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Danielle shakes her head. “Not really,” she admits with a shrug. “I guess I didn’t realize until I met Esther and Rose that I’m what you’d consider upper middle class. My grandparents started their own restaurant when they were in their twenties,” she explains. “They would have passed the legacy to my dad, but he didn’t want to be a restaurateur. His parents didn’t fault him because teaching is a noble calling, and they had other kids to take over the family business. But they had several restaurants across the state by the time Dad married my mom, and they sold a couple when my mom left to help Dad get on his feet. The rest is history. He invested in real estate and other small businesses in town and made the money back in spades.” Danielle smiles as she recalls the history of her family’s inheritance. “For a high school Principal, he has one hell of a mind for finance. You know he made me set up a Roth IRA on my eighteenth birthday?”
I lean against the dark, faux marble countertops and smile at her. We grew up so differently that it almost doesn’t seem possible that we should be together. We’re like Baby and Johnny from Dirty Dancing: the rich girl and the poor teacher she falls in love with. I bet her father will hate me.
“I have a retirement account through work, but that isn’t a privilege a lot of people have,” I shrug.
She rifles through my snack cabinet, a smile popping up on her face when she grabs a box of Nutri-Grain bars. “I figured. But now, whenever I go to someone’s house, I look at the little things to see what I take for granted—skincare products, food, home,” Danielle gestures at the space around us. “My dad shielded me from a lot of evils in the world. I was fourteen before I even found out that Manhattan had a homeless population on the south side of town. I’ve seen people asking for money at Dillons or outside Walmart, but it was so rare that I thought Manhattan was a thriving, wealthy community.”
Danielle walks into the living room and looks around. Her eyes take in the sepia-tinted photographs of my grandparents and the intricately patterned patchwork quilt draped over the couch. As she walks toward the couch, her hand trails along the faded fabric and brings a nostalgic smile to her face.
When she turns to me, she says, “Manhattan isnota wealthy community like I suspected. Manhattanhaswealth, but its people aren’t inherently wealthy. There’s a lot of people that need help here.”
I nod in agreement because I grew up being one of those people that needed help. We were never homeless, but I was embarrassed to invite friends over. “You’re right,” I respond. “There are more people in this town that need help than people willing to help.”
“I want to help people,” she says after a few seconds. “I want to bridge the wealth gap. It isn’t fair that my father and I have so much when others have so little, or sometimes even nothing at all.”
Her words spur me forward, and I walk over to Danielle and take her in my arms. She smiles at me, her youth and beauty warming every inch of me. “You have a good heart, you know that?”
She wraps her arms around my neck and stands on the tips of her toes to press her lips to mine. All the rom-coms in the world couldn’t stand up to the kiss we share. “My dad wants me to be a teacher, though,” Danielle says as she pulls away. “He thinks that a good education is the best way to help kids in need.”
Marcus Fulton is right, to an extent. A good education can take a student far, but sometimes the most challenging part is getting that student to pay attention in class because their stomach aches from not eating for three days. “If you want to be a teacher, I think you’d be a great one. You seem pretty level-headed, and you’re incredibly smart. You can also relate to people in an empathetic way that’s harder for male teachers to do.”
Danielle sighs. She tries to suppress it, but I still feel the warmth on my chest as she looks at the space between us and avoids making eye contact. “But,” I add, “if you want to be a social worker or a child advocate, that will also help kids in need. Getting kids the food they need could be the difference between going to class or going to the store to steal whatever they can get their hands on. You could be the person that keeps them out of jail, giving teachers like me a reason to do our jobs.”
She looks up, and we lock eyes. With fingers tracing patterns along the back of my neck, Danielle presses her forehead to my chest and mumbles into my shirt. “Thank you.”
I put my chin on top of her head and ask her, “For what?”
“I don’t know,” she replies. “Nothing. Everything. This. Us.” Danielle twists her head until her cheek is flat against my chest.
It’s the right thing to say. She holds me tight, and the rest of the night is a blur.
The first time I taste her, she’s on the edge of the couch with her panties on the coffee table and her shoes digging into my shoulder. She’s sweet like honey, and I lap from her delicious center until she’s screaming my name.
She tours the guest bedroom upstairs. There’s a wall full of closets, and the doors are full-length mirrors. I make her watch herself come as I sink to my knees and suck on her erect clit once more. “That’s right, baby girl,” I growl into her pussy when she’s clinging to my shoulders to hold herself aloft, “come all over daddy’s face.”
God, she brings the animal out in me. I nearly ravage her right there, but I take her to the bedroom down the hall. Past the main bathroom that she doesn’t get to tour. Into the master bedroom that’s shrouded in darkness. I lay her down on the bed and slowly undress her—shoes left on the ground, skirt discarded on the foot of the bed, cute little shirt tossed somewhere into the unknown, followed immediately by her bra.
The sun has long set before we finish. Danielle leaves fingernail tracks down my back. Bright red streaks of blood brought to the surface mar my skin like a tattoo.
I leave my own marks to match. Teeth pressed to her inner thigh, the curve of her neck, the space above her hip bone. I write a love letter on her skin in bruises.
“Do I need to take you home?” I would hate for her to leave my bed, but she’s still eighteen. She might still have a curfew with a father who’s concerned about her whereabouts.
But Danielle shakes her head no. “I’ll text him when I get up. My phone is somewhere,” she frowns as she looks around the darkened room. “I’ll tell him I’m staying the night with Cam or Rose or something.”
I don’t want her to lie to her father for me, but I could lose my job if she tells the truth. And frankly, I’d rather stay in this perfect little bubble we’ve made than face reality.
22
DANIELLE
Life is pretty much perfect, or as perfect as it can be when you’re secretly dating your teacher.
Rosemary is the only one that knows. She’s positively thrilled for me. Whenever we’re alone, she asks how things are going with Holy. She’s the only one that knows about our secret rendezvous. She tells lies for me whenever my father asks what we did one night or another.
But she’s keeping something from me. Sometimes, she can’t be my alibi. I don’t know what she’s doing or where she’s at, but I’ll text her to ask if she can cover for me so I can spend some time with Holy, and she never responds. The next day, she waves it off and says that she didn’t hear her phone go off or she went to bed early. There’s something fishy going on with Rose, and one of these days, I’m going to figure out what it is.
Cameron and Esther know that I’m seeing someone. But Cameron is convinced it’s some older guy at K-State. “Maybe a young professor,” she giggles. I never correct her; she isn’t far from the truth. It’s one thing to date a professor at a school I don’t attend. It’s another to date a teacher that I’m working for. I’d rather have Cameron believe that I’m banging the entire staff at the college before she finds out that it’s Mr. Pelham.
