"Uh-huh." She writes something down. She glances up at me, a knowing look in her eyes. "Ms. Gable usually stops by the auditorium after grading."
I don't ask how she knew to say that. Seventeen-year-olds see and know everything. I give her a quick wink, then go back to pretending I'm only here to work.
"Braces first," I confirm, and head over to get started.
The work is good for me. Measuring, cutting, bracing. For a while my hands are busy and my head mostly quiets down. Mostly.
Then, sometime later, the doors at the back of the hall open, and my hands stop on their own.
Darcy comes down the center aisle with a stack of papers in her arms and her hair loose, dark waves catching the work lights, and everything in me goes still and pays attention. She's in her school clothes, a cardigan buttoned over a blouse, completely decent, and a pencil skirt that hugs her hips and draws my gazeto her legs. It's not a sexy outfit, but it is to me, because I know that body now.
I know the warmth of her back under my hands and the melting sound she makes when I get my mouth on her throat. I know the deeper moan she can't hold in when I move my tongue over her clit. Standing on a stage in front of a plywood forest, I want her all over again, immediately, like Sunday night never let go of me. I'm hard just watching her walk, and there's nothing to be done about it in a room with teenagers milling around, which my body has flatly refused to accept.
She sees me and doesn't stop walking. When she comes up the stage steps she's smiling, and it's real, warm all the way up into her eyes.
"I heard a rumor about safety standards," she says.
"All true. That arch was one slammed door away from flattening a freshman."
"So you came to save the drama club."
"I came to finish what I started." I let that sit with her for a moment.
Her cheeks go pink, and God, I love that I can do that to her.
She sets the stack of student papers on a prop table like she means to stay, and for a while it's easy. She hands me screws before I ask. She holds the level against the brace, steady, tongue at the corner of her mouth while she watches the bubble in the center. I drive the screws and let myself look at her now and then, because I've stopped pretending I can resist.
But she keeps a distance I can measure. When I move down the brace, she finds a reason to be at the other end of it. When my fingers brush hers passing the level, she lets it happen, doesn't flinch, but doesn't lean in either, and afterward she folds her arms while she waits for the next thing to hold. Friendly. Warm. And an arm's length away, every minute, like there's a line drawn on the stage that only she can see.
Sunday night she pulled me through her front door by my shirt. Today I can't get closer than that arm's length.
I work it over while I mark the next cut. We're in her school. Her students are all over the auditorium, a dozen kids with phones, in a town that had Monday's news fully distributed by lunchtime. This woman has spent her whole adult life being careful in a place that talks. Of course she's not going to stand close to me in front of the drama club. She's probably half-afraid I'm going to try to kiss her right here under the work lights.
She's right to keep a healthy physical distance from me. I'm thinking about it constantly. Her mouth is right there, for fuck’s sake. I know what it tastes like now, and every time she leans in to read the level I catch the warmth coming off her skin and lose count of my own measurements. But I keep my hands on the lumber, because whatever's going on with her, scaring her off in front of her kids isn't going to fix it.
We hang the muslin sky last, the two of us on the ropes with Annie and Nora calling level from the house seats. When the muslin comes tight and the lights hit it, the plywood forest stops being plywood and starts to look a little bit magical.
Darcy steps back and looks up at it with her whole face open. I don't look at the sky at all.
"It's good," she says. "They're going to lose their minds."
"Tell them the arch is load-rated for actors. Not stage divers."
By six, Nora has released us from duty. Annie appears at the band-room door with her keys and a face that's working hard at staying neutral. "Thanks for the free labor, Finn. Come back anytime. We keep a list of handy volunteers."
"Put me on it."
"You already are." She winks at me, then gives Darcy a look before leaving the two of us alone.
Darcy walks over to pick up the papers from the prop table.
"You heading home?" I ask.
"Yeah. I've got these essays to grade."
"Right. Come on, I'll walk you out."
The school parking lot is nearly empty. The light outside is going gold. Somewhere behind the gym comes the distant sound of a custodian's radio playing. There's no one around. No students. No phones. Unless the whole town counts as an audience, and in Mattichogue it might.
