Hooked ~A Student/Teacher Love Story~

Chapter 22

“Oh, wow.”  I blinked at the words on the page of the novel one of my classmates wrote, surprised.  You’d think that a senior would know better than to put a full-out sex scene in a novel they were turning into their high-school English teacher.  Apparently not.

“What?” asked Gerard, setting his pile of papers down to come over and take a look for himself.

“There’s a… um…” I started to tell him, but he burst out laughing before I could finish, having already started reading the scene over my shoulder.

“Wow indeed. Whose book is that?”

I marked my place and checked the name on the title page.  “Sarah Tucker.”

“A girl put that in there? I would’ve expected a boy to do something like that.”  Gerard wrote something on a little yellow sticky note and stuck it on the page with the wildly inappropriate scene.

“At least it’s decent writing,” I said.

Donnals raised an eyebrow.  “You’re enjoying it?”

My cheeks flushed when I realized how that sounded.

“I mean the book overall! Obviously I’m not interested in sex, no way; it’s just a decent story line…”

Gerard smiled slyly.  “There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a nice romance novel every once in a while, Stella. You’re a teenage girl. You’re allowed.”

“I know there’s nothing wrong with it. I just wanted to establish what I meant when I said that it was good,” I retorted, unconvincingly.

“Mhm,” my boyfriend said.  He looked over my shoulder as I scanned the page for mistakes, trying not to take in the meaning of the words.  “This is actually pretty detailed. I guess we know what Sarah Tucker does in her spare time.”

“Not important,” I muttered, turning the page, praying it would end soon.  No luck.  Damn, how long could it go on?

“You’re right, what she’s doing isn’t important. It’s the who we should be worried about.”

I elbowed him in the stomach and he chuckled, returning to his own book.  After a few minutes of silence, he set down his novel.  I had passed the sex scene a while back, but it was still fresh in my mind.

“You know, we could always try that sometime.”

My jaw dropped, and my glasses slid down my nose when I jumped in surprise.  Had he really just said that to me?  REALLY?

Gerard burst into laughter as I turned bright red (once again).  “You- you should see your face right now… priceless…!”  He couldn’t get anything else out because he was laughing so hard.  Tears rolled down his cheeks as he clutched his stomach, falling over on my bedroom floor.

I angrily went back to reading and waited until he had finished laughing at me to speak.  “Are you done?” I asked, turning the page more violently than I probably should have.

“Yes,” he breathed, wiping his eyes.

“Good,” I growled.

Gerard watched me for a moment; I leaned back on my bed and held Sarah Tucker’s novel in front of my face.  I heard him sigh, and a second later, I felt him climb onto the bed with me.  He lowered the makeshift novel and met my eyes.

“You do know that I’m joking, right?”

“Of course,” I replied, sitting up a bit.

“Because I would never ask that of you.”