Chapter 35
Korgy was right. Once school starts back, it is harder to find pockets of time together since he has a full plate between grading papers, prepping lessons, and meeting the demands of the family.
He sneaks away to my place when he can, and we try our best to cram as much as possible into the tight windows of time, only to come to a screeching halt when his phone alarm blares for him to go.
The sex is frenzied and passionate, a blur that obliterates my mind and afterward leaves only slippery traces, quick flashes of visuals that surface over time, one at a time, serving as the crucial evidence that it ever even happened at all.
Exhibit A—a tongue, exhibit B—a pump, C—a strip of slick sweat on his back, D—the quake of an orgasm.
“I wish we had longer,” Mr. Korgy says every time he leaves.
And I agree with him. But there’s nothing we can do about it so we kiss a long, sad, parting kiss and he goes.
And then I lie on the patch of bed where he just was, the sheets still warm, his imprint still in them.
I lie there and replay every minute we spent together, every gesture he made, every line he said and the way he said it.
And then, once I’ve laid all the separate moments out, I reorganize them into my mind’s best recollection of chronological order.
And then once I have them in order, I replay them again, and again, and again, until I have them down pat, stretching the clipped thirty minutes we had together into hours of material.
I like to think Mr. Korgy does the same, but he’s probably too busy wiping his toddler’s ass.
We try to keep up through texting on the days between seeing each other outside of school.
Mr. Korgy says Gwen made a comment about how glued to his phone he’s been lately.
It’s not that she was suspicious exactly, more judgmental, but that he doesn’t want her to become suspicious, so he changes my name in his phone to Kurt, an old friend from college, so that we can text more without risk.
Still, it’s not much. Check-ins here and there, “thinking of you’s,” a couple rounds of emojis if he’s really tight on time.
I cling to the certainty that I at least get to see him during class, and that even though we’re discreet, it’s erotically charged, loaded and dangerous, riddled with esoteric glances while the other students scratch off their Starface zit stickers and scour TikTok on mute.
One time after school we have sex in his classroom’s cleaning closet.
I wrap my legs around him and ride him while he stands there bumping into the mop and the grimy yellow bucket it sits in, dirty water sloshing around with each thrust. We’re interrupted by the classroom door creaking open when Mr. Wembley comes in looking for him.
We stop cold but the water keeps sloshing and we look at each other terrified.
Then we hear the door close and Mr. Wembley’s footsteps disappear.
I brush myself off as Mr. Korgy twists a wiry eyebrow hair between his fingertips.
“That was reckless,” he says. “We can’t do it again, never again here at school. We need to be more responsible with this. I need to be more responsible with it.”
I say okay but my eyes sting. Probably from the fumes of the Clorox.