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August
They meet during her senior year.
She’s a straight-A student, in National Honor Society, president of the Spanish club. Dating Kan, the president of the debate club, since junior year. Daughter of the mayor, from a good, Catholic, church-going family.
He’s new this year at Middleton High, and along with Ms. Winterbottom and Mrs. Keating, one of the staff advisors for mock trial.
“I don’t know why he’s even teaching this class,” Michaela grumbles as they take their seats in their first period forensics class. “Connor got placed in Mrs. Keating’s.”
Laurel doesn’t particularly like Michaela, but tries to sound interested anyway. “She’s not teaching all the classes this semester?”
“No. And no one knows who this Mr. Delfino guy is anyway. Apparently he’s one of the new staff advisors for mock trial – which you need to do, by the way. We need one more person, and I have to have that on my college applications.”
“Who’s doing it this year?”
“Me, Connor, some new kid, Asher Millstone, and a few other people. I mean, ugh. Just kill me already.”
“Asher Millstone? The school mascot Asher Millstone?”
“Like I said. Kill me already.”
“I don’t have time. Seriously, I-”
A deep voice coming from the front of the classroom cuts her off.
“All right. Listen up. This is Forensics, but you know that already because you signed up for this. I’m Mr. Delfino. Call me Frank.”
Laurel turns, and there he is. Tall. Bearded. Handsome, in slacks and a waistcoat with his sleeves rolled up to expose strong forearms.
She blushes. And the next day, she goes and signs up for mock trial. Michaela is ecstatic, offering to do her calculus homework for the next month.
She didn’t do it for her. Not that she did it for any particular reason, that is.
Definitely not.
September
It’s not a crush.
She’s not that girl, the kind who lusts after a teacher twice her age who she could never be with. Legally, or otherwise.
She’s pretty sure Mr. Delfino – or Frank, as he insists on being called – doesn’t even know her name. He’s never said it, never really looked her way, and he seems like an ass anyway.
Mock trial starts the middle of the month, and quickly she learns that that assumption is entirely correct.
Eventually, she summons the courage to come to him after a team meeting with an idea for one of their cases. But he shoots her down and dismisses her, suggesting she go try the cooking club instead.
Part of Laurel feels like crying. But instead-
“You’re a misogynistic ass,” she says, straight-faced, unflinching.
She’s never been the kind to mouth off to teachers; she always nods meekly and accepts their word as law. She doesn’t know what comes over her, but she says it and storms off, furious at him, and even more so at herself.
The next day after class, however, she swallows her pride and approaches him at his desk.
“I’m sorry for what I said yesterday,” she tells him, cheeks flushed. “I shouldn’t have-”
Much to her surprise, he stands and walks around the desk. “No. You were right. I was out of line.”
She blinks. “Oh. Um, yeah. Okay. It’s… fine.”
Laurel turns to go, assuming that is the end of that, but he calls after her, “What’s your name again? Laurel?”
Laurel. Everyone always mistakes it for Lauren. That alone throws her for so much of a loop that she almost can’t remember how to speak for a moment.
“Yeah,” she nods with a timid smile. “Castillo. Laurel Castillo.”
He watches her as she goes. She gulps, feeling her heart in her throat.
October
She goes to homecoming with Kan.
Her dress is teal, knee-length; flattering, but tasteful. Her family keeps up appearances, after all, and with her perfect, beaming boyfriend on her arm she fulfills every expectation.
She can’t, however, help but have the vague sense that something is missing.
They dance for a while. The air in the gym is hot and sticky, and the freshmen are grinding, which is never a welcome sight. She sticks it out until she’s starting to feel kind of like she can’t breathe, and only then does she slip away.
She hugs her arms to her body and comes to a stop outside the gymnasium doors, almost jumping out of her skin when she hears a voice behind her.
“Laurel?”
Frank – Mr. Delfino – appears. He’s in a grey three-piece suit, and the sight makes her blush almost immediately, though the darkness hides it well.
“Mr. Delfino,” she breathes. “Hi.”
“Frank.”
“… Frank. W-what’re you doing here?”
“Chaperoning. I drew the short straw.”
“Then why are you out here?”
He shrugs. “Could ask you the same thing.”
“School dances aren’t really my thing. I get, uh… claustrophobic.”
“Don’t blame you. I jumped ship when the principal hopped in the mosh pit.”
They share a laugh at that, and after they sober up, their eyes meet. His are blue, she realizes. Blue, and soft, and as the smile drops from her lips, her breath hitches in her throat.
She looks away and shakes it off. “I try to enjoy these kind of things, I really do, but I never can. I don’t know why.”
“You’re an observer. Quiet. Not like the rest of them,” he says. “I get it.”
Laurel blinks, perplexed by the ease with which he reads her, and for a millisecond too long she holds his gaze.
“I should get back,” she blurts out. “My boyfriend’s going to start wondering where I am.”
My boyfriend.
Something flickers in his eyes at that. But it’s there and gone as soon as it appears, and he nods.
“See ya Monday.”
Laurel makes her way back inside. Kan urges her onto the dancefloor just in time for a slow dance, drawing her close and circling his arms around her.
Frank passes. He catches her eye, and her heart twists inside her like a corkscrew. There’s a look in his eyes again, that little flicker of – what? Meaning?
She’s imagining it. She has to be.
November
She starts getting to his class earlier, leaving later. She always sits in the front row. Maybe she intentionally fails a quiz or two – not enough to actually damage her GPA, but enough to get him to look it over with her after class.
He’s funny. Gruff, at times, and brutally honest. But she likes talking to him. She likes him, and that’s all it is: a harmless, pesky, stubborn little crush. That’s all it’ll ever be.
It’s the eleventh of November when that changes.
Their weekly mock trial meeting in his room ends, and everyone scampers out eagerly – except her. She stays behind, to finish up the rest of the prep questions and pack up her things.
Laurel picks up a stack of papers and goes for the door, only to hook her leg around one of the legs on the desk. Luckily she catches herself before she falls, but the papers sail to the ground and scatter everywhere. She sighs, and bends down to pick them up.
“All good?”
She glances up, and finds Frank watching her with amusement dancing in her eyes.
Laurel goes red. She looks away, irritated and bewildered by the way he can just do things to her, without even trying.
“I’m fine,” she says shortly, in an attempt to discourage him. “Seriously, I got it.”
He crouches beside her and reaches for the papers. “Let me.”
They’re close, closer than she’s ever been to him. She can smell his cologne, and it almost makes her weak in the knees.
She isn’t sure how it happens, but before she knows it he’s closer. Closer, until she can feel his breath on her cheek. Neither one of them is paying attention to the fallen papers now.
And just like that he moves forward, pulls her close, and leans in at the same time she does. Their lips collide in a mess of hot tongue and teeth; rough at first, but finding perfect, gentler synchronicity. Vaguely, she’s aware of how the door is wide open, how anyone could walk in and see them like this.
“That…” she breathes once she breaks away. “That was… inappropriate.”
“Yeah,” he agrees, his voice thick, and makes no move to back away.
Her lips are upon his again before he can utter another word.
December
She shows up at his door one night over Christmas break, shivering and distraught.
“I’m only seventeen. Y-you’d lose your job, and it’s not worth it.”
Frank steps aside to let her in. “It’s not?”
Laurel takes a deep breath and walks in, plopping down on his couch. He comes to sit beside her, and she gulps, and takes one look at him, and before she can think twice she has crawled into his lap, pulling him close and attacking his lips with hers.
“What’re we doing?” she asks. “This is-”
“I don’t know,” Frank replies. “I have no fucking clue.”
Their kisses grow heated. Hands roam. Then, before she even knows what she’s doing, she goes for his belt.
This time, he’s the one to pull away. “No. Hey, Laurel, stop.”
“But I-I…” she drifts off. “I want to. Don’t you…?”
She kisses him again, feeling him stiffen against her leg. He pulls away again, more reluctantly this time.
“’Course I do. But you’re underage, and I’m not going to jail for this.”
Laurel gulps, feeling stupid and suddenly very much like the kid that she is.
“Oh,” she breathes. “But isn’t there… I mean… can’t we do something? Like – with our mouths?”
Frank chuckles. “As tempting as that sounds, I’m not Bill Clinton. The law says oral sex is still sex.”
“So what? We… wait?”
He nods, grimly. “Yeah. We wait.”
January
No one can know. They can’t go on dates like a normal couple.
Well, she guesses, they’re far from a normal couple. She doesn’t know what the hell they’re doing. He invites her over to his place, cooks her dinner, and they kiss and talk – and it’s nice. Almost normal.
They jive so naturally, like she never has with any guy in high school, all the pimply, skinny, boring boys who are nothing like him. And in his little apartment, hidden away from the rest of the world, she isn’t his student, and he isn’t her teacher.
They’re just two people. She wishes it could be like that, always.
February
“I don’t really like him. Kan, I mean – but I can’t end it. If people started noticing, and got suspicious-”
“No. It’s smart.”
“I don’t want him. I only want you.”
A chuckle. “I’m flattered, babe.”
Babe. Wow. She’s surprised by how much she likes the sound of that.
March
She turns eighteen on the fourteenth – coincidentally, during a two-day trip to Philadelphia for a mock trial competition.
Laurel sits through the competition restlessly, and goes back to the hotel in the evening with everyone else. She has the misfortune to be rooming with Michaela, and waits until the other girl has talked herself to sleep to sneak over to the door adjoining their room to the one next to it.
The door on the other side is unlocked, just like Frank said it would be.
She slips inside and finds him there, sitting on the bed in his waistcoat and slacks, waiting for her.
Laurel goes right for him. He stands and wraps his arms around her, kissing her deeply. His hands groper lower and lower, and they’ve gone there before, of course, but the knowledge that they’re not going to stop like always – that they don’t have to… It spooks her, for some reason.
She pulls away, frowning. “I-I’m a… I’ve never… I was always gonna wait for marriage.”
“You’re a virgin?”
“Kan and I’ve fooled around, but we never actually…”
The shock leaves his eyes. It’s replaced by tenderness, and he reaches out, cupping her cheek.
“I’ll be gentle. I promise.”
Their clothes disappear. Somehow, they make it over to the creaky old bed – but much to her surprise, he doesn’t lay her down and climb on top of her. He lies back instead and urges her to straddle him, putting her on top, in control.
Laurel hesitates. He has a condom on, and he’s hard, and she’s wet, and they’re ready, but God, he looks huge.
“Will you fit?” she squeaks.
Frank doesn’t laugh at her. He just grins, an amused look in his eye. “Don’t worry. I’ll fit.”
Slowly, she eases herself down onto him. It hurts like hell at first, like she’s being split in half, and she tenses, crying out in pain. But he murmurs soothing words to her, and rubs her hips comfortingly, and so she keeps going, taking the rest of him inside her.
It hurts like hell at first. Then, he flips their positions, kisses her breasts, strokes at her clit, and gives her time to adjust to his size – and suddenly, it stops hurting.
And it starts feeling good. Really good.
He holds her afterward, when she’s sleepy and her body is humming with the aftershocks of pleasure. She looks down, and sees the bright red blood staining the sheets. She expects to feel dirty, defiled, everything the church has taught her since childhood she would feel.
She doesn’t feel defiled. Frank squeezes her tighter, and all she feels is… loved.
April
It’s not love. It can’t be love.
Every day she goes to his class, sits front row. Reminds herself over and over why this can’t be love. Why anything so forbidden and taboo can’t be real.
“This is just a fling,” she says to him one afternoon, coming to stand before him at his desk. “Right?”
He furrows his brow. “What?”
“I just…” Laurel exhales sharply. “This isn’t going to work. I’m applying for colleges, and Brown’s my top choice, and it’s all the way in Rhode Island.”
“Hey, slow down-”
“And you could fail me if you wanted, you know. It would hurt my GPA. Maybe even ruin my chances of getting into an Ivy like that.”
“You know I’d never do that-”
“But the point is that you could, okay?” she hisses. “You could, because I’m your student, and you’re my teacher, and-”
Frank silences her with a kiss. Within seconds he is walking her backwards, lifting her up, sweeping the stack of papers on his desk he’d been grading onto the floor, and setting her down. His lips are on her neck then, his hands hiking up her skirt and yanking down her panties.
“The door,” she pants. “Not locked-”
“I don’t care,” he growls. “Let them see. I want them to see.”
She bites her lip to keep from moaning when he enters her. Her protests die on her tongue.
May
It’s prom night, the night that everyone in the school has been buzzing about for months.
Kan’s promposal had been elaborate and romantic, in front of half the school in the cafeteria. Laurel ordered her dress months ago. It’s designer, long and flowing and cream-colored, and clings to her curves flawlessly.
It’s prom night, and here she is at Frank’s doorstep instead, without her corsage, the bottom of her dress muddy and stained from the puddles on the street.
“Hey,” he greets, taking her in from head to toe. “Shouldn’t you be at the dance?”
She nods.
“I was. And I was trying to make myself want to dance with Kan, or some other nice guy my age like everyone else… and all I kept thinking was how the only person I really wanted to dance with wasn’t there.”
His eyes soften. Frank steps aside, and lets her in.
“I just wanna be here,” Laurel admits softly. “With you.”
Frank pulls her close, tucking a dark curl behind her ear. “You look beautiful tonight, y’know.”
She blushes. He moves away briefly, fiddling with the stereo nearby for a moment, and when he walks back over, the first few notes of a smooth jazz song come over the speakers.
Laurel furrows her brow. “What’re you doing?”
He just shrugs, placing a hand on the small of her back.
“You said I was the only one you really wanted to dance with. So dance with me.”
He takes her hand in his, and they start to sway, so slow that they’re barely even moving. Eventually she ends up tucking her head beneath his chin and circling her arms around Frank in a tight embrace.
They don’t say a word, for a while. But then-
“I’m scared,” Laurel confesses, looking up at him. “I think… I’m falling in love with you.”
Frank just presses a kiss to her forehead. “I know the feeling, princess.”
June
She comes to his classroom after school on the last day.
The rows of desks are empty, the rest of the school deserted. He’s standing behind his desk packing his things into a cardboard box, and looks up when he hears the sound of her footsteps.
“Hey,” he greets, turning his attention to her.
Laurel gives him a little smile. “Hi.”
“Graded your final. You aced it.”
“Yeah, well, no offense, but this was kind of a blow-off class. It wasn’t exactly hard.”
Frank shrugs. “Fair enough. Made up your mind about college yet?”
“Brown, for pre-law,” she replies. “I got in, and it was my top choice.”
“Knew you would. They would’ve been idiots not to accept you.”
Laurel exhales sharply all at once and takes a step toward him, settling herself down on his desk.
“Can we not do this anymore?”
“This what?”
“This acting like student and teacher thing. It’s like we’re playing a part. Can we just be… us from now on?”
He nods, sitting in his desk chair and tugging her into his lap. “Yeah. I’d like that.”
They kiss for a while, slow and gentle. She pulls away with a smile.
“I’m going to miss having you as my teacher,” she chuckles. “You made going to school fun.”
“You always did have a pretty good vantage point to check me out from the front row.”
“I never did that!”
He smirks, and pulls her close. “Sure you didn’t.”
Three days later, she dons her cap and gown at graduation, and walks across the stage to receive her diploma. She graduates with honors, of course, and has all the right cords slung around her neck to prove it.
Afterwards, as she makes her way through the throng of people, she comes upon Frank, waiting for her with his hands in his pockets. She stops, smiles brightly, and is about to take a step towards him when-
“Mija!”
Her father’s voice booms behind her. She turns, and finds him and her mother there, arms outstretched.
Laurel forces a smile and hugs them, then turns to look at Frank.
“Mom, dad, this is, um, my… old forensics teacher. Mr. Delfino.”
“Ah,” her mother pipes up as she shakes his hand. “Well, I hope Laurel wasn’t too much trouble for you.”
“’Course not,” he says, glancing her way knowingly. “She was a pleasure to have in class.”
July
“I love you,” she tells him with a sniffle one hot, sticky night in late July, as they lay tangled underneath his sheets.
“I love you too,” Frank answers, and reaches over to wipe the tears from underneath her eyes. “Don’t. It’s all gonna be okay. We’ll make it work.”
We’ll make it work. Has it ever really worked? They still can’t go out on real dates, not even now that she’s out of his class and legal and graduated. Their town is tiny. People would talk, and she knows her dad would send his lawyers after Frank like a pack of wolves if he thought for a second that they’d been involved while she was still underage.
“Maybe I could defer for a year,” Laurel mutters into his bare chest. “Take some classes at that community college up the road.”
“Uh uh. No way. You’re way too smart to stick around in this town and you know it.”
“But-”
“I mean it. You’re gonna do great things, and you sure as hell can’t do ‘em here.”
There’s a pause.
“And you?” she finally asks.
“Me?” Frank grins, almost sadly. “I’ll be here. You know where to find me.”
August
She leaves for Brown on the twentieth.
She and Kan, who is Yale-bound, agree to break up; long distance relationships never work in college, he tells her, and she nods agreement, although it makes her feel sick.
Her first week is hell.
The dorms are nice enough, but suddenly the campus feels so much bigger than it had during her first visit, and Laurel feels so very tiny, like she could just disappear into thin air and no one would even bat an eye. She’s miserable, surrounded by entirely new people and things.
She misses home. She misses Frank.
It’s late Friday afternoon. Most everyone else is off pre-gaming for the weekend, and she’s lying in bed when her phone lights up with an incoming call.
“Hello?”
“Come outside.”
It’s Frank. She furrows her brow.
“What?”
“You said you live in Andrews Hall, right?”
“Yeah, but-”
“Just come outside. Trust me.”
Laurel frowns, but complies and stays on the line, descending two flights of stairs until she steps out onto the street.
A gentle fall breeze is blowing. It’s pleasantly cool, but sunny. The leaves on the trees are starting to turn and litter the sidewalks in the picturesque way she’d seen on all the brochures.
And there on the other side of the road, leaning against the hood of his car and still holding the phone to his ear, is Frank.
Her heart jumps into her throat. The phone slips from her hand and tumbles onto the pavement, but she doesn’t bat an eye. She hurries over to him, and they meet in the middle of the street. He lifts her up and kisses her like that, in front of everyone – for once without caring if the world sees.
“Y-you’re here,” she chokes out, after he sets her down. “What’re you doing here?”
“Thought maybe you could use a friendly face after your first week.”
A sob escapes Laurel before she can stifle it, half from joy and half from sorrow she’s been holding in all week.
“Hey, hey. Stop it. I got us a room at a hotel a few streets over, and I’m here all weekend. No tears allowed. Okay?”
“Yeah.” Laurel nods, and lets him open the car door for her. “Yeah. Okay.”
He takes her hand as they drive, and holds tightly it in the space between the two seats. Frank catches her eye, and her heart flutters. They’re just two people here, in this place hundreds of miles away from home. Just two people.
And she knows, right then, that that’s all she’s ever wanted.