First Man (14 page)

I simply didn’t want to share. Our daily sessions might have just been debates and discussions, but they were our own, and I had no desire to invite any interlopers into that quiet world, even my best friends.

“I think it was a good idea,” Brian said, finally speaking up after his taco had been successfully devoured. “Study halls are worthless in this school. Ms. LaPorte actually yelled at me for reading a magazine.” Brain’s lip curled in disgust. His rants about Ms. LaPorte were becoming a near daily occurrence. The skinny chemistry teacher who facilitated study hall apparently had a nefarious plan to make Brian’s life miserable.
“I didn’t have any homework!” he grumbled, “But I guess it’s a better use of my time to stare vacantly into space.”

“But I thought you were good at that,” Angie said, innocently.

The bell rang, cutting off Brian’s reply. I stood up and followed the crush of students out into the hallway and to my next class.

I didn’t plan to kiss him.

It’s easy to say that now, but it really was the truth. I walked into his office brandishing a finished copy of my first draft. I knew it was rough and my ideas still had a tendency to run away from me, but that didn’t keep me from being absolutely giddy with pride. At close to forty pages, it was the longest and most detailed paper I’d ever written.

Beaming, I dropped it on Adam’s desk.

He looked up at me, surprised. “I thought you weren’t planning on finishing this until next Monday?” he asked, flipping over the cover page and scanning my intro.

“I was, but I was on a roll this weekend, and I just kept going.” I’d spent the entire weekend shut up in my bedroom, furiously scribbling notes, editing and re-editing endlessly until the ideas started to come together in a real semblance of cohesion.

Now came the nerves.

“Ember, I’m sure you don’t want to sit here and watch me read this,” Adam said, flipping the cover page back over. “Why don’t you take a walk for a few minutes? I’ll write you a hall pass in case anyone stops you. Give me twenty minutes and I’ll do a quick read through, and I’ll read it over thoroughly tonight.”

I reluctantly agreed, even though I knew expecting him to read a thirty-eight page paper while I stared at him was a bit silly. Adam handed me a hastily written hall pass, and herded me out of his office. Faced with the sudden freedom, I pushed open one of the side doors and walked out into the courtyard.

March had arrived and winter was finally showing signs of releasing its hold on the town. Large drifts of dingy snow still peppered the school grounds, but muddy patches of earth were beginning to show through in spots. We’d, no doubt, have a few more storms before spring really arrived, but the hope that the bleak season would end finally seemed like more than an idle dream.

My boots crunched on the dry snow as I made a slow circuit of the school grounds. With every other student cloistered in class, the normally bustling courtyard was silent except for the persistent whistling of the wind.

Nothing ever seemed to change here. I’d lived in the same small town since my birth, and the constant sameness had grown stifling. I loved my parents, and I understood, at least abstractly, how they’d wanted to build a home in the same familiar place that they’d grown up in.

They weren’t so provincial to have never left the state. They’d both gone to UCONN for college, travelling a few hundred miles to Connecticut. They’d taken me on family vacations across the country, visiting both coasts in an effort to make me worldly.

We’d hopped a plane to California one summer when I was 12, and I’d stood at the edge of the ocean, staring out at the impossible blue of the Pacific, so different from the cool steel of the Atlantic.

I wanted to run off to the big city and experience the difference and the endless possibilities that books and movies promised that cities held. I had surprised everyone with my decision to attend BU. Boston might have fit my criteria as a large city, but it was still a place locked in winter and far too close to home.

It wasn’t Adam. What hung between us in those short winter days wasn’t even a concrete fantasy, and I was far too practical to hinge my whole future on the idle urge to kiss my teacher.

I had stared at the stack of crisp white letters with the word
Yes
printed at the top of each page. Washington DC, New York, Seattle, New Orleans. . . so many possible futures stared up at me from those pages. So many potential Embers. Who would I be at each one of those places? Who would I become?

Tucked at the bottom of the stack like an afterthought was Boston. I had plucked it out of the pile and stared at that page, telling myself that ‘
maybe I wasn’t finished being this Ember just yet
.’

And that was it. I’d gone on a tour with my parents, listening to the enthusiastic junior leading the group of wide-eyed students and nostalgic parents. I’d snapped photos of the tall buildings and tried to imagine if I’d feel any different living in one of those high-rises, all the while quietly promising myself that the next time I’d go farther away. Next time I’d go someplace really different. Just not yet.

Not yet.

I glanced at my watch and saw that I’d been wandering through the courtyard for close to thirty minutes. Slowly, I meandered my way back to the entrance, picking my way around the muddy patches. I pushed open the door and walked into the warm hallway, my boots leaving a faint trail of slush behind me.

Adam’s office was only a few doors down. I peeked my head into the small room, my skin still flushed from the cold. “Finished?” I asked, unable to keep the expectancy out of my voice.

“I am. Come in and sit down.” For once, the heavy desk wasn’t between us. Adam was leaning against the edge of his desk as he flipped through the pages with a pleased look on his face.

I pushed the door shut behind me, shrugging out of my coat and scarf and dropping them on that hard wooden chair I’d already spent so many hours in, almost vibrating with anticipation as I waited for Adam’s verdict. I couldn’t have sat down if I wanted to.

“It’s very good, Ember.” I instantly relaxed, tension I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding draining out of me. “There are definitely a few parts where you wander off topic a bit, and it needs some editing, but for a for a first draft it’s excellent.” My face had broken into a wide grin and the smile spread to Adam.

I looked up and saw his soft brown eyes watching me with an unreadable expression. That same spark flared between us again as we both realized how close we were standing to each other. I could smell the warm spicy scent of his aftershave and a faint aroma of damp wool from his sweater.

I’d played at being the bad girl and paid the price. Life as a good girl hadn’t been much more rewarding. Maybe it was time to just be Ember. Any moment the bell might ring or another teacher might knock on the door and shatter this frozen moment between us. Before that could happen, my brain said, ‘to hell with it’ and I crossed those last few inches between us and pressed my lips to his.

Time stopped.

Adam froze still as a statue, his lips dry and unyielding beneath my own. I almost expected him to shove me away, stammering something about how wrong this was, but I felt the tension drain out of his body.

He kissed me back. His arms wrapped around my waist, pulling me closer, and his lips parted beneath mine. Adam tasted like coffee and cinnamon gum, and I forgot that he was my teacher and fifteen years my senior. His hands skated over my hips, and I shivered when his fingers brushed the sliver of bare skin where my sweater met my jeans.

He pulled back just long enough to whisper, “Ember,” just a breath against my lips. He kissed me again, and the hunger of the first kiss had faded into a slower burn. It was a kiss that told me I wasn’t the only one who’d thought about this moment, consciously or unconsciously. It was a kiss that promised me that we’d be kissing many many more times.

The bell rang and we both jumped apart as though we’d been burned. I glanced back at the door, and, satisfied that it was still firmly shut, took a step closer to Adam.

“We can’t,” he said, softly and without conviction.

“I know. But I still want to.” His eyes were cast down at the floor, looking anywhere but at me. “Adam, look at me.” He did, and I could see the emotions whirling through his eyes – desire and fear all mixed up with a healthy dose of guilt. “I have to go to class, but I’ll come by here after school gets out. We can talk then.” I stared at Adam until he nodded, still looking shocked at his actions and my own.

Without giving him time to tell me no, I kissed him again. Nothing more than a quick peck, it was still a promise that whatever happened in the future, I didn’t regret that kiss.

FORBIDDEN FRUIT

Adam

S
he kissed me.

Ember. . . kissed me, and I kissed her back.

As a man who prides himself on being articulate, I can’t remember the last time I was rendered completely speechless.

She walked into my office, her cheeks pink from the wind, her blue eyes watching me warily she waited for me to deliver my initial assessment of her paper. I don’t know how she could have thought, even for a moment, that I would have been anything but pleased. Rough draft or not, her ideas were sound and well-executed. She was the sort of student a teacher would hope to get once in their career.

We’d been standing so close as we discussed her paper, far closer than any sense of propriety would have allowed, but hour after hour in her presence had worn down my defenses.

She took a step closer, and I could smell her perfume, a smoky scent with a backdrop of some type of berry, juicy and lush. Thank goodness it wasn’t apples. I had enough thoughts of forbidden fruit racing through my head.

A better man would have recognized what was simmering between us and seen that mutual admiration had grown into a dangerous attraction. I never claimed to be a better man.

When her lips touched mine, I suddenly understood every overwrought cliché I’d ever read. Did fireworks explode behind my eyes? No, and there were no dulcet choirs singing her praises either. There was only her and that soft red sweater and her lips that were still chilled from the March air.

Her mouth met mine, and I was lost. The resolve I’d been trying to muster crumbled, and my hands moved on their own volition, pulling her closer to me. I held her body sung against my own, and we fit together like two jagged puzzle pieces. Her hands wrapped around my shoulders, and, for the first time since arriving in New Hampshire I didn’t feel impossibly tall.