Teacher's Pet Complete Series (17 page)

“I’m going to eat you so good.”

I wanted it to be a dream.

“Damn, you look amazing.”

I wanted to… I needed him to know.

“Simon.” I pushed at his chest, but he pulled me in close. I could hardly take a breath or speak any words. I wanted to savor every second I had left with him before he knew, but that’s not who I was. I wanted to shout out loud that I cared for him only, that I wanted him, but what good would it do when Dane had sealed my fate? I had to do something, and I had to do it before things went any further. “Simon!” He caressed up my thigh and teased the opening of my folds with his fingers. “SIMON!” I shouted.

“What, Lynn, what?”

“Your brother.”

“What?”

“Your brother, Simon. I slept with your brother last night.” I panted as I said it. It was difficult to speak those words. “We had sex, and I’m sorry. I feel horrible.”

I bowed my head in shame as tears spilled from my eyes over to my cheeks and dropped on the floor one by one. Some splashed on his boots, some splattered on my feet. I was feeling far worse than I expected.

Simon didn’t speak. I didn’t dare look up, but my knees got weak until they buckled to the floor and I stayed there.

“Well, aren’t you going to say anything?” I grabbed the bottom of his jeans and I shook them. “Call me names. Tell me to fuck off, but don’t just stand there staring at me.” I had imagined that he would tear me apart, embarrass me again, tell me how horrible I was. In fact, I found myself hoping for it. I deserved his wrath, his rage, his disgust. I had done a disgusting thing to him, and I was yet again the reason for his pain.

But I was waiting for anger that didn’t come. It was worse than anger. The stunned silence was too painful to bear. I was sure that would be the end of me right there. Nothing could possibly hurt more than that.

Simon placed his hands on my shoulders. I looked up from the floor to meet him, eye to eye. I opened my mouth to speak, but all the words were already spent. I hugged at his legs to brace myself for what came next. He was finally going to be angry with me. I was going to get a brutal beating from his words and be absolved of my sins. I anticipated what he’d say next, but I never could have imagined what really did come out of his mouth.

“Lynn,” Simon said in an inexpressive tone, “I don’t know who you slept with last night or what he told you, but I don’t have a brother. I never did.”

For a moment my heart stopped beating. It dropped to the floor, shattering into a million pieces, scattered around my feet. One single breath seeped out of my mouth in a hiss like air from an old punctured tire. “What?” I managed to say. But I held up my hand before Simon could answer. I didn’t want him to repeat it. I didn’t want him to say it again, because I knew he had meant it by the confusion on his face. I knew what he was saying was true.

Simon doesn’t have a brother.

How?

What?

Dane lied to me!

That asshole! I'll never want to talk to him again.

“You slept with someone else?” Simon's face was twisted with confusion. “Last night? Right after we…” He couldn’t finish the sentence. There was hurt there—on his face—unmistakably. He was confused. I could read Simon’s emotions from a mile away, but I could feel the pain he felt from even further. His eyes took me in as he began to put it together. Every wayward piece of the puzzle was slowly becoming a whole. The sexy dress I wore, the expensive pair of shoes I held in my hand, my hair looking slept on and disheveled. The compliment he paid me once he saw me from down the hall that I was sure now if he could take back he would.

“I…” I wanted to speak. “Um…” I tried to explain, but I was stuck with my words. I wondered if it would help my case if Simon was aware I’d been drinking last night. That I was partially out of my head and not responsible for my actions—as if he hadn’t lost enough respect for me already—no, I guess that wouldn’t work. I was sure he could taste the alcohol on my tongue when he kissed me the way he did a few minutes ago. That would tell him all he needed to know, and probably more. I was with another man and he kissed me after. I really feel like shit for what I did.

“So, let me get this straight.” Simon’s jaw was tensed and hard set, like he was trying to chew rocks or break his teeth down the center. “Considering all the grief you’ve given me for hanging around Meghan, having to explain myself to you until you were convinced that nothing was going on. And once you were convinced of that, I had the mistaken impression that everything was fine, or at least as fine as it could be between us.” Simon moved closer to me, and I nervously backed away. “You waited for me by my office for God knows how long. You come in, we have sex. You make your demands and you leave. All of that happened just so you could turn around and fuck some stranger a few hours later? Have I missed anything?”

I shied away, wanting to crawl out of my skin and go hide under a rock both naked and disgusted. “No, you haven’t but you have to understand—”

“I don’t have to understand a goddamned thing, Lynn!” Simon’s voice was amplified in the hall. I felt that all-too-familiar tightening in my stomach, accompanied by hangover nausea.

“This was all a huge mistake.” Simon raked his fingers through his hair. “You and I were a colossal mistake. And to think I actually cared about you. What the hell was I thinking? You’re twenty-two years old. How could I expect you to have an ounce of a maturity?”

Okay, that hurt.

“Now wait a minute.” I didn’t mean to balk at him because I didn’t have a leg to stand on, but fear has a way of making you lash out when you’re cornered. “I know I messed up, believe me I do. I haven’t had time to stew in my ignorance yet, but you have no right to talk to me that way. If it wasn’t for me meeting you, none of this would’ve happened. I was fine before I met you and now my life is a mess. And don’t try to lay guilt trips on me about your fucking feelings, because I have feelings too. Did you forget about that? Did you forget that I have feelings?” My eyes started tearing in the corners. “Did you ever have feelings for me, Simon? I mean real feelings. Not the ‘while you’re on top of me’ type, but honest to goodness affection? I don’t think you did. This little ‘tryst’ of ours was never the real thing for you. I was just someone to pass the time. Your little plaything to use and toss aside.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Simon’s hands curled up in balls. Anger radiated from his skin, and I felt as though I could feel it in waves. It wasn’t that I was afraid he would hurt me, because he didn’t strike me as the violent type, not really, but all that I said had struck a bad chord, so our song was likely to end on a distinctly sour note. “What makes you think you were a plaything? Is that why you think I’m here sleeping against the wall, risking my job like a lovesick puppy? Because I
don’t
care about you? Are you serious?”

“Just admit it, Simon.” I was going too far and I knew it, but I couldn’t stop now. I was in it up to my ankles. “I was only for your entertainment, like Meghan was. You never cared about me and you don’t care about her. As soon as you thought I was out of the picture, you replaced me with someone else within seconds. Now, I admit what I did was absolutely wrong, but you could at least give me the chance to explain myself. You know? Kind of like the one I gave you.”

Simon shot me a steely look. “Only if you take it back.”

I let out a thin, seething breath, feeling my blood boil to a thousand degrees. “Take what back?”

“What you said about me not caring about you.”

“Well, you don’t.” I paused. “Do you?”

“Of course I do.” His eyes met with mine. “But the fact that you’re even questioning it tells me all I need to know.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?”

My room door flew open. Sonja stood in the entryway, hair in her eyes, wearing a thin white t-shirt that showed glimpses of her vagina, depending on how she decided to move. Her nipples were tightened into little pink knots because the hallway was so cold in the mornings. They could clearly be seen through the thin cotton material, but of course, as usual, Sonja didn’t give a damn.

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hands. Her mouth opened wide in an unavoidable yawn. Her face scrunched to fight it, but the yawn won out. “Look, you two.” She glared at the both of us. “If you insist on arguing so early in the morning, could you please take it out of the halls? The weekend is the only time I get to sleep in, and you’re ruining my dreams of cute American boys massaging my special parts in a steam room.”

“I should go.” Simon was clearly agitated. He kept glancing up from the floor and averting his eyes, trying not to stare at Sonja half naked.

“Yes, please go,” Sonja said, shooing him along. “I’m sure Lynn has had enough of you for the night. Look at her. She’s all worn out. Looks like you did a great job.” She clapped. “Thumbs up.” She yawned. “I’m sure she’ll tell me all about it later on. Good night!”

Sonja retreated into the room and slammed the door behind her.
Why did she say that? Why did she
… I turned around and realized Simon wasn’t there, and he was halfway down the hall before I had the mind to stop him. He turned a corner before I could plead for him to wait, and I was left all alone in the hall feeling abandoned.

What did I do? I didn’t understand where my outbursts came from or why I was so emotionally charged all the time. It wasn’t Simon that I was mad at—not at all. The truth was I was upset at myself, and disappointed for getting in this position.

I opened the door to my room and walked in. Sonja was lying on her bed with a book in her hand and her feet propped up on a pillow. She looked up from the book, and as her eyes met mine I found myself turning away from her gaze. My shame had officially extended beyond my reach, and I couldn’t pull it back for the life of me.

“Well?” She sat up, resting her back on the headboard.

“Well what?” I tossed my shoes on the floor and began to unzip my dress without a second thought of her eyes being on me.

“How did it go, silly?”

I didn’t answer.

“Uh-oh.” Her forehead wrinkled. She placed the book to her side and pulled back her sheets. “It didn’t go well, did it?”

“Nope,” I admitted, feeling a tinge of sadness. “Not at all.” I pulled off my dress and laid it across my bed, looking at it like it was a foreign object. I wanted to burn the things I’d had on last night, because now they seemed alien to me. The dress I had on, the shoes that I wore, the memories I held of Dane’s head between my legs.

“Well, what happened?” Sonja’s voice invaded my thoughts. “What went wrong?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I bet I know what it is. Simon couldn’t get it up, right?” She smiled, thinking it was all fun and games. “That’s what happened, isn’t it? He got… what’s it called… performance anxiety because he made such a big production of it with the fancy clothes and the limousine. I heard it can happen when men put that kind of pressure on themselves. The good news is he must really care about yo—”

“Shut up!” I couldn’t take it anymore.

“Hey, why what the—”

“I said shut the fuck up, Sonja.” She retreated toward the corner of her bed. “It wasn’t him, okay? It wasn’t Simon that sent the box to me, it was fucking Dane. Dane did this to me. He ruined everything.” When the dam breaks, it breaks. Everything I felt inside spilled out on the floor, draining my resolve to contain my emotions. My fortitude failed, my self-respect was crushed and Sonja was the witness as it happened.

“Oh no, Lynn, don’t cry.” Sonja leapt off her bed and wrapped her arms around my shoulders, squeezing tight like my father used to do, hard enough where I almost couldn’t breathe but soft enough so I could release my emotions. I felt comforted. I turned my body and leaned my weight into her chest as she slowly sat us down on my bed.

“Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

I shook my head. I couldn’t talk about it anymore at that moment than I could go back in time and change it all.

“If you don’t talk about it, it will twist your insides into knots. You know that, right? Secrets have a way of doing that. They tighten around your conscience until it becomes so painful you have to get it out.”

I looked up from her chest like a suckling baby bonding with its mother over her milk. “I slept with him.”

She questioned me with a glance. “Slept with who?”

“Dane…” I looked away, breaking eye contact. “I slept with Dane, Sonja. I might not have had actual sex with him, because I was too drunk to remember, but what we did do was definitely more than friendly.”

She let out a breath. She loosened her arms around me as if she was debating letting me go. “How much more… friendly?”

I bowed my head toward my waist and down to my feet. “He went down on me…” Heat rose in my cheeks. “He licked me… until I came.”

“Shit! I knew that guy was trouble.”

I wiped tears from my eyes and observed the stunned look on Sonja’s face. She was at a loss for words, and so was I. The silence between us from that point on turned out to be therapeutic. We sat supporting each other, turned back to back as she read her psychology book and I stared out the window. We sat that way for nearly half an hour.

“So what are you going to do?” Sonja asked, breaking the silence.

“I have no idea. I think I’m more confused now than I’ve ever been in my life.”

“You think you lost Simon for good?”

“I'm sure of it.”

“Did you want to?” She turned.

“No, not necessarily. I just can’t… I don't know. I can’t seem to stop messing up lately. Maybe relationships aren’t really my thing. Put it in a book, I can handle it. But this real-life stuff? I don’t know.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not it, Lynn. There’s nothing wrong with you. That's what we’re here for, right? To learn? And that’s what you’re doing. So I’d say you might be on the right track.”