“Sorry,” Thiago responded. “Let’s make that twenty.”
I stomped over to him. “You’re pushing it way too far, Thiago,” I whispered, so only he could hear me.
“You can call meCoachorMr. Di Bianco, notThiago.” He turned back to the court. “Walker, pass the ball!”
“You’ve been testing me ever since class started,” I said. I was annoyed by his attitude and refused to do any more push-ups.
“You’ve been getting on my nerves today more than normal,” he said. “Now give me those push-ups, and not the half-assed, knees-on-the-ground kind—count ’em out.”
“I hate you,” I said.
“Good. That solves a serious problem then,” he said, looking me straight in the eye.
“What problem?”
“Me pulling you off into an empty classroom and fucking you against the chalkboard, for example.”
My mouth went suddenly dry. I couldn’t believe he’d just said that. “What?”
“I said, twenty push-ups!” he screamed. I noticed Taylor was watching us out of the corner of his eye. I walked off in a state of shock and found a place to do my push-ups. It wasn’t until Ellie told me I was on number twenty-five that I realized I was in a completely different world. How could he say that to me? In the middle of class? Just like that?
After class, I hurried first into the locker room, changed quickly, and then sat outside watching the other girls come and go. Ellie came out soon after and asked me to go with her to lunch, but I said I had a headache and might go to the nurse’s office for some aspirin. I told her if she saw Taylor, to tell him I’d be there in a few minutes. I knew Thiago would still be in the gym, putting away the equipment. The coach was always the last to leave, and he had to check to make sure no one had left anything behind. I kept sitting there, and eventually he made his rounds and returned. He didn’t seem remotely surprised to find me there.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“Waiting for you.” My heart beat faster. There was nothing I could do to force it to behave in the presence of my boyfriend’s brother.
“You’re not supposed to be here unsupervised. I could give you detention for this.”
That’s when my mind spun out of control. To a place where a phrase like that was more of a turn-on than a threat. Thiago seemed to read my thoughts, and his voice dropped from a deep, imposing baritone to a whisper as he told me, “Kamila, you need to leave.”
“You can’t treat me that way in front of everyone,” I said. I needed him to know that he had hurt me.
“I can treat you however I want. I’m the teacher and you’re the student, remember?”
“Do you tell other students you want to fuck them?”
“Go to class.”
“No.” I crossed my arms.
“Kamila…”
“Aren’t we going to talk about what happened at your house two days ago?” I said.
“Nope,” he replied, leaning against a wall and crossing his own arms.
I was furious. “What we did meant nothing to you, did it?” I asked.
“You seemed to like it,” he replied.
“Don’t act like I’m the only one who wanted it,” I said.
“What if you were?”
“Oh, right, after all you’ve got your teacher friend, Miss what’s-her-name…” I said sarcastically.
“Maggie.”
