This Girl

“This—this can’t happen!” I say. “I’m your teacher now. Everything has changed. We can’t do this.” I can hear the edge in my voice again. I’m trying my best not to come off as angry, but I am angry. Not at her, but how can she differentiate? Maybe she shouldn’t. Maybe this would be easier for her if she were disappointed in me. Easier for her to let me go.



She sits back down on the couch and drops her face into her hands. “Will, I won’t say anything,” she whispers. “I swear.” She looks back up at me and the sadness in her eyes has returned. All the hope is gone.



The hurt in her voice only solidifies the fact that I’m an asshole. I can’t believe I just did this to her—led her on like this. She doesn’t need this right now.



“I’m sorry, Layken, but it’s not right,” I say as I pace the floor. “This isn’t good for either of us. This isn’t good for you.”



She glares at me. “You don’t know what’s good for me,” she snaps.



I’ve really screwed this up. Royally. I need to fix it now. I need to end it now. For good. She can’t leave here thinking this is going to happen again. I stop pacing and turn toward her.



“You won’t wait for me. I won’t let you give up what should be the best year of your life. I had to grow up way too fast; I’m not taking that away from you, too. It wouldn’t be fair.” I inhale a breath and tell the biggest lie I’ve ever told. “I don’t want you to wait for me, Layken.”



“I won’t be giving anything up,” she replies weakly.



The pain in her voice is too much, causing me to have an overwhelming urge to hug her again. I can’t take these emotional swings anymore. One minute I’m wanting to kiss the living hell out of her and take her in my arms and protect her from every tear that’s about to come her way, then the next minute my conscience kicks in and I want to kick her out of my house. I’ve hurt her so bad and she has no idea how much worse her life is about to get. Just knowing this makes me hate myself for what I just allowed to happen. Despise myself, even.



I grab my shirt and pull it over my head, then move across the living room to the back of the couch. I take a deep breath, feeling slightly more in control the farther away I am from her. I grip the back of the couch and prepare an attempt to rectify a nonrectifiable situation. If I could just get her to understand where I’m coming from, maybe she wouldn’t take it so hard.



“My life is nothing but responsibilities. I’m raising a child, for Christ’s sake. I wouldn’t be able to put your needs first. Hell, I wouldn’t even be able to put them second.” I raise my head and meet her eyes. “You deserve better than third.”



She stands up and crosses the living room, kneeling on the couch in front of me. “Your responsibilities should come before me, which is why I want to wait for you, Will. You’re a good person. This thing about you that you think is your flaw—it’s the reason I’m falling in love with you.”



Whatever was left of my heart before those words left her mouth is in a million pieces now. I can’t let her do this. I can’t let her feel this way. The only thing I can do to make her stop loving me is to make her start hating me. I bring my hands up to meet her cheeks and I look her in the eyes, then I say the hardest words that I’ll ever have to say. “You are not falling in love with me. You cannot fall in love with me.” As soon as I see the tears welling in the corners of her eyes, I have to drop my hands and head toward the front door. I can’t watch her cry. I don’t want to see what I’m doing to her right now.



“What happened tonight—” I point to the couch. “That can’t happen again. That won’t happen again.”



I open the front door and shut it behind me, then lean against the door and close my eyes. I rub my hands over my face and attempt to calm myself down. This is all my fault. I allowed her into my house, knowing how weak I am around her. I kissed her. I kissed her. I can’t believe all of this just happened. Twenty minutes alone with her and I somehow screw her life up even more.



Seeing her sitting on the couch just now, dumbfounded and heartbroken because of my actions and my words . . . I hate myself. Pretty sure Lake hates me now, too. I hope it was worth it. Somehow doing the right thing in this situation seems completely and utterly wrong.



I walk to the car and pull Caulder out. He wraps his arms around my neck without even waking up. Kel opens his eyes and looks around, confused.



“You guys fell asleep in the car. Go home and go to bed, okay?”



He rubs his eyes and crawls out of the car, then makes his way across the street. When I walk back through the front door holding Caulder, Lake is still sitting on the couch, staring at the floor. As much as I want to grab her and tell her I’m so, so sorry for this entire night, I realize she needs this to get past whatever it is going on between us. She needs to be angry at me. And Julia needs her to be focused this year. She can’t have Lake wrapped up in us when it might be the last year she ever gets to spend with her mom.



“Kel woke up, he’s walking home now. You should go, too,” I say.



She snatches the keys off the table in front of her and turns to face me. She looks me straight in the eyes; tears streaming down her face. “You’re an asshole,” she says, her words like a bullet of truth straight through my heart. She walks out and slams the door behind her.



I take Caulder to his room and tuck him in, then walk to my bedroom. When I close the door behind me, I lean against it and close my eyes, then slide down the length of the door until I meet the floor. I press the heels of my palms against my eyes, holding back the tears.



God, this girl. This girl is the only girl I care about, and I just gave her every reason in the world to hate me.



11.



the honeymoon



“I’M SO, SO sorry, Will,” she whispers. She puts her hands over her face and covers her eyes. “I feel horrible. Terrible. And selfish. I didn’t know how hard it was for you, too. I just thought you kicked me out because I wasn’t worth the risk.”



“Lake, you didn’t know what all was going through my mind. For all you knew I was just some jerk who kissed you, then kicked you out of my house. I never blamed you. And you were absolutely worth the risk. If it weren’t for knowing what I knew about Julia, I would have never let you go.”



She pulls her hands away from her face and turns to me. “Oh, my god, and those names. I never did apologize for that.” She rolls on top of me and brings her face inches from mine. “I’m so sorry I called you all those names the next day.”



“Don’t be,” I shrug. “I sort of deserved it.”



She shakes her head. “You can’t sit here and tell me that didn’t piss you off. I mean, I called you thirty different names in front of the entire class!”



“I didn’t say it didn’t piss me off. I just said I deserved it.”



She laughs. “So you were mad at me.” She lies back down on her pillow. “Let me hear it,” she says.



regrets



I’VE GONE AS slowly as possible. I’ve called on each student, never rushed them, never even timed them. Usually they don’t spit them out this fast. Of course, as soon as Gavin finishes his poem, there’s still five minutes to spare. I have no choice but to call on her. I waited until last, hoping the bell would ring. I don’t know if I’m trying to spare her from having to get up and speak after what happened between us last night, or if I’m scared to death about what she might say. Either way, it’s her turn and I have no choice but to call her up.



I clear my throat and attempt to say her name, but it comes out all mangled. She walks to the front of the room and leaves her poem on her desk. I know for a fact she didn’t write a single word yesterday in class. And considering the events that transpired in my living room last night, I doubt she was in the right mindset to even write one. However, she appears unwavering and confident and has apparently memorized whatever it is she’s about to perform. It sort of terrifies me.



“I have a question,” she says before she begins.



Shit. What the hell could she possibly need to ask? She left so angry last night, I wouldn’t be surprised if she outs me right here and now. Hell, she’s probably about to ask me if I kick all my students out of my house after I make out with them. I nod, giving her the go-ahead for her question . . . but all I really want to do is run to the bathroom and puke.



“Is there a time minimum?”



Jesus Christ. She’s actually asking a normal question. I breathe a sigh of relief and clear my throat. “No, it’s fine. Remember, there are no rules.”



“Good,” she says. “Okay, then. My poem is called Mean.”



The blood rushes from my head and pools in my heart as soon as the title flows from her mouth. She turns toward the room and begins.



According to the thesaurus . . .



and according to me . . .



there are over thirty different meanings and substitutions for the word



mean.



(SHE RAISES HER voice and yells the rest of the poem, causing me to flinch.)



Jackass, jerk, cruel, dickhead, unkind, harsh, wicked, hateful, heartless, vicious, virulent, unrelenting, tyrannical, malevolent, atrocious, bastard, barbarous, bitter, brutal, callous, degenerate, brutish, depraved, evil, fierce, hard, implacable, rancorous, pernicious, inhumane, monstrous, merciless, inexorable.



And my personal favorite—asshole.



MY PULSE IS pounding almost as fast as the insults are flying out of her mouth. When the bell rings, I sit stunned as most of the students make their way past my desk. I can’t believe she just did that!



“The date,” I hear Eddie saying to her. The word “date” snaps me back into the moment. “You said you’d have to ask your mom?” Eddie says. They’re standing next to Lake’s desk and Eddie has her back turned to me.



“Oh, that,” Lake says. She looks over Eddie’s shoulder and directly at me. “Yeah, sure,” she says. “Tell Nick I’d love to.”



I’ve never had a problem with my temper before, but it’s almost as if the day I met Lake, every single emotion I had was multiplied by a thousand. Happiness, hurt, anger, bitterness, love, jealousy. I’m unable to control any of it when I’m around her. The fact that she apparently had been asked out by Nick before our little incident last night somehow pisses me off even more. I glare at her, open my drawer, and shove my grade book inside it, then slam it shut. When Eddie spins around, startled at the noise, I quickly stand up and begin wiping the board.



“Great,” Eddie says, her attention back to Lake now. “Oh, and we decided on Thursday so after Getty’s we can go to the slam. We’ve only got a few weeks, might as well get it out of the way. You want us to pick you up?”



“Uh, sure,” Lake says.



Lake could have at least had the decency to agree to a date when she’s not standing five feet from me. As much as I want her to be pissed at me, I never thought I’d be pissed at her. But she seems intent on ensuring that that happens. Once Eddie leaves the classroom, I drop the eraser and turn back toward Lake. I fold my arms across my chest and watch as she gathers her things and heads toward the door, not once looking in my direction. Before she exits, I say something I regret before I even say it.