavishing on me. It had been a long time since I had felt wanted by someone, and let alone someone who I actually wanted to want me to some degree, and the little boost I got every time he reached out to me was what I needed to keep me from cutting things off entirely. I knew that it wasn’t exactly the nicest thing in the world, but he had lied to me about who he was - I wasn’t going to go beating myself up too badly, given that he had held some pretty important stuff back when we’d first met.
And that was what I kept telling myself.
I didn’t expect to see him again, at least not in person.
But I hadn’t counted on how much he, apparently, wanted to see me again.
I was waiting by the gate and seeing all the kids off to their various buses and parents and lifts back home when I spotted him. He was dressed in dark jeans and a black t-shirt, not bothering with a jacket, and the sight of his arms made my heart swim with excitement.
And then, my stomach dropped. Just what the hell was he doing here? Joseph walked towards me, his eyes pinned to me as though he could see nobody else, and I felt everything around me slow down for a long moment as I tried to prepare for what I was going to say to him.
I had practiced a million times in my head the sharp telling-off that I had ready for him if I ever saw him again, but all of that seemed to just drift and drip away from my mind when I actually saw him standing there. It was one thing to be able to recite it in my head when there was nobody there to hear it, quite another to come out and tell it to him when he was standing there in person.
"Abigail," he greeted me with a nod, and to anyone else he could have passed for one of the dads flirting with me at the school gate. I had done it often enough, keeping them at arm’s length and giving them just enough to keep the both of us entertained, but I had always felt like I was comfortably and completely in control. With him, with this, it was different. The world was tipping on its side, the ground threatening to slip-slide out from under me, and the only thing keeping me on my feet was his eyes, those eyes that made everything around me slow down.
"What are you doing here?" I asked, hoping that how much he had thrown me wasn’t evident on my face. I doubted I was doing much of a good job at hiding it. I glanced around, making sure that nobody had seen us talking; I wanted to be able to deny that I had ever seen him here, as though that would make all of this go away somehow.
"I’m here to pick up my sister," he replied. "Mary. Mum’s busy this afternoon and I don’t get to see so much of Mary since I’m offshore so much."
It was a good story, but I knew it was only half the truth. At least part of the reason that he was here was because of me. He knew this was where to find me, how to scare an answer to all those messages out of me. I had been the one in control for a little too long for his liking, and now he was claiming that back from me and I had no choice but to give him an answer.
Seeing him like this, it sent all those feelings that I had tried to pin down inside of me rushing back through my head. I hated this. I loved it. I was so happy to see him, and I was so scared that I was going to give something away by just being close to him like this, too. My body ached, my skin prickled, and I could remember so vividly the way that his hands had felt when they had moved all over my body. I could remember his tongue between my legs, could remember the way he made my back arch when I came. And I knew, from the look in his eyes, that he could remember it all, too.
"I don’t think you should come here when I’m working," I told him bluntly, but there was a waver in my voice that gave him all the space he needed to stay.
"Why not?" He replied. "You scared you won’t be able to handle yourself around me?"
I glanced around, making sure that nobody had heard him speak those words to me. My heart was pounding dangerously fast in my chest and it felt like my blood was on fire in my veins, but the feeling was, somehow, good. Like this was what my body had been built for.
"Come inside," I ordered him. I couldn’t do this out here. I couldn’t risk it - I didn’t want people to see us together for more than a moment, and I knew that if Mallory caught a single glimpse of us, then she would never let me forget it. He raised his eyebrows at me, and I ignored what he was trying to tell me with them. I didn’t care. He needed to get out of there, and I needed to feel him closer to me, and I could only think of one way to answer those problems for both of us.
I took him back to my classroom – mercifully empty, thank all things good and pure – and closed the door behind him. I crossed my arms over my chest and turned my attention to him.
"What are you really doing here?" I asked.
"You wouldn’t answer my messages," he told me bluntly. "And I know that you want to. I thought you might find it a little easier to say what you need to say in person."
I looked away from him. I couldn’t tell him the truth. I couldn’t tell him how much I knew. But my God, standing there, so close to him, the burning, pulsing chemistry between us was nearly impossible to deny. And maybe I didn’t want to deny it for another moment.
Before I could stop myself, I moved towards him, planted a kiss on his lips. I knew this was stupid, knew this was crazy, and knew above all else that if anyone caught wind of what we were doing in here then I would land myself in some serious hot water. But then, his hands came to my waist and he pushed me back against my desk and I knew that I had made the right choice. How could it be the wrong one, when it brought me closer to him?
