Teaching Willow: Session Three (5 page)

There is a palpable silence in the room, only the sound of my labored breathing sharp enough to slice through its thickness.  I needed to say those things.  I needed to say them and my parents needed to hear them.  Now I just have to prove—to them, to Ebon, to myself—that I’m true to my word.

I have to do whatever I can to fix this, at least for Ebon.

Sticking my chin into the air, I march to my dresser, take out clean underwear, grab some yoga pants and a tee shirt and breeze past my family.  No one says a word until I turn from inside the bathroom door and announce, “Now, I’m going to get a shower and get my life back on track. I suggest you three go have dinner and talk about me somewhere that I can’t hear you.”

With a flick of my wrist, I send the door slamming shut and I turn on the shower to scalding hot.

EIGHT- EBON

Risk versus reward.  Every risk needs to be analyzed in relation to and weighed against the possible reward the endeavor carries.  I didn’t want Willow badly enough to risk my career, so I stayed away.

Until I found out that I’d been fucking her all along anyway.

In a way, that should’ve allowed me to move on more easily, not make me so crazy to finally taste the forbidden fruit.  I mean, for God’s sake, I’d already tasted it.  A couple a dozen times.  But that didn’t seem to matter.  The knowledge had the exact opposite effect that it should’ve.  I resisted so hard for so long, but I couldn’t resist having Willow
as Willow
after I’d had a taste of what could be.

I knew the risk.  And the reward outweighed it. Even though I didn’t give myself much time to consider, to weigh the options properly, I doubt I would’ve done things differently.  The chances of getting caught were remote.

But not remote enough. 

We got caught.  Seen.  According to the Dean, we were identified by someone who knows Willow and is concerned for her, what with her being taken advantage of by a teacher and all.

What horseshit! If they only knew…

But they don’t.  And they wouldn’t believe me if I tried to tell them. Besides, I am guilty.  I did knowingly take my student into my classroom and fuck her brains out.  I deserve to be fired.  Which is just what I got—fired.  Terminated.  Let go.

Even if I hadn’t confessed, even if I’d denied having been in the building (or on campus!) that night, they would still have let me go.  A rumor such as that is almost as damaging as the facts themselves.  The college couldn’t risk keeping me.  And, under those circumstances, I couldn’t stand to stay.  So we parted ways.  And here I am.  Exactly where I didn’t want to be. Everything I worked so hard for flushed down the toilet.  No possible future for me in sight.

I don’t know what to do about Willow yet.  I feel partly responsible for whatever trouble she ends up getting into.  The power to stop the whole thing rested squarely on my shoulders, but I didn’t even pause. I jumped. I risked.  I lured her in, knowing she wouldn’t resist, and I took what I wanted.  And now we’re both paying for it.

Do I still want her?  Yes.  When I close my eyes and think of my cock sliding in and out of her body, I get harder than I’ve ever been with another woman.  When I think of her murmuring a quote from
Lady Chatterly’s Lover
after I came in her ass, I’m convinced that I’ve never wanted anything more.  Even after all that has happened, I want her.  Above anyone else, I want her.  Sometimes it almost feels like I
need
her.

Do I love her?  Hell, I don’t know.  Right now, it’s hard to separate the different feelings of loss and grief from…everything else.  I grieve the loss of my job, my future, the life that I worked so hard for.  But I have to admit that I do grieve the loss of Willow. I just don’t yet know
to what extent
I grieve it.  In a way, I hope I’m not in love with her because, chances are, we’ll never see each other again.

I throw my toiletries in my shaving case and zip it closed.  It’s the last of my packing. I’m ready to go.  Where, I haven’t decided yet.  My plane ticket is for Vegas.  I’ll start there.  I figure since I’m kind of in limbo, with not a lot to lose by digging up old skeletons, I might as well exorcise the demons of my past, which means going home.  Assuming, of course, that my family is still
in Vegas
. 

I could call and find out, but I don’t want to let them know I’m coming.  I think the element of surprise could work in my favor in this particular instance.  But the biggest reason I want to go there is to draw them away from Florida, away from my new life, if they’re even still here.  They’re poison and I don’t want anyone getting hurt because of them.

Like Willow.

I sigh.

Willow.

Fuck.

Everything else can wait until I get back.  It’s hard to say where things will be and how I’ll feel in a couple weeks’ time anyway.  Better? Worse? No different?  Who knows?  I just hope to have some idea of what the hell to do by then.

NINE- WILLOW

For all my bravado and blustering when I was facing my parents, now that I’m in my car heading to Ebon’s, I’m feeling much less courageous and in control.

The only things I have in my arsenal are questions and apologies.  The questions, I might never have answers to. I doubt Ebon will be amenable to discussing exactly how and when he discovered what I’d been playing at.  It’s one of life’s great mysteries that I’ll probably die wondering about.

My other weapon is a slew of apologies.  However, I doubt they’ll get me very far.  I have no helpful solutions, no way to take back what I’ve done or what happened to Ebon because of it. I can only tell him that I’m sorry.  Truly, deeply, profoundly, miserably sorry.  And then I can watch him walk away despite it.

Really, I don’t see much good out ahead of me now.  But still, I have to try. I have to at least deliver my apologies. Otherwise I’m afraid I might just wither up and blow away.  I can’t live with that kind of guilt and not spontaneously combust.

I park outside Ebon’s house. I watch for signs of life. I see none.  I wait and wait and wait for the nerve to get out and go to his door, but I’m terrified he won’t even let me in.  My stomach is in knots, my nerves are a mess and I feel like I might puke any minute now.

It’s as I sit, subconsciously finding reasons
not
to go to Ebon’s door, that I begin to think of who it was that threw my whole world off its axis.  Besides myself, that is.

No one should’ve been in the Language Arts building that night.  No one should’ve been going by that classroom.  Even if someone had stumbled upon us, there’s no way they’d have been able to identify
me
out of context. Ebon, maybe. He is, after all, one of the teachers of that class.  But me?  How would anyone recognize me?

My heart fills with lead as I think through the questions, as I postulate and hypothesize.  It sinks farther and farther, becomes heavier and heavier.

No one would’ve recognized me. 

Unless they happened to see me leave. 

Or happened to see Ebon talking to me. 

Or both. 

I close my eyes against the growing knowledge of the truth.

No one would’ve recognized me unless they saw me talking to Ebon, saw me leave shortly after him and followed me.  Maybe because they already happened to be worried about me.  And maybe because they happened to suspect that he had eyes for me before now.

My breathing becomes shallow as I put the puzzle pieces together and find that all signs point to one person.  One person who has seen me talking to Ebon before, knows I’ve been acting strange, could’ve seen us talking that night back stage and could’ve seen me leave and then followed.

Tiffany. 

Sweet Jesus, it was Tiffany.

She is really the only logical person to consider and the more I think about it, the angrier and more confounded I become.  Why in the world would she go to such extreme measures to ruin my life?  And Ebon’s?

While I don’t have all the answers, at this point, I don’t really care.  What’s done is done.  What matters
now
is that she is the one person who can fix this, the one person who can go to the Dean and say that she was mistaken.

I just have to give her a good enough reason to do so.

Without giving it a second thought, I start my engine and pull away from the curb, leaving Ebon’s house behind in favor of chasing down the one tiny ray of hope that shines into the black mess my life has become.

I pray that the one who turned it inside out can right it once again.

TEN- EBON

When I turned eighteen, I left Nevada and never looked back.  I haven’t even kept a check on local news via the internet.  For all intents and purposes, my family let me go when I was sixteen. They ceased to be my family when they forced me to do what I did.  I promised myself that if I ever got away, I’d start fresh and never look back.  And that’s exactly what I did.

Until today.

The dry heat of the dessert is suffocating. I don’t know if it’s a physical reaction or a psychological one that just
feels
physical. Either way, it’s stifling.  So much so that I nearly turn right around, walk back into the airport and get a ticket to fly out of here today.  To anywhere.  Anywhere but here.

But I don’t.  With no job, no life mission left to lose anymore, now is the ideal time to put the past to rest once and for all.  And since my mother has obviously managed to track me down, it needs to be done.  The sooner, the better.

I take a cab to my hotel and get checked in.  Once in the air conditioned comfort of my suite, I don’t even unpack.  I don’t want to pretend I’m staying one minute longer than is absolutely necessary.  No, instead, I sit on the edge of the king- sized bed and open up the web browser on my phone to look up anything and everything I can find on my parents. 

Sadly, the first hit I get is when I check the Las Vegas Department of Justice website.  It shows several arrest reports for my father, two for my mother, but only one of them is recent.  Four months ago, my father was busted for rape.

Again.

Evidently, he was released under his own recognizance due to his bail being posted.  He just has to stay put until his trial, which has been delayed twice.  As I read along, my gut burns like it’s full of a metric ton of hot, heavy rocks.

Now I don’t have to wonder why my mother has sought me out.  But I
do
have to wonder how much she has been able to glean about my life.  And the people in it.

It’s with a sick feeling that I set my phone back to its home screen, wishing that I could reset my life to a happier place so easily, and I walk to the in-room phone to call down to concierge for a cab.

I know what I have to do.  As unpleasant as it is, it has to be done.

I have to go see my father.

ELEVEN- WILLOW

I don’t care that it’s late.  I pound on the door of Tiffany’s apartment until I get an answer.  When she peeks through the crack, the chain still engaged, and sees me standing on her stoop, I know that I was right.  I know that she’s the one who turned me in to the Dean.  Guilt registers on her face before her expression turns to one of defiance.

“It’s late, Willow.  What are you doing here?”

I keep a tight hold on my temper.  “Do you really even have to ask?”

“I don’t know—”

“Cut the shit, Tiffany. I know you saw us. And I know you turned us in to the Dean.  Let me in.  We need to talk.”

“It’s late. I have to—”

I soften my tone as much as possible.  “Please.  It’s important.”

Her mouth pulls tight, but I can see her relent.  She closes the door and about ten seconds later, I hear the chain sliding in its track before the door swings open again, wide enough that I can enter.

I go and sit on the sofa, an action full of purpose and by specific design.  I know that if I stand, I might pummel the hell out of her. Sitting is best.  Sitting is definitely best.

I wait for her to take the seat in the chair across from me.  She’s bundled up in a thick robe like it’s two degrees outside rather than the very nice sixty-something that it actually is.  She’s also hunched over protectively. I imagine that has
everything
to do with my arrival.

I take a deep breath to calm myself before I begin.  “Tiffany, let’s just dispense with the pretenses. I know what you did, and I even think I know why, but that’s not why I’m here.  I’m here because I’ve come to beg you to recant.”

“Willow, I’m—”

“Let me finish.  I know you think you were helping me. I get it. I really do.  But the thing is, you have
ruined
Ebon’s life.  He lost his job, Tiffany.  The man lost his job because of what you did.  But it’s not too late to fix this. You just have to—”

“It
is
too late, Willow.”

“No, it’s not.  All you have to do is—”

“Even if I could change things, which I can’t because he confessed, I wouldn’t.  Willow, what he did was wrong.   So, so wrong.  Men like him don’t deserve to be teachers.  They don’t deserve to be trusted.  Yes, I did it for you, but I also did it for future students.  He can’t just take advantage—”

I growl, curling my fingers into tight fists and leaping from the sofa to pace.  “You have no fucking clue, Tiffany!  I tricked him.  He thought I was Sage!  You have no idea what I did to that man and then you, in all of your self-righteousness, cost him everything. 
Everything!”

I feel hot tears threaten.  This is all my fault.  In the end, no matter what anyone else did, every bit of this is my fault. I’ve ruined a man’s life because I’m a selfish, scheming, childish liar.

I feel like pulling my hair out, I’m so frustrated.  Oh god, oh god, oh god! Finally, I turn back to Tiffany. I’m desperate and frantic.

“Tiffany, please!”

“There’s nothing I can do, Willow. He confessed, which actually makes me think a lot better of him.  And whatever you did, it doesn’t justify what
he
did.  He knew who you were, Willow.  He came to practice to get you.  He knew
exactly
what he was doing.”

I throw my head back and scream in futility.  “Tiffany, this was none of your business! If I’d wanted you to know, I’d have told you.  Why can’t you just fix this and let me live my life?  I’ve got enough of a mess to clean up without adding this to it.”

She shakes her head, not willing to give an inch.  “Sorry.  What’s done is done.  I guess both of you should’ve thought about what you were doing before you started this.  You knew it was wrong.  You knew—”

“Yes, I did!  Is that what you want to hear? Yes, I knew it was wrong, but I was in love with him.  I still am!  But he wouldn’t have anything to do with me because
I was his student
. He
was
the bigger person.  He
was
the better person, the more mature, the more responsible person. He did everything right. It was me,
me
that made the mistakes.  And it’s so unfair that he would have to pay for them.  He didn’t ask me to fall in love with him, Tiffany. It just happened.”  Suddenly, I’m drained. And hopeless.  And devastated.  “It just happened.”

I don’t try to stop the tears this time. I let them flow, bitter and remorseful.  Once they start, they gush.  They gush like water from an open damn.

Tiffany doesn’t try to comfort me.  If anything, I can feel her disdain battering my already-tormented mind.

“Oh well.  I guess you’ll make better choices next time then, won’t you?”

My mouth wants to gape open at her callousness.  I keep it closed by gritting my teeth so hard my jaw aches.

Once again, like a caped hero coming to the rescue, fury surfaces. It burns away all the tears and leaves me feeling cold and hateful toward the girl who I thought was my friend.

“You know what, Tiffany?  I hope in all your infinite wisdom that you
very carefully
choose who you fall in love with, because God help you if you have any friends
like you
if you don’t.  They might take it upon themselves to swoop in and ruin your life.” I walk calmly to the door, swinging it open.  I glance back over my shoulder, ice shooting from my eyes.  “Stay the hell away from me.  If I see you again, I won’t be responsible for what happens.”

With those words hanging in the air between us, I step through the door and slam it shut behind me.  When I reach the parking lot, I don’t bother to look back.