Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 111089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 555(@200wpm)___ 444(@250wpm)___ 370(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 555(@200wpm)___ 444(@250wpm)___ 370(@300wpm)
“And I shouldn’t have acted the way I did. That was totally inappropriate.”
“‘There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.’”
“No. Don’t do that,” I insisted. “There is right and wrong.”
“Yes, but come on. Can we cut this teacher/student BS for a second? I’m eighteen. I can consent.”
“In the state of Georgia, you are my student, so you can’t, actually.”
“Yeah. I googled this shit before now. So what? Would that be true in California?”
“It doesn’t matter what it would be in California. We’re in Georgia.”
“Where the age of consent is sixteen. So you’re telling me some seventy-year-old man can fuck around with a sixteen-year-old here, but I, someone who can smoke and die for my country, can’t kiss my teacher who’s not even a decade older than me? I’m pretty sure you and I both know bullshit when we hear it—and fitting for a state that has something on the books about alcohol before twelve thirty on Sundays, but I guess not for religious reasons because of the separation of church and state. M’kay.”
“It doesn’t matter what it is or why it exists. It doesn’t change that what we did was wrong.”
“Just because something’s against the law doesn’t make it immoral, and you’re smart enough to know that.”
“I’m smart enough to know that morality and ethics are a little more complicated than that, and I’m trying to sort that all out.”
I was tired of trying to have a rational debate around this. None of it had anything to do with our feelings around what happened at the library.
“Did it feel wrong?” he pressed, moving closer, eyeing me as though he dared me to say I believed that.
“Can we not get into that?”
“It’s a little late for that, James.” It was like he was saying my name intentionally, because he knew it would affect me. “I’m just saying I don’t give a shit about some bullshit law that’s about as substantial to me as the pot laws in our backward state.”
“This would be easier if you weren’t so smart. If none of that matters to you, then at least keep in mind that I could lose my job. I could lose everything over this.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Again, his words were hostile, projected on me so intensely, I would have thought he’d kick my ass over it all, the way he did the guy in that alley. “You think I didn’t spend all night fucking googling the shit out of this to figure out what the hell to do about it? You think I would ever do anything…at all…to hurt you?”
It took me a moment to realize it wasn’t anger he was feeling, but hurt, as though he felt I’d thought he’d been so callous in disregarding how it would affect my life.
“I don’t think that at all,” I assured him, and he caught his breath, seeming surprised by how he’d worked himself up.
“I’m sorry. I’m just stressed. Like I said, I was up all night, freaking and worrying that you’d hate me for having started it. Looking up Georgia schools and laws. I went from driving myself crazy thinking you didn’t feel anything more for me, to knowing the only outcome would be you pushing me away and having to deal with that. I hadn’t considered the possibility that it might not go down like that, that you were even capable of wanting anything else. You said you weren’t gay, and you didn’t suggest you were bi too when we were talking about me.”
“I’m still trying to sort through my thoughts around all that. Until we did that, I sincerely didn’t believe I was. I keep going back through my life, trying to think about ever having felt that with a guy or…anyone. And there’s nothing. I knew I felt something different for you. I thought, at first, it was just that I really liked spending time with you—and I admit I was getting a little too comfortable thinking of you as a friend—but then something changed, and it threw me for a loop.”
“Fortunately for you, while I was scouring the net on my all-nighter, I got in deep with some Reddit boards—which, by the way, we should probably talk about how you might be demi, especially with what you’ve told me about how things started with your ex-wife. I mean, your wife. Goddammit.”
There was plenty to complicate this.
But he took a breath, and then he looked nervous, almost timid. “So you liked it?” He must’ve noticed my expression because he shook his head. “Don’t answer that. Going by your reaction, you obviously didn’t hate it, but…I guess a part of me is relieved it wasn’t all just me, you know?”
“Yeah.”
The silence returned, neither of us seeming in any hurry to find answers to a question that didn’t have a yes-or-no answer.