Unteachable(10)
Author: Leah Raeder

Wish I was there, he said.

Me too, I answered.

I pressed the phone to my chest, a warm rectangle of light irradiating my bones. I wasn’t sitting there alone. I wasn’t alone anywhere anymore.

Something made me check the screen again. I’d read it fast, teary-eyed. It was different when I read it the second time.

What he’d actually written was, Wish you were here.

Wesley met me Monday morning outside calc with a carrot cupcake.

“Olive branch,” he said.

I split it with him.

“Hey,” he said, licking frosting from his lips, “if shit gets crazy at your house, you can come to mine. My mom won’t try to give you advice. She’ll just stuff your face.”

On impulse, I hugged him. He was ungodly tall. “Thank you,” I said somewhere in the vicinity of his xyphoid process.

When I let go he was blushing.

A pang of guilt. Had I been leading him on, by habit? Nip that in the bud. I flicked his ear. “Hiyam’s having a homecoming after-party. You want to go and drink her booze and stare at her tits?”

“Fuck yes.”

I walked into Film Studies later that morning feeling more in balance with the universe than I had in a long time. Which meant, of course, that the universe had to swing a big rusty wrench straight into my face.

He wasn’t there. A sub sat at his desk.

“Where’s Mr. Wilke?” I said.

The sub shrugged. “His instructions say you can use this period to work on your semester project.”

Wesley and I slipped out after she took attendance.

“This is f**king weird,” I muttered.

“Why?”

Because he drove me home Friday. Because we made out in his car, in the rain. Because he said he thought of doing terrible things to me in his head.

“I don’t know. He didn’t seem sick last week.”

“Mysterious illnesses often strike the elderly.”

I kicked the back of Wesley’s knee.

“Are you gonna spend the whole day pining for him?”

Yes. “Meet me in the lab in ten. We can start on our masterpiece.”

Where are you? I texted Mr. Wilke when I was alone at my locker.

I waited for a reply. Five minutes. Ten. Then I sighed, and tossed it in, and buried myself in schoolwork.

He finally responded that afternoon. Court date. Nothing major.

I didn’t reply.

A minute later, he added, I miss you.

I stood at my locker as kids milled around me and felt like I was on a movie set, surrounded by extras. Their lives were so small, so simple. So scripted. No one had a secret life like this. No one was texting the teacher they’d f**ked, the teacher they were planning to f**k again.

I want to see you, I said.

I expected a brush-off. I did not expect him to say, Can you meet me outside school?

Yes. God, yes. Where?

He gave me an address not far away for a pickup.

And then where? I said.

Wherever you want.

I sat on an old cold case outside a derelict gas station half a mile from school. The sun banged off chrome pumps scabbed with rust, ricocheting into my eyes in bright bullets. Heat baked up from the cracked concrete. A tin sign pocked with BB holes creaked mysteriously, no breeze touching it. I reclined in a cool bath of shadow, my body relaxed, my mind going a million miles an hour.

He pulled up like a movie star, one arm propped on the headrest, mirrored aviators flashing.

I got in. The seat leather scorched my legs.

We didn’t speak. He took his sunglasses off. His eyes were tender and soft beneath. He wore a pinstripe shirt and tie with jeans, sleeves rolled up, hair wind-tossed. Sun gilded the feathering of stubble on his cheek.

We didn’t kiss.

Our hands met on the scalding seat between us.

I breathed fast. I hadn’t been this scared since I got into that rollercoaster car by myself. This was the same thing, really—getting on a ride that might destroy us.

Worst Case Scenario: he loses his job, I get kicked out of school.

Best Case Scenario—

I don’t know. What is the best case scenario? Sneaking around, peering out of curtains? Lying to everyone we know?

I thought of that Robert Frost poem they love to ruin for you in high school. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood. This was where my life forked. I could only go one way; in the other, Gwyneth Paltrow plays my alternate self like in Sliding Doors, ending up miserable or happy. That was the question. Which one was she? Which was I?

I knew which one I was.

The fearless one.

I squeezed his hand.

The silence between us rang. It made everything so clear. I saw my thoughts reflected in his face, the trepidation fighting with a very simple, very biological need. He looked at all of me, my fresh teenage skin, my adult certainty, my old soul. No one had ever looked at me so completely. No one had ever seen me as such a whole, rounded person.

Yes, I thought. This is the road I want.

He squeezed my hand back, then took the wheel.

It’s amazing how much you can communicate without words.

We drove onto the highway, through neat green rows of soybeans raking to the blue horizon. My window was down, hair lashing my face. The air smelled chemical with a tang of sickly-sweet fermentation. A blade of sunlight lay across my legs, making my skin glow.

I glanced at Mr. Wilke. His look made something deep in me ache. I held on to the feeling, letting it open inside of me, blossoming, filling me from toes to fingertips with a tension somewhere between hunger and pain. By habit I put my thumbnail between my front teeth. I hadn’t meant it seductively, but Mr. Wilke stared, a smile flitting around the edges of his mouth.

Great job, Lolita. Now you just need some heart-shaped sunglasses.

I felt his eyes on me, hot as the sunlight. I knew he was watching every move. I tilted my head back, eyes half-closing, the wind playing over my face. My heart beat a slow, bluesy rhythm. It felt like acting, like being on stage, every camera on me, bewitched.

The car slowed.

We both looked at the motel sign, then each other.

He turned.

Crunching gravel. Parking space. Engine off, ticking. Heat swarmed into the silence, becoming almost a sound, a high locust whine buzzing against my skin.

I heard him breathing. He wasn’t quite looking at me, his gaze landing somewhere on the dashboard.

We knew what we were doing, Your Honor.

He put his sunglasses back on and popped the glovebox, handing me a second pair. I laughed softly. Like this would hide anything.

Maybe it wasn’t for other people. Maybe it was for us.

It was a lot easier to face him without seeing his eyes. My reflection in his lenses: a girl without fear, her lips slightly upturned, knowing.

He got out and headed for the registration office.

Panic attack.

I flipped down the sun visor, clawed at my hopeless hair. What had I eaten since I brushed my teeth that morning? What planet had I been on? No memory of anything between waking and the moment I got into his car. I couldn’t sit comfortably in my own skin. Every tendon was a violin string stretched taut, dying to sing out at the faintest touch. What if it was different? What if I’d ruined it by lying, leaving? God, what the hell could he possibly see in a screwed-up eighteen-year-old? How screwed-up must he be to get tangled in my life?

Footsteps on gravel.

I slapped the visor up.

No more thinking.

I opened my door, slammed it shut loudly, defiantly. My senses focused on small things: the pumice scrape of his shoes, a splash of sun on a steel bumper. He opened 112 and went in first. I followed, closing the door behind me.

Dim inside, afternoon light straining through muslin curtains. There were heavy drapes to either side of the window that we didn’t touch. I had impressions of square silhouettes in the murk but all I really saw was him. Taking his sunglasses off, setting them on the bureau. Moving toward me. Taking my glasses off, too. I blinked at the dust suspended in a cloud of sunlight.

I didn’t realize I wasn’t going to step further into the room for a while.

Mr. Wilke put his hand under my jaw, raising my face. My body pressed against the cool metal of the door. I ached like I’d been asleep, or watching a long movie, and needed to be pulled, stretched, used. It made my face sullen, made his eyes narrow. We looked at each other with that resentment you feel when you want something so much it’s causing you pain, so much you start to hate it a little. There was a whiff of gasoline and the city on him and that smokiness I’d become addicted to. I put my hand on the knot of his tie. His mouth opened, as if I’d touched some live part of him.

Our lips met.

What happened felt more like chemistry than a kiss. Pure liquid heat on my lips, dissolving into me, trailing a hot line down my chest and pooling in my stomach. My heels rose off the floor. All of me rose, unanchored, held down only by his weight pressing me to the chilly slab of the door. We kissed as we could not have done until now—like lovers. He tilted my head, slid his tongue into my mouth, not urgent or hurried but in a way that made me feel the inevitability of this. The hand on my jaw moved over my chest, my belly, to the button of my shorts.

I’d had some practice unknotting ties.

When I tugged it free he pulled back, those full red lips slanting in a half-smile. This made it easier to unbutton his shirt. He watched me, letting me have my way with him. Raised his arms obediently when I rolled up his undershirt. I wanted to press it to my face, smother myself with it like ether. But he took my wrists and pinned them above my head and something trembled in me, somewhere between blood cells and neurons, a liminal space where I wasn’t quite mind or body. God, he was going to f**k me right here, against the door.

His hands let go and mine stayed raised, obedient. He unbuttoned my shorts, knelt to take them off. Warm breath sighed between my thighs, making me feel my own wetness. Large, careful fingers slid beneath my underwear, pulling, fingertips running down my legs. I bit my lip so hard I tasted sweet copper. He kissed my hip, moving along the soft crease of my thigh, moving lower as his hands spread my legs open. I couldn’t. I couldn’t anymore. I thrust my fingers into his hair and pulled his head back, making him look up at me. My face said it all.

He stood, unzipping himself, taking the condom from his back pocket as I pulled him out of his jeans. His dick felt huge and burning hot in my hand. I slid my palm around the base and he froze, the muscles of his chest chiseled against his skin, unmoving. My fingers stroked the fine silk over that hardness, pumping slightly in my hand. Just touching it made me curl up, everything in me going super tight. He put the condom on himself. Lifted me suddenly under the knees, making me grab him for balance. Then it was only my spine against the door and his dick thrusting inside of me, and I lost all breath, all function, all everything. For an endless moment all I felt was penetration. Slow and hard. Slow and deep. He made sure I felt every single thrust. I was hard inside, too, my body coiled and tense, and the first few moments were so poignant it was almost painful. Then the rhythm took over, and the world began to fade back in. My bare thighs rubbing against his jeans. The way his abs flexed, the muscle rolling, the little trail of bronze hair he pressed against my navel. The viperous motion of his body as he f**ked me. He held me a few inches above him and raised his face, watching mine without kissing me. The way we looked at each other was more intimate than a kiss could have been. I saw his pupils dilating like a pulsing black heart. I saw every tremor of strain and pleasure that went through him. I watched what I did to him, how vulnerable he became as he gave himself to me, f**king me but also being f**ked himself, that slightly lost, boyish look coming into his face as he got closer and closer. A fire built in me, leaping from cell to cell, setting my body slowly alight, but I made myself keep my eyes open and watch him. His eyes closed, his eyebrows rising helplessly. His fingers dug into the backs of my legs. His dick was so hard and thick inside me that all I felt was a sweet fullness in my core. Every time he sank in completely and compressed my clit, a bolt of pure electricity shot up through my belly. My eyes were open wide when the tension in me changed from resistance to surrender, and I started to gasp uncontrollably, and didn’t tell him I was coming, but he knew. The fingers clenching my legs tightened like claws. I came so fast and hard it was like a flash of sheet lightning, a blinding white bliss, there one second and gone the next, and I gaped at the shadowy room, dazed. He kept going for a few more seconds, groaning, thrusting hard one last time and then rocking through the aftershock, settling against me, our weight easing limply against the door.