14. Nathan
fourteen
My anxiety isat an all-time high. Between Callahan’s annual physical approaching, the threat of my finances hanging over my head, and the slew of older teachers in the building still bucking me on the new curriculum that the district purchased, I cannot face sitting alone at home and letting it eat me alive.
So, instead, I am at school, well past sundown, attempting to bury myself in work until I can pass out from sheer exhaustion.
Now that it’s creeping toward seven-o’clock, I’m running out of things to do. My fingers rattle anxiously in an erratic rhythm against the arm of my desk chair. All of my emails are answered. Parents have been called. Meetings with teachers have been scheduled—to go over yearly evaluations, approve new clubs and sports advisors, and to speak about student behavior concerns. Ever since Claire and Lucy brought this check-in/check-out system into play, more and more teachers have been interested.
Claire.
The way she has infested my brain is absolutely maddening. She shouldn’t be there to begin with. But instead of the image I keep trying to concoct to deter myself—of her standing in the morning dawn with pink in the apples of her cheeks and apologies on her lips for setting off the alarm well before the birds were awake—my mind keeps her on a polymorphous loop of those ever-changing manicures wrapped around my cock, clutching at the stark white of my sheets, joining my hand that I use to apply gentle pressure to her throat.
I grunt.
I’m hard in my office again. Thinking of Claire. This needs to stop.
But I can’t go home. Instead, I decide to take a walk.
No one else is in the building, but I’ll make my rounds. I decide to start in the sixth grade hall. The sensored lights hum as they flicker on in my presence. I take a nice slow pace as I gaze at topographical map projects and character analysis posters, math coordinate graphs that, when done correctly, make a jack-o-lantern. I don’t even realize I’m in the seventh grade wing until I hear music growing louder, overcoming the hum of lights that, now that I’m more aware, didn’t flicker on.
Because they were already on.
Pop music blasts from Juliet Ford’s classroom, and my attention catches as Claire shimmies across the doorway. She’s darting from one side of the classroom to the other with colorful papers in her hands, arranging something I’m sure is for tomorrow morning. I inch closer to the doorway and notice her head tilting with the beat of the music, her hips swaying back and forth as she quietly sings along to the song. I can’t make out the words, because I’m suddenly caught between a rock and a hard place.
I can’t pretend like I didn’t see her, right? I have to say something? We are the only two people in the building—if she hears footsteps, and then sees nothing, she might get paranoid, and then her mind might start to wander, and all of a sudden, the thought of Claire wandering this building alone, scared to death of a predator makes me?—
“Holy shit, Nathan!”
I hadn’t even realized how close I’d gotten to the doorframe until she shouted, and as I startle, my forehead whacks right up against the metal.
“Oww.”
“Oh my God!”
The moment has split into utter chaos in a matter of seconds.
I palm my throbbing forehead. Claire drops the bright papers in her hands, letting them flutter to the floor like confetti, and rushes to me.
“I’m so sorry!”
“Not your fault,” I grunt, letting my head fall for a few beats before I lift it. At least all of the blood that was in my dick has somewhere else to rush.
“Here, let me see… I’ve got some experience with head injuries.”
It all rushes south again the moment her hands are on me.
It’s like my body was devoid of a heartbeat, and the minute her hands met my skin shocked literal life back into me.
One hand wraps over mine to peel my fingers away, and the other cups my face so that her thumb can caress the tender skin that whacked against the doorframe. I don’t know what to do. Don’t know where to look.
If I focus on the button of her lips in concentration as she examines my head, I’ll wonder what she’ll look like if I tell her she can’t come without my permission.
If I focus on how silky soft her skin is against mine, I’ll picture it surrounding me, rubbing against my bare thighs as I pound into her while her manicured fingers grip me for purchase.
But worst of all, if I focus on the wells of blue she wears for eyes, I could drown in the untold sea she has there, the one I not only don’t deserve to know, but shouldn’t want to in the first place. I’ll jump off the diving board into the deep end, and she’ll swallow all of my secrets, the ones I don’t let see the light of day even for myself, whole.
“Here, come sit down. I’ll be able to see in better light.”
I nod, and the moment her touch disappears, this room is an icebox.
Claire indicates to a wheeled chair after removing the stack of papers that just sat upon it, and I comply, taking a seat.
“Tilt your chin up?”
She asks instead of tells, and I wonder where that rambling, pink-cheeked girl disappeared to. When she says, “Sorry I called you Nathan back there. That was unprofessional,” I have my answer.
I scared her away. I did that with my judgmental remarks and assumptions about her. Immediately, I right us, hoping to coax her back out—the woman full of wonderful ideas about how to treat our students.
The woman who revealed to me in too few of words how our own paths seem to be one in the same when it comes to our pasts.
The woman whose brain I’d like to pick after I lay her out in my bed.
“No. Nathan is fine. Not unprofessional at all.”
I tilt my head back slowly, and try my best to appear like I mean those words. For all intents and purposes, I am the picture of professionalism in this building. Hell, I shine my shoes before I go to bed each night, and the seams of my slacks are so tight you could bounce a quarter off of them. Or something like that.
She hums a nervous laugh that I’m sure I wasn’t supposed to hear, but it’s in the same moment that her skin razes mine again, and I have to distract myself, especially with her this close to me.
“What’s so funny?”
From up this close, with her standing above me, I can make out the quirk of her smile as her thumb brands me. Her voice is raspy as she swallows and answers.
“Not to be rude or burst any bubbles, but you’re kind of known as the hard-ass around here—between you and Don, anyway.”
It doesn’t come as a shock. I’ve always prided myself on following the rules and achieving excellence. Coming from her lips, like it’s gossiped about behind my back, kind of stings. I wince, and she pulls back.
“Sorry. Actually, we should get some ice on this.”
I fold my hands over my belt when she leaves, staring up at the ceiling, expecting her to head to the office to snag an ice pack from the nurse’s stash. But then, I hear the zipper of a bag, sloshy shaking, and a loud pop! She’s back in about a minute, branding a portable ice bag.
“These always come in handy.”
She smiles in this soft yet confident headiness that I don’t get to fully appreciate before she’s applying the cold pack to my head.
“Keep that on there for fifteen minutes.”
The stern finger she points in my direction sends a shiver through my core that definitely isn’t from the ice pack. I’m usually the one in charge, but suddenly, the thought of her doling out orders?—
“Do you mind if I play my music?”
Get your head out of the gutter, Nathan.
“Not at all. Honestly, I should head back to my?—”
“Oh. Not a chance. I’m running you through concussion protocol as soon as my timer is up.”
Yeah. So. Claire in charge might be added to the fantasy before I go to bed tonight.
“Mr. Harding? The music? Is it okay…?”
I swallow, hating the sound of my professional name on her lips because it puts an ocean of divide between us. I can’t put my finger on why I want to stitch that distance between us up, but the urge is too strong to deny.
“Nathan. Please, call me Nathan.” For some reason, that pinks her cheeks. “And by all means.”
With my unoccupied hand, I indicate to the phone in her hand. She presses play, and continues shuffling around the room like she had been when I’d interrupted her by head-butting her door. She collects the papers she’d dropped earlier, and gets right back into her rhythm, as if our little mishap never happened. It only takes one cheerful pop song for me to interrupt, the need to know what she’s doing here so late more powerfully present as it bangs around in my head than the blood that rushed to the place where I’d actually banged it.
“What are you working on?”
“Oh! End of novel centers. They finished The Outsiders last week, so we’re doing a few stations with each standard to wrap it up instead of just taking a test.”
On the table where she stopped, she lifts the stack of hot pink papers.
“This one is theme, over in that far corner is symbolism…” She points to each table, clearly thought out and organized to review this book in its entirety. “…and at this last one, they’ll get to draw a character of their choosing to show the shift from beginning to end.”
She looks so immensely proud of herself. I can’t even deny that I am, too. How did I ever perceive her as incapable?
“This is… quite incredible, Ms. Benson.”
“Claire. Claire is good.”
“Claire.”
That syllable feels heavy and sweet on my tongue. I can’t pay it any more attention.
“Maybe if we’re on a first name basis, I won’t seem like a monster to everyone else?” I offer. She laughs, this quiet little puff of sound that I’m suddenly craving more of.
“I don’t think you’re a monster at all,” she says. Her smile startles at the sound of her phone timer, and with that, she closes the gap between us again. The feel of her skin against mine burns like the surface of the sun, and yet somehow, I want to be closer.
“Really?”
“Nah,” she says, the corner of her lip lifting into a smile that’s a sultry combination of sly and sweet. “You’re more like the Grinch.”
I huff a sarcastic chuckle.
“And that’s supposed to be better?”
“Of course.” Her eyebrows squish together in a way that says, Duh, idiot. “He was never the bad guy in the first place. The Who’s just couldn’t see through the rough exterior to the man on the inside. They never gave him a chance to open up to them. Plus, his heart was three sizes bigger by the end, so that’s gotta count for something.”
I don’t have time to process the truckload that statement dumps onto me, because suddenly, she’s lifting the ice pack from my forehead and inspecting the damage.
“Hmm… Doesn’t look too bad. You’ll definitely want to ice some more at home. It might be a pretty color in the morning. Does your wife have any make-up that you can borrow?”
“No wife.”
I swallow down the concrete flavor of that truth, and the red in her cheeks intensifies.
“Hmm.”
She tilts her head, still holding the ice pack just barely peeled away from my forehead.
“And no girlfriend.”
Thoughtfully, her head tilts to the other side. There was absolutely no reason to offer up that information. I’ll kick myself for it later. But then, she asks, “Do you want me to bring in some concealer for you? Just in case?” and the mental image of Claire coming to my office to delicately paint my face with makeup already has me crammed between a rock and a hard place—both of which being the state of my cock right now.
I cough, clearing the gravel in my throat.
“I’ll, uh… I think I’ll be okay.”
I stand, smiling tensely, hoping to put space between us before I realize that standing actually puts us closer together. If Claire or I were to inhale too quickly, she will feel the current state of my dick. With a wince, I take a slight step backward, placing more than just breathing space between us.
Which was definitely a huge mistake. Because now, I can see just how much height exists between us when we’re this close. I can just make out the pertness of her nipples, poking through the cotton of her bra. I have the visual of her peeking up at me through those long eyelashes, a little bit of fear but a lot of come and get me in her eyes as they slowly bat up at me.
I swallow, wondering if closing my eyes to imagine her is more dangerous than letting them trace every intricate detail in her gaze.