But in the meantime, I had to kiss a boy. I had to admit, a cute boy, that made it easier. Plus he had heard about my brief ‘teacher’s pet’ period with Ms. Wagner, and figured we could both appreciate talking about her.
One day, we were hanging out at his place, and she had come up in conversation while we were taking notes. Johnny as usual was going off about how great a teacher she was, and, used to him talking about this, I smirked at him.
“What?” he asked.
“You always talk about what a great personality she has,” I replied frankly. “You’re not fooling anyone, Johnny.”
Johnny had the worst ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’ face on the planet. “Uhhh, babe, what are you even saying?” he asked with way too much confusion in his voice to be convincing.
“Come on, I know what all the boys say about her. I get it. She’s really attractive.”
“Babe, come on, this is a trap,” he said. “You know I only have eyes for you.”
I shrugged. “Hey, you can admit someone is attractive without meaning you’ll do anything about it. Plus, she’s you teacher, it’s not like anything will happen.”
He lowered one eyebrow and smirked at me. “It’s Hazelwood, babe.” Hazelwood had a bit of a reputation, two teachers were fired and probably jailed in the past decade for doing things with their students. “But yeah, she’s dece, I suppose.”
“Wanna know a secret?” I asked him. He nodded. “Okay, so, fun fact about me, I’m actually bi. And if you tell anyone about this I’ll kill you, but I used to have the biggest crush on her.”
“Woooah.” Johnny replied with wide eyes of wonder. “That’s so cool. What’s it like?”
I gave him a “come on” look. “It feels like having four legs and segmented eyes. It just feels like having crushes on girls as well as guys, Johnny.”
“Still, that’s… kinda hot,” he bashfully admitted.
I chuckled. “Yeah, I thought you would say that.”
“Nah, but I get where you’re coming from though. Like, her hips-” He stopped himself sheepishly. “Wait, you’re a girl. You probably just had this ‘tender love’ thing for her, right? Sorry for presuming.”
Johnny really was the sweetest mix of considerate and boneheaded. “Girls can feel lust too, dummy.” I retaliated. “Yes, her hips are like the sexiest things I’ve ever seen.”
Jonny’s mouth was agape. To be fair, I had never shown this side of myself to him before. I don’t honestly know what possessed me to do it now. Like it or not, Johnny was actually pretty sweet, and pretty trustworthy to boot. I felt safe and comfortable exposing this side of myself to him, knowing he was the least likely person to judge me for it. Unlike Lucy.
“I mean, yeah, I’ve… how cool are you with me talking about how sexy I find other girls?”
He asked. How touching. I stared at him in thought for a few seconds, and slowly replied, “I think because we both had a crush on her specifically – you had a crush, right?” He nodded slowly. “Okay, cool, then yeah, I think it’s okay talking about her specifically.”
“Okay, because I’ve had… dreams about her. Is that okay?” He scrunched up his face, preparing for the worst.
I laughed. “Johnny, Johnny, Johnny.” I replied slowly. “We should have had this conversation earlier.”
***
As twisted as it seemed, the thing needed to turn our relationship sexual was our combined crushes on Ms. Wagner. At first we referred to it as our past crushes, but as we confessed more and more, I was the first to admit I still had my crush, and Johnny quickly told me afterwards he felt the same way. We both concluded it would never happen, but it was nice to fantasize.
And fantasize we did. It started with our phone calls – we’d describe our dreams of her more and more graphically, and finally I couldn’t take it anymore and began touching myself while on the phone with him. Johnny, being the sweet birdbrain he was, didn’t clue in and asked if I was in pain when I got bolder and my moans got more pronounced. I think anyone else would have been weirded out, but Johnny? Johnny liked the taboo naughtiness of it. He liked that we shouldn’t be doing it. Before long, we started having phone sex where we took turns asking the other to close their eyes and describing all the things we pictured Ms. Wagner doing to them. (Johnny needed pointers on how women ‘even do it in the first place,’ because of course, but once he learned the basics he was a surprisingly fast learner.)
Then, once, we described these fantasies in person while hanging out at his house, and, as awkwardly as possible, Johnny told me he was really turned on and we decided to fool around for the first time. If I was being a hundred percent honest, I got it confirmed that day that sexually I was not into guys, but I appreciated Johnny’s efforts and used my acting skills to let him believe he did a great job. Of course, to reciprocate, I blew him, and I doubt he faked his orgasm. Afterwards he told me how amazing I was and how much he appreciated me and cared about me. Me, I was lost in the thoughts of how wrong the scent of a man was, and how I yearned to inhale Ms. Wagner’s scent up close.
Suddenly, we absolutely were that couple that did PDA. No one saw it coming, the least of which being Ms. Wagner. I was lucky enough to catch her face the first time she saw us going just a little bit too far for class etiquette. Her mouth was open and she was visibly breathing, her face a mix of shock and slight anger.
And, like I said, I’m no schemer, but in that moment I realized I could use her past to my advantage.
We had started doing rarer lunch period meetups again – only when I had done particularly poor on a report or test – and rarely, if ever, talked about anything other than schoolwork, but I was prepared for that.
“You’re doing well,” Ms. Wagner told me with a sweet smile as we finished our mini-lesson. God, I loved her voice. I loved the smile that accompanied it when she liked something. She was irresistible. “I trust you’ll study tonight for tomorrow’s test?”
I pretended to mull it over. “Probably, I answered. “The trouble is, tonight I’m supposed to do a thing with Johnny, and he gets pretty pissed when I blow these sorts of things off.”
“Oh yeah?” she asked, pretending to be curious. Below I could see concern.
“Yeah, honestly sometimes he can be kind of forceful,” I said with conviction. “It’s like, I love him and everything, but he’ll make plans for us then check if I was free that day after, or he’ll get weird when I talk about my other friends. Once he even asked me to give him my phone so he could look through it. I don’t know, I’m probably overreacting, but maybe I should bring it up with him that I don’t like it.”
Ms. Wagner was no longer hiding the concern on her face. “Um, wow. Absolutely you should,” she replied, with a little more Valley Girl in her voice than usual. It seemed like her voice would get like that when she got all feelings-y and high school-y herself. “Like, that’s not cool of a boy to just do that to a girl.”
“I dunno, he got pretty mad when I last brought it up,” I shrugged. “He said I was acting crazy and making it up. I figure he’ll just grow out of it eventually.” Internally I grinned. This was exactly like those boys you dated that you regretted, Ms. Wagner. Right before your secret girlfriend.