School Ties (3 page)

“Miss Brewster!”

“Monsieur Gerreaux, nice work. Congratulations.”

“Thank you.” He's beaming with pride and for good reason. I'd overheard his instructor saying he should enter his project in the state competition. I bet he'll place, too. The photographs as a set are stunning. He's set them up so your eye is drawn to the tiniest differences in each print. As your gaze follows along, you're left feeling like you're being led through a dark forest at someone else's mercy and shown precisely what they want you to see. It's frustrating and thrilling at the same time. Or at least it is for me. I don't know what anyone else sees. So often I'm left feeling like I don't live in the same world as everyone else. “Miss Brewster, these are my parents.”

I'm greeted with a murmured “
Bonsoir, mademoiselle
,” from both of them and though I extend a hand for a shake, they kiss me on the cheeks. My reply of “
bonsoir
” is met by a stream of rapid French. Gerreaux mercifully interrupts to explain that I don't speak French. Much, anyway.

“Jean-Philippe has told us you gave him the inspiration for his project,” says Madame Gerreaux.

“Oh, no. Just a nudge. That's all they need most of the time. Your son is very talented.” I chat with them for a few minutes until Jean-Philippe tugs them away to look at one of his roommate's sculptures.

I wend my way through the crowd, stopping to look at each project. I loved coming down here when I'd visit my grandfather. It was my own personal museum. Now I'm here, pride swelling in my chest as I walk among the works they've put their angsty, testosterone-fueled hearts into. I'm biased, having seen how much (in some cases literal) blood, sweat and tears have been poured into these pieces, but I think they're amazing.

I've saved a particular corner of the building for last, knowing what and who I'll find there. When I've had my fill of the rest of the show and done my best art show chatter—The composition! The dimensionality! Reminiscent of Donatello or whatever other Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle comes to mind!—I make my way to the alcove where Shep and a couple of boys from his class have hung their work. I've averted my eyes for the past few days though I know what's going to be there. I've seen all of Shep's drawings from class, so there won't be any surprises, but it'll be fun to see them on actual display.

I tease myself before turning the corner and an anticipatory smile creeps over my face. I'm such a dork. A silly, stupid, inappropriate dork to get so excited about seeing my secretly favorite student's high school art project. Be that as it may, my breath still catches and I come up short when I swing into the nook.

Shep

I've been waiting for this all night. For her. For every “congratulations” I've received, for every hand of someone's eager parent I've shook, and for every time a teacher has asked me something about one of my drawings, I've kept an eye out for Erin.

The show is closing in fifteen minutes. I'd almost given up but in some back corner of my brain, stupid hope held out that she's like a kid saving the best for last, and maybe I'm her best. I'm such an arrogant douche bag. But when the purple herringboned shoe peeks around the corner, I'm on high alert. If I'd stayed in Shamokin, I don't know that I would've ever learned what the fuck herringbone is, but here I've acquired more knowledge about preppy attire than I'll ever need to know. Tweed, popped collars, Nantucket red. Even if I didn't know what that pattern was called, I'd know those shoes anywhere. I stare at them at least once a week because they're her favorites, and I stare at her feet so I won't stare at her face. Or other things. But she's here and I can't wait to see the look on her face.

Her ready smile melts, her chin wrinkles and her eyebrows fall, shadowing her brilliant brown eyes. Confused is not what I was going for. She stands there looking like she might drop the cup of punch she's holding. It's tipping and I don't want her to spill on her shoes and ruin them. I reach out and right the flimsy plastic, not able to help the contact with her soft skin when I do.

Her eyes fly wide to mine and her wrist that had been drooping snaps up in a reflex. The cup I'd been trying to steady gets crushed between us as she turns, spilling bright red liquid down my white dress shirt and blue-and-red-striped tie.
Shit.
Guess I'll be throwing a load of wash in tonight and hoping it doesn't stain. I have one extra shirt, and it's nice to have a cushion in case I can't get laundry done on a Sunday. But if this gets ruined . . .

“Oh, god, Shep. I'm so sorry!”

Shep? She's never called me Shep before. It's always Mr. Shepherd. I'd let her spill a rainbow of punch on me, have to do laundry every day, if I could hear her call me that again.

She's grabbed a handful of napkins from a pillar nearby and is sopping up the washed-out blood color that's seeping through my undershirt to my skin. Jesus Christ. I've stopped breathing, and I'm standing stock still as that stupid pillar. If she doesn't stop touching me . . .

I grab her wrist and clear my throat. “It's okay. Miss Brewster, it's okay.”

Even though I'd like to shove her up against the nearest wall, drag her hands over her head and kiss her silly, another teacher, Mr. Connelly, has walked into the alcove.

“Had a collision, I see?”

“Yes. God, I'm so clumsy.”

I drop Erin's wrist and we step back from each other. Erin backs into the pillar and almost spills what's left of the napkins and a bowl of popcorn. She's not usually clumsy at all, but it's a convenient excuse.

“This building with all its nooks and crannies isn't helping,” Mr. Connelly says. Then he launches into a lecture on how the original building was built the year the school was founded and has been added onto so many times there are at least half a dozen architectural styles incorporated into it. I bet he can name every single last one of them.

He'll yammer on about this for another twenty minutes. I don't want to abandon Erin to his boring spiel, which I'm sure she knows already, but, “I should rinse this out. I'll be right back.”

I hurry to the nearest bathroom and strip to my T-shirt. If I button my jacket over it, you can barely see the red. I hold my button-down under cold water and most of the juice comes out under the stream. It might be salvageable. When I've done all I can do, I walk back out. Mr. Connelly's gone but Erin's still there, staring, no cup in her hand.

I toss my shirt under a bench and wipe my damp hands on my dress-code khakis.

“Do you like them?”

She turns to me, hugging her elbows and a sweet smile on her face. That's better.

“I do. I'm sorry about earlier, I . . . I was surprised.”

I nod. I knew she would be. It's part of why I did it. I wanted to surprise her.

The drawings I've tacked up are half the sketches she's expecting: the glass still lifes, the other object studies we've been working on, a few perspective exercises. But the rest of them, they're fleeting postures. A hand holding a piece of chalk, the grip of fingers surrounding a dining hall tray, the rounded brim of a baseball hat under the bright sun of a soccer game. I'd had to cull them carefully from the sketchbook I keep wedged between my mattress and the bedframe. Not that the rest are scandalous—Erin dresses conservatively and I don't chance putting the less-chaste images of her I have in my head to paper—but someone would be able to tell it's her.

My favorite is one of her heels lifting out of the backs of her shoes as she stretched to reach the top of the board because she'd filled up the rest of it. The definition of her calf muscles and the tiny constellation of freckles to the left of her Achilles tendon . . . I can't be the only one who's noticed, and there aren't so many feminine ankles around here. These, though, are innocent. Could be anyone. But they're not. She knows it and I know it.

She opens her mouth to say something, when Will Chase swings around the corner. His face lights up when he sees her.

“Miss Brewster. I wasn't sure you'd be here. You spend all your time down here as it is. I thought you'd be bored of this stuff by now.”

The face he makes implies he's bored already.

“I've seen a lot of it before, but not everything. They've all been working so hard. Some of them must've been working right up until the show, putting on finishing touches. And some of them,” she says, sneaking me a glance, “have been keeping parts of their projects tightly under wraps. Everything's great.”

She means it, too.

Mr. Chase checks his watch and stares too long at Erin. “Mr. Shepherd, it's getting on curfew. You should help the other boys clean up and then get back to the dorm. Don't want to be late for check-in.”

The clock on the wall confirms. I've got ten minutes before I have to be up at Ford unless I want a slap on the wrist for being late. I'm tempted to stay here, though. I don't like the way he's looking at her. I might do my damnedest to keep my thoughts about Erin Brewster pure and chaste from afar, especially in public, but Will Chase sure as fuck doesn't. He tears his eyes off her long enough to look down his nose at me, even though we're about the same height. I might even have an inch on him.

“Yes, sir,” I bite off, grabbing the half-full bowl of popcorn and the napkins Erin didn't grab in her haste off the pillar. A few steps later, Erin's voice chimes in my ear. “Well done, Mr. Shepherd. A pleasant surprise.”

The slight emphasis on the word “pleasant” dulls the sharp stab of annoyance at Will Chase's interruption of something I'd been looking forward to for weeks. What a lame-ass fantasy life I lead. Doesn't he get enough of her already? He chats her up in the dining hall, walks her toward her classroom after lunch and who knows? He probably invites her to his apartment to “watch a movie” or “read some poetry.” Goddammit. Why does he have to steal one of the only times I have a legitimate excuse to talk to her? I blow a breath out my nose so I don't sound pissed off when I say this, because I'm not. Not at her.

“Thanks, Miss Brewster. Thanks for coming. Have a good night.”

Then I'm walking away from her. Leaving her in a room full of my drawings and, because you can't always get what you want, Will Chase instead of me.

Erin

Shep grabs his discarded shirt from under the bench and walks out, his shoulders stiff under his blazer. My eyes follow him until he turns the corner, and then he's gone. I turn to see Will staring at me. We've gone out a few times, once to a pizza place in town and once he'd brought a DVD and a bottle of pinot noir over to my apartment after lights-out. I couldn't drink since I was on duty, but I'd substituted some grape juice and we'd clinked the cheap IKEA wineglasses.

After our abortive make-out session a month ago, he didn't talk to me for days but then he'd started flirting and I'd been pleased.
Not now
does not mean
not ever
and I'm much more comfortable with the pace things have been moving since. He'd kissed me after our movie date, pressing me against the wall and sweeping his tongue through my mouth.

There'd been no flood of desire like when he'd grabbed me hard in the art building because the gesture was lacking that hot, blatantly sexual aggression. No urge to drop to my knees because there was no rough handling that called to the submissive I suspect lurks somewhere deep inside me. Yes, though the making out didn't make me weak-kneed, it had been enjoyable. When he feels like it, Will can be enjoyable.

From the way he's looking at me, he feels like it.

“That Shepherd kid isn't half bad, is he?”

He's turned his eyes to Shep's drawings and I stifle the words in my throat.
He's wonderful.
“He's pretty good.”

Will takes a few steps and lays a hand at the small of my back possessively. A small pulse of pleasure radiates from where his fingers lay. “Maybe next Sunday I can take you to the MFA. Or the ICA. Show you some real art.”

“How do you know we both have Sunday off?”

“I checked the schedule.”

It's not hard to do, it's online, but you have to go out of your way to find out someone's schedule other than your own. Will checked my schedule. It might not make anyone else swoon, but I'm flattered. “Oh. Um, okay.”

“Good.”

He snakes his hand around my waist and he pulls me to him so we're standing face-to-face, no room between our bodies. The muffled voices of boys cleaning up are bouncing around the awkward corners of the building. I put my hands on his chest and apply pressure.

“The boys are still here. We shouldn't.”

“Why are you always pushing me away, Erin? Don't you like me?”

“I do like you, I—”

“Because I like you. I think about you all the time.” He does? “I want to be with you. Here. Now.”

I shake my head and flush. “Not now.”

Instead of his expression darkening, his sculpted brows go up. “But here?”

I squeak and squirm in his grasp but he doesn't let go. “Will!”

“Here?”

Suddenly it doesn't sound like such a bad idea. I'm tired of playing by the rules, of being a good girl. I've achieved my one goal in life; I should be allowed to let loose. Maybe I should try being adventurous, daring. Live on the edge for once. Maybe being a tad promiscuous will make me feel like a real grown-up, and will smother the wholly inappropriate feelings I'm starting to develop for Zach Shepherd.

“Okay. Here.”

He smiles that über-charming grin. I'm happy to have pleased him, especially when he kisses me, his hands curling around my hips and his fingers digging into me in a possessive and rough way that makes my breath go short. But I have to hiss, “Will, stop. Wait 'til they're gone.”