Teaching Willow: Session One

Teaching

Willow

Session One

A serial novel

By

Paige James

Amazon Edition

Copyright 2014, Paige James

Cover photo by Forewer

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All rights reserved.  Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the author.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.  This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.  If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person.  If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy.  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This book is a work of fiction.  Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, any place, events or occurrences, is purely coincidental.  The characters and storylines are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

FROM THE HEART

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Teaching Willow

Session One Description

My name is Willow Masters. I’m a senior in college, I’m smart and I keep to myself. I haven’t had an “incident” in years. What all of these facts have in common is that none of them made any difference when it came to Ebon Daniels.
 

He started out as my sister’s date. I was instantly infatuated, but had no plans to do anything about it. I even managed to keep my feelings hidden when he took over my Modernist Literature class for the semester. The problems didn’t start until my sister took pages from my book—literal pages from a book I was writing—and gave them to the one person never intended to see them. That’s when the lies started. That’s also when I saw an opportunity to make my only dream become a reality.
 

So I took it.

And nothing will ever be the same again.

How could one lie spark a wildfire that burned down everything in its path? How could it get me all I ever wanted and then cost me everything that ever mattered?

It doesn’t seem possible, but it is. It’s possible, it’s true and it’s tragic. In my book, there is a happy ending, but I don’t know if my life will have the same outcome.

My name is Willow Masters and this is the story of how falling in love with my teacher nearly destroyed both of our lives.
 

And how it still might.

ONE- WILLOW

Ebon paces back and forth at the front of the class.  I love the way he rubs his chin as he gathers his thoughts.  In fact, I love everything he does.  Everything about him is perfect, from his longish black-brown hair and intense green eyes to the stubble that always seems to dust his cheeks.  He’s tall and lean with a smile to die for. His name is even perfect.   It sounds like Evan, but it’s actually Ebon, a strong, intelligent name.  All in all, he’s pretty much the ideal man.  But more than any of his million wonderful qualities, it’s his mind that draws me to him.  His soul.

From my seat in the back of the room, I see Ebon’s eyes flicker up to me and then dart quickly away.

That’s new,
I think, a little unnerved.  Ebon goes to great lengths to basically ignore me in class.  I mean, he
is
dating my sister, so he can’t make it look like he favors me at all.  And actually, he doesn’t.  At all.  The grades I get in here are a product of my love for the written word. It’s as simple as that. 

I’ve always loved to write.  Journals, short stories, term papers, anything and everything, I just love to write.  But at this point in my life (a senior in college), I’m working toward making it my career.

As Ebon wraps up the class, he announces our assignment for Monday.  His eyes rise to the back of the room. To me.  Again.  And as they did moments ago, they retreat just as quickly.  It’s in that fraction of a second that I see…

What?  Heat?  Curiosity?  My imagination?  Am I seeing what I so desperately
want
to see?  Or is there something new in Ebon’s gaze, something very…personal?

The contact was too brief to be certain. All I know is that my stomach is suddenly an anxious knot of pure want, hot and dangerous
. 

Ebon clears his throat and addresses the students closest to him on the front row.  “At the beginning of the semester, I asked you to write one chapter each week toward a work of fiction.  I told you it could be anything under the sun and that I wouldn’t ask for you to hand it in.  Many of you had questions as to the purpose of such an exercise.  Well, for next week’s assignment, I want you to read back over your work thus far and find the truth in it.  Find the honesty.  Find the part of you that’s revealed within it.  Virginia Woolf said, ‘Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.’  What does
your
work say about you?” 

As his eyes scan the faces of his students, there is absolute silence.  We aren’t just waiting to be dismissed.  We aren’t anxious to leave or bored out of our skull. No, there is silence because Ebon is the kind of teacher, the kind of
man
that commands your attention with nothing more than the expression of his thoughts.  He leaves you hanging and wanting more every time he speaks.  Looking around at all the rapt faces, I know that I’m not the only one who is enthralled by him.  There are probably dozens of other girls in the room that would melt into a puddle if he turned much more of his attention their way.

With a smile and a nod, he dismisses us.  “See you Monday.”

I avoid eye contact as I make my way down the steps to the door. It’s the same routine that I employ every Monday and Wednesday.  Aside from the other reasons to avoid all appearances of knowing Ebon outside of class—reasons like his relationship with my sister and the fact that he
is
my instructor—my biggest motivator for keeping my distance is that I can never risk him seeing how I feel.  He can never know that, with every class and every word, I’m falling more and more deeply in love with him.

As I push through the door, I hear his voice.  “Willow.”

I turn, resisting the urge to rub my hands over arms where chills broke out from hearing him say my name.  It always affects me this way.

I meet his eyes.  He makes no move to approach me or to say anything else. It’s almost as though he just wanted me to stop and turn. 

We watch each other for long, countless seconds before his lips curve into a polite and professional smile.  “Have a nice weekend.”

“Thanks. You, too,” I say, finding the interaction bizarre yet utterly stimulating. 

I walk to my car on a cloud, much like I do after every class with Ebon.  My soul feeds off those couple of hours all week long.  But it’s the four or five hours directly following exposure to him that are the hardest to overcome.  But they’re also the most pleasurable.

Spending time with Ebon is like getting a shot of morphine. For the first little while, the world is a hazy, happy tangle of troubles that seems a million miles away.  Gradually, I surface from the fog into a kind of dulled clarity where the pain of my mostly-solitary existence is less excruciating for a few hours more.  Then, overnight, it wears off. I wake to the world as I remembered it, left with nothing more than the memory of short-lived ecstasy and an intense craving for my next dose. 

That’s Ebon Daniels in a nutshell.  He’s like a drug.  And I’m hopelessly addicted.

At my apartment, I slide my key into the door only to find that it’s already unlocked. I twist the knob and walk inside to find my sister Sage sprawled on the couch with a bag of Doritos resting on her stomach. 

“You’re gonna get fat if you eat like that,” I say, throwing back to her the same words she’s said to me a million times over the years.

“Shut up,” she snips without even looking up at me.

I touched the only raw nerve Sage has—her slow metabolism.  The half inch of height that she has on me is practically the only physical disparity between us, other than four chronological minutes.  We are identical for the most part with long, straight black hair, pale skin, and blue eyes.  The only other differences are my far-sightedness and the fact that she actually
is
prone to weight gain, whereas I am not. I’m sure that’s why she’s commented on my eating habits my whole life. It’s probably the only thing she’s ever envied about me.  She might not be thinking about it right now, but she’ll have to go to the gym for an extra hour or two this week to keep those chips from settling on her thighs. 

“What’s wrong with you?” I ask, throwing my books onto the bar.

“Don’t leave those there,” she gripes, her eyes focused on my books.

I sigh.  When Sage graduated from community college and got her first job, she moved into a really nice apartment in Tucker, Florida.  Lucky for me, it’s only fifteen minutes from Gainesville where I am finishing up my bachelor’s in English Literature at University of Florida.  Dad agreed to pay half the rent if she let me stay with her until I graduate.  Sage was more than happy to do that, but it’s still her apartment so I have to abide by her rules.  Including not leaving my books lying around.

“I’ll take them to my room in a second. I was just waiting for you to answer me.  What’s got you diving into the junk food?”

Sage finally turns to fully face me.  I see an unfamiliar expression marring her classic features.  I’ve encountered it often enough when I look in the mirror, but I’ve never seen it on Sage. 

It’s rejection.

“I got dumped,” she says woefully.

My mouth gapes open.  “You’re kidding.”

“Of course I’m not kidding.  Why would I joke about something as horrible as that?”

I roll my eyes.  “Oh god, yes, it’s awful!  The end of the world for sure.”

Sage sits up, fire shooting from her eyes.  “Look, I don’t need your smart-ass commentary. If you can’t have a little sympathy, then leave me the hell alone.”

I bite my tongue and let a few seconds pass before I speak again.  “Did you love him?”

Why does my heart pound so hard as I wait for her answer?

“No,” she answers decisively.  “But can’t I still be hurt?”

Tears shimmer in her eyes. Guilt surges into my chest.  This has never happened to Sage before.  I reason that to someone who has always gotten everything she wanted—and been the one to discard it when she’s finished with it—it probably
does
feel like the end of the world. 

I walk to the couch and plop down on the opposite end, pulling her feet into my lap.  “I’m sorry.  I guess I had a moment of spite.  That wasn’t very nice of me.  Tell me what happened.”

“Look, Willow, I know we’ve led different lives and you’ve never had what I have as far as social experiences, but this is hard for me.”

“I know.  That’s why I apologized.  I wouldn’t wish this on anybody.”  I’ve had my fair share of rejections, which is why I’ve been avoiding pretty much everything in the way of men for the last year.  I refuse to think it might have anything to do with my Ebon Daniels fascination and how every other guy in the world pales in comparison.

“I…I don’t know what happened. Things were going so well and then BAM!  He dumps me.”

“That doesn’t sound like him at all,” I muse. And it doesn’t.  Ebon is not just a nice guy; he’s classy.  I can’t see him just dumping Sage like a heartless asshole.  “Did he give you a reason?”

Sage raises wide eyes to mine.  Her bottom lip is pulled between her teeth, teeth that are so like my own, in a gesture that I know all too well.  She’s done something wrong.  “Ummm, well…”

I feel the frown tug my brows together.  “Well what?”

Sage flops back on the sofa, crossing her forearms over her eyes.  “You’re gonna kill me.”

“Huh?  Me?  What does this have to do
with me
?  Why would
I
kill you?”  

As I wait for her to uncover her face and answer me, I experience two emotions.  The first to surface is confusion. Why would this have anything to do with me?  I mean, I’m only the slightly-younger sister and the student, neither of which are a threat or even a consideration in Sage’s relationship with Ebon. 

“Willow, I…”

It’s the guilt in her voice that gives me pause.  Sage doesn’t feel guilty about anything.  Ever.  And it makes me think…

That’s when the second emotion rips through me like a furious tidal wave.  Two and two equals four, and four in this case is the worst possible outcome in the history of the world.  But surely my math is wrong.  Surely…

My heart is slamming against my ribs.  She didn’t… 

I mean, it’s not like she would ever…

Surely she wouldn’t...

“Sage, what did you do?”

She raises her arms just enough to peek out at me from beneath them.  “I gave him that story you’ve been working on.”

My stomach drops straight through the floor and lands on the cold slab foundation below with a sickening thud. “Wh-what story?”

In my panic, I’m thinking of a dozen other letters, journals, and short stories I hope that Sage found and delivered to Ebon.  Any of them would be humiliating to have him read, as they’re all very personal and not nearly my best work.  But there’s only one that could be this devastating, only one that I recently printed out to hide away so that Sage wouldn’t stumble upon it when she uses my laptop.  There’s only one that I hid inside a shoe box—a boot box to be exact—that Sage was getting ready to throw away, a boot box that would conceal my precious white pages perfectly. 

“I went looking for my black boots to wear Sunday night. I couldn’t find them and I thought maybe you had borrowed them.  I saw the box on the shelf in your closet and I thought… I thought…”

I feel every drop of blood drain from my head, one by one.  Each bead takes a little piece of my dignity and my soul with it as it leaves my face.

“Sage,” I whisper.  “You didn’t.”

She sits up again, her eyes pleading as she wraps her fingers around my arm.  “Willow, it was so good.  I was just going to read the first page, but it sucked me in.  I had no idea it was about
my
Ebon.  I swear.”

Oh god, oh god, oh god.

I slide out from under Sage’s feet and walk slowly around the couch to the kitchen. Without a word, I grab my books from the bar and make my way to my room.  My mind is consumed with a single thought—damage control.

I could move.  Just up and move.  Quit school and go get a job somewhere, doing…something.  I could go to the beach and work at a surf shop until next year and enroll at one of the smaller colleges. 

Or I could die my hair.  Over the weekend. Go in Monday wearing a bunch of wild makeup and my contacts.  He’d never know it was me.

Or I could get plastic surgery.  Yeah, that’s it. I could get plastic surgery so that I look nothing like my sister.  Hmmm, but that will take more than a weekend and I need a solution before Monday.

Maybe I’ll just die. In my sleep.  Sunday night.  There’s always that hope.

I dump my books in the floor and ease onto the bed, carefully, like it might drop out from under me, too.  Like the world just did.  When it holds steady, I turn onto my side and curl into the fetal position.  I close my eyes, wishing I could just shut out the universe, shut out life, and live in my Ebon Daniels drug haze forever.  It’s the realization that I’ll never enjoy that high again that makes me the saddest, that makes me feel the most bereft.  I don’t mourn the loss of my privacy or my dignity nearly as much as I mourn the impending loss of something more precious than even
I
had realized.   Because after this, things will never be the same again.  Never.