Seventeen | ✔️

Twenty-Two

I was a fuck-up. And Jason would never let me live that down. He kept constantly reminding me of it every day, every time he would see me.

"You're a fuck-up."

"Thanks, Jason," I muttered.

    "You could've said something," Jason said. "Maybe she wouldn't be so pissed at you now if you just said something. You know, without showing up to a mostly high-school party and nearly exposing your illegal relationship to her classmates AKA your students."

    "Shut the hell up," was my typical reply.

    Why would I tell Harrison about who I was? Who I could be? Hell, I didn't even really know who I could be when I dissociated. I didn't understand it, and it shouldn't have mattered so much to her, but it did. It did because I started this relationship, and I was going to have to end it. Somehow.

    It had been a week since the party I crashed, punching Mike in the face and pretty much exposing me and Harrison's relationship to him and whoever was watching the show unfold. Goddamn idiot, I thought to myself. Sometimes I really needed to be more careful about my actions.

    I knew I had to do something, I just had to. So I rolled out of my bed, threw on a red checkered flannel and some jeans, then made my way out of my room. Jason, sitting at the counter eating a bowl of cereal (for those curious, it was, in fact, Lucky Charms), looked over to me and gasped way too over-dramatically.

    "So the man gets up from out of his bed after laying in it for the past 2 days straight, barely pulling himself together to eat a meal!" Jason exclaimed in a weird, made-up accent that mimicked those people narrating a documentary on Animal Planet. "So. You're finally up. What gives, dude?"

    I went to the fridge and grabbed a water bottle, pressing the cold top to my lips and drinking the entire thing at once. I was severely dehydrated, as I truly hadn't gotten out of bed for days. "I'm going to see Harrison."

    Jason laughed. "You dumbass!"

    I looked at him and frowned. "I thought that was what I was supposed to do?"

    Jason shook his head, getting up and dumping the excess milk from his cereal bowl into the sink. As opposed to me, he didn't drink the leftover milk from the bowl. He liked to say that only psychopaths did that. He turned to me. "You should find a way to make it up to her, yes. But you can't just show up at her dorm."

    "And why not?"

    "Because, you fool," he said, taking a pause before reminding me, "she's your student and you can't show up at her dorm because you aren't supposed to. I'm sure the dean would frown upon that. And you certainly can't just show up unwanted. Which, trust me, you are."

    "Right," I said. "That completely slipped my mind." How could that have completely slipped my mind? I truly needed to be more careful.

    I took a seat on the couch and let my head fall back, staring up at the white ceiling. I was lost and didn't know what to do. It was stupid of me to think I could have just gone to her dorm to apologize, to talk about everything. It was stupid to even think that I could fix everything between us after my countless number of mistakes. Still, I needed to do something. So, I pulled out my phone and texted her.

O- Harrison... I wanted to talk to you. About everything... Can we meet? Somewhere

private?    I waited and waited for her reply. Just sitting there staring at the stupid, empty ceiling. Hopelessly awaiting her response, hoping for a loving response, or one that made her seem like she was ready to forgive me. A response that was warm and inviting.    But all I got was this:   

H- Yeah. You're dumb ass secret hideout. In 20. If you're late, I'm out.    But I would take what I could get.

•••

After the events of the party a week ago, I had decided to lay low, focusing on catching up on homework while indulging in dumb Youtube videos.

    Once West arrived back to the dorms at 2 in the morning following the dreaded party, he texted me thousands of times before barging into my room himself, using the spare key I had given him (and also regretted giving him, since it gave him the ability to come into my room and interrupt my sleep, although, it had been hard to sleep that night, anyway). He forced me to fill him in on all of the details of Otto showing up and fighting with Big Mike. The entire time, I could only think about what I had blurted out to Jason the day that he took me to Otto's secret hideout.

"I love him."

    I didn't really love him, did I? It seemed impossible, and not because Otto was hard to love, although he was sometimes. But the fact that he had a temper, and I didn't know how bad it could get, scared me. I just couldn't fathom the idea that I could be in love with him. With my English teacher. I didn't really think of him in that way, as my English teacher. I just thought of him as Otto, the stupid, mysterious guy I ran into at a coffee shop. The guy who talked to me about the stars at a party and kept me occupied and intrigued for hours on end. And while he had his troubles, his problems, and his many flaws, I still cared about him. He had enticed me into falling into the trap called love. And now, I was stuck behind its bars.

    That was why when Otto texted me, I felt the need to respond.

O- Harrison... I wanted to talk to you. About everything... Can we meet? Somewhere

private?    I knew exactly what he wanted to talk about, obviously. But some part of me was still mad at him. Actually exceptionally mad because he had lied to me about who he was, and he didn't even own up to it. He had brushed it off as if what we had meant nothing. And that pissed me off. Not to mention, he had shown up at that party, exposing us in front of Big Mike and nearly the rest of the school. So, I decided to be passive-aggressive about it.   

H- Yeah. You're dumb ass secret hideout. In 20. If you're late, I'm out.   

When I chose his hideout, I didn't choose it so that I could confront him about it. I chose it because, not only would it do more than hint at what we needed to talk about, but it was also private. And as we'd learned, privacy was essential.   

So after getting dressed, simply in a sweatshirt and some leggings, I made my way downstairs to the ground level. I walked straight to the parking lot, got into my car, and turned it on, then driving away. My playlist called Escape was playing all the way to the hideout because I knew that if this was going to go smoothly, I needed to calm myself down. Because my heart was racing faster than OJ Simpson's white Bronco in the middle of the police chase down the highway. Frank Ocean surely helped in the calming process.   

When I arrived earlier than him (on purpose), I took a deep breath before leaving the comfort of my car. I made my way to the stairs and climbed up them into his little apartment, remembering exactly how I had left it.   

A mess.

•••