Page 51 of The Teacher
I’m going to faint from happiness.
“Do you want to hear it?” he asks, now shy himself.
I nod. “Very much.”
He pulls a scrap of notebook paper from his pocket. I recognize his handwriting now, and I can see the scribbles on the page. Words he wrote just for me. I listen in rapt attention as he recites the verses:
Life nearly passed me by
Then she
Young and alive
With smooth hands
And pink cheeks
Showed me myself
Took away my breath
With cherry-red lips
Gave me life once again
When he finishes the last line, I can barely breathe myself. It’s such a beautiful poem. Nobody has ever written anything like that for me before. Hudson was my friend, but he was no poet. Even if something had happened between the two of us, he never would have written anything like that for me.
“I love it,” I whisper. “So much.”
“I mean it,” he says softly. “You gave me my life back.You have no idea how dreary my world was before you came along.”
He laces his fingers into mine, and we just stand like that for a moment, staring at each other. I can’t even bear to show him what I wrote for him after hearing his beautiful verses. It seems so stupid and immature by comparison. I’ll have to keep working on it. Until I write something worthy of him.
“I think about you all the time.” He reaches out to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. “Do you think about me?”
“Every moment of the day,” I answer truthfully.
He kisses me again, and he starts tugging my shirt off. He did this last time, so I expected it. But what I don’t expect is the way he attempts to unbutton my jeans. I take a step back and smile apologetically, but he doesn’t catch my eye—he is wholly focused on getting my jeans open. I take another step back, this time bumping into the table behind me, and now there’s nowhere to go. Nathaniel successfully gets the button open and then lowers the zipper as I suck in a breath.
He raises his eyes to look up at me. “You are the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met, Addie.”
I hold in that breath as he tugs down my jeans and then my panties. But I don’t tell him not to do it, because…well, how can I? Yes, he told me he didn’t care about sex, but I knew on some level it couldn’t be true. I’m not totally stupid.
I lose my virginity to Nathaniel in the darkroom that afternoon, and the whole time, I recite his poem in my head, written just for me.
Life nearly passed me by
Then she
Young and alive
With smooth hands
And pink cheeks
Showed me myself
Took away my breath
