Bittersweet Dreams (18 page)

“That's all right. I've already made other arrangements,” I said.

The disappointment on his face reminded me of Carlton James's reaction in the cafeteria. Young or old, when men didn't get the reaction from a female that they wanted or expected, they all looked the same, like little boys told to put away their toys and go to sleep.

“Wait,” he said, and returned to his desk. He jotted something on a piece of paper and brought it to me. “That's my home phone number. It's unlisted. Kids are always pulling prank calls on teachers, but you can call me anytime you want, day or night, Mayfair. I'll be there to listen, and if you want me to come get you or anything, you just call. Anytime.”

Anytime? I wanted to ask him if he had a life away from this building. Didn't he have a girlfriend? How could he be so good-looking and not have a line of beautiful women at his door? Why would he be available anytime? Would it be ungrateful of me to ask?

Another thing occurred to me. Had he ever given his phone number to any other female student? Suddenly, everything about him became important. Was this his first teaching position? If not, why did he leave the first one? Where was he from? Did he have family in Los Angeles or somewhere else in California? Brothers or sisters? Had he ever been married or engaged? What sorts of friends did he have? Were they all teachers? How would he explain giving so much attention to a high-school student?

Since most of the girls here didn't talk much to me, I was at a disadvantage when it came to knowing these sorts of things about our teachers, but I did want to know more about him, if not for any other reason than to be careful.

It was so much easier for someone to get lost out there when a school was located in a city, especially one as large as Los Angeles. My imagination began to run a bit wild. Maybe after he left the building, he turned into a serial killer or was part of some sex cult.

And then I paused and thought how ridiculous it was of me to imagine such things. It showed how this place was getting to me. I was beginning to think like some of these airheads. If any school did a good background check on its employees, it would be this one. The rich could afford paranoia, and this school catered to the wealthy.

“Thank you,” I said, and put the paper with his number in my purse.

“I'm here for you,” he said. “Remember that.”

I nodded. He watched me leave. I closed the door behind me and walked slowly down the hall toward the front exit. I heard his door being opened, but I didn't look back to see if he was watching me walk away. It made me too self-conscious about my body. I felt as if I were in a summer thunderstorm.

Hot lightning sizzled around my heart. No man, no boy, had ever touched me the way Mr. Taylor just had. When he put his hand over mine and began to play with my fingers, it wasn't a fatherly gesture or just a friendly one. It was pure, raw sex. I could feel the heat moving through his hand and into mine. It stirred me. Fight back as hard as I tried, I couldn't keep the tingle from traveling like electricity up and down my spine and into my thighs and breasts. All sorts of sexual images flashed like lightning bolts against the darkness of my deepest thoughts. The images I had shown Allison created a stream of erotic pictures resembling a trailer for a movie with the title
Mayfair Cummings Loses Her Virginity
.

But there was thunder, too, loud crashes of warning hammering at my heart. Alan Taylor was a young man, yes, but no matter how I tried to rationalize it away, I was still legally a minor, and he was an adult with an influential position when it came to young women at the school. Besides the legal and ethical aspects, I had to confess to myself that he had an unfair advantage. He was a man of some experience who easily saw my vulnerability. How seamlessly he could make the transition from concerned faculty adviser to my first lover if I didn't heed the sound of thunder. But did I want to?

I really hated being vulnerable and innocent, because I was at a disadvantage. All the books and articles about sex that I had read did not prepare me for these feelings. I hated that more than anything. Information was always my steadfast protector, my God. I worshipped with encyclopedias, not Bibles, but here this was failing me.

And that made me angry, but to be honest, I wanted to be angry. Anger helped me avoid dealing with my inner feelings. How dare Mr. Taylor take advantage of me at one of my weakest moments? He knew I wasn't going to run to the principal or to my father to tell them about him. He certainly knew I wouldn't tell Julie. On top of what had just happened to me because of the three bitches, my creating another scandal would be too much. I wouldn't have any credibility, and it was no good to pretend that didn't matter. I still had to attend school here, and my father still had a life in this community. There was nothing to do right now but ignore what I could ignore and concentrate on my studies as usual.

I walked out and away from the building. I didn't want Mr. Taylor to see me get into a taxi after he had offered to drive me home. I sensed that he wouldn't take that as a rejection so much as a challenge. He would want me to understand that I didn't have to be bashful or embarrassed to ask him for help. Ironically, my refusing his offer would only encourage him more.

And yet I would be lying if I didn't admit to myself that I was more than flattered by his attention. The woman who had blossomed inside me couldn't help but continue to wonder what it would be like to be with such a good-looking adult man. I had read and understood enough to know that it would be quite different from being with Carlton James, even though Carlton saw himself as every girl's dream lover.

Carlton would go at it all too quickly, clumsily. The book I had given Allison explained the mechanics well. I knew that males often cared only about pleasing themselves and did so before the female even got started. In short, I knew Carlton wouldn't take lovemaking as seriously as a man like Mr. Taylor surely would or, at least, should. With Carlton, there would be no real romance, just groping and satisfying egos. For most of the girls, if not all of them here, that would be enough, but it wasn't enough for me. I wasn't looking to neck in the back of a movie theater or be with a boy in the rear of his car. Alan Taylor would know that, had to know that, otherwise he wouldn't have taken the risk of talking to me like this and making the subtle proposals he was making.

Shouldn't I be more attracted to that, to someone who saw me for who I was, someone mature enough to handle this forbidden relationship?

When the three bitches accused me of being gay and making them uncomfortable in the locker room, I was angry, of course, but I couldn't deny that I had wondered about myself from time to time. I learned that it wasn't an uncommon thing for someone young to consider.

Maybe I
was
gay.

Maybe I
was
looking at those girls in the locker room.

I had read up on this once, and comments in a psychological abstract returned to me. If you thought back to your earliest memories and realized you'd always been different, you might be gay, but that didn't necessarily mean you were. However, I couldn't deny that I've always been different. I certainly didn't fit the stereotype of a gay woman, but not fitting a stereotype doesn't mean it's not true. And Albert Kinsey, a pioneer in human sexuality research, had determined that many people were in between.

Teenagers often felt strongly about members of their own sex and were aware of the attractiveness of someone of their own sex. I was keenly aware of how attractive Joyce Brooke was, but again, that didn't mean I was gay.

Did I drive Carlton away because his aggressiveness threatened me? Was I really turned off by him, or was I turned on too quickly and completely? Did I know in my heart that if I had gone with him to his home, I'd be unable to stop him from seducing me? Maybe deep down inside, that was what I really wanted, and I was afraid of myself more than I was of him.

Was I conflicted about Mr. Taylor for the same reasons?

Was Julie right? Was I infatuated with books and articles about sex because I was unsure about my own sexuality? I fantasized about boys. Wasn't that enough?

These thoughts kept the summer storm alive inside me. I didn't even realize how far I had walked until I reached the strip mall, where there were restaurants, a drugstore, a dry cleaner, and a mailing outlet. I'd call for a taxi and have the driver pick me up here, I thought, and walked toward the Italian restaurant.

Just as I stepped onto the sidewalk, I heard a car horn and turned to see Mr. Taylor pull into a parking spot. He waved and got out quickly. “What are you doing here?”

“I was going to meet someone here,” I quickly replied.

“Oh. Secret date, huh?”

“Something like that. Maybe it was too secret.”

He smiled and stood gazing at me with his hands on his hips. “Long walk from the school. Either you or your date were being very careful,” he said.

“You're reading too much into it. Besides, walking is good for thinking, and right now, I have a lot of thinking to do.”

“That it is. I don't do enough of it, of both. By the time I get home, I'm mentally drained from being on the front lines. That's what I call the junior high, the front lines. My students are like little hand grenades. When the bell rings to start class, it's like someone pulled the pin. I don't open my mouth before hands go up asking if what I said was important and should be put in their notebooks. There's enough energy in the room to launch a satellite into space.”

“Sounds exhausting.”

“Mentally, it is.” He nodded toward the other restaurant, which was really more of a bar. “The truth is, I sometimes stop there for a while to have a drink and come back to earth.” When I didn't say anything, he added, “Only one drink, of course.”

It occurred to me that if he was going to stay here for a while, he would surely see the taxi arrive to pick me up.
Get out of this, genius
, I told myself.

Unless, you don't want to get out of it.

The summer thunderstorm inside me was gone. I felt more relaxed, maybe simply because I was out of the school building. Out here, I did feel as though we were equals of a sort. He was still a teacher, but he was never my teacher, and there were no administrators watching us from doorways.

“You're really not meeting someone, are you?” he asked, tilting his head a bit to the side and narrowing his eyes when I hesitated. “You just wanted to run away.”

“I suppose,” I said.

“Don't blame you.” He looked at the bar and smiled. “How about we take a ride and look at the ocean? Nothing more calming than the sea on a day like this,” he said. “Unless, of course, you're supposed to be home. I wouldn't want to be responsible for your getting into more trouble.”

“I don't have to be anywhere,” I said. “My father stopped putting curfews on me years ago.”

“I bet. So?” He moved to the passenger side of his car and reached for the handle.

This was it, I thought, that great moment of decision. Should I fall back on being a teenage girl, or should I step forward and be a woman? For most of my life, I was so self-confident. I thought I would always make the right decisions, because I was so well informed and so perceptive. What I didn't count on, what I didn't consider, was what the woman in me would demand. Sometimes that had little to do with anything more than pure, raw feelings. “Okay,” I said, and got in when he opened the door.

He got in very quickly, as if I might change my mind. Then he smiled, started the engine, and backed out of the parking space. Both of us glanced at the cars that rushed by, to see if any of the school administrators were driving past. I told myself that this was still very innocent. He just saw me walking along and offered a ride. They would certainly believe I had left the building in a rage.

“This looks like a new car,” I said, running my hand over the leather.

“It is. I got it four months ago. I inherited a little money when my father died. He had remarried and left most of his money to his second wife. He had taken on the responsibility of raising her son, too. The kid's fourteen and a couple of handfuls, as I understand it. I haven't been close to the boy and probably won't see either of them given my father's passing.”

“So you're an only child, too?”

“As far as I know,” he said, smiling. “My mother wondered.”

“What happened to her?”

“She died when I was in my teens, pancreatic cancer. She was just forty-five. I wasn't much older than you are. Chronological age, that is. I understand your mental age is off the charts.”

“The latest research suggests that our brains never stop growing as long as we use them, learn new things, and keep challenging ourselves.”

“Yes, I think that's true.”

“And your father remarried, too.”