“Yeah.”
“Did you enjoy yourself?”
I fight the urge to laugh. “Yeah. Of course, I did. That’s the first time someone’s touched me like that, and…”
“Same,” he says. “Perhaps we could…do it again?”
“Definitely,” I say.
“Great,” he says, and it sounds like he’s smiling. There’s a rustle as he picks up his blazer, then shifts the chair out of the way. “Okay. I’m going to slip out now.”
“Alright. I’ll wait five minutes.”
“Good. And, uh…it might be a good idea to keep the door open after you. To air the room out.”
“Right.” I don’t want a poor teacher to come in next period and smell jizz.
“I’m closing my eyes now,” he says, and I do the same. “I’ll write you.”
The door opens, then shuts. I keep my eyes closed for half a minute more to make sure, then open them.
Five minutes later, I leave the storeroom and duck into the closest bathroom. There’s a few minutes until the bell, and I assess my appearance in the mirror. My hair is slightly messy, but not enough to suggest I’ve been up to something suspicious. There are definitely more creases in my shirt than there were before, but it looks like I’ve been running around playing sports rather than giving a handjob to a stranger.
There are no suspicious stains on my clothes. My lips aren’t especially pink, and thankfully, my flush has disappeared. I look perfectly normal. I head back to my locker, and that’s where I run into my friends.
“Dude,” Ricky says, pointing an accusing finger at me. “Where the heck have you been all lunch?”
Shit. As soon as it hit lunchtime, I dumped my books in my locker and waited for five minutes in a bathroom cubicle. Honestly, I avoided them so I wouldn’t have to explain why I was about to disappear.
“I had to talk to my maths teacher,” I lie. “There’s a test coming up, and I’m seriously concerned about passing, so I had to ask her a bunch of questions.”
“Ugh, that sounds like the opposite of fun,” Ethan says. “You coulda messaged us, though.”
“We missed you,” Lily says with a teasing smile.
I wish she wouldn’t smile at me like that because now I feel illogically guilty for spending the past half an hour with an anonymous guy in my lap.
“Yeah, sorry,” I say. “I lost track of the time.”
“Aaron!” Mimi says, eyes big. “We were just discussing going to this super cute cafe on the weekend. It’s just opened up in the mall, and it’s got this thing called sakura lattes.”
“They’re cherry-flavoured,” Lily supplies.
“I know what sakura means,” I say, then add a smile to soften my words.
“Anyway,” Mimi says, glancing at Lily, “we should totally go!”
“Okay,” I say because that’s always been my automatic response in these kinds of situations. “I’m working on Saturday —”
“We can do Sunday,” Mimi interrupts.
“And I have a lot of homework to do,” I add.
“Oh, bring it. We can study there. Drink the lattes, chat a bit, and then get a good hour or so of work done. It’s a plan,” Mimi decides.
“Okay.”
“Yay!” Lily smiles at me again.
