Isaac and Liam

Chapter 6

Liam

I texted him around 5pm that I was taking him to My Thai Nee Place, the best Thai restaurant in town.

He had once told me he had had fond memories of visiting Thailand 2 years ago and loved the food.

So I had made a big fuss denying that it was a date. He knew it was a date and I knew it was a date. We had an amazing date. Without schoolwork we still found plenty to talk about.

I had known he was funny and flirty, he was twice as much and I loved every minute of it.

He told me about his friends, his older sister and younger brother who was just 8 years old now. He talked of his mom now a corporate lawyer, his dad who was a Blast Foreman at a salt quarry.

I talked of my late dad I had idolised and my mom who was a nurse and my 4 older siblings. We were no longer student and teacher or even tutor and tutee. We became good friends in the real sense.

We agreed to go out every weekend after that. As the days passed it became futile to pretend to Damien that I hadn't fallen for Zac.

He had his reservations before meeting him but he could see why I was enamoured by Zac.

Even under relentless teasing and questioning from Damien, Zac held his own. After taking him to a barbeque at Damien's place, he was given the seal of approval.

The weird thing was that among my greater group of friends noone had seemed suprised that I had brought Zac with me and it seemed like a foregone conclusion that we were dating.

I had tried correcting them but Liz and Cathy both who had known and presumably liked Maddie told me that I was now more interesting. They were fawning all over Zac.

I knew Zac had overheard them and laughed it off. All he had said was, I was the only person left who didn't know we were great together.

I took him to see a Shakespeare play in the park as one of the dates. He had been bored stiff. His reasoning was, it had felt like schoolwork because we had been studying that same book so it didn't count as a date.

We went to the movies twice, he discounted the other date because we had gone to the same place twice and didn't have a meal.

We went bowling together. He was very competitive and enjoyed beating me everytime. I only found out afterwards, he had been a championship bowler in his old town.

Since he could legally drink, we went to a bar with billiards. He had pretended to have no idea what to do.

He scammed me out of $120 after sinking every ball. His reason was, he enjoyed feeling my body against his as I showed him how to hold a cue stick.

I loved the way he came up with creative ways to keep adding to the number of dates. I didn't mind. I worried that when the dates ran out, what excuse would we use to continue hanging out, outside of his tutorial sessions.

The sexual tension between us was palbable and unmissable but neither of us took that first step towards doing something about it.

He knew I wanted to and I knew he wanted to. But I had rejected him too many times, I suppose he was unwilling to try again.

I didn't know how to say I want to kiss you now. I didn't care anymore and I hadn't meant a word I had said earlier about not wanting to cross that line.

Whenever we parted at the end of the date, with anticipation high from my side, he would just, just retreat.

At this rate we were never going to happen.

Today was our last date. If my count wasn't wrong, we had gone on 12 dates in a space of a month. I knew that if I didn't do anything about us, we were unlikely to happen.

Due to his improved grades, I had in good conscience told his mom that her son no longer needed my help.

He was now an average B+ student and if need be we would resume tutorials for his final exams.

Zac had been pissed about my ending our sessions and had lashed out at me and accused me of not wanting to see him anymore.

I wish I had been able to be honest with him about my motivations. It wasn't a lie that he no longer needed my help as much.

It was true. I didn't feel right about having an affair with my student. That just went against everything I believed and stood for as an Educator.

I didn't want to betray his parents trust like that. We lived in a medium sized town and the last thing I needed was to develop a reputation of having relationships with my students.

Besides Zac, I was now tutoring 4 other students.

As much as I craved and desired Zac, I had to put my reputation first. I really wanted to be a teacher and getting substitute jobs were really hard. There were not that many schools in town. I decided I was going to be honest with him and lay all my cards on the table.

The most important thing was I now knew without a doubt that I was in love with Zac and I wanted to do things right with him.

I didn't want to feel guilty being with him. There should be no sign of impropriety in our relationship. He was now legally an adult and so was I and we could do whatever we wanted.