I hurled myself into the first washroom I came across.
The stall door slammed noisily behind me, and I curled up on top of the toilet seat, my head between my legs. I couldn't stop my breath from coming out in shallow, panicked gasps.
It felt like my body was on fire.
My phone buzzed in my backpack: a bunch of text messages from Jess and Rachel, wondering where I was now that lunch was over and whining about how my coffee was getting cold.
Little did they know I've already had my caffeine fix for the day. In fact, I was wearing it.
I muted my text messages and threw my phone into the bottom of my bookbag. Hopefully, they would get the hint and leave me alone until school was over and I could go home.
I refused to go to my last class. Worst case scenario, Mr. Woods might come looking for me. It was better to be marked absent and make up some lame excuse to my mother later than face him again that soon. Or at all, period.
After a couple of minutes, my hysteria eventually died down to a tolerable panic and I began to optimistically sort through my options. I could switch schools. Or drop his class, maybe the deadline for switching courses hasn't passed yet. Or I'll dye my hair and change my name so he won't recognize me in the halls. Maybe get extensive plastic surgery.
Sure, sure. This is fine. I'm totally not in denial. Everything is going to be okay.
The door to the bathroom slammed open and I almost jumped out of my skin. Who goes to take a piss right after lunch, during the last period? Couldn't they hold it? I grumbled antagonistically in my head.
I went to rub the mascara off my cheeks with toilet paper when a horrible realization struck me.
This wasn't the regular, shitty one-ply toilet paper that was usually stocked in student stalls. It was the cushy four-ply kind.
Now that I think about it, this washroom was strangely nice for my small-town, falling-apart-at-the-seams high school.
I didn't... did I?
... I was in the staff washroom.
I heard the click of someone locking the door outside my stall.
Feeling like I was going to throw up, I peeked out from the crack in the stall doors, and there I saw Mr. Woods: still drenched in coffee, still looking pissed, and beginning to unbutton his shirt.
Dear Universe, what the fuck did I do to ever deserve this?
I pulled my legs to my chest so he wouldn't see my shoes underneath the stall and covered my mouth with my hands. Everything is fine, I reassured myself. As long as Mr. Woods didn't know I was here, I could just wait until he leaves.
In part alarm and fascination, I watched as he stood in front of the mirror and finished unfastening the front of his shirt. Oh God, he was perfectly toned. His muscles rippled every time he moved.
He carefully wiped down his body with paper towels and my eyes travelled in sync with his hands as he went to work on himself. I watched as he slowly ran the wet paper towel across his chest, and I couldn't help but wish that was me, dragging my finger across every part of him, watching how he'd react...
He painstakingly made his way down to his lower stomach, where his v-line cut across his abdomen in broad strokes, and my eyes widened as he began to unbutton his pants.
My cellphone rang out loudly, the chorus of Pittbull's International Love echoing across the bathroom stalls. I cursed Rachel and Jess for their bad timing and habit of calling me when I didn't respond immediately.
I jumped up from the seat and scrambled to dig out my phone from the depths of endless homework and worksheets.
"Miss Taylor? Is that you?"
I looked out to see him frozen in place, eyes focused on the bottom of my stall.
My shoes. The hot pink stilettos he saw me in this morning. Of course, he'd recognize them.
He cautiously advanced forward to knock on the stall door, and to my absolute and utter terror, it swung open on its own.
DID YOU NOT LOCK THE DOOR YOU DUMB BITCH?!?!?!?!?!
There I was, hyperventilating and crouched on the toilet seat as a half-naked Mr. Woods loomed over me.
***
I started to cry. Actually, I'm not sure how I made it this far without breaking down.
"Please... sir," I whimpered. I couldn't bear to call him Mr. Woods after the joke Jess said this morning, and especially not after all the dirty thoughts that were sprinting through my mind.
For some reason, my saying that made his expression darken, which made me think he was even angrier at me than before. I began sobbing more violently.
"I didn't mean to do... any of that... sir..." I sobbed. I pressed my fingertips to my eyelids but I couldn't stop the tears from pouring down my cheeks and blurring my vision.
For two beats, he stood above me, frozen and unsure, as if he was battling with something in his head.
And then, as if he came to a decision, he knelt down in front of me; pushing my hands away from my face and dragging his thumbs across my swollen cheeks instead. "It wasn't my intention to scare you," he whispered.
"Sir?" I asked, more of an exclamation of surprise than a question. He clenched his jaw.
"Stop calling me that. It's driving me crazy," he muttered. He let go of my face to subtly adjust his pants.
"I don't want to call you anything else." I knew I sounded like a child, but I also knew I would say anything to keep his hands on me for a little while longer.
"Shit, call me Sive if you want, anything but that." I still couldn't believe how much he swore when his guard was down. I felt the corners of my mouth lift up in amusement.
"Sive?"
"It's my first name." Was I just imagining the tenderness in his eyes as he crouched over me?
"Sive." I unintentionally breathed out his name, like a sigh.
In that moment, he seemed to realize himself, and he stepped away from me; tucking his hands behind him like he didn't know what to do with them.
"I'm sorry, I didn't know anyone was in here. Let me put on some clothes." He took off the rest of his wet shirt and reached into his bag for a grey hoodie, and for the first time, I saw the bare expanse of his back and arms.
They were covered in tattoos: vines, roses, and symbols I couldn't identify. Exactly like the ones from my dream.
I watched shamelessly as he pulled the sweater over his abs.
My mind was going a mile a minute, trying to figure out how to bring up the tattoos without mentioning my awful wet dream again. But at the same time, I was distracted by his now messy hair and new fit, a stark contrast from his usual put-together self. I bit my lip. It was the first time I saw him in something so casual. He looked like... a teenager.
It made me feel like I could talk to him normally.
Like I could even flirt with him.
"Did they hurt?" I cleared my throat. "The tattoos, I mean?"
If I didn't know any better, I swear the back of his neck turned pink.
"You get used to it, but it's different for everyone. It's something you'll have to figure out for yourself, when you turn nineteen," he gently asserted. Was he trying to put me in my place by reminding me how young I was?
For some reason, him subtly drawing the line both pissed me off and made me bolder.
"I am," I blurted. "Nineteen, I mean. I had to repeat a year. I turn twenty this May."
"Oh," he turned around, but I caught a glimpse of his expression before he could compose himself. And then: "Your writing... how did you know about my tattoos?"
"I didn't. It was just... a dream." I couldn't believe we were talking about this. "I'm not like a_ I mean, I never saw you naked before... this. I mean, shirtless_" Shut up, shut up, shut up!
"About the assignment," he blissfully changed the topic. I watch mesmerized, as he ran his hand through his hair, a futile attempt to tame it. "I can look past the... ah, contents of the false submission, but I can't look past the fact that you're failing my class nonetheless."
"I'm failing?"
He looked at me in disbelief.
"... You have 52 absences."
Oops. Maybe I shouldn't have skipped all of those classes to fulfill my coffee cravings.
"I take my work very seriously, so I wouldn't want one of my students to fall behind. I actually wanted to talk to you about having extra sessions to help you catch up... And, I guess, to make up for what just happened."
"Extra sessions?" My eyebrows creased once again, trying to figure out if this offer was genuine.
"After school. It's up to you, of course," his hand was on the back of his neck and he didn't meet my eyes, almost like he was nervous about my response. Cute. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.
"Yes," I agreed, a little too fast. "I mean, sure. I'm very serious about passing your class." I sucked air into my lungs, trying to compose myself. "Thank you, Sive."
He looked down at me, eyes strangely unreadable.
"What?" I questioned.
"I shouldn't have let you call me by my first name. It feels like I've opened Pandora's Box," he mused, mostly to himself.
"Too late, you can't take it back." After a beat, I stepped closer to him, getting a little too brave. "I'll only say it when it's the two of us... which I guess will be a lot from now on?"
His eyes darkened with an unreadable expression.
"Tomorrow after school," he said in response, not meeting my eyes. He picked up his things to leave, and I opened the door for him.
"Miss Taylor," he nodded. I bristled at his sudden formality. Are you kidding me? I saw you shirtless but you won't call me by my first name?
"Sir," I volleyed back before I could stop myself. I watched his shoulders tense up before the door snapped shut behind him.
Smiling gratuitously to myself, I recognized with full satisfaction that I had the power to get under his skin.
But the smile quickly faded as I realized he could also make tomorrow Hell for me because of it.
______\\ author's note
eliza's thirsty ass watching sive through the crack: