Discipline (9 page)

Defeated and racked with guilt, I took that
time to go straight to my room, reaching the top of the stairs when
Mr. Davies came back inside and spoke to me from the bottom of the
steps.

“Mr. Cole told me that he saw the blonde
haired fellow grab you,” he said in a hushed tone, continuing only
when I stopped and turned. “I’m guessing that’s why he sprung into
action. I would do the same if it were my wife or girlfriend,
though I can’t say I’d have used quite as much force since I’m not
a very angry man.” He paused. “But then again, Daniel isn’t a very
angry man. And you’re certainly not his girlfriend.” He gave me a
look. It wasn’t a question, but his old eyes squinted as if waiting
for me to confirm. My attempt at a casual response was marred by
the crack in my voice.

“Of course not.”

He stared for a few more seconds before
nodding and starting back towards the kitchen. “Of course not.
You’re old enough to remember how those stories end in this
town.”

Kind of. The student-teacher scandals that
rocked Woodhill happened before I reached the high school, so I
never paid a whole lot of attention to the “Miss Mullens Thing”
that happened when I was in elementary school, or the “Mr. Brown
Thing” that happened when I was in middle school. But I knew who
had probably scoured every last detail and stored them all in her
memory.

“Hey, remember the Mr. Brown thing? Or the
Miss Mullens thing?” I interrupted Kelsey’s story about Reesa from
Textiles. She didn’t seem to mind.

“Omigod,
yes
?” Her answer was
incredulous. “Definitely about Mr. Brown. Do you not? He was like a
poor man’s Mr. Cole, which isn’t bad at all.” She drew her tongue
across her lower lip. “God, I wish he still taught here. My
student-teacher fantasy might’ve had a shot if he didn’t fall off
the face of the earth.”

“You’d… sleep with him?”

“Yes. Sorry, not sorry.”

“But I thought… wait, what was his story
again?”

“Really? Oh my God,” Kelsey groaned at my
lack of knowledge, though she was more than happy to fill me
in.

Mr. Brown had been one of the younger
teachers at the high school — cute and apparently known for being a
bit of a flirt, but mostly with pretty teachers and moms. I have a
faint memory of Aunt Erin wondering if he was sleeping with Bree
Hannigan, but dismissing the thought because of something or
another about Bree’s C-section scar. That was the extent of Mr.
Brown’s controversy. But after a friend of hers spilled, Woodhill
found out that he had slept with an eighteen-year-old senior named
Hillary Rice during winter break, and within months, a series of
claims popped up from some junior girls in his Photography class.
One claimed to her friends that she had slept with him around the
same time, and that their affair carried on in the dark room. Once
that story went around and eventually reached outraged parents, the
school board investigated. It was then that a friend of the girl
joined in on the story, and suddenly, there were two
sixteen-year-old girls who had allegedly slept with Mr. Brown,
something that seemed extremely believable considering the recent
discovery of his affair with a senior. There were, after all, new
rumors that he had begun sleeping with Hillary long before her
eighteenth birthday. Perhaps in the dark room as well, because why
not?

That ended up untrue. But text messages in
Mr. Brown’s phone served as proof of his affair with the
sixteen-year-olds.

He fled town before his car and house could
be further vandalized. Assemblies and “grief counseling” were had,
strict conduct codes for faculty were introduced and both girls and
their families moved out of state. Also, to this day, the high
school dark room hears many jokes about developing film with bodily
fluids.

“The Miss Mullens thing was different
though,” Kelsey said. “She was actually dating an old student who
had already graduated, but there was a big ol’ shitstorm about
whether or not they’d had sex before he graduated, like before he
turned eighteen. So she was out of school during the whole
investigation and some kid from one of her classes took that time
to say that he slept with her too, which made the case even crazier
and then she was put on suspension.”

“What’d they find out about all of it?”

“Pretty sure she never dated her
boyfriend-student until he graduated, and that other kid turned out
to be a total liar, but she still had ‘pedo’ and ‘whore’ keyed on
her car and stuff. And all the parents hated her anyway. So she
quit. And I heard she had trouble getting hired somewhere else.”
Kelsey laughed. “My mom and her friends still think she slept with
that sophomore though. They still talk about it.”

“But he admitted to lying, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, he said he just wanted to keep up the
story for his friends. But ya know. I hear Mullens was hot and hot
people are easier to hate. More fun to hate, too. I’m sure Adriana
knows all about that. She seems like someone with haters.” She
threw her hands in the air. “Me, for instance. Just kidding. But I
do want her hair. And her face. And her body…”

I mumbled some sort of response, distracted
as I thought about Daniel. With Woodhill’s history of scandal, I
could hardly blame him for being so careful all the time. Other
teachers were cautious and proper but he took it to a whole other
level — probably because no one else looked like him or had such a
devoted following of fangirls. There were Facebook groups dedicated
to him, probably by the same students who peeked through the
windows of his house. He was like an actual celebrity, one that the
tabloids were aching to report salacious gossip on because his
reputation was just too crystal clear and pristine.

Which made the fight with Ben even crazier
as I recalled it in my head for the hundredth time. Daniel’s
perfect reputation was nearly ten years in the making and he had
gone ahead and risked it all for a minute of fighting Ben. It just
happened that the witness was old Mr. Davies and not someone who
was a lock to spread the story around town. Not that he wasn’t
still a risk, considering what a bizarre scene the fight had
probably been.

And just as I had the thought, Kelsey read
my mind and said it aloud.

“Kind of seems like Mr. Cole’s due for
scandal, right? He’d be the ultimate story.”

I tried to respond but my phone buzzed.
Kelsey instinctively looked over, raising her eyebrows at the name
on my phone —
Darien
. I had saved Daniel’s number under that
name because I anticipated a situation like this and because I have
little to no creativity, apparently.

“Who the hell is Darien? Stories,
please?”

“He’s just a friend,” I said, searching my
brain for a convincing detail to add. “Adriana’s friend,
really.”

“Oh.” Adriana had a lot of “friends.” It was
a solid story. “But why is he texting
you
?” Kelsey asked as
I opened the text message.

I didn’t answer as I read Daniel’s
message.

Don’t be. You didn’t drag me into anything.
I was the one who couldn’t just stand and watch him do that to
you.

I let go of the breath I was holding.
Kelsey’s voice was faint in the background.

“Whoa… are you sleeping with this guy,
Nina?”

I ignored her as I rapidly began to text
back, typing and deleting, typing and deleting. Before I could
compose a coherent sentence, another text came through. Daniel
again.

That being said, we can’t see each other
again.

I stared and before I knew it, my fingers
had typed and sent a response —
Why
? I immediately regretted
it though, because I knew the answer. It was obvious. He had risked
everything yesterday. And for me. It couldn’t possibly be worth it,
and I’d be selfish for pressing to see him. What we had couldn’t
possibly be anything more than physical attraction, which was a
dumb thing to trade in for an entire career.

I waited for him to say that, to convey to
me that I wasn’t worth the trouble. I was already prepping myself
to be hurt when his response buzzed in my phone. Shifting away from
a whining Kelsey, I read the message.

Because I’ve built my life and career on my
discipline and I have none when I’m around you. Please don’t
contact me again, Nina. I’m sorry.

CHAPTER 6

“Just like the good ol’ days!”

Adriana kissed my cheek once she popped out
of the restroom, where she’d been changing into one of my work
T-shirts in order to cover Em’s shift for the night. Its distressed
logo matched with her faded Daisy Dukes, which looked more like
denim underwear than a real article of clothing. They made my own
shorts look like capris but of course, Adriana could get away with
that sort of thing, especially at Todos Santos.

“I’ve missed this,” Harry remarked, his
accent making the word
I’ve
sound more like
of
. He
watched with a half grin as Adriana and I logged into the POS
system near the bar. I decided not to tell him that I had to put my
two weeks in after the shift. “Nothing against Em, but there’s
something about the
Adriana
-Nina combo that makes the night
go by even faster,” he said, holding his arms out for Adriana to
walk into. She gathered her hair over her shoulder and walked into
his open arms backwards, letting him rumble something of pleasure
as he hugged her from behind.

“Sandwich,” she chirped, holding her arms
out at me as Harry planted kisses on her neck. He glanced up at me
while still brushing his lips along Adriana’s bare skin.

“Yeah, wake this one up, Ade. She’s been
acting like a downer since last week.”

“Not true,” I protested, though it probably
was. Saturday was the day that I’d come to work straight from the
gallery interview. Despite hoping that there’d be a last minute
snag, I’d gotten the job. And so I went through the motions of the
shift like a zombie, my head distracted with thoughts of a new
internship but mostly, Daniel’s damned text. He didn’t want to see
me again because he apparently had no control around me — which
felt like an insult and compliment rolled into one. Though more of
an insult because whatever it was that I did to him, it made him
want nothing to do with me again. So in the end, it was a loss.

And I couldn’t get it out of my head. It
didn’t help that I hadn’t told Adriana about any of it yet either.
After helping me get Daniel’s number through Mike, Linh had warned
me to prepare for her wrath over once again being the last to know,
like she’d been with the news of my quitting Todos Santos the first
time and moving in with Ben. Along with Daniel, that thought had
been weighing hard on my chest.

“Nina, boo. Tell me why you’re sad,” Adriana
pouted, winding her arms up and around Harry’s neck, the bottom of
her shirt riding above her pierced naval. Harry ran a finger up the
line of her taut stomach. “I’ll fix it for you. Is Ben being
stalker-y? Do I need to kick his ass?”

I laughed weakly. “Actually…” I started,
prepared to finally tell her about Daniel. The fact that she and
Harry were practically grinding up on each other didn’t faze me.
Back when the two of us worked together, this was the norm at Todos
Santos — all the waitresses flirting with the bartenders, everyone
in the restaurant flirting with the customers and business being
conducted as usual amid the boiling sexual tension in every corner.
It wasn’t difficult for me to carry on a conversation as Harry
slipped his hands down the sides of Adriana’s shorts. “Someone
already kicked Ben’s ass for me,” I said.

“
What?
Who?”

“Um, Mike’s friend. Daniel. Whom we hung out
with at the bar on Sunday. He ran into Ben at my brother’s
graduation party when I went home last weekend.”

Adriana stared and squinted. “I’m sorry —
what?
”

“Okay.” I took in a deep breath. “I didn’t
tell you this on the first night that we saw him, but I didn’t tell
Linh either. I just didn’t want you guys making a big deal of it
while we were there in front of him.”

The faint smile on Adriana’s lips was
getting fainter. “What? Just tell me,” she said, dropping her hands
from around Harry’s neck.

I let go of the long breath. “Daniel’s my
teacher. Was. My teacher. I had him for English my senior year in
high school. And I had a huge crush on him then. Everyone did.”

Both Adriana and Harry stared at me now.
“What?” Harry shook his head and blinked. I ignored him to wait for
Adriana’s reaction. Her full lips parted slowly and more and more
until her jaw hung wide open.

“Oh. My. Fucking.
God
!” she shrieked
with laughter. “And I was airing out your sex life in front of him?
That’s
amazing
!” She was in a fit of giggles now and Harry
was back to laughing though he probably wasn’t sure about what —
all he needed to know was that Adriana’s arms were now winding
behind his back, her hands slipping into his back pockets. “I’m so
sorry, Nina. It was so much fun though! And hey, it got you drinks
with him, so I was essentially your wingwoman that night!” She
squealed, throwing her head back onto Harry’s shoulder. “God, it
would’ve been even better if I’d known who he was!” she laughed,
though it slowly began to wind down as realization gleamed in her
hazel eyes. There was a pause. “So, you told Em who he was that
night?” she asked.

Uh oh. “Yes.”

“Does Linh know?”

“I had to ask her to get Daniel’s number for
me after he got into it with Ben at my brother’s graduation party.
I couldn’t just ask around, it would be suspicious.”

Adriana nodded, her gaze elsewhere now.
Harry, however, looked at me with an expression that said,
You’re in trouble
.

I closed my eyes for a second. “You’re mad
that I told you last.”

Adriana didn’t miss a beat. “I’m mad that
you’re still acting fucking weird around me.”