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Idon’t want to keep seeing him, but also, I never agreed to see him in the first place. Maybe if I ignore that part of the question, he’ll get the hint.
God, you’re the coolest chick ever.
That’s me. Mrs. Cool. I chuck my phone on my side table and resolve to forget about Elliot. It was nice to fool around with him this summer. We made out a lot, and he was really into feeling me up, but that’s where I drew the line. Elliot’s cute, but he’s no Mr. Pelham. And I resolved years ago to save myself for a man that was worth it.
I’m not ashamed that I haven’t had sex yet. I know a lot of people in my graduating class that have done the deed, but their experience doesn’t shape mine. I have friends that regret their first time, and I have friends that think sex is the best thing that has ever happened to them. I appreciate all the perspectives in my life; I just know that my first time will be with Holy Pelham.
* * *
“Girl, who are you dressing like that for?” I picked Rosemary up for school a few minutes ago, but it isn’t until we get out of the car that she sees my whole outfit. “You look like a sexy angel. Is it already Halloween?”
I roll my eyes. “It’s not like I’ve got wings on.” The rest of her assessment might be true, though. The all-white, almost sheer dress fits like it was painted on. It’s barely school appropriate. While it’s long enough to pass the fingertip test, the straps are nearly nonexistent. They are razor-thin, and the only way I was allowed out of the house this morning was by throwing on a jean jacket. Even then, my father wasn’t pleased.
“You don’t have to do all this for Elliot, you know.” Rosemary shuts the front door of my Jeep and goes into the backseat to grab her bag. “He’s not a very high-maintenance boyfriend.”
It makes me shudder when people refer to him as my significant other. “We’re not dating, Rose.”
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, okay. Whatever you say. Hooking up.”
I give her a pointed look, and her teeth snap together quickly. “We aren’thooking up, either. You know that.”
Rosemary and I have been best friends since we were twelve. She moved to Kansas from Montana and transferred into my dance class over the summer. We hit it off quickly, and soon we were having sleepovers, doing each other’s nails, and talking about our crushes. She fit into my life like she was born to be there and vice versa. She knows everything about me, including my prohibition against sex with men that aren’t Mr. Pelham.
“Relax.” Rosemary comes around the back of the car and meets me. “I know you’ve got some master plan to seducea teacher,” she says in a conspiratorial whisper.
I look around to see if anyone heard her. “Shush, nobody needs to know about that.” I love Cameron and Esther, and I’m sure they wouldn’t tell a soul if I told them about my crush on Holy. But small-town secrets are rarely kept secret for long. The more people that know about something, the more people wind up knowing.
Rosemary waves me off as we walk toward the building. “How are you going to seduce him, anyway? You heard last year that one of the junior high teachers lost their job because they were dating a high school student. It wasn’t even their student, but they were still underage.”
“I’m not underage,” I tell her simply. “It’s frowned upon when the student is eighteen. And sure, my father would probably fire him. But the point is, it’s just a moral injustice at this point instead of a legal one.”
She looks at me as if she isn’t sure whether I’m telling her the truth. Then, eventually, she decides that she doesn’t care. “The question still stands. What are you going to do to convince Mr. Pelham of this?”
I’ve been putting together a plan for years. “Let me handle that.”
* * *
I’m not clumsy by nature, but the best way to get a man to stare at your ass is to bend over. So I make sure to drop papers, knock over a water bottle on someone’s desk, and tidy up Mr. Pelham’s organizers by bending at the waist. He isn’t the only one who stares, but I don’t care about the teenage boys ready to line up and ask for my phone number.
Holy didn’t say much when I came into class after lunch. “It’s the first day,” he told me, “so we probably won’t do much.” Then he made every effort to ignore me.
As someone actively ignoring a boy with a crush on me, I could tell the difference between someone who wasn’t interested, someone playing hard to get, and someone that was trying to pretend their feelings didn’t exist. Holy is the latter.
I suspect he’s withholding his lustful gaze because I’m a student. I appreciate that because it means he isn’t easily swayed by a pretty girl. But it’s also a pain in the ass to deal with from a pursuer’s perspective.
With my first day in the books, I’m more frustrated than anything. I thought I saw something in Holy when we spoke last week. The way he stared at my legs made me think this pursuit would be easier. But he stays at the front of the class and avoids me like the plague, even when I squeeze past him to hand out papers. He backs up until the whiteboard to stay away from me.
“Ms. Fulton,” Holy clears his throat as the last class of the day gets up to leave. “You’re very clumsy.”
I raise an eyebrow at him. “Sorry about that,” I reply with a mumble. I’m already feeling defeated and thinking about what my next game move will be.
He grabs the extra syllabus papers and taps them against the desk, straightening them into a perfect stack. “Aren’t you a dancer or something? Shouldn’t you be light on your feet and graceful?”
The hair on the back of my neck stands up as I realize that Mr. Pelham has been watching me. That or he’s simply looked into my schedule and discovered that I’m on the dance team. Either way, he knows I’m a dancer, which isn’t information I volunteered. “It’s probably just first day of school jitters.”
Holy sets the stack of papers on his desk and meets my gaze for the first time. His brown eyes are beautiful. I know people often say that they’re boring, but his have depth. His make me long for him. “Then I’m sure you’ll be better tomorrow,” he says reassuringly.
There’s something in his tone. I think it’s the way his lip twitches into a half-smile at the end of his sentence. It makes me realize that everything I thought during the last three hours was wrong. Holy Pelham is interested in me, after all; he’s just very good at hiding it when we’re in front of the students. “I’ll do my best, sir.”
