Rules for dating your teacher:
• Don’t skip multiple cheerleading practices. This goes double when you are the head cheerleader.
• Don’t look at him any more than normal. Or less than normal. Don’t smile at him.
• Ace your homework.
• Don’t stab any of the girls who swoon over your teacher in the eye holes, no matter how tempting. This goes double for Thea Arnold.
He slipped a note in between the pages of my homework.
Life is better with you.
Tonight. I left my response beneath his grading binder when no one else was around.
We leave each other these little notes. We don’t sign them. We don’t write like ourselves. But we know who they’re from. No one else would send me notes the way he does.
I sneak to his house at night. On nights when I don’t have practice, I slip into my track tights and sneakers and walk over there, taking my time. My parents don’t even care that I’m gone. I’m a busy girl, after all. I always have this fund-raiser or that volunteer event or this mock trial event or that.
Or this forbidden love affair or that forbidden love affair.
Or just the one.
Tonight, Alex is reading me French poetry. He isn’t just paging through a book, though—he’s copied his favorites into a worn-out leather-bound notebook, and the pages are a little yellowed and the penciled entries are smudged, like he’s read through them a hundred times.
“You’re like someone out of a story,” I tell him, paging through the handwritten poetry. “You actually copied all these down?”
He nods. “It’s what I did to practice my French, actually. And I thought that they were nice.”
“They are nice,” I tell him, and he smiles at me.
I prop my head on my hand, elbow resting on the floor. “Read me another. A love poem.”
“A love poem? Are you trying to tell me something, Riley Stone?” He smiles at me over his notebook.
I roll over and look at him upside down. “Are you going to read me another pretty poem or not, Alex?”
He leans over and kisses me on the chin, then pages through his book.
“Aha! Here it is.”
I turn right side up. He’s pointing at a page with a corner folded down.
“It’s called ‘Les Roses de Saadi,’ ” he tells me. “It’s by this famous French poet—Marceline Desbordes-Valmore.”
J’ai voulu ce matin te rapporter des roses;
Mais j’en avais tant pris dans mes ceintures closes
Que les noeuds trop serrés n’ont pu les contenir.
Les noeuds ont éclaté. Les roses envolées
Dans le vent, à la mer s’en sont toutes allées.
Elles ont suivi l’eau pour ne plus revenir;
La vague en a paru rouge et comme enflammée.
Ce soir, ma robe encore en est tout embaumée . . .
Respires-en sur moi l’odorant souvenir.
“Tell me what it’s about?” I ask. “Roses and the wind?”
“It’s love being roses. And the wind tossing them about. This girl brings roses to her love, but the sash she has tied them with splits and they blow to the sea, and they turn the waves red.”
“It is,” he tells me.
“Why did you read me a sad love poem?”
He rolls on top of me and spreads little kisses along my neck. “So I can make you happy again.”
Alex kisses me on the mouth, hard, so I can feel his teeth, and I wrap my arms and legs around him. I want him, and I want all of him, and I want my clothes off and to be in his bed, but I know that’s not now. Not yet.
We’ve talked about it. A few weeks ago I hadn’t had a real kiss, and now I’m talking about sex. Real sex, and not the giggly way I talk about it with Neta and Kolbie, but with someone who cooks for me and gives me jewelry and reads me French poetry.
“Are you ready?” he asks me, looking into my eyes, and I know what he’s asking because his hand is on the button of my jeans.
I kiss him, hard, but then I turn and shake my head no into his shoulder. “Soon,” I promise, but I’m lying because this is big and I’m not ready. I want to be ready. But that’s a lot and that’s moving fast and there’s just a lot in this relationship that I haven’t really thought through.
I feel him smile against my mouth. “I’m going to wait for you, Riley Stone,” he says. “I promise. Do you know why?” His hip bones dig into mine, and I want him.
I do.
“Why?” I ask.
“Because I am absolutely falling in love with you.”
I pull away and look into his eyes, but he’s just looking down at me. I feel the weight of the necklace on my throat. “Do you mean that?”
He nods and kisses me again. “More than anything, Riley.” He rolls off of me, and for a moment we’re just next to each other on the living room floor. “Pretty soon, you’re going to be eighteen. And you’ll have graduated. And do you know what that means?”
“What?” I ask.
He smiles and touches my hair. “We can be together everywhere. Not just in secret. You won’t have to sneak through the alley anymore. I can take you to the movies and to restaurants and visit you at school and you can sleep over and no one can say anything, ever.”
“And Jacqueline?” I ask.
And then I hold my breath.
It’s the first time I’ve ever mentioned Jacqueline.
Ever.
“I don’t think Jacqueline’s ever coming back. And if she does, we’re as good as over.” His voice is flat.
I want to ask him more, but the lack of emotion in his voice is strange. It excites me.
He’s mine.
Really mine.
I don’t think anyone in the history of the entire world has ever had a love like we have.
“Never leave me, okay, Riley?” Alex says. His tone is soft, and he tugs on a piece of my hair.
“I won’t,” I whisper. “It’s us, forever.” I put my hand on his heart, and he lifts my palm to his lips.