Beauty and the Beat

Beauty and the Beat (27)

Mrs. Crandall didn’t seem to know what she was supposed to say back to this. I didn’t really know what else I was supposed to say. Ethan was still silent, probably assuming that that would be the best thing for him to do.

“You both still should have known that what you’re doing was wrong,” Mrs. Crandall finally told me.

“I understand what we did was wrong.” My head felt like it was about to split open. “I’m not saying that it’s not wrong. I am a high school student. He is a high school teacher. It’s wrong. It’s wrong for us to be together. But that didn’t stop me from falling even more in love with him. And that obviously didn’t stop him from falling in love with me.”

Mrs. Crandall’s eyes went wide. “You’re in love with each other?”

Ethan nodded, slowly and seriously. “I am in love with her.”

I nodded as well in agreement. “And I’m in love with him.”

“In love…” was all she was able to say, still in shock.

“You’ve been in love, right?” I started, desperately wanting her to understand as I stood up so I could be closer to her. I then looked over at the ring on her finger. “Of course you have; you’re married. “

Mrs. Crandall was looking at me skeptically. “What is the point of asking me this?”

“You know how it feels to be in love,” I told her, and I wanted to smile at all the memories I had with Ethan, but fought against it. “When you’re in love, you want nothing more than to just be with the person. They make you feel smart, and beautiful, and talented. They make you feel like you’re worth it. Like you’re good enough. Before Ethan, I never had a serious boyfriend before. And I thought it was because I had a problem. I thought I was the reason why my few relationships never really went anywhere. But then, after I saw him again after years of being separated, I realized that I wasn’t the problem. He was the problem. My relationships didn’t work because they weren’t with him.”

Ethan frowned. “Sadie…”

But I continued on, almost forgetting I was trying to prove a point. “It took some time after he came back,” I sniffed, not about to allow myself to cry. “But I realized that I was in love with him and I had always been in love with him even when we were kids. He made me feel like I was good enough to be in a relationship, even though his age and his job did make me feel insecure at times. But that’s what love is, right? It’s not perfect. It’s not supposed to be perfect. We fought, and we got jealous, and we had bumps in the road we had to deal with, but… it was perfect… to me. Because I was with him. He was mine. I was his. Everything… was great. But now… Now it’s all ruined.”

I was in tears. I hadn’t wanted to cry, but I found myself doing it anyway. I just loved him so much that it hurt.

I sat in my seat again and Ethan reached out to take my hand, not caring that we were in front of our principal.

“We’re not just hooking up with each other, Sally,” Ethan informed her, and I thought it was strange that he was calling her by her first name. It just reminded me even more that he was a teacher and we had actually been caught. “This relationship we have with each other would last even after she graduated. She wasn’t just trying to raise her grade. I wasn’t just trying to feel young again by hooking up with a student. The feelings we have for each other are real.”

But now is all ruined. Everything was over. I didn’t know how we could continue our relationship. Even if we weren’t student and teacher anymore, this was still going to be haunting over us for the rest of our lives.