He blinked dramatically at me, but the corners of his lips turned up. “It’s funny how fairy tales always seem to get it wrong. But that was an interesting twist on it. For argument’s sake, what if the teacher wasn’t in love with her?”
My eyebrows shot up, but his expression remained soft, calming my nerves. “Okay. So then why did he tell her that?”
“He didn’t tell her that. He told her that he’d fallen for her.”
“Isn’t that just some cheesy, shortened version of ‘I’ve fallen in love with you’? What else would that mean, then?”
“Just that he has strong feelings for her that could maybe, one day, turn into something more. Something stronger. Possibly love.”
“Then I’d tell this teacher that he needs to learn how to correctly use romantic terms. Because ‘fallen’ implies it’s already happened. He’s a teacher for heaven’s sake. He should know the difference between past and present tenses.”
He smirked and his eyes lit up. “He’s already been through this with her. He’s a history teacher. Not an English professor.”
I laughed, feeling settled as we both comfortably slid right back into our old banter. “Well, he should at least know the difference between fallen and falling. I’m sure he’ll confuse a lot of students if he teaches them about how Rome is falling.”
“Touché.” He tried to appear offended, but his eyes gave him away. “Now, about the ending of this story. You said they made up. What does that mean? They can’t go back to being friends now that they’ve both admitted they have feelings for each other. They can’t be more than friends, because she’s his student. So what did they do?”
It was stupid to refer to ourselves as characters in a fairy tale, but for some reason, it made it easier to talk about the real issues at hand. It seemed to simplify things enough to rationalize them with level heads. “Well, I guess I imagined that they’d kind of have the best of both worlds. I mean, even when they were only pretending to be friends, they never really were. Their feelings for each other didn’t pop up overnight. So at some point in their relationship, they were more than just friends. Why couldn’t they just go back to that?”
“Back to what? Friends with emotions?”
I nodded, giving my chest a moment to loosen up. I felt as though I teetered on the precipice of rejection, and I needed to steel myself for it. I took a deep breath, released it, and continued. “Yeah. I don’t understand why it has to be one way or the other. You’re the one that wants to put labels on it. Can’t we just have a relationship without defining it?”
“It’s not that simple, Bree. I know you may not understand this because you’ve never had a romantic relationship before.”
“That may be true, but why do I need to have had experience to understand human nature? What we had worked perfectly fine before you decided to overthink everything. That’s your problem, Axel. You think too much,” I said, punctuating my words with a smile.
His head fell against the back of the couch and he let out an exaggerated sigh. “Bree…you’re not understanding.” He lifted his head again, making sure he had my attention before finishing his point. “Things go bad when people don’t think. When they don’t anticipate what could happen before they do something that they shouldn’t.”
After knowing about what had happened with my dad, Axel’s words hit me hard. They made me really listen to him, and think about the entire situation. He was right. Whatever decision we made, it had to be thoroughly thought out.
“Here are the concrete boundaries we have. They aren’t lines in the sand or chalk on a driveway. They won’t disappear or wash away. They aren’t bendable, there aren’t loopholes, and they aren’t to be questioned. I am your teacher—I’m in a position of trust. Teachers are expected to take the responsibilities of the parents when the students are in their care. Having a relationship with you is morally irresponsible. You are still a minor—I don’t care what the law says. You may be legally able to consent to sex, but you aren’t legal to vote, gamble, or drink.” He looked at me knowingly. “And you’re not considered a legal adult until you’re eighteen. So, you’re a minor.
“Those are our brick walls. The things we cannot change. You want to go back to the way things were, except we can’t. And here’s why: We were both under the impression that our friendship was innocent, meaning we saw each other as regular people, no impure thoughts, no indecent expectations, just another person to pass the time with. Our conversations remained clean because neither one of us wanted to be rejected or lectured for saying something inappropriate. But now you know how I feel, and I know how you feel. There’s nothing to stop us from fantasizing about each other, or discussing those thoughts. And it’s a very small step between words and actions.” His voice had grown strained toward the end, sounding as though it was hard for him to finish.
“We’d just have to make up some rules. Such as no talking about that kind of stuff. We’ll keep it clean. If we don’t talk about it, then the distance between words and actions is irrelevant.”
He shook his head in quick jerks, running his hands over the back of his neck. “Like I said, it was easy before because neither of us knew where the other stood. Had I randomly told you one night on the phone how badly I wanted to kiss you, what would you have done? Probably freaked out, gone silent, or made some excuse to hang up. I never said anything because I didn’t want to take that chance. But that’s all changed, because now, I know how you feel. So I have nothing to keep me from saying that to you.”
“You know I have feelings for you, not that I want to kiss you. Don’t assume that because I care about you as more than a friend, it means I want to jump into bed with you. Don’t assume I want to kiss you, or be affectionate with you. That should be what holds you back from saying anything inappropriate.”
He held my gaze, strong and steady, as if calling my bluff. “Okay, fine. Maybe that’ll hold me off from saying it to you. But now that you know how badly I want to kiss you, what will happen when you want the same thing? What will stop you from saying it to me?”
“I don’t know how badly you want to kiss me. You’ve never told me that. You asked a hypothetical question about a theoretical confession. So that would be what would stop me from saying anything.” My heartbeat raced, nearly making me lightheaded, and I prayed he couldn’t hear it in my voice.
He leaned forward until he sat at the edge of the cushion, as close to me as he possibly could without getting off the couch. His dark lashes lowered slightly, giving his intense stare a sultry kind of feel, and freezing me in place. I couldn’t back up or move away if I’d wanted to. His tongue peeked out and slowly, seductively, moistened his lips. “Ever since that evening at the library, I’ve wondered what your lips would feel like on mine. I’ve imagined in vivid detail how your tongue would taste in my mouth. And I’ve gone to sleep nearly every night, dreaming about what sound you’d make when your lips part, that intake of air right before opening your mouth for me.”
All the oxygen in the room vanished and I felt flushed. My cheeks were feverish, my lungs ached from too much panting, and my limbs tingled. A tight, fiery knot burned low in my belly, and I squeezed my thighs together in the hopes of relieving the throbbing sensation in my groin that matched the beats of my racing heart.