The Senior, Part Seventeen
Part Seventeen
Against my better judgment, I decided to go with Jade’s idea.
We did need to talk. She was a lot more familiar with the school than I was, and a secluded location meant we wouldn’t get interrupted or overheard. Of course, I knew that going somewhere she suggested meant being on her ‘home turf;’ while Jade didn’t seem like the theatre type, she could still know the department well. As I made my way back inside and across the school, I reminded myself that I wasn’t committed to any of this. If whatever she had in mind was too risky, I could always just turn around.
It took a few minutes for me to reorient myself with the half of the building that I was less familiar with; there was enough signage for me to find the auditorium, plus I had a vague memory of the school’s layout to fall back on. As I stepped into the performance space, I let out a sigh of relief. It was totally empty. That included Jade, however. Glancing around for a moment, I then remembered that her text had said ‘backstage.’ The curtains were down at the front of the room, so I ventured towards the stage and wandered through a side door that looked like it led back there.
Jade was easy enough to find. She was perched on a nearby stool, reading some script until she noticed me out of the corner of her eye. “Oh, hey!” She hopped up and set the little book down behind her, “For a minute, I thought you were going to bail on me.”
“Is this a good place to talk?” I asked. Sure, it was secluded right now. As I just learned from my arrival, however, was that anyone could come in from anywhere. The side I just used, as well as the opposite one, not to mention the curtain itself and maybe another door or two I hadn’t spotted yet. Even if there wasn’t something scheduled in here, Jade probably wasn’t the only student around who was inclined to skip class with a spot like this. Or perhaps someone involved in the department preferred the stage to the cafeteria for lunch.
She replied, “Kind of. Follow me.”
As usual, she had a way of drawing my eye. The sway of her hips as she sauntered away in a rather short skirt was difficult to ignore. For a moment, at least, before I came back to my senses and averted my gaze. Then I let her lead me to a place that really wasn’t that far.
She opened a door around the corner that I recognized right away as some sort of costume storage. Addressing my internal concerns, no doubt because she was thinking along the same lines, Jade said, “No one should be coming in here any time soon. Better than standing around backstage, right?”
Well, kind of. If somebody did happen to do so, it would look a lot more suspicious for me to be in such a private place with a student. At the same time, she was right. I had already considered that talking behind the curtain didn’t look great when I had no reason to be over here on my second day of teaching, when anyone could show up at any minute.
“Just to talk,” I asserted.
“Just to talk,” she echoed, glancing over her shoulder with a smile.
I couldn’t help but think back to the Jade from the bar. The girl who was so self assured and so easy to converse with once she established me as her social shield from unwanted guys. If only talking with her was as easy as it was then.
It was more of a costume room than a costume closet, thankfully. I definitely wouldn’t have followed her into a space that was too cramped or confined, even if it was objectively better than where we had just been standing. Closing the door behind us, glad to see her turn into an area that couldn’t be directly seen if someone did need to come in here despite her assurances, I launched into things myself. If I had learned one thing from yesterday, it was that Jade was good at flustering me and making things more confusing than they had to be. Almost as if I had seen her naked or something, with the promise of more to come.
So, getting right into it, I said, “Okay. The thing is, I could get fired for this. Any of this. All of this. Drinking with you, inviting you over to my place.” To some degree, this was my fault for making assumptions, and I wasn’t about to imply that I was blameless. “Yes, you’re legally an adult, but you’re still a high school student.”
To her credit, she didn’t counter with something right away, though it didn’t take long. Leaning against the sewing table next to her, she said, “So, you’d hook up with me a day after graduation? Or an hour after the ceremony, maybe?”
With a different tone, it would’ve sounded like a bratty clarification, but she actually sounded curious and a bit skeptical. “Not exactly,” I replied. That would look pretty bad as well, even if we waited until she was officially done with school. “I’m just saying, there are rules.”
Jade just sighed. “I guess. But we already broke those rules. And so far, you’ve only mentioned why we shouldn’t. What about the rest? Do you want me? Would a secret like this excite you like it excites me?”
“That’s not the point,” I said, internally wincing as the words left my mouth. A non-answer like that was just as bad as obviously guilty witnesses pleading the fifth in courtroom dramas.
“Then what is the point?” Jade asked, “That you could get in trouble? For fucking an eighteen year old girl who’s into you?”
Umm, yes. Except I wouldn’t put it like that.
Before I could respond, she went on, “Well, how about this? If I promise to drop your class, can we at least make out right now?”