Discipline (28 page)

With everyone staring at us, I looked up at
Aaron, expecting to see anxiety pinching his eyebrows, his Adam’s
apple bobbing up and down with trepidation. But to my greater
surprise, he appeared calm as ever. I observed him, a peaceful
feeling unfurling in my chest as I studied his square jaw, how it
was clenched but not tight, his perfect lips relaxed and just
barely parted.

But as our walk came to a halt at the corner
of the entrance and the main hall, I noticed how the sparkling blue
of his eyes was casting over into something glacial, unwelcoming.
It took me longer than it should have to follow his gaze and see
what he was looking at.
Whom
he was looking at.

Shit
.

By the time I noticed Ben, Aaron had stepped
out in front of me, holding my body behind him by my hand. And
suddenly, it started again — the feeling of quiet all around me,
the ringing in my ears. Seeing in slow motion. I looked around at
the students in the hallway. There were a few wearing expressions
of genuine concern. But then there were the ones whose eyes went
from shocked to hungry, their smiles — they were
smiling
—
filled to the brim with anticipation, their damned phones out with
the cameras already pointed at Aaron.

It’s over.
My heart dropped into my
twisting stomach. Any hope I had for this to go quietly had already
been dashed and Ben had yet to touch Aaron. It was already a mess,
Ms. Burke already up from her desk and standing in the doorframe of
the front office, her hand out, her eyes wide with concern as she
looked at me.

Only then did I realize that she’d asked me
something and that I was nodding fervently in response, my lips
repeating the same word over and over —
yes
.

“
Call them, yes, call them now
,” I
heard my voice urge. The cops. Once my eyes confirmed Ms. Burke
dialing, they flew back to Ben. His attention had turned to me, his
lips twisted in a sneer. But Aaron kept his strong frame between
us, his hand squeezing mine and muttering something to Ben as Ben
spoke to me. My ears ringing louder, I could only read his red
lips, making out the words “
what he did to you
,” only
because he kept repeating them.
God
, he was already
preparing his lie. He wanted everyone to hear it.

Touching my face, I tried to snap myself out
of the haze, my heart beating so fast now that I felt faint. Blood
seemed to be rushing to my chest only, away from my head, my feet,
making me stumble despite Aaron’s strong hold.

“Nina.” I heard his voice, registered his
blue eyes and suddenly, sound came crashing back in my ears. “Baby,
you’re okay,” he murmured, shaking my hand lightly as if trying to
wake me up. It did the trick. Ears, eyes focusing, I came to just
in time to hear the blonde girl shriek again.

“
Mr. Cole
!”

He had barely turned back around before
Ben’s fist sunk itself below his eye. One of the screams I heard
was my own as Aaron crumpled to my feet. Flecked on the skin of my
toes were several drops of blood — Aaron’s.

“
Ben! Stop!
” I tried launching myself
at him but he caught me by the shoulders, pushing me — or rather,
flinging me off to the side. Eyes squeezed shut, I heard shrieks
echo the halls as I crashed into something hard — a doorframe. My
head throbbed and my ears pulsed as I lay sprawled on the floor,
shaking magenta dots from my vision. Barely lifting my head, I
expected to find Aaron on the ground where I’d last seen him, but
instead, I saw two pairs of feet — his and Ben’s — and in a second,
I saw Ben crash to the floor before me, bright red streaming down
one side of his face.

Instinctively, I scrambled back from him. We
made eye contact for long second before he sneered and shakily
returned to his feet, all the while shouting, repeating the same
line.

“He fucked her when she was
seventeen
!”

Nothing came out of my mouth when I tried to
contest his words, my head dizzy as I tried to sit up. None of the
surrounding kids were smiling anymore, their eager expressions now
twisted with shock, horror. There were more of them now, probably
three, four times as many spectators as there were a few minutes
ago, all of them having filed out from the library and classrooms.
I blinked hard, my focus just so happening to land on the freckled
girl who knew Jake. Both her hands were clasped over her mouth, but
she didn’t look at me. She stared at Aaron, aghast.

When the police came, they took both him and
Ben away.

CHAPTER
20

The first court hearing came about a month
after the fight, and even weeks after, the reports continued
strong. They focused mostly on Aaron, whom they painted as the star
teacher who had fallen from grace. Released to the public was every
last detail of his personal life, including his “torrid affair with
former student, 21-year-old Nina Decker.”

From Mr. Davies to Cara Fulton to Bree
Hannigan, quotes were taken, spun and published. Even Aaron’s
neighbor, Maura Lewis, repeated her account of what she’d heard the
night that I’d gone to his home in Woodhill. Overnight, Aaron saw
his heavily guarded personal life splashed in detail across the
front pages of both local and regional papers.

One former student of his released an entry
on his personal blog detailing the “disruptive” and “heavily
flirtatious” conversations he’d witnessed between Aaron and myself
during my senior year. The article was picked up by a local paper
and quoted in a new story. By the time someone fact checked to find
that the blogger had never shared a class with me or Aaron, the
story had already been out several weeks and accepted as truth.

Another story claimed that often, Aaron and
I brought our affair onto school grounds.

According to Jake, the students in his year
displayed a mix of emotions ranging from envy to “absolute
disgust,” which were the words that Bree Hannigan had used with the
newspaper. “Don’t worry,” he had told me. “They know you two
weren’t together in high school. They just need something to be mad
about.”

That was apparent, considering the distorted
tales that continued leaking out from “former classmates and
students,” most of whom I’d rarely spoken to in high school.

Though the worst stories were the headlines
about Aaron’s suspension and investigation by the school board,
because those were real and true. They came during my second round
of court hearings, which served the purpose of granting a permanent
status to my restraining order from Ben. Foolishly, I’d imagined
him being thrown into jail for making death threats and taking the
first swing at Aaron, but that didn’t happen. Thanks to his
lawyers, he’d been charged with only third degree assault, a
misdemeanor with a fine of a hundred-twenty dollars. He was as free
a man as he’d been before the whole mess, so the restraining order
was a comfort to me. Even if it meant furthered tension with my
mother.

She attended the court hearing, but she
didn’t speak much to me. Everything about her posture and
expression embodied shame when she stood near me, but her lips
refused to form any sort of an apology.

And I didn’t ask for one. Not from her nor
Kelsey. Sitting before the judge in the cold, brittle courtroom, I
thought of the freeing words Aaron had told me at my favorite
little bar in Brooklyn.
You either love the family you were born
with or you choose the one you want to live with.

And I had chosen.

EPILOGUE

Eight Months Later

“
Adriana
, damn it! Unpack this box
now or we can’t technically have this dinner tonight!”

Em jabbed her finger at the yellow shoebox
sitting next to our front door. I laughed from the kitchen,
uncorking a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc as I watched Adriana fly out
of her bedroom, a brilliant blur in her ivory sundress. Kneeling
before the vintage shoe rack we’d bought from the flea market last
week, she threw open the shoebox. Removing her espadrilles from
inside, she held them above the first shelf of the rack, pausing
dramatically as she peered over her shoulder at us.

“Ready to make it official?”

Em nodded as I grinned. “Go for it.”

Adriana dropped the shoes onto the rack
before spinning around and holding both arms out like a magician
after his final trick. “
Ta-da
!” She wiggled her fingers, her
eyes bright and dancing with mirth. “We’re officially moved in,
ladies. Let the housewarming celebrations begin.”

A month after moving into our new apartment,
we were finally ready for a housewarming party. For probably too
long, we’d been living out of boxes and suitcases, too excited
about being under the same roof and exploring the neighborhood to
ever unpack. Many nights, we all slept in Em’s room, talking
ourselves to sleep in her cushy, queen-sized bed. Among the three
of us, she’d unpacked the most, being the responsible “mama hen” as
Adriana called her.

“Linh’s here!” Em announced upon hearing the
doorbell. She poured two more glasses of wine and readied the
cheese plate, brushing crumbs off her white shorts before pointing
a finger at me. “
You
. Go put on your outfit, missy!”

“Whoops. Yes, ma’am, will do.”

It had been Adriana’s idea for us all to
wear white. It was something or another about symbolism — “a blank
canvas” and starting over at our new place. Something like that. I
didn’t mind. I had been planning on wearing a certain white dress
for the dinner anyway.

“Oh boy, Nina. Bringing back the memories
with that number, aren’t ya?”

An arm draped around Linh, Mike grinned wide
when I emerged from my room in my white crocheted dress. I hadn’t
told the girls about my plan to wear it, so upon catching sight of
me, they burst out laughing.

“So we’re waiting on one more?” Linh asked.
When I nodded, she held up a bottle of vodka. “Well, Mike and I
brought this from our apartment. You can use it to punish him for
being late if you want.”

I smiled as I accepted the bottle. “Thank
you. I’m tempted but he has a meeting early tomorrow morning.”

“At the new school?”

“Mm-hm.”

But when Aaron arrived five minutes later,
Linh gave him the vodka anyway. From my bedroom, as I ran a brush
through my hair, I made out the sound of Mike giving him a
warning.

“Don’t get too drunk, man. You’re already
gonna have trouble when you see her.”

All I heard in response was Aaron’s low,
sexy laugh as he accepted the vodka. Peeking out my door, I watched
him bring the shot to his lips. But just as he tipped the glass
back, his eye caught mine in my doorway.

“No.” He immediately set the shot down,
shaking his head with a laugh. “Not that dress, Nina. Don’t do this
to me.”

“It’s a test of your self control, Aaron,”
Adriana teased. “If you can go the whole dinner without mauling
her, we’ll let you two skip dessert and go to Red Hook so you can
rip her dress off in the comfort of your own apartment.”

Aaron laughed. “I can get through dinner.”
He bit his fist for a second as he gazed at me. “Just… let me have
a word with my girlfriend really quick.” As he came into my room,
the girls teased him.

“You go have a word with her, Mr.
Teacher.”

“Just a
word
, though! Not a hump —
the food’s gonna get cold!”

“
Ade
!” I called at her before letting
Aaron close the door behind us. Immediately, his hands found my
hips and then dipped to my backside, his lips tenderly touching to
mine.

“Do they know what date it is?” he asked,
his murmur a warm hum against my mouth. “Not even Linh?”

“No, but it’s better this way, so they don’t
try to make us go to Todos or Mike’s bar and just party our asses
off till seven,” I giggled. “You have that faculty meeting tomorrow
and I need to get to class by eight.”

In preparation of my second real semester of
college, I’d kicked June off with summer classes at Baruch. They
were just Gen Eds though — so I could have them fulfilled before
getting to school and figuring out what I actually wanted to
study.

Aaron grinned. “We’ll keep it to ourselves
then.”

We were the only ones who seemed to remember
anyway. Despite the fact that Linh and Mike had met on the same
day, they didn’t seem to remember that exactly a year ago, we had
all sat down at that restaurant in Nolita. Back when I’d been
remembering how to live without Ben, when I was still wary of
Adriana and when Aaron had strictly been Mr. Cole. All because of
Woodhill, the place that neither of us had been to in eight months,
though it felt like an eternity by now. A good one.

“Yes. We’ll keep it to ourselves.” We didn’t
keep many secrets these days anyway. I closed my eyes, a content
smile sliding across my lips as Aaron backed me against the door,
his lips brushing mine as he slid his hands over my dress, his
fingers hooking into the little holes.

“Shit,” he murmured as one of the holes
stretched and ripped.

I smirked.  “Don’t worry.  It’s
about time you finally got to do that to this dress.”  Aaron
raised his eyebrows as I grinned.  “It’ll be your anniversary
gift.  Just wait till we get to your place tonight.  You
said you could get through dinner, right?”

Aaron only nodded, biting back his smile of
disbelief.  “And I thought you’d finished fulfilling all my
fantasies.”   His blue eyes studied mine as I shook my
head.

“That doesn’t stop,” I said softly, feeling
a flutter in my heart as Aaron kissed my lips  “We’re together
now.  It’s our fantasy every day.”

His words were a warm murmur against my
lips.  “But better.”