[Warning Labels] - {A Student/Teacher Romance}

(Gwen) - The Red Ink

    (Gwen)

   The Red Ink

    It wasn’t that Cormac was amazingly or impossibly hot. He was actually no cuter than the average guy. Ok, maybe slightly above average. I’m pretty sure he got extra points for his golden brown hair; just long enough to skim the tops of his ears and make it fall into his eyes. But still, he wasn’t the hottest boy in school. There were at least ten to fifteen guys hotter than him, if I were to guess off the top of my head. Twenty if you included some of the male teachers.

   My point is, it wasn’t really his looks that got him all the girls (and trust me, there’s been a lot). It was his way of…being. The way he moved, and spoke. The unexplainably sexy way he stood and stared off into space; the rush that when through your body whenever he winked playfully at you. All these little things, and more, came together to create a guy that any sane girl would go for.

   I knew I wasn’t up to his usual standers. Being of sound mind and average breasts it was plain to see I didn’t qualify. But I had always hoped I made up for it with personality and a little thing I like to call the “awesomely supportive” factor. This assurance had always carried me through the years of endless girlfriends and breakups; the countless times I had worn a too-short-skirt that went completely unnoticed by him; the unimaginable frustration I felt whenever I was speaking to him, only to realize he was gawking at some other girl.

   It’d been enough. Right up until the ‘other girl’ became my mother.

   I sighed, pretending to listen as Cormac told me how amazing she was. Home room usually consisted of the students talking while the school made announcements that no one ever listened to or cared about. Though the room and students from year to year never changed, the teacher did. This year it was Mr. Peterson, one of five new teachers at Morris High. You could tell he was here right out of college; with his young age (I took a roundabout guess of twenty-nine to thirty-two); his lack of authority when he spoke; the fact he insisted we call him West, his first name – you could practically smell the ink on his teaching certificate it was so fresh. Besides home room I had him for Physical Science. For such a newbie he wasn’t half bad at his job.

   “I bet she works out a lot-hey, are you even listening to me?” Cormac’s voice slowly faded back in and I jumped a little, quickly nodding.

   “Yeah, you think she works out a lot. You know she works out a lot, you’ve been coming over nearly every day since ninth grade.” I replied drily, returning my attention to the top of my desk; which had sadly become more interesting than Cormac. I hated hearing him talk about her in some form of love-sick awe, and there aren’t many things I hate in this world.

   “Oh, right.” He paused, staring off into space a moment before snapping himself back to reality. “So like I was saying-” I quickly stopped listening.

   Thankfully the bell rang just thirty seconds later. It bothered me that I felt relief knowing Cormac didn’t have my next class. “I’ll see you later,” I mumbled, waving as I rushed out the door.

   Avoiding Cormac between classes made me five minutes early instead of three. Every class I walked into the teachers gave me strange looks. Not one teacher at this school could seem to comprehend me doing something off schedule, even something like being early.

   I just had to make it through one more class, Physical Science, before it was free period and then lunch. I smiled as I remembered Jenna and Lee’s reaction to me getting two periods in a row off. They had complained it was unfair, that the teachers favored me because I ‘kissed so much butt’. It wasn’t until I reminded them the classes were arranged randomly by a computer that they left me alone.