Teaser: Cecelia wasn't sure how to feel about being assigned as a student
teacher to the high school she'd left behind four years ago.  Then she
found out that Bob Hawkins would be her supervising teacher, and the crush
she'd had on him way back then flamed up again.  What she didn't know was
that he'd had a crush on her too.  Both of them tried to fight the
attraction.  And both of them were fighting a losing battle.

   The Student Teacher by Lubrican

   Chapter One

   Bob Hawkins sat at his desk, staring at the list of students for his
history summer school class.  He sighed.  As usual, he had all the "losers"
to deal with for two months when most of the other teachers were going to
Mexico, or on extended camping treks in Yellowstone or whatever.  He sighed
again.  It had to be done.  The mortgage on his house strained his
resources, but he wasn't about to get rid of the relatively opulent place.
It sat on one point eight acres, which provided him with all the room he
needed for his gardening obsession.

   His eyes ran down the list again.  It would be all right.  These would
no doubt be like the last bunch, and the bunch before that.  He knew how to
deal with them.  It was a lot of work and called for a lot of patience, but
experience had taught him what worked with kids like these, and while
fashion and the language of teenagers always changed, what motivated them
didn't.

   He frowned again, but it had nothing to do with the list of students who
had to pass his class to graduate.  They were the ones under the real
stress.  He was known not to cut anybody any slack in his class.  You
learned the material and passed the tests...or you didn't.

   His frown had to do with the fact that he was being saddled with a
student teacher during summer school.  He'd skated on that little duty in
the past, but it was his turn and complaining wouldn't cut any mustard with
Horace Grimes, the principal.  Horace usually left him alone, for the most
part, and Bob wanted it to stay that way.  It was going to be a pain in the
ass, but it was only for two months.  It was actually seventy days, but it
was easier to think of it as just two months, during which he'd have some
gung-ho, recently indoctrinated, by-the-book, starry-eyed kid under his
feet while he used relatively unorthodox techniques to get kids to learn.

   At least it was only during summer school.  During the fall semester
he'd be back to what he loved most--inspiring young minds to remember
facts, figures and the true import of history that would repeat itself
unless they stopped it from doing so.

   But first there was summer school to get through.  He reached for the
pile of lesson plans he'd be using with the kids who, for this or that
reason, resisted learning.

   ========================================

   As she opened one of the big double doors, Cecelia Carter realized she
was nervous.  That irritated her, because it seemed silly to be nervous.

   While she hadn't exactly been filled with trepidation at being assigned
to Harper High for her student teaching, she had to admit it was a bit
unsettling.  She was the first student teacher in a pilot program that took
place during summer school.  It hadn't been done before, and she felt like
the success of the program rested entirely on her shoulders.  But worst of
all was the instant she walked through the front doors, she felt seventeen
again.  Everything was exactly the same as it had been when she'd walked
out those doors for the last time after graduation.

   On her way to the office, she stopped at the trophy case in the main
hall.  There was the trophy won when the Harper Penguins took state in her
senior year.  It had seemed excruciatingly important, back then.  The
trophy looked a little tarnished now.  Her eyes fell to the photograph of
the team, with the cheerleaders lined up on their knees in the front. 
There she was, in the middle with Mandy McKinley.  She recognized all the
smiling faces, though they had faded in her memory like the image had faded
a bit on the paper.  As she saw the various faces again she wondered what
had happened in their lives since high school.

   She knew about only a few of them.  She had stopped by Mandy's trailer
each of the few times she'd come home from college to see her parents. 
Mandy now sported the last name of Dunham, had three kids and smoked like a
chimney.  She'd gained at least fifty pounds and cursed like a sailor.  She
claimed to be happy.  Jeff Dunham, whose smiling face was right above
Mandy's in the photograph, was a salesman for a water softening company and
was gone a lot, but Mandy said they were getting along OK.  There had been
no talk about how their plans to go off to college together had been
derailed when Mandy came up pregnant just before graduation.  At least Jeff
stood by her, forgoing his football scholarship to marry her and be there
when she needed him.

   As she looked at the trim, fit, non-smoker kneeling next to her own
young image in the photograph, Cecelia couldn't get Mandy's overweight,
smoking, harassed present day appearance out of her mind.  "There, but for
the grace of God and a firm resolve to keep my legs closed, go I," said
Cecelia under her breath.

   She shivered and then went on to the office.  She pushed open the same
door that led to the same office she had been in dozens of times in what
seemed both like the distant past ...  and just yesterday.  There, behind
the counter was the same Mrs.  Miller, who looked up and smiled the same
smile.  Cecelia knew exactly what she'd say.  Mrs.  Miller didn't
disappoint.  "Good morning.  How may I help you?" It was probably the
umpteenth time Mrs.  Miller had said that to Cecelia.  Mrs.  Miller treated
every visitor to the office the same way, whether student, parent, teacher
or whatever.

   "I've been assigned here for student teaching," said Cecelia.

   "Welcome back," said Mrs.  Miller with a bright smile.  "It's so nice to
see you again."

   Cecelia was surprised that the woman remembered her, but it made her
feel good, too.

   "Thanks.  It's good to be back." Cecelia looked around.  "I think," she
added.  "I'm a little nervous, to be honest."

   "You'll do fine," said the woman.  "Let's get you in to see Mr.  Grimes
so you can get started."

   Cecelia also remembered Mr.  Grimes well.  It occurred to her that she
had no idea what either Mrs.  Miller's or Mr.  Grimes' first names were. 
That was something students had no need to know.  He looked the same too,
with thin black hair combed over his bald pate and owlish eyes behind thick
spectacle lenses.  He looked up and actually smiled!

   "Cee Cee!" he said happily.  "I was so glad to hear you'd been assigned
to Harper."

   She kept her face straight.  Cee Cee had been the nickname her
girlfriends had given her in the eighth grade, based on the first letters
of her first and last name.  She'd been quite happy with it initially.  It
sounded hip and bouncy, at first.  But then her body blossomed and she
became a cheerleader.  For the boys, Cee Cee had taken on an unwelcome new
meaning as they joyously greeted her in the halls or wherever.  The vast
majority of them looked first at one of her breasts, and then at the other,
during those greetings.  It had been a ritual, and they always laughed
after performing it.  Why they thought addressing each breast by part of
her nickname was funny or cute, she didn't know, but they all did.

   She flushed slightly, hoping Mr.  Grimes was unaware that the nickname
had been adopted by teenage boys to refer to her cup size.  She'd been
stuck with it, and almost everybody, including teachers and staff, had used
it.  At least Mr.  Grimes hadn't looked at her chest as he greeted her.

   "I go by Cecelia now," she blurted.

   "Of course," said the principal, his face resuming its slightly pinched
look.  "In public, however, we'll refer to you as Miss Carter, or Ms., if
you prefer."

   "Either is fine," said Cecelia, feeling foolish.  He'd given her a
friendly greeting and she'd thrown it back in his face.  She tried to
soften that rejection.  "I'm just trying to act a bit more grown up than
when I left."

   She was rewarded with a slight smile.  "As it should be!  And you HAVE
grown up.  That is certain.  And I really am sorry.  It was just habit.  I
should have known better.  I expect that nickname caused you some
discomfort, back then."

   Cecelia felt her cheeks get warm.  He DID know!

   "Kids," she said hastily.  "They can be the cruelest members of the
human race."

   "You got that right," said Grimes firmly.  "Please, sit down.  I'm sure
you're chomping at the bit to get to some real teaching.  We really are
delighted to have you back.  You were an outstanding student, and I'm sure
you'll be an outstanding teacher as well."

   "Student teacher," Cecelia corrected, and then felt foolish again.

   "Humility can be a valuable asset," said the man, his face stern.  "But
from our perspective," he said, opening a file, "and from the reports on
how you've done in school, we're going to treat you just like any of the
other teachers." He closed the file.  "Student teaching is a formality,
really.  It does help some folks weed themselves out of the teaching
profession.  They find out it isn't what they expected it to be, or that
they're not well suited to perform that very important task.  But we don't
expect that to happen to you.  We have a great deal of faith in you and
high hopes for your success.  As you said, you're all grown up now, so
let's have no more talk about you being `just' a student teacher."

   "Thank you," said Cecelia, a little dazed by both the length of his
speech and the warmth with which it was delivered.  She was pretty sure
that, other than at an assembly, she'd never heard Mr.  Grimes say more
than ten words in a row.

   She sat in one of the hard-backed wooden chairs across the desk from the
principal.  Her buttocks seemed to want to slide forward and she had to use
her abdominal muscles to stay upright.

   "Not that one," said Grimes, waving her to another chair off to the side
of his desk.  "That one is for parents or students I have to come down on.
Makes them uncomfortable and off kilter." He grinned.  "It has an inch
sawed off both front legs.  One of the tricks of the trade I learned from
an acquaintance of mine in law enforcement.  There are a number of tricks
of the trade you'll become familiar with, Ms.  Carter."

   She stood and couldn't help looking at the legs of the chair.  Sure
enough the front legs were squared off where they touched the floor.  The
ends of the back legs were more rounded.  She could see what he was talking
about, now that she knew what to look for.  She sat in the other chair
which was, in fact, much more comfortable.

   "All right," said Grimes.  "I'm supposed to give you a speech about all
this, but I know you, so I'm just going to say that this is your
opportunity to identify those areas that will need a little fine tuning
before you take on a classroom all by yourself." He sat back in his chair.
It took several seconds before Cecelia realized he wasn't going to say
anything else.

   "That's it?"

   "In a nutshell," he said calmly.  "You wouldn't be here if your advisors
didn't think you were ready.  As I said, I know you.  You were a serious
student.  Hopefully you sowed all your wild oats in college.  In any case,
I'm quite confident you'll be a fine teacher.  Additionally we've paired
you with one of our best staff members, who will teach you the kinds of
things they don't teach at institutions of higher learning...some of those
tricks of the trade I was mentioning.  Good luck.  It's great seeing you
again.  Rah, rah, sis boom bah!  Gooooo Penguins!"

   He stood up, grinning again, no doubt in reference to his cheer.  He
stuck his hand out to be shaken.  On auto pilot she gripped his hand and
immediately wished she hadn't.  Not only was it distinctly odd to shake Mr.
Grimes' hand in the first place, but his hand had a cool, limp feel that
sent a shiver down her spine.  She smiled weakly at him, said "Go team,"
less than whole heartedly, and took her hand back as he said, "Anything you
need...anything at all...just ask."

   Back out in the main office she realized he hadn't told her who her
supervising teacher was.  She was so unsettled that she didn't want to go
back in there to find out.  Mrs.  Miller looked over at her and waved a
piece of paper.

   "We need to get your forms filled out next," she said.

   Cecelia penned things neatly on the lines provided: address; medical
insurance; license number and type of car that would be parked in the
teachers' parking lot; next of kin, and so on.  She handed it back.

   "I think you're all ready to go," said the woman.

   "I'm not sure where exactly that is," said Cecelia.

   "I'll take you there," said Mrs.  Miller.

   ===================================

   As Cecelia followed Mrs.  Miller down familiar hallways, things from her
"interview" with Grimes bounced around in her mind.  One of those things
was his reference to her "sowing her wild oats" in college.

   Men at college had been a big disappointment to Cecelia.  In high
school, the girls had had a code name with reference to a boy who
was...exuberant...in his attention to his date.  She remembered one of
those in particular.  Kathy Wilson had showed up at her locker one day only
minutes after Cecelia had agreed to go to the movies with Jeff Dunham. 
That was before Jeff and Mandy had started going together.

   "Be ready to be Captain Nemo when you go out with Jeff," Kathy had said
in a matter of fact voice.

   She'd been right too.  Jeff seemed to have more arms than an octopus,
and having to fight him off had ruined the movie for her.  She'd ended the
date before Jeff could get her somewhere alone.

   She'd expected college men to be more mature, but they weren't.  They
all seemed to be interested only in what boys had interpreted "Cee Cee" to
mean in high school.  When her first few college dates all turned into
attempts to get her drunk or naked, she began "washing her hair" most
nights.  As a result, she hadn't sowed any wild oats at all during her
college years.  Instead she'd stopped wearing makeup and adopted loose
jeans and sweatshirts as her primary wardrobe.  She'd even gotten horn
rimmed glasses, abandoning her contacts in favor of a look that, along with
only rare smiles, was crafted to suggest she was unapproachable and
uninterested in the males of the species.  To her abject horror, it had
gotten her a little attention from other young women instead.  Then again,
they were much easier to discourage, and a heck of a lot more polite about
it.

   Her previous drab attire had served its purpose.  When she brushed off
the occasional invitation, it usually stayed brushed off.  She got a work
study job, too, which made it easy to turn down dates, because she could
claim she had to work on any given night.  At work, where she digitized
written records on exhibits in the university museum, she interacted with
few people.  The men she met there were more serious than the average
college guy, but also weren't all that interesting, for the most part.

   For a while she felt a little lonely on Friday and Saturday nights, in
her room, while her roommates were out sowing THEIR wild oats.  Her
studies, a long list of good books, and some truly awful television had
gotten her through it, though.  She was perfectly aware that her biological
clock was ticking away, but she was also convinced that she had plenty of
time left before any alarms might go off or that clock might need
servicing.

   Of course now that she was going to be a student teacher, things had
changed.  For one thing she was wearing a light summer blouse, with an
appropriately modest, but stylish skirt.  It had felt strange to put on
such feminine clothing after years of suppressing her femininity.  And,
perhaps, she might start meeting men who were mature enough to respect a
woman for her abilities, instead of just the fact that she had a willowy
figure with full thrusting breasts and waves of shiny auburn hair cascading
down her back.  Perhaps they might not center on the touch of lipstick on
her lush lips, or the fact that it was impossible to keep one's buttocks
from rising and falling as one walked.

   As Mrs.  Miller turned to a familiar looking door and gripped the knob,
Cecelia reflected that for the foreseeable future, she needed to pay
attention to student teaching, rather than think about men and the role
they weren't playing in her life.

   Which was why, when she saw the man sitting at the desk and realized
just who her supervising teacher was, she was completely unprepared for the
weakness that suddenly assaulted her knees.  She had to stop and
concentrate on standing up, so that she didn't sink to the floor.

   "I've brought you your student teacher, Mr.  Hawkins," said Mrs. 
Miller. "And I need to remind you that I'm still missing the
eighteen-oh-three reports on your sixth hour class for last year."

   Cecelia saw him turn his head and look at her.  His eyebrows were
raised, almost in a frown, until it was obvious he recognized her.  They
dropped and the corners of the mouth above that devastating cleft chin
she'd forgotten all about went upwards, revealing white teeth that took her
back as if high school had been yesterday.

   "Cee Cee," said Bob.  "You have no idea how glad I am to see you again."

   Chapter Two

   Memories assailed Cecelia's mind for what seemed like ten minutes, but
was in reality only sixty seconds.  She hadn't thought about Mr.  Hawkins
for years, but it all came back like an overpowering wave of surf.  She'd
had a killer crush on him when she was in his class.  Part of her mind
heard Mrs.  Miller talking to him, and his reply about the reports she had
mentioned, but most of it was taken over by feelings she had thought were
both silly and long gone.

   He'd been twenty-five when she was in his class.  On the one hand, that
had seemed old at the time, but on the other hand she hadn't cared.  That
he was married hadn't mattered either.  As she sat in class, over the
months, she'd had disturbing...but delightful thoughts about him.  His
smile, his soulful eyes, and especially that cleft chin had drawn her eyes
like magnets.  The first time she'd heard a particular song on KY-104
Golden Oldies, it had instantly become "their song," though he of course
had no knowledge of that.  Seeing him brought it all back.

   Joe Elliott's "Pour some sugar on meeeeee," popped into her mind in what
seemed like full stereo.  Her left arm jerked out to her side, taking up
the unconscious fingering position of the air guitar she'd played wildly in
her room as she whirled to the beat and lyrics of the song.  She'd
fantasized that it was Mr.  Hawkins singing that song to her.  She'd
watched the video of the band playing that song exactly once, and then
never again.  She hadn't been able to fit Bob Hawkins into that visual
rendition.  She also hadn't been able to get a clear vision of what
happened in her fantasies as she "poured sugar" on Mr.  Hawkins, but she
knew it was delicious and wonderful.  She got a taste of how delicious and
wonderful it was as, in the dark of night, her fingers had slipped between
her legs and played with her teenaged clitty until she felt the release
that was required so she could actually get to sleep.

   She blushed with embarrassment and dropped her arm as she realized what
was happening.  Mrs.  Miller chose that particular time to say, "Thank you,
Mr.  Hawkins.  I'll expect those reports in a day or two."

   "I promise," said Bob, looking earnest.  His eyes went from the older
woman to his new student teacher.

   "Cee Cee, is that really you?" he said.  He was grinning again.  "Wow,
what a difference a few years can make!"

   Cecelia tried to get control of her mind and body.  "Um...hi," she said
weakly.  "I didn't know it would be you." She felt like a teeny bopper all
over again and felt a surge of frustration.  Schoolgirl fantasies were a
thing of the past.  And even though he looked just like she remembered him,
she was irritated that she was feeling like that schoolgirl again.

   "Same old dude," he said with a smile.  "I am SO glad it's you.  I had
visions of having to ride herd on some..." He stopped.  "Never mind.  I'm
just glad I have a good one to work with.  Come in.  Come in!"

   Cecelia realized she was just standing there, where she'd stopped when
she'd first entered the room.  She took a deep breath and made her right
foot move.  Taking a step she realized she was headed for one of the
student desks in the room and she swerved drunkenly to avoid sitting in the
same seat she'd had when he was her teacher.  Her frustration surged as she
looked around for somewhere else to sit.  Other than his desk chair, which
was occupied at the moment, there was nowhere else to sit with dignity.

   He seemed to recognize the problem.

   "Hang on a sec," he said.

   He got up and went to the supply closet, which he returned from with a
hard backed chair just like the one in Principal Grimes' office.  Her eyes
slid down to examine the bottoms of the front legs before she jerked them
back up to Bob's face.

   "This is more fitting for a teacher," he said, smiling.

   "Thank you," she said.  She felt like she should say something else, but
couldn't, for the life of her, think of anything intelligent to say.

   "How's college?" he asked.

   That turned out to be only the first of a string of questions he
peppered her with.  It wasn't until ten minutes later that she realized she
had relaxed-that, by basically interrogating her, he'd calmed her down. 
She wondered if he'd somehow known what she was thinking, though he gave no
direct evidence of that.

   "And now here you are," he finally said.  "I can imagine how this must
be affecting you."

   She looked at him sharply, while he went on.

   "It's a little like coming back home after you've gone off to college.
Your parents remember you as their little girl, and they treat you just
like they did when you left."

   She blinked.  That's exactly how her parents had treated her.  That very
first time she'd come back home they'd even told her what time to be home
when she'd said she was going out with some of her friends from high
school. It had taken her years to break them of that behavior.

   "Not to worry," said Bob.  "I know what you've been through, and none of
the kids will remember you.  Now you're one of us, the evil administration,
and you get to strike terror in the hearts of unruly teenagers." He grinned
again.  "I'm proud of you, Cee Cee.  It's good to know that sometimes a kid
gets it and goes on to do great things."

   Cecelia suppressed her urge to ask him not to call her Cee Cee.  From
his lips it didn't sound so bad.  It sounded normal, in a way.  She felt
more relaxed and tried to say something adult.

   "Well, it's kind of weird to be back, in a way, but it's kind of
exciting, too.  I just hope I'm up to it.  I have to admit I'm a little
nervous."

   "I'd be worried about you if you weren't," said Bob.  "But that kind of
nervousness will go away.  I'm quite sure you'll be fine, with time.  I
won't throw you to the lions right away.  You'll have a chance to wade in
the alligator pond before we make you swim in it." He grinned again. 
"Sounds like you've arrived in a zoo, huh?" Then he chuckled.  "Actually,
it IS a zoo sometimes."

   Cecelia found herself staring at that damned chin dimple.  She jerked
her eyes up to his nose and stared at that intentionally.  With almost
regret, she decided even his nose was handsome.

   Then, as if an invisible switch had been flipped, Bob Hawkins was all
business.  He described what class they'd be teaching, and showed her the
text book, which was a different one than what she'd had when she was in
the class.  Then he handed her the academic records of the fifteen students
who would be in it.

   "Take a look at those, so you know what to expect when the kids get here
next week."

   Quite suddenly he was ignoring her, going back to the stack of papers on
his desk that he'd been looking at when she first arrived.  She wondered
why he wanted her to look at whatever was in the folders.  Students were
students, right?  They were in your class and you taught them.  What else
did you need to know about them?

   She opened a folder and her eyes scanned the unfamiliar format.  There
were test scores and grade reports.  There was a synopsis of disciplinary
actions taken.  Attendance was recorded, as well as participation in
extracurricular activities.  She was astonished to see there was a page
with notes on potential problems at home.  The one she was looking at, for
a girl named Haley Simpson, had a note that said Haley's mother was single,
worked nights and wasn't there to supervise Haley's homework.  She opened
another one, for a boy named Theodore Johnson.  He had a peculiar mixture
of very high and very low grades.  His standardized test scores suggested
he was very intelligent.  The notes section said that he was the primary
caregiver for a younger brother and sister, and that his parents had been
arrested multiple times for drug violations.

   By the sixth one she knew that these kids were the ones that she and her
friends in high school would have labeled "losers." She couldn't call them
that now, of course.

   "Mr.  Hawkins, this is going to be a tough crowd," she said.

   "Bob," he responded.

   "What?"

   "You can call me Bob, now." He smiled.

   She was flustered again instantly.  "I can't do that!" she blurted.

   "Why not?" he asked, still smiling.

   "I just don't think I can do that.  I mean it just seems so wrong. 
You've always been Mr.  Hawkins," she said weakly.  "Maybe Mr.  `H'...but
never Bob!"

   "You keep thinking of me as your teacher," said Bob.  "I get that,
because it's easy for me to think of you as my student.  I need to get over
that.  The fact is that you've become much more mature in your outlook on
life.  And, while I am, sorta, kinda still your teacher, we're both adults
now, so you need to get over it, too."

   "I've had a lot to think about lately," she said somewhat vaguely. 
"I'll try to work on that, though.  I want to think of you as a colleague,
but that seems so...I don't know...pushy maybe?" She frowned.  "I mean I AM
a student teacher.  It seems presumptuous to try to put myself in the
category of being your peer."

   Bob was quite willing to have a serious conversation with this
delightful girl.  It helped take his mind off how "delightful" she was.

   "At what point do you decide we're peers?" he asked.  "It has to happen
sooner or later.  Is it when you graduate?  Is it when you get your
teaching license?  Is it when you're hired for a full time position?  Or is
it after you've completed your first year and decided to subject yourself
to that torture for another year?  Seems like now is as good a time as any
to me."

   Cecelia tilted her head and stared at him.  She seemed to be deep in
thought.

   "You always were one of the best teachers," she said suddenly.  "I never
thought about why that was, until now, but I realize now it's because you
treated us like grownups.  You gave us credit for having a brain, and let
us use them."

   "I MADE you use them," he said, grinning.  "That's why some kids thought
I was one of the worst teachers."

   She shook her head.  "Hardest, maybe, but even that's not fair.  I don't
remember your class being hard.  I liked it.  You gave us a lot of
homework, but I usually didn't mind doing it.  I liked coming to history
class." She looked away, blushing for some reason.

   "OK, then," he said.  "We'll split the difference.  To the kids, I'm Mr.
Hawkins.  To you, when speaking of me in the third person to the kids, I'm
Mr.  Hawkins.  The rest of the time, when it's just you and me, you'll work
on calling me Bob." He waved his hands in the air.  "Abra cadabra...PRESTO!
You, Cee Cee, are now my peer."

   He saw her flinch, and thought about that for a few seconds.  He was
good at reading people, particularly young people.  Her negative reaction
couldn't be the reference to her being his peer.  Young people in her
situation wanted desperately to be considered peers of those older, even if
she was resisting it.

   Then he thought he got it.

   "Oh," he said softly.  "I'm sorry.  Old habits die hard.  Here I am
doing the same thing I was talking about...treating you like my
student...using your high school nickname.  I shouldn't even have called
you that back then, to be honest."

   Her face turned so red that he was afraid he'd said the wrong thing.

   "Did EVERYBODY know?" she almost moaned.

   "Know what?" he asked, sounding puzzled.

   "What that meant," she gasped.

   "What it meant?" He was obviously confused now.  "It was just your
nickname...wasn't it?  Cecelia Carter...C-C."

   Cecelia wanted to crawl in a hole and hide.  Her assumption that he knew
what the boys had made the letters stand for, back then, had caused her to
get into a situation that she didn't know how to handle.  She couldn't just
tell him about her breasts.  She felt tears gathering in her eyes as
embarrassment almost incapacitated her.

   "Hey," he said softly.  "Don't worry about it.  Whatever the wound, it's
over and done now.  I'll be sure to call you Cecelia, OK?"

   She felt a surge of relief as she realized he was giving her a pass on
explaining what was so horrible about her nickname.  He'd always been so
cool.  Her relief was followed closely by a resurgence of those silly
romantic emotions she'd been captive to four years earlier.  She clamped
down on that and wiped her eyes.

   "Cecelia is fine," she said softly.  "I'm sorry.  I feel stupid."

   "Maybe someday you'll tell me about it," he said.  "But like I said,
that was then and this is now.  Nobody besides me probably even remembers
that nickname."

   "Mr.  Grimes did," she said, before she could stop herself.

   "I'll have a word with him," said Bob promptly.

   "Please, no!" she said.  "He apologized too.  Don't say anything to him.
It really shouldn't be a big deal.  I don't want to make a fuss."

   Bob's face was serious.  "Listen to me.  We're going to be working
together...closely together.  I'm not going to pry into your private
affairs, but the way you just reacted looked like it WAS a big deal.  I
don't want you distracted by anything that will have a negative effect on
your performance here.  Student teaching can make or break a career, not
because of your skill set, but because of the emotional strain it can
cause. If eradicating that old nickname will help remove an emotional
stressor, then that's what I want to do."

   Cecelia had visions of Bob going around to everyone, frowning and
ordering them never to call her anything but Cecelia or Miss Carter.

   "I really don't want to make a big deal of this," she pleaded.  "It was
stupid.  The boys just..." She stopped before she blurted out the rest.

   Bob saw her getting upset again and gave her another out.

   "We'll worry about what we call each other later.  I was just going over
lesson plans.  That's as good a place for you to start as any.  What do you
say?"

   He smiled and again her eyes gravitated to the lips she had had
fantasies of kissing as she hugged her pillow at night.  When he smiled
like that the cleft in his chin deepened.

   "I'm ready!" she said, eager to get her mind on something other than
that dimple.  She felt hot, suddenly.  "They still haven't fixed the air
conditioning in this building, have they," she said grumpily.

   "It's been fixed for years," he said, sounding surprised.  He went to
the thermostat on the wall.  "Says here it's seventy-two." He looked at
her.

   She blushed as she realized there were other things that could make a
woman feel...heated.  It was obvious that her feelings for this man weren't
anywhere near as buried as she'd thought they were.

   "I'll be fine," she said, somewhat stiffly.  "Shall we get started?"

   ====================================================

   Bob explained that it would probably be fruitless to try to cover five
thousand years of history in two months, particularly with students who
were scholastically challenged.  What he wanted to do was try to teach
these kids how to properly study history, should they want to do so at some
future date.

   "The only reason to study history at all," he said, "is to learn lessons
from it that apply to your current or near future situation.  If all
history amounts to is a bunch of dry statistics, it doesn't do you any good
at all.  But history really DOES repeat itself, and what happened decades,
hundreds, or even thousands of years ago really CAN have an impact on your
life as it recycles itself into the new generation."

   She felt like telling him he was preaching to the choir, but only nodded
while he went on to explain that his intent was to inspire the summer
school class by reviewing the major world shaping events of the twentieth
and twenty-first centuries.  That history could be brought alive because it
could be shown how those events created the culture these kids now lived
in. Understanding why things were the way they were was what he thought
might grab their attention.

   In other words, he'd abandoned the official curriculum for the class,
and was teaching what HE thought would result in scholastic success. 
Cecelia was astonished, and it showed.

   "I wouldn't do this during the regular school year," he said.  "At least
not to this extent.  But these are kids who have to be here for summer
school while their friends are out having fun, and this might be their last
chance to get a diploma before just giving up on the idea.  I guess what it
breaks down to is that in my opinion, the true art of teaching is to teach
kids HOW to learn and then motivate them to keep doing it.  After that they
can learn on their own.

   It made all kinds of sense to Cecelia, but it went against everything
she'd been taught.  Curriculum and approved lesson plans were the rule! 
That's what you did!  You weren't supposed to just decide what was
important and what wasn't.  You had to teach it all!  What he was talking
about, though, sounded like it would be fun, because it really COULD
illuminate aspects of their current lives.  She swallowed her arguments and
told him to go on.

   ==================================

   They kept at it for an hour, reviewing each day's plan for the first
week of class and discussing what techniques would be used to teach it. 
Some of what she'd heard as theory in college took on more meaning as, for
all intents and purposes, he lectured her.  Except it wasn't like a
lecture. It was more like a philosophical discussion, or debate, in which
he was presenting a view he was trying to get her to accept.  She
remembered his style when she was in his class, and how a student could
disagree with him about some interpretation of a historical event, and
finally understood why she'd loved coming to World History.  His style was
loose and, if you wanted to, you got to participate in the conclusions of
the discussion.

   The classroom door opened and Mr.  Higginbotham, one of the vice
principals, stuck his head in.

   "Bob, didn't you get the memo about them fumigating today?"

   Bob sat up straight.  "Yeah.  I just forgot."

   "Well you weren't the only one," sighed Higginbotham.  "Hence the need
for me to traipse around the whole school running people out." He glanced
at Cecelia and his eyes showed appreciation.  "You must be the new student
teacher," he said, and then by way of introduction: "Jeremy Higginbotham,
Vice Principal in charge of discipline, among other things."

   "Cecelia Carter," she said automatically.  She knew him, but he
obviously didn't remember her.  Then again, she'd never gotten detention,
which was Mr.  Higginbotham's special area of expertise.

   "Carter," he said.  "Sounds familiar.  Do I know you?"

   Bob laughed, and Higginbotham looked at him questioningly.

   "She's an alum," said Bob.  "She was one of the good ones...you
know...the ones you never had anything to do with?"

   Higginbotham's eyebrows rose.  "Carter," he repeated. 
"Cheerleader...right?"

   Cecelia's cheeks darkened a little.  Was that the only thing anybody
would remember about her?  "Yes sir," she said.

   Higginbotham grinned widely.  "Sir!  She actually called me sir!  Miss
Carter--is it MISS Carter?--never mind--Cecelia, you have made my day. 
Welcome aboard!" He kept grinning.  "Now leave.  It wouldn't do to have our
new student teacher gassed like all those people in the concentration camps
that Bob here teaches students all about.  Bob we could probably do
without, but the school board frowns on killing off student teachers." He
kept grinning, no doubt at what he thought of as his clever repartee.

   "OK, we're out of here," said Bob.  He stood and collected the papers
they'd been going through.  "We can move this to my house.  I have air
conditioning." He grinned.

   Chapter Three

   Cecelia looked grim as she drove, following Bob's older model Chevrolet.
While she didn't actually know all that much about Bob Hawkins, she knew he
was married.  All the girls had known he was married.  It had been the bane
of their fantasies, back when she went to school at Harper High.  His age
hadn't dissuaded them from fantasizing about him, but it was a little
difficult to pretend you could compete with a wife.

   A slight smile of reminiscence came to her lips as she remembered
wondering what it would be like to be in his arms with his luscious,
smiling lips pressed to hers.  That was about as far as her really detailed
fantasies had ever gone, though she was aware that some of the other girls
would have gone MUCH farther if there had been an opening.  But there never
had been an opening, because Mr.  Hawkins was very married, and he'd made
it clear that he was very happily married.

   What she was worried about now, as she trailed him to his house, was
that Mrs.  Hawkins would see through her hopefully calm exterior and
recognize that Cecelia Carter had the same crush on Mr.  Hawkins now that
she'd had back in high school.

   She stopped daydreaming and noticed that they were in a very nice part
of town that she had always associated with being where the rich people
lived.  She got more and more curious when Bob's car turned into a long
tree-lined driveway that led to a large house surrounded by lovely ornate
gardens.  When he parked his car on the brick horseshoe drive in front of
the house and got out, she put her car in park and left it running,
assuming he had some errand to run that he'd remembered during the drive.
He stood looking at her for a few seconds, and then came to her window. 
She rolled it down.

   "We going to do this here in your car or something?" he asked.

   "This is where you live?" Her voice rose.

   "Home, hearth and gardening.  That is my life outside of school," he
said.  "It's a long story.  Don't get the idea you'll be living like this
on a teacher's salary any time soon."

   "Wow," said Cecilia as she got out.  She noticed that his eyes fell to
her bare thighs as her skirt slid up, but when he offered her his hand to
help her get out of the car she thought she'd imagined it.

   Her amazement--and her vocal expression of it--only increased when they
went inside.  A vaulted entryway, with a mirror-like terrazzo floor,
presented two curving staircases that led to the second floor.  To the
right was a living room and to the left was a dining room with a table that
could easily have seated twenty people.  He led her through that room and a
kitchen that would have made any professional chef's mouth water, to a
library that, other than one wall that was almost entirely glass, contained
wall-to-wall bookshelves packed with both hard and paperbacked volumes. 
The only thing that seemed out of place was a cheap press wood computer
hutch that had been put in one corner of the room.  Along with the
computer, it was covered with piles of books and papers.

   "This is where I do my homework," said Bob, putting his briefcase on the
round hardwood table in the middle of the room.

   "This is just gorgeous," sighed Cecelia.

   "Trust me," said Bob.  "This place takes every penny I make.  I just
couldn't bear to give it up, that's all.  I have a little more than an acre
of land to use to pursue my love of gardening, which is what keeps me
sane."

   "Your wife must spend all her time just cleaning," said Cecelia,
thinking about how big the house was and how much there would be to do in
routine upkeep.  She couldn't imagine Mr.  Hawkins having servants.  Then
again, she would never have been able to imagine him having a house like
this either.  "Unless you have a maid, of course," she added.

   "No maid, and no wife," he said.  His voice sounded heavy.  "My wife
left me about a year after we got this place."

   "I'm sorry," said Cecelia, who felt instant guilt because she WASN'T
sorry at all.  This information was too new to fully process, so she'd
simply said what she was sure she was supposed to say in this situation.

   "It was a good thing, actually," said Bob.  "We only got this house
because she was climbing the corporate ladder and she said we needed to
present a 'suitably successful' image.  She wanted to be able to have
dinner parties and such that would impress her bosses and clients."

   "Well she sure got that," sighed Cecelia.

   "Not enough, apparently," said Bob.  "She'd tried talking me out of the
classroom from the moment I met her.  I had a little money I inherited from
an uncle and she wanted to parlay that into a fortune in the stock market,
while she drove toward a vice presidency.  She had visions of me doing the
same thing and couldn't understand that I loved my job.  She got tired of
trying to talk sense into my stony brain and finally gave me an ultimatum.
By then I was pretty sure it had all been a mistake from the beginning. 
But you can't talk sense to hormones and she was a beautiful, interesting
woman." He sighed.  "She got her vice presidency and suddenly this place
wasn't good enough.  Her new job was in Chicago anyway, and I didn't feel
like moving to Chicago to continue being the man she was embarrassed to be
married to."

   "I'm so sorry," said Cecelia.  She really was sorry this time.  She
thought Bob Hawkins deserved much better than a grasping cutthroat
corporate and social climber.

   "Like I said.  She was a sweet girl before she got greedy, but she
wasn't the woman I thought I'd married, so when it ended it wasn't as bad
as it sometimes is.  I decided to invest all my savings in this place and
bought her out," said Bob.  "That let me refinance, which is the only
reason I can afford this place on my own at all.  This is my retirement
fund, so to speak.  When the time comes, I'll sell it for a pretty penny
and live the life of Sluggo in my golden years."

   "Isn't that supposed to be the life of Riley?" she asked automatically.

   "Riley lives high on the hog," said Bob, smiling.  "Sluggo lives in a
trailer somewhere but has enough to eat and can afford a case of beer now
and then." He looked around.  "Speaking of which, you want a beer or
something?"

   Having Mr.  Hawkins, her history teacher, offer her a beer seemed so
bizarre that the only framework of understanding she could fit it into was
that, like the fraternity boys in college, he was trying to get her drunk.
That led to conflicting reactions.  On the one hand, getting drunk...and
loose...with Mr.  Hawkins didn't seem like it would be all that horrible.
On the other hand, she knew it was ridiculous to believe he'd try something
so juvenile.  She didn't like beer all that much anyway.

   "I'm not much of a beer drinker," she finally responded.

   "What a shame," he said.  "I get mine from a company called Pyramid.  My
favorite is their Apricot Ale.  It's a wheat beer, but flavored with fruit.
I'm not much of a beer drinker either, except for this stuff."

   "Maybe later," said Cecelia.  "I'm not really thirsty right now."

   There were comfortable, padded chairs around the circular library table,
and they sat while he got the lesson plans out so they could pick up where
they'd left off.  At one point they got to a note that reminded him to look
up more information about the origin of cloning and genetic surgery.

   "I don't have any books on that," he said.  "You want to research it on
the internet for me?"

   Cecelia got up and went to the computer.  When she was seated, he leaned
over her shoulder, reaching past her to push the button that supplied
electricity to all the components.  Her nose twitched as she inhaled the
fragrance of...Mr.  Hawkins.  It was difficult to break down, but he
smelled good.  She felt her face flush and almost jerked when he laid his
hand on her shoulder briefly.

   "There you go," he said, lifting his hand.  "I've got broadband, so it
shouldn't take you long."

   She spent the next two hours searching the web, printing information,
and making notes in the lesson plan before he said they'd done enough for
one day.

   "Want to see my gardens?" he asked with a hopeful note in his voice.

   "Sure," she said, more to be polite than for any real craving to see
plants.  The front yard had been beautiful, but she didn't think she'd ever
sit and contemplate it like art.

   He led her through French doors in the glass wall of the library, to a
patio that curved off to the right and became the deck of a swimming pool.
The blue water looked good as the warmth of the sun soaked into her body.
There were flowers, bushes and trees everywhere and she followed him as he
pointed out various plants and named them.  She thought it was funny that
certain trees had to be this or that distance away from the pool, and that
some types of plants couldn't be placed at the bottom of the eight foot
privacy fence that surrounded the pool, patio and garden area, because the
roots would interfere with the fence posts.

   "Sounds like you need a degree to know all this," she said at one point.

   "Actually they do have degree programs for horticultural architecture,"
he said quite seriously.  "If I hadn't gotten my teaching degree before I
got into gardening, I would probably have ended up going that way."

   "That would have been a terrible loss to the students of Harper High,"
she said.

   "Thank you," he said, bowing.  "I suspect someone will say the same
thing about you some day."

   They ended up by the pool and Cecelia idly kicked off one shoe.  She
wasn't wearing pantyhose.  She drew the line at that and was willing to
shave her legs regularly if that was what it took to keep them looking
smooth.  She bent a knee and dipped the bare foot in the water.

   "How can water always feel so cool when the sun is shining on it all
day?" she asked.

   "You like to swim?"

   "It's one of the ways I kept in shape in college," she said.

   "It worked."

   She glanced at him and was shocked to see frank male appraisal on his
face.  She felt tingles of familiar excitement ripple through her body and
she looked away.  The prospect of Mr.  Hawkins NOT being married was
finally sinking in, and she suddenly felt jittery.  She wanted nothing more
than to just fall in the cool water to relieve the heat that suffused her
body.

   "Feel free to use the pool any time," he added.  He turned away.  "I'm
going to get me a beer," he said.  He didn't offer her one this time--he
just walked away.

   She looked around the garden, her eyes flickering past or settling on
splashes of color while she got her breathing under control and reminded
herself that the thoughts she was having about the owner of this garden
were completely inappropriate and needed, somehow, to be banished from her
mind.

   =================================

   Cecelia's emotional condition would have suffered even more had she
known what was going through Bob's mind as he got a chilled beer from the
stainless steel refrigerator in the kitchen.  As he opened it, he wandered
back to the doorway to the library, looking through it and the French doors
at the figure of the woman in the garden.

   She'd always been cute and vivacious.  Sitting in his class in her
cheerleading uniform, she'd caused him emotional distress of his own. 
While she had been undeniably good looking, she didn't seem to have the
clique mentality that a lot of her good looking friends displayed. 
Moreover, she was smart and witty.  And he'd never seen her acting slutty.
He couldn't count the number of times some girl in his class had "let
something show accidentally" as she sat in front of him.  He'd learned to
ignore those little gifts, though he knew, even then, that his marriage was
in trouble.  He was aware that while candy was sweet, it was also very bad
for you.

   Cecelia, though, was more along the lines of fine chocolate.  She was a
good example of the difference between Brachs and Godiva, and while it was
no problem to take a pass at Brachs, well...Godiva took a lot more self
control.

   Cecelia had been what he thought of as the quintessential budding woman,
who had the potential to rock the world, not to mention some man's love
life.  He'd tried not to have sexual thoughts about her, and the few others
like her, back then.  It had been impossible, of course.  She was the
flower, and his subconscious male mind was the bee.

   He'd been tempted on several occasions, both back then and since,
particularly after Sherry had scorned him, but teaching was his life, and
it wasn't worth hazarding that for some quick action with a young woman who
probably had no idea what being made love to was really all about.  He
could get off with his hand when he needed to--no fuss, no mess, no
complications.

   He knew he could have climbed back on the dating roller coaster.  A lot
of his students were being raised by single mothers, and more than a few of
them were ardent about getting to parent/teacher conferences, particularly
since word got out that he was now unattached.  There were hazards
associated with the possibilities that raised, too.  He couldn't give the
appearance that he was flitting from one flower to the other, and he
couldn't be sure that any of the candidates would work out for a longer
term relationship.

   His eyes followed movements of the young woman out in the garden, and he
felt his prick twitch and begin to fill with blood.  She was so delectable,
and still seemed to have all the qualities she'd had when he'd admired her
so much.  An office romance was out of the question, of course.  It wasn't
fair to her, and it could get him in a lot of trouble.  It wouldn't be
legal trouble, but having enemies on the school board was never a good
thing, even if they had no real right to disapprove of who he had a
romantic interest in.  They'd simply label it "bad judgment" and his career
would be over in that district.

   He saw Cecelia wander over to the big, covered hot tub under the gazebo
at one end of the pool.  She ran her fingertips across the cover, almost
idly, and he wondered what those fingertips would feel like drifting across
his skin like that.  He was almost fully hard now and cursed himself under
his breath for letting his imagination run wild.

   She turned toward him and began walking purposefully toward the library
doors.  He took a deep drink of his beer and left it on the counter while
he headed toward the bathroom that would have served the kitchen staff.  He
couldn't let her see him with his cock at full attention, saluting her
desirability.  He'd just made it into the little room when he heard the
French doors open and then close again.

   He felt trapped in the bathroom.  He hadn't had a boner like this in a
long time and was pretty sure the only way to get rid of it would involve
some arm work.  He couldn't very well do that while Cecelia was left to
wander around the house.

   Or could he?

   He pushed the door open and stuck his head into the kitchen.  Cecelia
was examining the beer bottle he'd left on the counter.  She looked so
fine!

   "Hey, nature calls," he said.  "If you want to explore, feel free." He
ducked back into the bathroom and his fingers went to his belt.  If he was
going to have to do this, he might as well enjoy it.

   Closing his eyes, he called to memory what Cecelia's blouse looked like,
covering those delightfully firm looking breasts.  He imagined her going
into his bedroom and lying on the bed.  It was July, and it was hot.  She
opened her blouse, fanning it to cool her skin.  The bra was hot, too, so
she reached under herself to unclip it.  Doe eyes looked at him in his
fantasy and she said, "I'm so hot.  Help me, Bob."

   "Oh damn," he sighed.  "This isn't going to take long at all."

   =============================

   Cecelia did explore, though only tentatively, at first.  She felt oddly
out of place, like she was sneaking around in her teacher's house. 
Reminding herself that she was trying to act like his peer, she went into
the living room and looked around.  There was a sterile kind of feel to the
place and she made the assumption that he didn't spend a lot of time there.
There were French doors in that room, too, that led to more gardens
outside, with statuary as points of central focus.  She noticed that most
of the statues were nudes but didn't assign any particular relevance to it.

   Moving back to the vestibule, she looked up the staircase on the side
nearest her.  The heels of her sensible shoes made sharp clicking noises as
she climbed the stone steps.  At the top, she found a hallway extending in
either direction.  She worked her way down the hall, peeking through doors,
finding bedrooms and powder rooms that had that same sterile feel, as if
they were just for show.

   When she found his bedroom, it was obvious immediately.  It reminded her
of a college dorm room, with posters on the walls and the clutter of being
lived in everywhere.  She caught herself sniffing the air, as if she
expected to smell locker room odors, but the only thing she sensed was a
slight lemony scent.

   Her eyes were drawn to one poster and she gasped as she recognized an
action shot of Rick Allen, drumming one-armed, beads of sweat captured by
the camera, midair as they flicked from the tips of his flying hair.  It
was surreal to find a Def Leppard poster on the wall of the man she'd
fantasized about while listening to that band's music.

   Her eyes finally drifted away from Allen's image and fell on the bed,
which was unmade, the covers tossed carelessly aside when he'd gotten up.
The impression of his head was still left on the pillow.  A pair of pajama
bottoms had been dropped negligently on the exposed sheet.  They were
covered with little hearts in neon colors in a pattern she recognized as an
overlaying rainbow.  She couldn't help but imagine Bob, dressed only in
those pajama bottoms, getting out of bed.  She almost giggled as she
thought of the treasure at the end of THAT rainbow.  The mirth faded as she
closed her eyes and the image of Bob took the bottoms off and stood up. 
Though covered by her eyelids, her eyeballs rolled downward to look at what
her imagination had exposed.

   Her eyes snapped open and she actually jumped off the floor with a
shriek as someone touched her elbow.

   Trying to turn, with her body in the partially opened doorway, resulted
in her left elbow smacking the door frame solidly at about the same time
she saw Bob take a step back, concern on his face.  His "I'm sorry.  I
didn't mean to startle you," was almost drowned out by her cry as her funny
bone complained vociferously about what she'd just done to it.  It was the
kind of pain that demanded she bend over and cradle the elbow in her other
hand, while she whined.

   She felt his hands on her shoulders and marveled that, while she was in
so much pain, she could still get a little thrill at that touch.

   "Are you OK?" he asked anxiously.

   She raised her head, still unable to stand back up, and found herself
looking right at his zipper, which wasn't quite all the way up, for some
reason.  Her mind was in turmoil.

   "Yeah," she groaned.  "I just hit my funny bone.  Give me a minute."

   "Why do we call it a funny bone when hitting it never seems funny?" he
responded.

   Her whimpers turned to laughter, and her body was suddenly released to
stand.  Her face was flushed and some of her hair, which had fallen forward
when she bent over, remained draped across her right breast.

   "I'm sorry," she finally said.  "I was snooping and you caught me."

   "I gave you permission to snoop," he said carelessly.  "You want some
ice for that elbow?"

   "I don't think so," she said, rubbing it.  "It feels better now."

   "Good," he said.

   "You have a poster of Rick Allen on your wall!" she blurted.

   "Amazing guy," said Bob.  "They're one of my favorite bands.  Despite
all kinds of tragedy, they made it big.  It's a testament to their talent."

   "That's MY favorite band, too!" she said, feeling her face get hot.

   "Then you have excellent taste," said Bob.  "Are you sure you don't need
that elbow looked at?"

   "I'm fine," she said.  "I should probably be going home."

   "I meant to ask you if you'd found a place to stay yet," said Bob.

   "I'm staying with my parents until I can find my own place," she said.
"My mother is ecstatic and keeps telling me there's no need to find an
apartment because my student teaching only lasts three months."

   "Horace might offer you a permanent position," said Bob.

   "Horace?"

   "Sorry." He grinned.  "Mr.  Grimes to you."

   "Mr.  Grimes is named Horace?" Her voice rose a whole octave.

   "Now you know why he goes by Mr.  Grimes," said Bob, smiling.  "Besides,
you need more privacy than you'll get at home.  What about your boyfriend?
Isn't living at home going to cramp his style?"

   "I don't have a boyfriend," she said.

   Bob blinked.  How could this lovely young thing not have a boyfriend? 
Were all young men insane?  His confusion must have shown on his face,
because she went on.

   "I haven't had good luck with men.  They're kind of a pain in the
ass..." she blushed at the coarse word, but continued.  "I just decided
they were more trouble than they were worth."

   Bob wondered if that was just her rationalization for having decided she
was a lesbian.  He felt something very near pain at the thought that she
might have gone that way, but it wasn't any of his business.

   "Hey, not a problem.  Your sexual orientation makes absolutely no
difference to me."

   Cecelia was astonished as she saw her hand shoot out and push at his
chest.

   "I'm not THAT way!" she yelped.  "Don't even TALK that way!  My mother
would have a heart attack if she heard that!"

   Bob was almost ashamed at the relief he felt at finding out she hadn't
given up men permanently.  He reminded himself it was none of his business.
"It's really none of her business either," he offered.

   "My mother is an old fashioned kind of woman," said Cecelia.  " She
wants to be a grandma, because that's what she thinks she's supposed to be,
and that's my department.  If she got the crazy idea that I like women
instead of men--even though that's not true--she'd go over the edge.  Don't
even joke about that!"

   Bob stepped back, his face suddenly serious.  "You're right.  I
shouldn't even have brought it up.  I'm sorry.  I guess I still have a
little difficulty adjusting to the fact that you're a grown woman.  I'll
work on that, I promise.  And I promise never ever to mention anything even
resembling your social life to your mother, should I be so fortunate as to
cross paths with her again."

   Cecelia was also having trouble adjusting to her change in status...or
HIS change in status, perhaps.  She kept thinking of him as her teacher,
rather than the man she would be working with for what would be almost
three months.  Still, her upbringing required that she respond
appropriately, so she did.

   "Thank you," she said.  Then, his obvious honest contrite feelings
required that she say more.  "But I think you're wrong.  I mean one of the
reasons everybody liked you was because you treated us more like grownups
than all the other teachers.  You made us want to BE more grown up."

   The grin that appeared on his face made her feel better.

   "I know," he said.  "I've always believed that if you expect the best
from kids, most of them will try to give it to you.  Instead of enforcing
the rules, I try to make it clear I expect kids to honor them.  You
wouldn't believe how much hot water that's gotten me into with Horace and
some of the others."

   Flutters were starting to run through Cecelia's body again.  This man
was so attractive, and so thoughtful, that it seemed to do things to her
even though she tried to fight it.

   "I'd better get going," she said.

   "I'll see you out," he responded.

   Chapter Four

   Bob had fallen into the habit of getting to school two hours early. 
Many of the other teachers shaved that to thirty minutes, a few even less,
but Bob had found over the years that having more time to get ready for the
day to "start" made for a much calmer frame of mind.  That calm frame of
mind could set the tone for the students, too.

   He was sitting, thinking about what it might be like having Cee Cee
around all day, instead of just for an hour, when his best friend Denny
Nelson opened the door and sauntered in.

   Bob had often wondered why Denny and he were such good buddies.  Denny
often reminded him of Al Bundy from that goofy TV show "Married with
Children." Denny was basically an amoral man caught in a moral situation.
He was married to a delightful woman named Helen who was fully aware of
Denny's wandering eye and took advantage of it during their bedroom
games...if one was to believe Denny's description of events.  Bob had no
idea if Helen knew about the excruciating detail in which her husband
described those bedroom games to his best friend, but she never blushed or
seemed uncomfortable when Bob visited, which happened frequently.  Bob was
the adopted uncle of their three small children.

   "Dude!" said Denny as he rushed into the room.  "I just found out about
Cee Cee.  You fucking lucky DOG!" He struck a pose.  "What I wouldn't give
to be able to tap that regularly," he sighed.

   "It's not like that and you know it," laughed Bob.

   "Maybe not, but it CAN be!" said Denny excitedly.  "Man, it's just not
fair.  I get a pimply faced geek named Rodney as my student teacher and you
get the cheerleader who was responsible for lowering more blood pressure
than an alpha blocker."

   "I thought cute girls raised blood pressure," said Bob.

   "Not when every drop of blood in a man's body rushes to his aching
prick," moaned Denny.  "And whenever she sashayed down the hall in that
short little skirt, it was everything I could do to spare a few drops of
blood to keep my leg muscles working." He frowned.  "This just isn't fair.
And you're probably going to take the fucking high road and ignore prime
pussy.  Bob, I swear, if I didn't know better I'd think you were a fag."

   "Gay," said Bob, smiling.  "They call them gay these days.  You have to
be politically correct.  You have access to fine young minds, and shouldn't
corrupt them with stereotypes."

   "The only stereotype I'm thinking about right now is the horny male
teacher flipping up the short uniform skirt of the cheerleader to find her
not wearing any panties.  You should be pounding that pussy into the
ground, mister, and swelling that belly until her uniform doesn't fit
anymore."

   "Don't tell me," groaned Bob.  "You've gone and knocked up Helen again."

   Denny got a puzzled look on his face.  "Not from lack of trying," he
said.  "I'm beginning to think she's sneaking the pill or something.  Do
you know I made a special effort to bang her drum every single night for
two months and she STILL didn't catch?  I would have kept it up, but she
got tired of being the captive princess to the barbarian." He sighed. 
"Man, you ought to see her in that little getup I found on the internet. 
It's nothing but gold straps that barely cover all the good parts.  It's
even got rings on it, to use to tie her up, though she drew the line at
that." He looked disappointed.

   "You know, she's going to dump you some day for a normal man," said Bob.

   "Nah," sneered Denny.  "She loves me, warts and all."

   "Yeah, well wait until some guy comes along and treats her like a lady,"
said Bob.  "Once she finds out there are men who are horndogs only part
time, she'll start thinking about what life might look like off her back."

   "Ha ha," said Denny, a wry look on his face.  Then his face twisted and
he grinned.  "That's IT!" he said.  "You're going to use the old `I'm a
gentleman' thing on Cee Cee.  You'll get her off guard and then get to
actually SEE what's cradled in those double C cups!  Brilliant!"

   Bob's mind jerked as, for the first time, he connected Cecelia's
nickname with a bra size.  With something like horror he realized that if
Denny had made that connection, many other men and boys would have as well.
He remembered how she'd said Horace had apologized, and felt stupid for not
having known why.  And she, no doubt, thought Bob knew too.  That explained
why she'd been flustered when it had come up the day before.

   "Ohhhh man," groaned Denny.  "I bet she's got pink nipples that stand up
an inch.  I remember you could see them sometimes, even through those
sports bras Mrs.  Nicholson made them wear under their uniforms."

   "You need professional help," sighed Bob, who now couldn't get the image
of stiff pink nipples out of his mind.  He was sure that his first
instinct, when Cee Cee got there, would be to look at her breasts, and he
started reminding himself not to do that under any circumstances.  And that
reminded him that she might arrive any minute.  "Now, leave and go get
some, before my student teacher gets here and you traumatize her by making
a totally inappropriate move on her."

   "You know I'd never do that," said Denny, sounding injured.  "I know how
lucky I am to have Helen, and I'd never do anything to risk losing her. 
It's all fantasy for me, brother.  But YOU have a chance to live out my
fantasy.  I'm counting on you.  I can't wait to hear all the juicy
details." He turned to leave and, just before opening the door, turned back
to Bob.  "Do you think they make cheerleader outfits that would fit Helen?"

   "Get out!" groaned Bob.

   Denny opened the door and there Cee Cee was, reaching for the knob.  Bob
held his breath.

   "Good morning, Miss Carter," said Denny, almost formally.  "It's
wonderful to see you again.  Welcome back.  If there's anything you need,
just let me know."

   He held the door open for her and then left.

   "Everybody's so friendly," she smiled.

   "If only you knew how friendly," he muttered.

   "What?"

   "Nothing.  Ready to get to work?"

   "It's so exciting to actually be doing something, instead of just
studying something.  I've been ready since I got here."

   Pointed, turgid pink nipples on soft thrusting breasts appeared in Bob's
mind, pushing toward his mouth as her soft voice echoed in his brain: "I've
been ready since I got here, Bob!"

   He blinked and decided not to stand, since he suddenly had a boner.

   "Let's get to it," he said, trying to think of schoolwork instead of
something else his mind wanted to "get to."

   ==================================

   During that day, and three more, Bob and Cecelia spent the hours going
over their plans for the summer class.  An observer would have seen two
professionals working toward a common goal in what appeared to be a
seamless fashion.

   Of course that observer wouldn't be able to see inside those
"professionals." While each tried to ignore the attraction to the other,
neither was able to completely subvert his or her feelings.  Every day, Bob
admired Cecelia's svelte young body and sharp, quick mind.  She asked a lot
of questions, pointing out the places where what he planned conflicted with
what she'd been taught to expect.  He was pleased that she did so and even
more pleased when she argued with him about some of his ideas.

   One bone of contention was his intent to address each student by his or
her last name, with the appropriate title of address.

   "Teachers have always called students by their first names," Cecelia
objected.  "Honorific speech is intended for one's social superiors."

   "I cannot believe you said that," sighed Bob.  "Didn't you address Don
Higginbotham as 'Sir' just a few days ago?"

   "Of course I did," she said.  "He's part of the administration."

   "That doesn't make him your social superior," said Bob.  "He's part of
the educational team.  If you'll remember, he didn't expect you to address
him that way.  It was a pleasant surprise."

   "Well, it's just polite," caged Cecelia.

   "Exactly," said Bob.  "These kids are challenged.  A lot of people look
down on them.  Is that fair?  If we want them to assume the mantle of
productive adults, shouldn't we treat them with common courtesy, at a
minimum?"

   "They're going to laugh at you," said Cecelia.  "And they won't respect
you."

   "I called you Miss Carter when you were in my class."

   "You did?  I don't remember that."

   "Sometimes," said Bob.  He felt a stab of regret as he remembered what
else he'd called her, not knowing then what it meant.  He tried to gloss
over that.  "Sometimes, I called you what your friends called you, and at
other times, when I wanted you to respond with maturity, I addressed you as
Miss Carter.  In my experience it generally works.  And I'll get whatever
respect I earn.  It won't be based on how I address them.  I can't demand
respect, at least not for myself.  I have to earn that."

   "But you can't be effective if they don't respect you," said Cecelia.

   "True, but I also can't force them to learn.  I have to make them want
to learn.  And once they get that...once they understand that I-or you-have
helped them find the ability to be productively curious, respect just
follows."

   "If you say so." Cecelia sounded doubtful.

   "Tell you what," said Bob.  "You call them by their first names, and
I'll call them by their last.  We'll see if it makes any difference.

   "But we need to display a common front," said Cecelia.

   "Says who?" Bob smiled.  "People are different.  They have different
tastes and understandings.  There's nothing wrong with kids seeing adults
agreeing to disagree.  It's even better if they hear both sides of an issue
and have to think about it to make up their own minds about what to
believe."

   The days continued and the start of the summer session loomed closer and
closer, at least to Cecelia.  Bob was eager to begin.  It might help take
his mind off of how his student teacher smelled, for example.  She used
some kind of subtle body wash or something, and whatever it was, it made
him want to lick her all over.

   As for Cecelia, the fact that he let her form and defend her own
opinions affirmed that what she remembered about him being a great teacher
was correct.  She tried to reduce all her feelings to pertain to his
teaching skills, instead of imagining him in bed under the poster of a
one-armed drummer, pouring emotional sugar all over her naked body.

   The only other thing that took her mind off of Bob was the fact that, as
the date their class was scheduled to begin drew near, she felt like she
was about to step from the frying pan into the fire.

   ==================================

   Friday was the first day the cafeteria was open.  Prior to this the
teachers had to see to their own lunch.  But with a football camp running
on Friday, lunch was being served.

   It was the smell of food that drew her there.  Remembered foods made her
mouth water and she went into the noisy room.  She got in line and selected
her items, and paid the same frumpy woman who had been there for years,
punching buttons on the cash register at the end of the line.  She didn't
even look at Cecelia.

   Cecelia, of course, didn't consider the teacher's lounge.  She had
routinely seen teachers going through the line when she was a student, but
hadn't paid any attention to where they went to eat.  She also didn't
remember that the few teachers that had always stayed in the lunch room
were monitors.  For that reason, she simply fell back into habit.  She
looked for an empty table and sat down.

   She was looking at the food, thinking that it had looked more appetizing
the last time she'd seen it, when someone slid a tray onto the table across
from her and sat down.

   "Hey sweet thing," said a male voice.  It was a kind of voice that
instantly told her this was a male on the prowl.  "You're new here.  I'm
Brian Freeman, captain of the football team.  You wanna hook up?"

   She looked up in disbelief.  She was unaware that the jeans and blouse
she'd dressed down in for her last day before class started, along with her
auburn hair pulled back in a long ponytail, might make her look like an
especially lush senior girl.  She had also been unaware that football camp
was starting that day, and that there would be horny young men in the
school.  This one had that classic smirk on his face that announced he
thought he was God's gift to women and that all he had to do was present
himself and girls would start ripping their clothes off.

   Two more boys sat down, eagerly looking at her, their eyes raking up and
down her upper body.

   "What'd you find, Brian?" asked one.  Then he said to Cecelia, "Pay no
attention to him, my luscious little treat.  My dick is twice as long as
his."

   The third one laughed.  "When you can find it, Lewis.  I'm the man who
can rock your boat," he said, leering at Cecelia.

   She felt her face get red, as anger suffused her whole body, and she
stiffened.  Who did these little pricks think they were?

   "Beat it," growled Brian.  "I saw her first."

   "Ooooooooo," said both the other boys, laughing and holding up
artificially trembling hands.

   "I'm a teacher!" said Cecelia tightly.  She realized, as soon as she'd
said it, that Bob's constant insistence that she think of herself as a
teacher instead of a STUDENT teacher had sunk in.

   "Is that so," said Brian, who didn't seem to be fazed by what was
happening.  "What class are you teaching, 'cause I definitely want to be in
it." He laughed.

   "I don't think so," she said, feeling like things were getting out of
control.  "You'd get an F." She immediately felt like she had said
something juvenile, and felt frustrated.

   "That means I'd have to get extra help," grinned Brian.  "I'd have to be
at your house every night for hours and hours while you...helped me."

   He thought he was so cute, and she lost it.

   "Look, you little prick," she started out heatedly, "if this is the way
you treat girls your age you'll never get laid.  You'll grow old jerking
off, wondering why every other man got a shot at a woman while all you got
your hands on was a piece of pig skin.  You're a sad, sad little man.  Now
go away and leave me alone before I give you detention."

   It took every ounce of courage and control she had to take a bite of
meatloaf smoothly, as if she was unconcerned.  In fact, she was horrified.
She'd cut the boy down in front of his friends.  She'd used vulgar language
and acted in a completely unprofessional manner.  If anyone on the
administrative staff had heard her, she'd probably be fired immediately. 
She glanced sideways and back the other way, to see who was within earshot.

   The boys at the three tables nearby were all staring at her, their
mouths open.  She looked back at the three who had sat down at her table.
Brian's face was red as a beet, and he was clearly angry.  The other two
had gone pale.  She couldn't stop herself from saying it.

   "Go on, run along and play." Her right hand lifted and she whisked her
fingers at them, like they were a minor annoyance.

   "Bitch!" muttered Brian.

   "Detention!" she snapped.

   "You can't do that!" he yelled.  "School hasn't started yet!"

   "Watch me," she snarled.  "You're out of your league, but it seems
you're too stupid to see that.  Do you want to go for two days of
detention, so you have more time to think about it?"

   "You can't do that!" he insisted.

   Coach Nickerson approached.  He'd been getting in line when he saw
something going on in one corner of the lunch room.  He saw his star
quarterback and two others sitting across from a young woman who looked
amazingly familiar.  Then it clicked who she was.  He didn't know what she
was doing here, but it was obvious she was upset.  Knowing Brian, he could
imagine why she was upset.  He was a good quarterback, but a lousy human
being.  He left his tray in front of the entrees and hurried over.

   "What's going on?" he asked as he approached.

   Cecelia looked up.  Her response was habit.  "Hey, Coach." Then she
realized things had escalated.  She didn't want things to escalate any
more.

   "She can't give me detention!" insisted Brian, looking up at his coach.

   "You gave him detention?" Nickerson raised his eyebrows.

   Now she was stuck.  It had become official.  She wondered if she'd
survive this.  She didn't even know if she was ALLOWED to give detention at
all, much less before school actually started.  But another teacher was
involved now.

   "There was a little misunderstanding about how to politely address a
teacher," she said weakly.

   "She can't give me detention, Coach!" insisted his quarterback.  "It's
summertime, Coach!"

   "What did he say?" asked Nickerson.

   The woman he remembered as a cheerleader, and who was now obviously a
teacher, blushed.  She had always been one of the straight laced ones, as
he recalled.  He liked that kind.  The ones who distracted his players were
the ones he wished would disappear.

   "I'd rather not say," she said.

   "What do you want me to do?" asked Nickerson, his voice firming.

   "Coach?" Brian sounded scared now.  "All I did was ask her if she wanted
to hang out."

   "I bet you did," said Nickerson, frowning.  He looked back at Cecelia.
He couldn't remember her last name for the life of him, but what she had
been called came easily.  "What'll it be, Cee Cee?"

   Oddly, when Coach Nickerson called her that, it just seemed normal, and
her mind dropped into what would have been normal if she was still a
cheerleader.

   "I want him to do a hundred suicides," she said calmly.  "And these two
should do fifty.  None of them have any idea how to treat a lady."

   "A HUNDRED SUICIDES!" screeched Brian.  "MY FUCKING LEGS WILL FALL OFF!"

   "A hundred and fifty," she said calmly.  "You can spread them over three
days, if that will help."

   "A HUNDRED AND..."

   "SHUT UP!" snapped Nickerson.  "Learn when to quit, Freeman!  Find
someplace else to sit and finish your lunch.  I want twenty five of those
suicides done before we start up after lunch!"

   "Awww come ON, Coach," pleaded his star quarterback.  "How was I to know
she was a teacher?"

   "I'll make it two hundred myself if you don't get a move on," growled
Nickerson.  "And apologize to the lady before you leave!"

   It obviously took a great deal of control, but he grunted, "Sorry," and
then fled.  His two friends parroted him, just in case, and followed.

   "Stay there," said Nickerson.  "Please," he added.  "I'll be right
back."

   He went and got his tray, paid and returned to sit across from her.

   "You should have taken your tray to the teacher's lounge," he said.

   "I didn't think about that," she said.  "I'm sorry I got your team
captain in trouble."

   "He got himself in trouble," said Nickerson.  "Long time no see.  How'd
you end up back here?"

   "I got assigned here for my student teaching," she said.

   "How about that!" He grinned.  "Well, welcome back.  You obviously stood
up to him.  I know the way he works."

   "He probably hates me now," she said.  "You don't have to sit with me. I
know you need to have a good relationship with your team."

   "Quite the contrary," he said, taking a bite.  "They have to know that
we teachers present a united front.  Besides, you DO look awfully young to
be a teacher.  This way nobody else will hit on you."

   "Oh," she said, not sure if looking young was what she wanted.  "OK,
thank you."

   "No problem," he said.  "Who's your supervising teacher?"

   "Mister Hawkins," she said.

   "Bob?  Good guy.  Got a raw deal from his ex-wife." He blinked.  "I
wonder why I said that."

   "I don't know," said Cecelia.  "Why DID you say that?"

   He shrugged.  "Beats me.  But every time I see him, I think about that.
She ruined the poor guy.  He's got no social life to speak of.  Messes
around with roses and petunias instead.  But he's a good guy and a good
teacher, and I guess that's the main thing from your perspective.  You're
lucky."

   They chatted about the old days then, and twenty minutes later she left
the cafeteria to return to what she now thought of as her classroom.

   She got there first--Bob had left the building for lunch--and was going
over the material again when he returned.  She'd already forgotten what
happened at lunch.

   They worked through the afternoon and finally it was time to go home. 
Cecelia was both excited that school was going to start the next Monday,
and dreading it at the same time.  It showed as she tried to gather up her
materials and she dropped them.  He helped her pick them up.

   "Don't sweat this," he said.  "You're going to do fine.  And I know how
you feel.  I was dreading having a student teacher, but not anymore.  You
just need to relax.  How about I buy you a drink?"

   Her reaction was much swifter than her brain.

   "No!" she said.  It sounded harsh, and a flurry of thoughts rushed
through her head.  "I can't go on a date with you." Somehow that sounded
harsh too.

   "It's not a date," he said, sounding a little anxious.  "It's just a
drink, and I thought you could use one."

   She couldn't help but think back to the one time she'd gotten sloppy
drunk with her friends at a sleepover.  She'd almost passed out, and puked
three times.  It hadn't been any fun at all and at that point, had in fact
scared her.  She'd shied away from alcohol ever since.  Then there were all
those college boys who had tried to push fruity drinks laced with Everclear
on her, for the express purpose of getting her drunk.

   "I don't need a drink," she said.  "I'm just a little nervous, that's
all."

   "OK, OK," he said.  "You're going to do fine.  I'll see you Monday." He
grabbed his briefcase and left the room.

   Chapter Five

   She was almost to her car when someone hailed her.  She turned to see a
man about her age approaching.

   "You're Cecelia Carter, right?" he asked.  His eyes did what every other
man's eyes did.

   "Yes," she said.

   "I'm Ted Masters," he said.  "I'm a new teacher here, too.  I was
talking to that secretary woman in the office and asked about you."

   "Mrs.  Miller?"

   "Is that her name?  Anyway, I have an idea.  It would be good for both
of us."

   "What's that?" she asked.

   "Well, I found an apartment, but it's a little steep for a beginning
teacher's salary.  Two of us would make it really workable, though, and I
know you're staying with your parents, so I thought I'd offer to be
roommates with you."

   "Roommates?"

   "Yeah, you know, share expenses and stuff."

   "How do you know I'm staying with my parents right now?" she asked.

   "I told you.  I asked about you.  I saw you around and I needed a
roommate, so I asked around."

   "Why did you think I'd need a roommate?" she asked.  This whole thing
sounded weird.

   "Actually, I hoped you would," he said glibly.  "And it turns out you
do, so how about it?"

   "I don't think so," she said, almost carefully.

   "Aww, come on," he said.  "It would be fun.  We're both the same age,
and probably have the same interests.  And most of the other teachers here
are a lot older.  It could be a lot of fun.  Besides, that way we don't
have to go through the dating thing.  It's perfect."

   "The dating thing?"

   "Well," he smiled.  "It is a one bedroom apartment, after all."

   "You want me to move in with you into a one bedroom apartment," she
said, her voice too steady.  Unfortunately Ted didn't notice how tight her
voice had gotten.  He thought he was on a roll.  He didn't even notice the
car that rolled to a stop behind him.

   Cecelia looked past him to see Bob rolling down the window of his car.

   "It's perfect!" Ted said.  "We both know the deal.  This is the
twenty-first century.  I'm clean, and I love condoms.  We get to have all
the sex we want and neither one of us has to mess around with dating.  I
mean what if one of us went to a bar and ended up going home with one of
our student's parents or something.  This is hassle free--guaranteed--no
muss, no fuss, just super hot sex and our own little place to get away from
the world when we leave school." He smiled brightly.

   "You don't even know me!" she gasped.  Bob was just sitting there,
listening.

   "I know everything I need to," he said smugly.  "You were a cheerleader,
and you're stuck back in the same town you left to go to college. 
Everybody around here thinks of you as cute little Cecelia or something. 
You don't even have a boyfriend.  Who are you going to date-old high school
friends?  I'm here to solve your problem.  I played a little football in
high school, so I know your type and you know mine.  This is perfect, I'm
telling you.  No complications.  We have a good time, get enough experience
to get out of this one horse town into a GOOD school district in a big
city, and then the world is ours!"

   "Hey Cecelia!" said Bob loudly.  Ted turned around.  Bob ignored him. 
"Do you think you could put your sex life on hold until after the faculty
meeting?  We're going to be late."

   "What faculty meeting?" asked Ted, looking confused.

   "The one for the summer school teachers," said Bob.

   "I didn't hear about any faculty meeting," complained Ted.

   "You must have missed the memo.  Cecelia?"

   "I'm coming!" she said breathlessly.  "I'll get back to you," she said
to Ted, as she almost ran around the back of Bob's car and jumped in.

   "Where is it?" wailed Ted.  "I can't miss my first faculty meeting!"

   "You know where Barney's Bar-B-Q is, out on highway sixteen?" asked Bob.

   "No, I just got to town a week ago," Ted complained.

   "Can't miss it," said Bob.  "Just get on sixteen and go west.  Big neon
sign in front of a quaint little place.  They're going to feed us there
too, and it's great eating." He started to drive off.

   "Wait!  Let me follow you!" wailed Ted.

   "Don't want to be late!" yelled Bob out his window.  He accelerated,
turned left at the corner and then took the next left, too.  From there he
turned up an alley and pulled into somebody's back yard.

   "What are you doing?" asked Cecelia breathlessly.

   "Just call me Saint George," said Bob, smiling.  "We'll give him time to
get lost and then I'll take you back to your car.

   "What about the faculty meeting?" she asked.

   "Don't tell me you swallowed that, too."

   "Well..." She blinked as she realized he'd just gotten her out of an
awkward situation.  "Yes," she finished.

   "I think I'll have a word with Horace about that young man," said Bob.

   "I still can't believe he said that," she sighed.  "That's TWICE I've
been hit on today!"

   "Twice?"

   "Some football player in the cafeteria thought I was a senior.  He and
his friends were telling me what huge cocks they had." She blushed and
covered her mouth.  "I can't believe I said that!  And I called him a
little prick too!  Coach Nickerson had to come save me then, and you just
saved me from that...that...guy!" She started to sniffle.

   Bob reached out and touched her shoulder.

   "Take it easy," he said.  "You're just going through a transition
period, that's all."

   "No I'm not!" she said angrily.  "Do you want to know why I don't have a
boyfriend?" she snapped.  "Because all the men I met in college were just
like that.  And now I'm OUT of college and those men haven't changed one
iota!  Men are pigs.  All they think about is sex.  The only man I
interacted with today who DIDN'T try to put a move on me was Coach
Nickerson!"

   "I didn't put a move on you," said Bob.

   "You asked me out for a drink," she argued.

   "I offered you a beer at my house, too," said Bob.  "That doesn't mean
I'm putting a move on you."

   Cecelia's emotions were already at a fever pitch.  She couldn't deal
with all the things that were rushing through her mind, among them the fact
that the man she still had an unwilling crush on DIDN'T want to put a move
on her.

   "So you're not interested in me at all?" she blurted.

   Bob had been around women who acted like this.  They were impossible to
understand, and it was likely that no matter what you said, it would be the
wrong thing.  But he had to work with this girl.  She was acting like a
girl, so he thought of her that way.  He tried to think of a way to lift
her up a little, without getting her even more riled up.  That necessitated
ignoring her actual question.

   "Cecelia, you're very attractive to men," he said.  "You have to know
that.  You're drop dead gorgeous, and young and full of life.  The
biological imperative drives men toward you.  But that doesn't mean you
have to give up men.  You just have to stick to your standards and let them
know when you're available and not, that's all."

   "I'm NOT available!" she shouted.  "MEN ARE PIGS!"

   "Cecelia," he pleaded.  "Don't let them get to you like this.  Don't
give up on all men just because a few of us are jerks."

   "I might not if I ever met one who wasn't a jerk," she moaned.  At the
same time she thought about how she should be telling Bob HE wasn't a jerk.

   He tried for a little humor.  "So...you're rethinking your stance on
lesbianism?" He smiled to let her know it was just a joke, but her response
was completely serious.

   "Oh, I know I'm not a lesbian," she said quite seriously, thinking about
how she felt about this man.

   "And how does one know that?" he asked, still joking around.

   "One just knows," she said calmly.  "Have you ever been attracted to a
man?"

   He realized she was serious and the grin faded from his face.  Suddenly
there was nothing girlish about her.  It made him nervous, for some reason
that she'd ask him that question seriously.

   "No," he said.

   "Then you understand how one can know."

   "Look," he said.  "I'm sorry.  I was just joking around."

   "I know, but sometimes emotions aren't something to joke about." She
smiled.  "I've had a hard day."

   "Sounds like it," he agreed.  "What seems strange about that is that you
spent most of it with me.  Now I'm feeling a little guilty for some
reason."

   "Well don't," she said.  "I should have included you with Coach in the
list of men who didn't hit on me."

   "I forgive you," he said grinning.

   "But I'm not drop dead gorgeous," she said.

   "Yes you are."

   "No I'm not."

   "Yes...you ARE."

   "Why are you telling me this?" She seemed quite serious.

   "Because you need to know there are men who appreciate your obvious
physical attributes who won't slaver all over you like Ted back there."

   Cecelia felt like there were butterflies in her stomach, and ants
crawling all over her nipples.  She barely stopped herself from reaching up
to squeeze them.  He was so obviously serious as he said such wonderful
things.  He wasn't pawing her, but she knew he found her at least
attractive.  She didn't know what to do about that, and she felt helpless.
He was, in a way, proving that what he said was true, and that was a world
she wasn't sure she would be able to cope with.  She felt shaky and wished
she could just go to sleep and ignore the world.

   "Is the offer for that drink still good?" she asked suddenly.

   "It could be," he said.

   "Could be?"

   "How about we eat something too," he suggested.  "And that doesn't
elevate it to a date.  We both have to eat, you know."

   "Dutch treat?" she asked.

   "Sure," he said.  He didn't have a lot of extra money anyway.

   "You're on," she said.  Somehow she felt better already.  She giggled.
"But not at Barney's Bar-B-Q," she said.

   "Oh no," said Bob firmly.  "Never there.  Have no fear of that."

   It occurred to her that she'd never heard of Barney's Bar-B-Q.  She said
as much.

   "Don't tell me you sent him on a wild goose chase," she said.

   "No, it exists.  It's been there for a couple of years now."

   "So why never there?" she asked.

   "It's a gay biker bar," he said, smiling grimly.

   =========================================

   Tucked in a booth at Giuseppe's Italian Restaurant, Cecelia looked over
the drink menu.  She hadn't learned anything about drinks while avoiding
them.  She found herself telling Bob why, for some obtuse reason.

   "It's an old gambit," said Bob.  "I went through that in college.  Most
men figure out how lame that is sooner or later."

   "I don't know what to get," she said.

   "Try Scotch and Drambuie," he said.

   "Is that bourbon?" she asked, knowing only that bourbon was whisky and
that whisky was hard liquor.

   "No," he said.  "It's whisky, like bourbon, but made differently.  It's
slightly bitter and the good stuff has a smoky kind of taste."

   "Why would I want to drink something bitter?" she asked.

   "That's what the Drambuie is for," he said.  "It's a Scotch based
liqueur, but it's sweet and counteracts the bitterness.  They go together
really well."

   "So it's like two drinks in one," she said, warily.

   "Not really," he said.  "The Drambuie has some alcohol in it, but not
much.  It's mostly for taste."

   "If I don't like it you have to drink it," she warned.

   "Then I'll get a whiskey sour and we can trade," he said, smiling.

   "Sour?"

   "Never mind," he said.  "Just trust me.  This is a milestone, and I'm
not going to screw it up."

   The waitress arrived and Bob gave her the order.

   "What kind of milestone?" she asked.

   "I probably shouldn't have said that," he said.

   "Well you did, so give."

   "You wouldn't like the answer," he said.

   "I'll be the judge of that," she replied.

   "OK, but it's a little complicated." He paused.  "I don't have much of a
social life," he went on.  "It's not that I don't like women, but I'm also
not really interested in trying to have...I don't know...I guess I'd say
superfluous relationships with them.  I mean if sex isn't involved, it
seems like a lot of work to find things to connect with."

   "So all women are good for is sex?" She sounded disgusted.

   "I told you it's complicated.  Let me finish."

   The waitress brought their drinks.  In this particular establishment,
the normal order was a double.  His had a straw in it, hers didn't.  She
took a sip.  It was delicious in a way that was almost startling.  She was
amazed to actually taste the smoke he was talking about.

   "It's not that women are only good for sex," he said.  "But let's be
honest, sex is what draws men and women together initially.  Those that
find common ground outside of sex are lucky.  But if they don't, then the
relationship is kind of empty.  I mean you can't have sex sixteen hours a
day, right?  It doesn't come easy to have something other than sex to grow
a relationship on, at least not in my experience.  And bouncing from one
woman to another trying to get lucky and run into one that's interesting
beyond the physical is...well...bouncing around from one superfluous
relationship to another."

   "OK," she said.  "But I always thought that when a man wanted to get
lucky, it had more to do with sex than relationships." She took a deeper
sip.  She couldn't believe how good this drink was.  It made her throat
warm all the way down, and then built a little ball of heat in her stomach.

   "Now," he said, "and this is the part you might not like.  When I had
you as a student you were interesting.  I won't lie about it.  You were
interesting physically, but you were also interesting because of your
personality.  Of course the physical attraction was a no-no, and I tried to
suppress that, but at the same time I loved your inquisitiveness and your
sense of determination to make something of yourself.  You were somebody
I'd like to have spent a lot more time with."

   Now the gulp she took was because he was telling her that while she had
a crush on him, he had one on her!

   "And then you graduated, and my marriage dissolved, and life got a lot
harder.  But I got through it.  I couldn't find any women who were worth
the effort of getting to know, or maybe I was too hurt to risk more
rejection.  I don't know."

   He smiled sadly.  She looked at her glass, which was empty.  He wasn't
paying any attention to his, so she reached for it and took a tentative sip
through the straw.  THIS was delicious too!

   "And then one day, out of the blue, that delightful, beautiful,
interesting girl--a woman now--walked back through my classroom door.  I
still thought of her as that student who'd made my day so much brighter,
and she still thought of me as her teacher.  It was almost like the old
days.  But it isn't the old days.  We're colleagues now, and it's been a
little rocky for me.  I want to be your friend, but there's been some
resistance to that, because I DO find you attractive."

   He smiled, and this time it wasn't sad.  She kept sipping until all that
was left in his glass were a few rounded ice cubes.

   "I know this isn't a date," he said.  "I don't actually want it to be a
date.  But it IS a chance to spend some time with that delightful woman who
I think is going to do SO well as a teacher and make wonderful things
happen in the lives of a lot of kids.  I don't want to screw that up.  It's
a milestone."

   Not having any experience with drinking a little over four ounces of
alcohol in ten minutes on an empty stomach, Cecelia wasn't aware that it
was causing the lightheadedness she was feeling, while it lowered her
inhibitions.  All she knew was that he was saying the nicest things.  He
was the nicest man.  And she was horny...horny for her teacher.

   "Mithter Hawkins," she lisped, and stopped.  Something was wrong with
her mouth.  "Mishter Hawkins," she said carefully, concentrating hard to
make her mouth work correctly.  "I like you, too." She watched a quizzical
look come onto his face.

   "Oh boy," he said.

   "I'm a girl," she giggled.  "You're the boy."

   The waitress came back and Cecelia reached for Bob's glass, holding it
up.  "I want another one of theesh," she said.

   "Lasagna for both of us," said Bob.  "And breadsticks, lots of
breadsticks."

   "And one uv theesh, too," said Cecelia, trying to grasp her own glass
and having trouble doing it.

   "Just the food," said Bob.

   "You were right," said Cecelia as the waitress left.  "I feel really
relatched."

   "I'm glad," said Bob, smiling.  "Why don't you take a little nap now,
until the food gets here.  I'll wake you up."

   "Am I sleepy?" she asked, sounding surprised.

   "I think you just need a teeny little nap and you'll be fine," said Bob.

   She peered at him and then scooted toward him.  She put her head on his
shoulder.  A little nervously, he put his arm around her and she leaned
into him.  "I don't have a pillow," she said, breathing deeply.  He smelled
so good!  "You smell good," she mumbled.

   "I'm glad."

   He just held her for the fifteen minutes it took for their food to be
prepared.  He was worried because he wasn't sure he could sober her up
enough to get her home safely.  He teased her lips with a breadstick,
though, and she took a bite as she woke up.  She was suddenly ravenous and
ate three breadsticks in a row.  Then she burned her mouth on the piping
hot lasagna, and ate two more breadsticks while it cooled.  Eventually she
could talk again and, by the time they left, she was in remarkably good
shape.

   "I'm going to drive you home," he said.

   "Why?" she asked.  Her recovery had snuck up on her, just like being
tipsy had, and she was just as unaware as she became more lucid as she was
when she'd lost it.

   "You've had a lot to drink," he said.

   "One Scotch and whatever-it-was," she said.  Her eyes went out of focus.
"Or was it two?  I can't remember now."

   "That's my point," he said.  "I'll drive you home."

   "But how will I get my car back?"

   "I'll come get you tomorrow and bring you back for your car."

   She thought for a minute.  "No, I need to get a run in.  It's been days
since I had a good run.  I'll do that in the morning and run down here."

   "Good idea," he said.

   Ten minutes later he dropped her off in front of her parents' house. 
She opened the door and got out.  Then she leaned back in and he was
presented with a view of luscious cleavage as her blouse fell away from her
chest.  She was wearing a lacy rose colored bra.  He jerked his eyes up.

   "I really do like you," she said.  She looked confused, and then said,
"I mean...thank you." The confusion was still on her face when she stood
back up and turned to go into the house.  She wondered why she'd said that.


   There were other things that were confusing too.  Dinner had been
delicious.  She could remember that plainly.  And the breadsticks had been
to die for.  But why couldn't she remember what they'd talked about before
that?

   And why was she so horny that she could hardly wait to get to her
bedroom where she could spread her legs and rub until she got some relief?

   ====================================

   Driving home, Bob wondered if he'd made a terrible mistake.  He'd
practically told the woman he was infatuated with her.  He hadn't meant to
do that.  But, as hard as he tried, he couldn't get her out of his mind. 
Her ponytail, draped carelessly over his shoulder while he held her, had
smelled so good.  The skin on her arm had felt so soft.  It had taken
everything he had in him not to let his hand slip carelessly onto the
breast that was only inches from it.

   And she hadn't gotten mad!  She hadn't complained that he was like all
the other men who tried to get in her panties.  He almost ran a stoplight
as he imagined some faceless man who HAD tasted the delights of her naked
body.  By the time he got out of his car he had a raging hard-on.  There
was nobody around to see it, so he didn't really care.  He already had it
out and was stroking it by the time he got to his bedroom.  He thought
about that tipsy "I like you, too," but his mind jarred with the "Mister
Hawkins" that had gone with it.  Then that cleavage intruded on his
mind...and he barely caught the jets of spunk with a hastily snatched
tissue.

   Chapter Six

   Bob was weeding a bed of Hydrangeas, which wasn't going well because he
kept thinking of Cecelia and wasn't paying attention to what were weeds and
what were Hydrangeas.  It disgusted him a bit that he couldn't control
himself.  She was just a woman, after all, like any other woman, right? 
And, while he hadn't exactly sworn off women, like she seemed to have sworn
off men ...

   That distracted him.  It was almost criminal that she had sworn off men.
That no man got to bask in her beauty ...  soak in her aroma ...  run his
hands over her supple body ...

   He was thinking about how happy he'd been to find that Cecelia was his
student teacher, and how it was quite possible it might turn out to be a
big mistake when he heard a vehicle turn into his driveway.  He looked over
his shoulder to see her car pulling slowly toward him.  He felt a surge of
panic.  He was dressed in what he usually wore when out in the garden; gym
shorts, no shirt, and tennis shoes with no socks.  The shorts were baggy,
which was good because he realized thinking about her had given him another
boner, and bad because he knew if he stood up it would push the shorts
straight out.  He tried to will his unruly penis into softness as she
parked ten or so feet from him.  He stayed hunched over.

   When she got out of her car it didn't help.  She had done as she said
she would, going for a run to retrieve her car from the restaurant.  She
had on a skin tight tank top, and short shorts to go with it.  Her hair was
still in a ponytail.  She had on running shoes, with the kind of socks that
came only to the tops of the shoes, and had little fluffy balls on the
back.

   Even without makeup she looked delicious.

   "Hey," he said, trying to act normal.  "I see you got your car OK."

   "Yeah," she said.  "I have a question, though."

   "Shoot."

   "What did we talk about in the restaurant yesterday?"

   "You don't remember?" He felt a wave of relief wash through him.

   "No, and I don't know why."

   "I suspect you're not much of a drinker," he said.

   "I already told you that," she said.

   "What you told me is you don't drink," he corrected.  "And what I mean
is that when you DO drink, you need to be careful.  I think you got a
little tipsy."

   "I did?"

   "In fact, you took a little nap.  You really don't remember that?"

   "No," she said.

   What she was thinking, though, was that after all her careful attention
to not letting men get her drunk, she'd gone and let a man ...  get her
drunk.  Except that he hadn't taken advantage of her when it happened.  On
the one hand, that made her feel good.  On the other, they had been in a
nice dark booth.  She could remember that much.  And he HADN'T taken
advantage of her!  She chastised herself for thinking that way.  Just
because she couldn't control having a crush on him didn't mean he felt the
same way, even if he did say she was drop dead gorgeous.

   Then she wondered what else she might not be remembering.

   "Um ...  I didn't say anything stupid ...  did I?" she asked.

   "Not at all," he said.  "You were a perfect lady.  Even so that's the
last time I'll suggest you need a drink." He smiled awkwardly.

   She wondered why he was still hunched over down there on the ground,
instead of standing up, talking to her.  He was on his knees, still pulling
up weeds of some kind, alternately looking at them and then looking up at
her over a bare shoulder.  She watched the muscles ripple and move under
his shiny skin and then looked away as she wondered what those moving
muscles might feel like under her hands.

   "OK," she said.  "I just wanted to check." Her eyes went to his waist,
where there were no love handles.  He was in pretty good shape.  She felt
the feelings start and turned sideways.  "I'll see you Monday then?"

   "Unless we see each other before then," he said.  His mouth snapped
closed, and he wondered why he'd said that.  It was sometimes used as a
snappy comeback, but he hadn't said it for that reason.  He realized he'd
said it because he hoped they WOULD see each other before then.

   "Is there anything else we need to go over?" she asked, and realized she
hoped he would say there was.

   "There's always more to plan for," he said, trying frantically to come
up with some important example of that, should she ask for one.

   "I'm still all sweaty from my run," she said.  "I should go home and
clean up first, if we need to have another planning session."

   "I'd hate to take up your last weekend before school starts," he said.

   "I don't mind.  Really.  I don't have any plans."

   "Oh.  OK.  You want to come back here?  I mean we can relax, and it
won't be noisy or anything.  Bring your swimsuit if you want." He closed
his eyes hard and gritted his teeth.  That was the first thing he'd thought
of after seeing her in her running outfit, wondering how amazing she'd look
in a bikini.  He hadn't meant to say it though.

   "Maybe," she said, thinking about the only suit she had.  It was a
one-piece, low drag competition model she'd used in the pool at school,
swimming lap after lap.  The only problem was that it had very little
padding in the cups.  She looked down to see that her nipples had foiled
both the sports bra and the cloth of the tank top she was wearing.  She
could see both of them, even in the heat.  In the cool water they'd spike
for sure ...  if they weren't already spiked just from being around him. 
"Maybe," she said again.

   "Whatever," he said, trying to sound like it really didn't matter.  In a
way he hoped she didn't, because he had no idea where his jock strap was,
and he knew he'd need one if he swam with her, no matter what her suit
looked like.

   "Be back in a while," she said.

   "I'll be here," he responded in his most nonchalant voice.

   ===================================

   Bob stood up as soon as her car was gone.  His prick made the front of
his shorts jut out obscenely.  He left the pile of weeds he'd pulled for
later and ran into the house.  A shower got him clean and soft-pricked
again, thanks to the after-image of her long, lean legs and those
delightfully thrusting breasts.  He looked everywhere for the jock strap,
but never found it.

   They had already gone over all the lesson plans for the first week, so
he pulled out the ones for the second and third weeks.  He figured to let
her pick one of those days for her first foray into running the class,
though he wouldn't require it if she didn't feel good about it.

   Having something to talk about when she returned, he turned to preparing
a tray of snacks, cutting slices of summer sausage, several kinds of
cheese, and then adding quartered tomato slices, olives, celery and
carrots. He didn't keep soda in the house, but he did have bottles of
juice. That would have to do.  He was just finishing up when the chimes
rang.  He'd chosen a tank top and shorts, but hadn't put anything on his
feet.  He answered the door barefoot.

   She'd opted for another tank top and shorts too, with sandals.  Her hair
was now in a loosely woven French braid that lay on her back like it was
hugging her.  She had a plastic shopping bag hanging from one hand.

   She got excited when he told her about being able to choose a lesson
plan to kick off her instructional experience with, but then got nervous as
she looked at the choices.

   Bob would have already covered World War I and how it led to world wide
isolationism.  He also would have covered the purpose and fate of The
League of Nations, after the war to end all wars, and how The Great
Depression played a role in rendering the League powerless to stop Hitler
from advancing so far into his plans that the world erupted into war again.

   That left her with the options of covering World War II, the
development, for better or worse, of atomic energy, and the abandonment of
colonial imperialism, all of which created opportunities for strife and
conflict that were still playing out in the present.

   All of those were intimidating subjects.

   Bob's off-the-cuff attempt at getting to spend more time with her
backfired.  As Cecelia tried to pick a subject to cut her teeth on in a
real classroom situation, the worry associated with that made her want to
study up.  As much as she wanted to stay there and be around this
disturbing and fascinating man, she wanted to earn his approval as a
teacher more.

   "I'll take atomic energy," she said, feeling like she'd eaten something
that didn't agree with her.

   "Great," he said, as if it was no big deal.  "That will be Wednesday,
and you should be able to knock it out in one day with no problem."

   She stood up.  "I think I got enough exercise today.  I'm going to go
home and get ready for this."

   "It's a week and a half away," he protested.

   "Yes, but I want to be ready.  This is all easy for you, but I've never
done it before."

   He thought glumly about the fact that while talking about nuclear issues
might be easy, watching her walk out his front door with the bikini he
hadn't seen yet wasn't.

   ===================================

   For her first day as an almost, real, live teacher Cecelia chose to wear
a light, summer dress.  She had planned on putting her hair up, but was so
nervous she just tied it back in her usual ponytail.  With white, flat
sandals, she thought she looked tasteful and professional.

   Within the first hour of class, however, her whole mindset had changed.
The boys in the class all stared at her as she sat to one side, watching
Bob teach.  As the boys continued to dart appreciative glances at her, she
saw the same thing in their eyes she'd hoped to get away from - frank
sexual evaluation.  She decided the dress was too short, and clung too much
to her upper body.

   When the class left for lunch she told Bob she thought she was a
distraction, sitting up front, and said she'd stay in the back of the room
that afternoon.

   "Of course you're a distraction.  Didn't I tell you you were gorgeous?
But you're taking this much too seriously," he said, smiling.

   "I want them to listen to you," she insisted.

   "And what happens when you get up there?"

   That made her feel like ants were crawling on her skin.  "I don't know,"
she moaned.

   "Look," he said.  "There are things in the world that just are.  That
you're a babe is one of them.  They'll get over it.  Eventually they will
have stared enough and fantasized enough that they'll come back down to
earth.  Just ignore them."

   "How can I ignore them when they stare like that.  They're undressing me
with their eyes!"

   "As would any man who sees you for the first or fifth time," he said
gently.  He smiled, trying to make a joke.  "Maybe the fiftieth time.  I'm
not sure, because I lost count somewhere last week."

   "You haven't done that," she objected.

   "In my defense, it's a perfectly normal biological urge," he said.  "All
of us pig men do it.  What concerns me is that it upsets you so much.  I'd
think you were used to it by now." He frowned.  "That was insensitive.  I'm
sorry.  Nobody has ever stared at me like that, so I should admit that I
don't understand what that feels like."

   "Yes they did," she said, without thinking.

   "Did what?" he asked.

   She blushed.  "Um ...  stared at you ...  and ..."

   "And what?" He raised an eyebrow.

   "Don't tell me you didn't know about all the crushes the girls had on
you," she said, flustered.  Her face felt hot.

   "Oh that?" He grinned.  "That was harmless.  They all got over it
eventually."

   "Not one of them," she thought to herself darkly.  Instead of saying
that, though, she said "So I just let them ogle me and wait for them to get
it out of their system?"

   "Exactly," said Bob.

   "That's not fair," she said.

   "Who told you being a woman would be fair?" he asked.  "For that matter
who told you life at all would be fair?"

   "I'm still going to sit in the back of the room," she said stubbornly.

   "OK," he said, carelessly.  "But you'll have to deal with it sooner or
later.  Maybe we should talk about it in class."

   "What?" She sounded horrified.

   "Well, the women's rights movement is all part of how we ended up where
we are today, and that's one aspect of the women's rights movement.  It's
in on the agenda sometime during class.  We can have a frank and open
discussion about sexual objectification and the tension that can cause and
all that."

   "Oh," she said.  "I thought you were suggesting that I tell the boys how
uncomfortable it makes me feel when they look at me."

   "You could do that," he said.

   "No way!" she yipped.

   "Why not?"

   "It would be presumptuous to say they were all looking at me that way,"
she said.

   "No it wouldn't.  They ARE all looking at you that way.  You know it.  I
know it.  They know it.  The girls probably know it too."

   "But I can't just say they are!" she argued.

   "We're going to miss lunch," he said abruptly.  "We can continue this
there."

   "Oh.  OK," she said.

   It didn't work out that way, though.

   ====================================

   When Cecelia walked into the teacher's lounge with her tray, there were
only a dozen teachers there.  All of them were sitting quietly, most likely
because Horace Grimes was standing at one end of the room.

   "Ahh," he said, when Bob closed the door.  "We're all here now.  I just
want to say a couple of things and then I'll leave you alone to enjoy your
delicious and nutritious lunch."

   Several people chuckled, and then it got quiet again.

   "It came to my attention that one of the new male teachers was making
unwanted sexual advances toward some of the ladies in this room.  That's
unacceptable and I want you to know I would have fired him for that.  He
was kind enough to get embroiled in an embarrassing little fracas at a bar
last Friday night, though, which gave me an even better excuse to let him
go.  I shouldn't have to tell any of you this, but please don't sexually
harass each other, OK?"

   For some strange reason that got some chuckles too.

   "And, if you choose to go patronize a gay bar - and I sincerely hope you
don't, though I freely admit it's none of my business - please do so over
in Dell City, or Silverton or somewhere other than here in Harper ... 
please?"

   That one didn't get any giggles.

   He thanked the room and then left without saying anything further.

   Cecelia was pretty sure Bob had talked to Mr.  Grimes, but as she was
about to ask him about it she saw a man wave at Bob.  He looked familiar
and she was sure she'd seen him somewhere before, but couldn't place where.
She went with Bob to the table and sat down.

   "This is Denny Nelson," said Bob, indicating that Cecelia should sit
first.  "He's my best friend, it's sad to say.  You met him on the way out
of my room a week or so ago."

   "Hi," she said, smiling at the man.  "Why is it sad to say you're his
best friend?"

   "Because I'm a reprobate," announced Denny cheerfully.  "Horace just
doesn't know it, which is why I haven't been fired too."

   "Oh my," said Cecelia, taken aback.

   "You needn't worry about me, though," said Denny.  "I actually know how
to behave, despite what goes on in my dirty little mind." He grinned. 
"Welcome to Harper High, or should I say welcome BACK to Harper High?"

   "I don't remember you," said Cecelia.

   "I think your last year as a student was my first one as a teacher,"
said Denny.  "I teach Spanish."

   "Oh," she said.  "I didn't take that."

   "I know," said Denny, grinning.

   "Denny is a perfect example of an annoying, but generally harmless male
who should be ignored when he misbehaves," said Bob.

   Then, as if a switch had been flipped, all innuendo fled, and the three
of them had a conversation about what kind of tests they liked, and why. 
She didn't have time to talk to Bob about anything else before it was time
to return to the classroom.

   She did sit in the back of the room the rest of the day.  Some of the
boys actually turned their heads occasionally, but couldn't stare at her
for long.  That wasn't true of Mr.  Hawkins, though.  Within the first hour
she felt like she was a student again, sitting in his class.  She noticed
his eyes on her a lot.  And she definitely noticed herself having some of
the same fantasies she had when she last sat at a desk like this, in this
room.

   She wasn't aware that she crossed and re-crossed her legs at least three
dozen times during the afternoon session, or that each time she did so, she
flashed pale thighs at the man standing in the front of the room.

   Chapter Seven

   When class was over and the kids were leaving, Cecelia stood up and
walked to the front of the room.

   "You talked to Mr.  Grimes about Ted Masters," she said.

   "I did, indeed," said Bob.

   "I didn't ask you to do that."

   "I didn't do it for you," he said.  "I did if for the next woman.  He's
a jerk with no morals.  Why expose the kids to that kind of mentality?"

   "Isn't that a little harsh?  I mean you got him fired."

   "He got himself fired," said Bob.  "All I did was send him to a gay bar.
All he had to do was turn around and walk out.  Apparently he decided to do
something else instead."

   "Mr.  Grimes said he would have fired him anyway," Cecelia pointed out.
"Obviously that's for what he said to me."

   "Look," he said, sounding exasperated.  "You've been talking about how
men are pigs.  OK, so I did something about it.  You were just complaining
about how you didn't appreciate it when boys are boys.  It SOUNDS like you
want something done about it.  But when somebody DOES something about it,
you say it's harsh.  Make up your mind, OK?"

   She went home, where her mother tried to have a conversation about what
teaching was like with her.  She was distracted by what Bob had said,
though.  She couldn't avoid the fact that he was right.  She did need to
make up her mind about how to deal with this thing that she now realized
had had a big impact on her life for years.  And she couldn't talk to her
mother about it.  If her mother found out what had happened to Ted Masters,
she'd almost certainly say it was Cecelia's fault.

   The next day she was still thinking about her relationships with men. 
It was frustrating to think about it though, so she let herself be
distracted by just listening to Bob teach.  He talked about how, after
World War I, the United States assumed the role of being responsible for
the whole world.  He gave examples, and asked the kids to decide whether
decisions made back then had been good ones or not.  He added how the war
to end all wars had depleted world resources and manpower, which caused
most nations to center their attention on their own troubles, to the
exclusion of all else.  He talked about how that repaved the way for
fascists and the communists to build and consolidate their power while the
rest of the world licked its wounds in isolation.  "We're still doing that
today," he said, and asked for examples.  He got five or six, smiling wider
and wider as the kids participated.  "So, which should we do?" he asked. 
"Should we get out of Iraq lock, stock and barrel?  That's what world
opinion says we should do.  Should we close our borders and say 'Fine,
world, if you don't want our help, then you can just do it all yourself'?"
An argument between several students erupted.  All Bob did was make sure
everybody who wanted to say something had the chance to say it.  He let
that go on for half an hour as the kids got passionate about their
particular stance.  Then he called a halt to the discussion.  "As you can
see, there is disagreement about how to proceed," he said.  "That's not
new. What's new is that in another year YOU will be voting to choose the
politicians to represent you.  If you run for office yourself, you'll be
making the decisions on what to do about this and every other problem this
country faces.  YOU are the leaders of tomorrow.  And if you refuse to
lead, then you will join the group of millions of Americans who don't vote,
and have to take whatever comes along.  You can't avoid that.  You'll be
one or the other.  "But we didn't cause all these problems," complained one
girl.  "True," said Bob.  "But you either have to solve them or live with
them.  That's just life.  Which is why history is important to understand.
Maybe, if enough people get into power who understand history, and the
lessons we can learn from history, better decisions will be made." The rest
of the week was like that, and Cecelia was reminded, over and over again,
of why she had loved Mr.  Hawkins' class.  There were other reminders that
happened as well.  Each afternoon, when she went home, she had to
masturbate to get rid of the horny, edgy feelings she got from staring at
him all day long.  ================================== Then, after another
weekend and two more school days that seemed to fly by as she crammed
harder than she ever had for finals in college, Cecelia was given center
stage by Bob, who simply said "OK, folks.  Miss Carter will lead the class
today." The things she noticed about the class had nothing to do with the
subject under discussion.  She saw Donny nodding off.  She saw Kinesha and
Katrina exchange notes.  Hector spent a lot of time looking out of the
window.  Ramona and Haley doodled.  And all the boys, when they looked at
her at all, seemed to focus below her neck.  When the final bell rang
Cecelia thought she had utterly failed at her first attempt to teach a
class.  It was easily the worst six hours of her life, as far as she was
concerned.  ================================ It was three-thirty.  Cecelia
sat limply in the swivel chair Bob normally used when he wasn't standing or
moving around the room as he taught.  Bob smiled as he looked at her.  She
looked forlorn, like she'd run a very long race and come in last.

   "Mr.  Hawkins, were we like that?" she asked tiredly.

   "Was who like what?"

   "When I was a student here," she explained.  "Were we that horrible?"

   "They weren't so bad today," he judged out loud.  "Thomas Atwater
actually answered a question.  That's a first."

   "Thomas Atwater is a little pissant," she grumbled.

   "How can you say that?" laughed Bob.  "He participated in your class."

   Because he spent the whole class staring at my ..." She stopped and her
cheeks pinked up.

   Bob knew what she had failed to say.  His reaction to that surprised
him, in a way, because his mouth supplied the word "breasts?" before he
could stop it.  She looked up at him sharply, blushing a deeper color of
red.

   "Yes," she said, her voice level.  "Nothing has changed." She meant that
nothing had changed as far as the boys in this class were concerned, but
the thought intruded that nothing had changed for her either, in terms of
the crush she had on Mr.  Hawkins.  "Maybe nothing ever will," she
muttered.

   "Well, if you feel that way, then at least you know what you need to
do," said Bob, causing her to look at him questioningly.  "Adapt," he
continued.  "When you accept the part of the situation you can't change,
you stop wasting time and energy worrying about that.  Then you can
concentrate on the things you CAN change."

   "So, I just get used to men ogling me," she said.

   "Like I said before.  Boys will be boys, no matter how old they are."

   "You're not that way," she said.

   "Of course I am," he laughed.  "I love looking at women just like
anybody else."

   "You must do it differently," she said.  "I don't remember you ogling
the girls in class.  You don't leer at me now, like Denny did at lunch.  I
think I've kind of held you in my mind as the representative of gentlemen
everywhere."

   "Well thank you," he said, the smile gone from his face.  "But don't put
too much stock in that.  When a man is acting like a gentleman around a
woman it generally means he's either trying to get something from her, or
doesn't find her attractive."

   "That's a horrible thing to say!" she objected.

   "Probably," he admitted.  "But I still think it's basically true."

   "So, because you're acting like a gentleman, you want something from
me," she said.  "I already know you think I'm pretty, so it has to be that.
What do you want from me?"

   A dozen things zipped through Bob's mind.  They were quite similar in
many respects, because all of them involved the two of them naked, doing
various delightful things.  He couldn't very well say that, though.

   "I ...  um ...  I want you to feel relaxed and confident so you can
succeed at student teaching," he said.

   She looked at him for what seemed like a long time.

   "You just lied to me," she said.

   "I did?"

   "Tell me you didn't."

   He opened his mouth, but he felt like a kid caught with his hand in the
cookie jar.

   "I DO want that for you," he insisted.

   "I believe that, but not in the context of answering that question," she
said.  "I'm not stupid.  It can't be that you want me to do something for
you as a teacher.  You know all you have to do is ask and I'll do anything.
You're my supervisor.  What does that leave?"

   "It's a stupid theory," he said hastily.  "And it WAS an awful thing to
say.  Let's just forget it."

   "Sex," she said softly.  Her eyes blinked and her face changed shapes
several times in a matter of seconds.  It was so fast that he couldn't make
any sense of any of the emotions that flitted past.  "That's what you
meant, isn't it."

   Bob sighed.  He hoped this wouldn't drive her away, but he'd opened his
big mouth.  He at least owed it to her to try to put her fears at rest.

   "Look," he said.  "I'm a guy, OK?  You already know I think you're
beautiful." He thought about how, if she hadn't gotten drunk the other
night she'd have known a lot more.  "But that has nothing to do with our
professional relationship.  I'm not trying to get anything from you, or
talk you into anything.  I can't help noticing you as a woman, but I AM
trying to control that.  In a way, I'm the proof that my theory is wrong,
because I'm really NOT trying to get anything from you.  It was a bad
generalization, and I shouldn't have said it.  All generalizations are bad
...  including this one."

   "I had a crush on you when I took your class," she blurted.  It had just
burst out of her, but it made her feel better in one way, while worse in
another.  She thought of several things he might say, but wasn't ready for
what he DID say.

   "I suppose I had a bit of a crush on you too." He looked sad.  "But
those were just the natural feelings that men and women have for each
other," he said.  "It doesn't have to mean anything all these years later.

   She closed her eyes.  Something inside her wanted to shout for joy that
he'd felt things for her, while she dreamed about him.  She knew she
couldn't let out that shout, because he also said what had happened back
then didn't mean anything now.

   And that was the problem she finally acknowledged, in those few seconds.
Her real problem was that she WANTED it to mean something now.

   And he didn't.

   She picked up her purse.  "I'll see you tomorrow," she said, and then
left quickly, before the emotions fighting for control inside her caused
tears to flow.

   ==================================

   In her room that night Cecelia felt like she was seventeen again.  It
was awful, and she remembered feeling awful then too, at times like this.
With a few years under her belt, though, she realized how pathetic she'd
been back then, kissing her pillow and rubbing between her legs while
whispering his name.

   "The first step to solving a problem is admitting there's a problem,"
she told herself.

   She admitted a lot of things to herself that night, before she finally
fell into a restless sleep.

   In the morning, she sat in the front of the class again.  It was partly
because she hoped that the boys' eyes, as unwelcome as they were, might
distract her from the man in the room who REALLY made her uncomfortable. 
As a boy glanced at her, she remembered staring at Mr.  Hawkins.  The boy's
eyes bounced away from her and she realized it wasn't so bad.  He was
seventeen and his life probably sucked, just like hers had.  He didn't
understand girls, like she hadn't understood boys.  She actually felt a
little sorry for him.

   As the morning passed, she paid less and less attention to how the boys
looked at her and more attention to what Bob was teaching.  He was talking
about cultural changes on a global basis that were artificially introduced
as a result of the aftermath of the Second World War.  The winning side
split things up, and not always along lines that honored centuries old
traditions, civilizations, or the partitions between them.

   She thought of the partition that was between her and Bob.  Part of that
wall was there because he was her supervisor.  Some of it was a difference
in age, though that was only seven or eight years.  He didn't seem nearly
as old now as he had when she was a student.  Some of the wall was made of
fear, which seemed odd because she wasn't at all afraid of him.  Maybe it
was fear of the unknown, or untried.  There was frustration in her
reflection.  Some of the wall she had built herself.  She had told him she
wasn't available, which she'd meant, except not towards him, even if she
hadn't known it then.  And her constant worry about men looking at her had
caused him to pull back too, for fear that he was bothering her.

   Part of her argued that he WAS bothering her.

   Another part of her wanted to go up to him, kiss him soundly, and say
something like "I've always wanted to do that."

   A third part of her wanted much more than a kiss, though that was hazy
and nebulous, because she had no experience upon which to base it.

   Yet another bit of consciousness insisted: "You're here to student
teach. Concentrate on that, you brainless slut!"

   Lunch came, and she went to McDonalds in her car, because she was still
trying to figure out what to do.

   When class was over the only thing she knew was that she wasn't going to
be able to just get over it.  Her feelings for Mr.  Hawkins needed to be
processed in some way that would lead to a resolution of some kind.  She
needed some girlfriends to talk to, but that wasn't an option for her.  All
the girls she'd known in high school were married or out of town.

   "Can I have tomorrow?" she asked Bob.

   "I think that would make all the sense in the world," he said,
"considering the subject matter."

   "That's a sexist thing to say," she snorted.  The next day's class was
on the political emancipation of women.

   "I don't think it's sexist to say that a woman might understand a
woman's issue better than a man would," he said, defending himself.

   "But this issue affected men too," she countered.

   "That part I can speak to." He smiled as if he'd won.  She found herself
staring at his dimple.

   "But I can have tomorrow?"

   "You can have tomorrow."

   "Any way I want?"

   He only paused three or four seconds, but it was obvious he was
thinking. "Any way you want," he said.

   ========================================

   What she did was discuss how, up until the nineteen forties, women had
only been allowed to play the roles in society that men wanted them to
play. She pointed out that it was still that way in some cultures.

   World War II had changed that, at least in America, because with the men
gone off to war, the women had to pick up the slack.  Women found out they
could do anything a man could do, for the most part and, when the war ended
and men tried to shove them back into their old roles, there was
resistance.

   "It changed the way men and women interacted," she said.  "Women knew
they were the equals of men, but the men wouldn't admit it."

   "Like anything has changed?" asked one girl, glaring at several boys
near her.

   So Cecelia talked about what HAD changed, and when it changed, and what
it took to GET those changes.  Thomas raised his hand.

   "My mom does exactly the same job as some men in her company, but she
found out she gets paid less."

   "These are very difficult social habits to overcome," said Cecelia. 
"Men have been subjugating women for tens of thousands of years.  The
progress we've just talked about only started happening within the last
hundred."

   "But we're smarter than people thousands of years ago," argued Thomas.
"So why do people still do that crap?"

   The idea came to Cecelia out of nowhere.

   "How should a girl act, Thomas?"

   "Huh?"

   "How should a girl act?"

   "I don't know," he said.

   "Sure you do," she insisted.  "Should a girl carry a rifle and fight in
a war?"

   "No," he said automatically.

   "Why not?" she asked.  "Israeli women do that."

   "I don't know," he complained.  "It just isn't right."

   "OK, we know what ISN'T right ...  what should a girl do, Thomas?"

   "Ask Hector," mumbled Thomas.  "He knows about girls."

   Cecelia turned her head towards Hector.  He was grinning.

   "How about it, Hector?"

   "It all depends," he said.

   "On?"

   "On what she wants," he said.  "If she wants a boyfriend, she has to act
one way.  If she wants a job, she has to act a different way."

   "How does she have to act if she wants a boyfriend?" asked Cecelia.

   "You know ...  she gots to put on lipstick and makeup and dress sexy and
stuff," he said.

   "I see." She surveyed the girls.  "Is that true girls?" She got a mixed
response.  She chose one girl who had nodded.  "Tell us why it's true,
Gretchen."

   "Well you can't get a boyfriend if you're ugly," said the girl, as if it
was obvious.

   Bob raised his hand, and Cecelia looked at him oddly.  She gave him
permission to speak, feeling silly, but he acted like it was the most
normal thing in the world.

   "What about the ugly boys?" asked Bob.  "Can't they get the ugly girls?"

   Gretchen shook her head.  "Nobody wants an ugly boyfriend."

   "Well what happens to them then?" asked Marcie.  She looked, and sounded
upset.

   "They become nuns or something," said Gretchen.  She sounded completely
serious.

   Cecelia got another flash of inspiration.  She didn't know if it would
work or not, but she gave it a try.

   "OK, boys only, by show of hands.  How many of you think that Gretchen
is the best looking girl in the class?"

   There was dead silence and a lot of wide eyes.

   "Come on.  It's an easy question.  How many?"

   Donny Ellis finally raised his hand, like he wasn't too sure about it.
Gretchen, of course, was looking all around.

   "Is he your boyfriend, Gretchen?"

   "No way!" yipped the girl, who looked upset.

   "But he's the only one who thinks you're the prettiest," insisted
Cecelia.  "If not him, who?"

   "I have a boyfriend.  He's just not in this class," said Gretchen.

   "But this class is the only culture you belong to right now," said
Cecelia.  "If nobody thinks you're pretty, then you don't get a boyfriend."

   "But that's not fair!" wailed Gretchen.

   "It's YOUR rule," Cecelia reminded her.

   "I just said nobody wants a boyfriend who's ugly," she complained.

   That led to a discussion about what was more important; looks,
personality or ability.  Bob jumped in with the biological imperative and
said that both boys and men always sorted the available female population
into categories of potential mates.  He said that the girls were doing the
same thing, and that it was normal to send signals to each other.

   It became a game to identify as many mannerisms as possible that could
be linked to the mating game.  One girl said she had always loved to tease,
but had no idea what message that was actually sending to the boys.  She
just thought it was part of trying to be cute and popular.

   A boy asked why, if it was so natural for boys and girls to be
interested in each other, adults kept trying to stop them from doing it. 
Cecelia asked how many of the girls wanted to have a baby right now, and
keep having them, staying home and doing all the work.  She got no takers.
Then she asked the boys if they were ready to quit school, give up all
their free time and support a wife and three or four kids by working ten
hours a day.  None of them were interested in that either.

   Bob interjected again.  "But how many of you think about having sex
anyway?" By this time everyone had participated enough that they all felt
comfortable raising a hand.

   "That's the thing," he said.  "The urge is natural, and it's there, no
matter what anybody says or does.  So your task is to figure out how to
manage that urge.

   "How do you do that?" asked a girl.

   Cecelia took over again.  "The way I handled it in high school and even
in college, was to make firm rules for myself.  I would allow only so much
and then it was done.  It has to be YOUR rule, though, because it has to
mean enough to you to overcome nature.  You make a plan and then stick to
that plan regardless.  If you're not ready to have a baby, and a
relationship gets to that point, you may have to break up.  You won't want
to break up, but you may have to.  It's either that or have that baby."

   "What about birth control?" asked one girl.

   "Then only birth control you can ever really trust is abstinence," said
Cecelia.  "It's just one of the facts of natural law."

   "All of you have options right now," said Bob.  "You can choose to do
some things, and choose not to do others.  You don't have COMPLETE freedom
of choice, but you DO have some options.  And there are things that limit
those options.  Pregnancy is one.  STDs take away lots of options.  Getting
drunk or high may seem like fun, but it takes away the option of
controlling your own body, and if you get too wasted, then somebody else
may control it for you.  I know it sounds old fashioned, but one of your
options is to save your virginity to give as a gift to a very special
person.  Once you have sex, that option is gone." He grinned.  "It IS
possible to just say no."

   In the end everybody was involved in the discussion, to one degree or
another.  Sometimes there were vociferous arguments, and sometimes
everybody agreed on the point being discussed.  When Cecelia saw that they
were about out of time she stopped the discussion and addressed Thomas.

   "You said we were smarter now than we were back then.  Do you still
think so?"

   Thomas blinked, and then looked around.  "Maybe not so much," he said
softly.

   "At least not when it comes to relationships between men and women," she
suggested.

   "Yeah." It was said by at least four or five voices.

   Chapter Eight

   "I knew you'd be good at this," said Bob, when the last kid was out of
the room.

   She turned to him.  The discussion had made her think, and come to some
decisions too.  "I still have a crush on you," she blurted.

   It caught him completely unawares.  "You do?"

   "Yes, and we have to do something about it." She said it very firmly.

   "All right," he said.  "What do you suggest?  You know I'll cooperate in
any way.  I'd hate to ask Horace to reassign you, but if that's what you
want then I'll do it."

   "I don't think it needs be quite that radical," she yipped.

   "OK, then, I'll follow your lead.  Where shall we go to talk about
this?"

   "Why do we need to go anywhere?" she asked.

   "You want to discuss this here?  In school?"

   "Why not?  It's where it all happened."

   "Oh," he said.  "Good point." He sat on the edge of his desk.  "I'm all
ears."

   "This is no laughing matter, Mr.  Hawkins," she said, frowning.

   "I'm not laughing, believe me.  I'm taking this just as seriously as you
are."

   "I was afraid you'd laugh," she said, uncertainly.

   He looked at this complicated woman who had upset his normal, sedate,
almost boring world.  He'd dreaded getting a student teacher, then been
delighted when it turned out to be Cee Cee.  Since then the proverbial
pendulum had swung both ways.  Now it looked like it was on the side of
things that was stressful, rather than joyful.  It was obvious, from her
tone, that she didn't WANT to have a crush on him.  He knew she was down on
men, and what seemed most important now was just maintaining a GOOD
relationship with her, even if that meant a sterile one.  Like her, he felt
like something needed to be done, just to clear the air and so they'd both
know what the deal was.  He'd made a confession of his own, but she had
been so tipsy at the time that she hadn't remembered it.  He toyed with the
idea of saying it again, just to make them even.  He decided that might not
be fair to her and didn't.

   "I'll never laugh at you," he said.  "If nothing else, it's flattering."

   It was much more than merely flattering, but he wasn't going to
complicate her life by telling her that.  "So, what shall we do?"

   Enduring confused and conflicting emotions, it wasn't surprising that
Cecelia reverted to her recent habits.  Classifying them both as
'unavailable' would remove the desire ...  wouldn't it?  She tried to think
of all the reasons they were unavailable.  First among them was the fact
that she just couldn't get past the concept that he was her teacher.  Four
years ago that had been part of the excitement.  Now it was a hindrance. 
There were ethical problems with having a relationship.  There wasn't any
policy that forbade relationships between teachers, but it was frowned on.
And she was only a student teacher anyway, so for all she knew there WERE
policies against that.  Then there was the age difference.  Again, four
years ago that had been part of the thrill.  But now he seemed so much
wiser that he seemed a lot older than she felt.  And, while he had
expressed appreciation for her as a female of the species, that was just a
kindly older man encouraging a young woman ...  or at least that's what she
tried to convince herself.

   Most humans don't do well in a constant state of flux.  They crave some
semblance of order in their lives, a pattern they can depend on to deliver
a modicum of stability.  That is particularly true of relationships, which
they want to be well defined and trustworthy, in terms of what they expect
from each other.  Sometimes, when a relationship is tumultuous, they will
introduce artificial strictures into the association in an effort to force
some kind of stability.

   "It's just the remnants of a silly school girl crush," she said.  Her
voice seemed shaky and she cleared her throat.  "I don't even know why I
told you about it."

   "It's obviously bothering you," he said.  "I mean you don't want to have
these feelings, right?"

   Her mind screamed that she DID but her voice said, "No.  It's not
professional.  It makes me feel like I'm still in high school."

   That cemented in his head that his own romantic and lustful thoughts
about her were counterproductive, and he resolved to resist them even
harder.

   "Well we ARE both professionals," he said.  "I can already tell that
you're going to do fabulously as a teacher, so maybe if we just concentrate
on the professional aspects of our relationship it will be a little easier
for you.  I confess I still perceive you as a student sometimes.  I'll work
on that."

   "Good," she said, more or less firmly.  At least there was a direction
in which to move.

   "All right then," he said, trying to sound perky and upbeat.  "See you
Monday."

   "Yes," she said.

   =======================================

   Kids may be ignorant, in terms of lacking as much education as older
people, but that doesn't mean they're stupid.  The ability to sense another
person's mood isn't something that's taught in a classroom.  It's absorbed
through something very much like osmosis, as a child is exposed to the
psychic energy of emotional situations.

   On Monday morning, therefore, almost all the kids in the class noticed
that something was wrong between their teachers.  The two adults who, last
week, had been relaxed and smiled and spoke with such energy and passion
about history, were now unsmiling, stiff depositories of information that
came out in sterile bits and pieces.  The two had always referred to each
other as "Mr.  Hawkins" and "Miss Carter," but when they said it this week,
it sounded meaningless, somehow.  The mood was subdued all day.

   It stayed that way all week as Bob and Cecelia clamped down hard on
their emotions.  Their verbal interaction was precise and stiltedly polite.
They rarely looked at each other and, when the kids left, they often left
with them.

   Since the subject matter for the week was the United Nations and the
emergence of the Soviet Union as a second world power, and since neither
subject was particularly exciting in and of itself, the teachers eventually
realized something was wrong too.

   Katrina nodded off on Tuesday, and Brad actually fell so hard asleep
that he tumbled out of his seat on Wednesday.  Both Bob and Cecelia paid
closer attention to the students then, and saw a lot of doodling and
staring out of windows going on.

   It was on Friday, when Cecelia saw Haley Simpson pass a note to Lucy
Schwarz, that things came to a head.  She stood up.  Bob, lecturing at the
moment, didn't seem to notice as she walked down the aisle and held out her
hand to Lucy.  Lucy, had been in the act of opening the folded paper and
hadn't read it yet, but there was nothing she could do.  She handed it to
Cecelia, who opened it, read it, refolded it, and returned to her seat. 
Lucy looked at Haley, who had her hand over her eyes.

   The last fifteen minutes of the class was a pop quiz, which drew groans
from all the kids.  When the bell rang Bob collected the papers as the
students filed out.

   He glanced at Cecelia.  He almost looked away because she was so
achingly beautiful, but controlled it.  "Anything interesting in that
note?"

   She tore her eyes off the cleft in his chin and handed him the note,
which was still in her hand.  He opened it.

   "I'm so bored I feel like I'm going to pass out.  I can't wait for the
bell to ring.  Want to go do something interesting after class?"

   "Well," he sighed.  "So much for grabbing their attention and keeping
them riveted."

   "She's right," sighed Cecelia.  She blinked and looked startled.

   "What do you mean?" he asked.

   "I don't know," she said, guardedly.  "I hate to say this, and it's
certainly not a reflection on your teaching ...  but I've been bored all
week."

   "This is a tough segment," he said.  "There's nothing very sexy about
the UN, and the wall came down before these kids were born.  Putin is just
now starting to repeat history in that part of the world, but the terror
Americans felt back then isn't part of that yet."

   "Maybe that's it," she said, listlessly.  "Are we going to grade those
now?" She looked at the papers in his hand.

   "I'll do them later," he said.  "I don't feel like it right now."

   "I'm part of this team too," she said.

   "I know that." There was a little heat in his voice.  "I just don't feel
like it right now, OK?"

   "I don't have anything to do tonight," she said.  "Or tomorrow," she
added.

   "I don't have a key to the building," said Bob.  "The football team will
probably be here tomorrow, though."

   "Let's just do it at your house," she said.

   "Is that proper?" he asked, feeling like he was being peevish.  "I'm
sorry," he followed up.  "Maybe I'm going a little overboard on this." He
didn't have to say what "this" was.  They both knew.  "This" had occupied
most of their concentration for a week.

   "Maybe we're both going a little overboard," she sighed.  "Whatever
we're doing, this has been a miserable week."

   "That's a little harsh, don't you think?" Bob thought about it.  "OK,
I'll admit it hasn't been the best week we've had."

   His comment could have been taken in several ways, including the way he
meant it, which was a simple admission that it was a tough week.  What
Cecelia heard, though, was really what amounted to very few of the words in
that sentence.  What she concentrated on was "week we've had." The
importance of that was the "we" in the phrase, because her subconscious
mind had been wanting there to be an "us" all along.  When he lumped the
two of them into that little two-letter word, something clicked in her mind
and, suddenly, there really was an "us."

   It wasn't a paradigm shift in her thinking, or anything like that, but
it was a small change, much like a tiny pebble rolling to a new position on
a downhill slope.  The first result of that shift was that she was more
convinced than ever that the TWO of them should grade those papers.

   "Seven O'clock tonight?" she asked.  "Your house?"

   "OK," sighed Bob.  It was the first time all week he'd felt hopeful
about anything, even if he didn't think about it that way.

   ====================================

   When a pebble shifts, it acts on other pebbles.  The physics of it is
pretty simple.  Force is applied and the object impacted reacts.  That
object moves, impacting others and so on.  It sounds benign, but it's how
avalanches get started.

   When Cecelia arrived at Bob's house ten minutes early, still dressed in
the blouse and skirt she had worn to school that day, it was because some
part of her was impatient to get there.  Bob was ready for his visitor
early too, for the same reason.  On the surface, the mountain was stable,
the pebbles at rest.  There was an undercurrent of emotion, but it was well
dampened.

   If we can take the analogy a step further and call emotions pebbles of a
sort, the pebbles started moving around as Bob and Cecelia graded the
results of the pop quiz.  The first set of tests were shocking.  As they
graded more and more, their emotional levels fluctuated.  By the time they
were done it looked like the kids hadn't heard anything all week.

   "This is awful!" complained Cecelia.  Bob had seen these kinds of
results in the past, but not for a few years.  HE knew what they meant. 
They meant that the teaching had been substandard.  He had done all the
teaching that week, so he was ready to bear the weight of the problem.  His
primary emotion was depression.  He knew it would pass, and that he'd deal
with this problem, but right about then he was depressed.

   "This is an example of piss poor teaching," he sighed.

   Cecelia's emotions were at a much higher level.  It wasn't supposed to
work this way!  She KNEW he was a good teacher, and it upset her more than
she realized when she heard him run himself down.

   "You might be a lot of things, but one thing you aren't is a piss poor
teacher," she said firmly.

   "Thanks," he said, feeling a little better.  "But the truth is that's
what this means.  We didn't ...  I didn't present the material in a
memorable way.  It's just that simple.  It can be fixed.  That's one of the
reasons we give tests like this.  We learn things."

   "But what happened?" she asked.  "We were doing so well.  The kids were
all interested and taking part.  Then this week, everything fell apart.  I
don't understand what ..." She stopped suddenly.  Bob could see white all
the way around her pupils.  "This is all my fault," she moaned.

   "I was the teacher, Cecelia," he said gently.

   "Don't you get it?  Last week we were a team.  And I insisted that we
put some distance between us, and when that happened, we quit being a
team."

   "There's nothing we can do about that," he said softly.  "It's the way
things have to be."

   "But it's not working!" she snapped.  "You're a better teacher than
this." She threw four tests up in the air as the pebbles of her emotions
surged.  "And I wouldn't have done any better.  This week really WAS
miserable for me!" She flopped her head down on her forearms.

   "Hey," he said, moving behind her.  He laid his hands on her shoulders.
"Take it easy.  We'll get through this."

   This time when he said "we" the pebbles of her emotions rolled all the
way over, hitting others until quite suddenly the avalanche was born.  It
wasn't moving fast, but it was moving with the kind of inevitably that an
experienced woman would have recognized.  The feel of his hands on her
shoulders only made things more frantic in the part of her brain that
demanded action.

   She stood, as the avalanche gathered speed, and felt the absence of his
hands as they left her shoulders.  She moved sideways, to clear the chair
and turned to face him.  Her eyes lit on the dimple in his chin and she
realized she hadn't looked at it all week.  She felt the loss of that ... a
whole week of looking at him lost, never to be reclaimed.  The avalanche
moved her whole body towards his and the sum of her pebbles crashed into
the sum of his as, without consciously deciding to do so, she pressed her
lips to his.

   She was already lost in the rumble and fury of the avalanche, and she
held him fiercely, as if he were her only hope to survive it.  The sum of
his pebbles, also held in check for a week, gave way as hers impacted his,
and his hands went to her back, where they had wished to slide for much
more than a week.

   They were like teenagers who are swept away, kissing almost violently as
each tries to find some other thing to bring to the party.  Her hands slid
down his back to rest on the back of his pants.  His copied them and he
pulled, letting his stiff prick announce itself.  Her brain knew what that
stiff thing meant, but it didn't react to it like it had in the past.  The
avalanche was moving too quickly to stop now and that dim and dusty stop
sign that had always caught her attention before was buried under the
debris of her emotions.

   He found himself cupping her breasts with both hands, squeezing them,
and couldn't remember moving them there.  Her hands slid from his butt to
his head, pulling it to her face while giving his hands more room to do
what she'd always stopped other men from doing.

   The avalanche moved on, inexorably obeying nature's laws.  His fingers
unbuttoned her blouse and pushed it off her shoulders.  Her arms loosened
long enough to let the cloth fall to the floor behind her.  Her hands came
up and loosened the bra three times as quickly as he could have, and then
pulled it off.  His hands were waiting, eager to feel the heavy, warm
globes in them.  She moaned as her naked breasts were touched for only the
second or third time in her life.  Again, the stop sign associated with
them was a bent and useless thing as the avalanche rolled on.

   Both of them knew where this was going, and neither had any tools to
slow or stop the headlong rush.  The inevitability of it all was almost
like fate, which cannot be altered.  Once the die are cast, the only
question is what numbers will come up.

   His fingers started at his belt, only to be pulled back to her breasts,
after which her own fingers finished what his had started.  His pants fell
to his ankles and lay there.

   They had to breathe, and their unbroken passionate minutes-long kiss had
finally robbed them of the ability to get enough air in, so their lips
parted, but only enough to suck in great gasps of air.  Their tongues
flicked, to maintain oral contact while they breathed, licking at each
other, straining to stay in touch.  His fingers finally found her nipples
and milked them gently.  She hissed, and mashed her lips against his again,
pulling at his T shirt.  They had to part long enough to get the shirt past
his head, but it was simply both leaning back and then leaning forward
again to weld their lips together again.

   His hands fumbled aimlessly along the waistband of her skirt, unable to
find a catch, until in frustration they simply lifted the skirt up so that
he could press the erection in his jockey shorts against the panties under
her skirt.  In only a few seconds she learned the entirely new art of
grinding against that hard lump.  She was rewarded with almost electric
zings that only served to make the avalanche move even faster.

   Suddenly he dragged his lips from hers, unable any longer to resist the
call of cherry-tipped breasts, demanding the services of his lips.  While
he sucked in an elongated, conical nipple, he reached to free his feet from
the tangle of his pants.  Then, still unable to figure out the clasp to the
skirt, his hands simply slid under it again to pull her panties down to her
knees.

   His mouth on her breast was something she had never allowed before, and
something she could not have been prepared for.  The sensations converted
her mind into a cloud, where everything was soft and perfect.  The
avalanche moved on, but it was under her now, somewhere down there, while
she lay on this lovely soft cloud feeling lovely soft things.  When his
mouth shifted to the other nipple, and she felt a dim constriction around
her knees, she wiggled them until the constriction fell and she could step
out of it, kicking it away.

   Then she felt the bite of the edge of the table across her butt,
softened only by the one thin layer of the cloth of her skirt.  He reached
to drag his prick out of his shorts, pulling the waistband only below his
balls, and fisted it, trying to find the target the avalanche now demanded.

   Cecelia came from a conservative family.  Her mother had insisted that
only pads were decent, and Cecelia had obeyed her mother all these years.
When the tip of Bob's rigid prick found the spot, all the pent up lust he'd
had for this woman provided the power to his muscles to thrust forward,
ripping her hymen to shreds within the space of less than a second.  He
felt the resistance at half a second, and felt his penis actually bend as
the tough membrane tried to deny him.  But desire overcame flesh and a
quarter second later he was buried in her tight sheath.

   Realization came to both of them at exactly the same time.  In his case,
it registered in his conscious mind what that resistance had meant.  In her
case, her mind registered pain she wasn't prepared to deal with.  Her kiss
turned to a cry, muffled, at first, and then a loud groan as her lips left
his to vent her pain.

   Now all of Bob's body was as rigid as his phallus as he grappled with
the fact that he had just taken Cecelia's virginity, something he'd thought
was already just a dim memory to her.  He felt guilt, because he HAD simply
taken it, like some cave man.  At the same time another part of his brain
felt the muscles in her newly deflowered pussy fighting the intruder,
trying to squeeze it out.  He stepped back and there was a liquid, sucking
pop as he pulled his red tinted prick from her body.  Both looked down to
see the evidence of what, at the age of twenty-two, had finally beaten down
her defenses ...  literally ...  and made her a woman.

   "I didn't know!" he gasped.

   "Owwwww," she complained, resisting the urge to press against her
damaged pussy lips, like putting pressure on any other owie.

   "I'm so sorry!" he cried.  "Cee Cee, I didn't KNOW!"

   It was him addressing her as Cee Cee that caused her reaction.  Mr. 
Hawkins had actually fucked her!  It had been everything she ever dreamed
of, up to the point where it suddenly hurt so bad that she wanted to cry.
It wasn't fair!  It was supposed to be wonderful!  And, because she felt
like a teenager again, and was thinking of him as her teacher, she blamed
it on him.  He was supposed to know how to do this thing!

   He was already struggling into his pants, and that brought her back to
the present, and who she really was, and who HE really was.  She felt more
pain now, but it was only the pain of failure.  Physically she was a little
uncomfortable, but that was all.  The primary pain was emotional, as she
saw a man who was beating himself up for something she was well aware - now
- that she had been an eager participant in.

   For the first time, she thought of him as Bob and it seemed right.

   "Bob," she said.

   "I'm so sorry," he moaned.  "I would never have done it if I'd known.  I
can't give it back to you.  I'm so, so sorry!"

   "STOP!" she yelled.  He looked up at her, blinking, while he fastened
his pants.  She realized all of her was still on display and stepped onto
both feet, letting her skirt fall to cover her down there.  Her breasts
were still bare, but she resisted the urge to cover them with her hands.

   "It's not your fault," she said.

   "Of course it's my fault!" he yelled.  "I didn't even ASK you!"

   She bent over to pick up her blouse and put it on.  She didn't want to
take the time to put on her bra in front of him.  She began buttoning the
blouse.

   "And I didn't tell you anything," she said.  "I wasn't fighting you off,
Bob."

   "I know, but if I'd have known, I would have done everything
differently," he moaned.  "I didn't want to hurt you."

   "Too late for that," she sighed, remembering the remarkable pain.  "But
what's done is done, OK?  In a way I'm glad it's done."

   "How can you say that?" he moaned.

   "I've been worried about it for years," she said.  "I don't have to
worry about it any more."

   "But I robbed you of something precious," he groaned.

   She thought about saving her virginity all these years and why she had
done that.  Her mother would have said she was saving it as a gift for the
one most special man in all the world.  But in truth, as she reflected on
it, most of why she'd denied men access to her womb had more to do with the
complications associated with having sex, including pregnancy and disease.
It had been purely practical reasons that had kept her from letting any man
do this before now.

   Which led, logically, to thoughts of why she HAD let this happen now. 
She didn't think of it as an emotional avalanche that was out of her
control.  To her it was quite reasonable to believe that this was the first
man to come along who was worthy of the gift she had given him.  True, the
gift was a little damaged in the giving, but up until it hurt like fire she
had been very thankful for it.

   "I don't think so," she said slowly.  She looked at him.  "I didn't come
here expecting this to happen, and I'm not sure why it did, but I CAN tell
you that I'm not all teary eyed because Bob Hawkins got my virginity.  OK?"

   "Are you sure?" He looked like a hopeful puppy dog.

   "I'm sure."

   She thought some more.  She wasn't sure what she was supposed to do now.
What was the first aid for a busted cherry?  She didn't remember them
covering that in sex ed.  But she had to do something, right?  She was
bleeding, after all.  It occurred to her that a woman with a college degree
should know these things and she felt like she had just bombed a pop quiz
herself.

   "I'm going to go now," she said, still trying to figure out what to do.

   "OK," he said weakly.

   She looked at his chest and felt the urge to kiss him.  She thought it
must surely be protocol to kiss after something like this, but somehow it
didn't feel like the right thing to do.

   "I'll see you Monday," she said.

   "Yes ...  Ok.  I'm really sorry."

   "I told you it's all right!" she almost snapped.  She picked up her bra
and panties, wadding them into a ball, and then almost ran to the door.  As
she started the car she was still processing all this, but the fact was
that the more she thought about it, the more it seemed like Karma had taken
a hand in things.

   After all, when all her friends were losing their virginities, the man
she dreamed of taking hers was the man who had just done it.

   Chapter Nine

   Bob had a rough night.  In his opinion, he'd acted like a cave man, and
ruined all possibility that there could ever be anything good between them
in the future.  That it had happened at all was suggestion there could have
been that tantalizingly sweet future.  How it had happened had taken it all
away from him.

   He could have blamed it on a lot of things, but he didn't.  He took
responsibility for it himself.

   ==================================

   Had Bob known what was going on in Cecelia's mind, he might have been a
bit less hard on himself.  The real problem was that she didn't stay around
long enough to talk about how she felt about it.

   Part of the evolution in her attitude was that, when she got home, she
expected what happened to show on her, like some scarlet letter.  She
expected her mother to take one look at her and scream "WHAT HAVE YOU
DONE?!" When, instead, her mother simply glanced at her and said "How did
the tests turn out?" she was flatly amazed that what had happened
apparently didn't show.

   "Not so good," she said softly.

   "What does that mean?" asked her mother.

   "It means we have a lot of work to do," said Cecelia.  "We have to do
better."

   "I know you can," said her mother supportively, and then went back to
her knitting.

   In her room, Cecelia reflected on how different her mother's reaction
had been to what she had expected.  In fact, ALL of this losing of her
virginity had been different from what she had expected.  It HAD gone
poorly, just like this last week of instruction, and she had an unproven
suspicion that it had gone poorly for the same reasons.

   The more she thought about it the more she saw parallels between how
suppressed or repressed emotion had affected both the way Bob taught and
the way her defloration had gone.  In both cases their emotions had
affected the situation negatively.  In one case, it had caused a lethargy
in Bob that had bled over to the kids.  In the other it had caused them to
rush forward, when they should have taken their time.

   As she got into bed she thought it was almost funny that her main
complaint about losing her virginity was that they hadn't taken their time.
She had already adapted to the idea it was gone, and she didn't miss it. 
She was also quite sure she'd never be sorry it was Bob Hawkins who was her
first, even if it had ended unhappily.

   As she put her head on her pillow, Cecelia thought that mourning the
fact that she hadn't thought out losing her virginity wouldn't fix
anything. And mourning the fact that her stubborn attitude toward how she
felt about Bob had affected the kids wouldn't solve anything.

   Just before she drifted off to sleep, her last waking thought was that
both situations COULD be rectified with more thorough planning and
preparation.

   Because his gardens were so extensive, Bob used an under-layment to
avoid most weeds.  But there were always a few that defeated the black
porous cloth he put around most of his plants, and he always had weeds to
pull.  In a way it worked out for him, because whenever Bob was down about
something, pulling weeds seemed to soothe him.

   He was jerking them with a vengeance Saturday afternoon, thinking of
each one of them as his own traitorous penis when he heard a car drive up
the driveway.  A glance told him it was Cecelia, and he wondered why she
was there.

   He had no problem standing today, because his prick had been limp ever
since he had hurt the woman he was very afraid he was in love with.  He
knew nothing could come of that, and it was a much more settled knowledge
than before, when his fantasies were still somewhat alive.  He'd blown it.
Cecelia specifically hated cave men who did exactly what he'd done, and you
don't get second chances from women like that.

   She got out, dressed in shorts and a tank top, with sandals on.  Her
hair was in a French braid again.  She looked completely normal, completely
beautiful, and his heart ached.  She had a plastic shopping bag hanging
from her hand again, just like last time.

   "Hi," she said.

   "Hi," he returned.

   "You still mad at me?" she asked.

   He goggled.  "Me?  Mad at you?  You can't be serious."

   "I should have told you I was a virgin," she said.

   "I should have asked," he barked.  "I did the very thing you said you
hate.  I mauled you."

   "I know," she said.  "But what's done is done.  You didn't really hurt
me.  Well, actually, it hurt like hell, but not for long."

   "I am so very sorry," he moaned.  "I know I can never make it up to you,
but ..."

   She held up a hand.  "It was a mistake, OK?  Everybody makes them.  We
were both at fault.  How about we just forget it, OK?  I don't want to
relive that every day for the rest of the summer.  And this thing between
us is affecting the kids, so we need to get over it because of that too."

   "I don't know if I can," he said softly, brushing dirt off his hands.

   "Of course you can," she said.  "I have a plan, actually."

   "A plan?"

   She held up the plastic bag.  "I brought my swimsuit.  You said I could
use the pool any time, remember?  So come swimming with me and we can talk
about my plan."

   "Swimming," he said, his voice dull.  He'd wanted to see her in a bikini
before, but it would only cause problems now.

   "You know, where you get in the water and splash around?" She smiled.

   He was astonished she could be so forgiving, and the last thing he
wanted to do was offend her again.

   "Look," he said.  "You go swimming.  When you're done, get dressed and
we can talk."

   She tilted her head at him, as if she were evaluating him in some way.
Then she reached in the bag and pulled out a black handful of cloth.  She
put the plastic bag on the ground and held out the cloth.  It was one-piece
swimsuit.

   "It doesn't show that much, Bob.  And I'm not afraid of you.  We're both
adults, remember?  We can work this out.  We NEED to work this out."

   "I thought we did," he sighed.  "But what we worked out didn't work very
well."

   "I thought a lot about that," said Cecelia, "and I think I know what
went wrong.  Come on.  I want to tell you about my plan.  I think it's a
good one, but I need your input."

   "OK," he sighed, standing up.

   "Where can I change?" she asked.

   "Pick any bedroom upstairs," he said.  "I'll meet you out there."

   She picked a bedroom that had a window looking out on the pool.  She got
undressed and performed one small chore that required she be naked.  Then
she put on the suit she had brought to swim in, adjusted it just the way
she wanted it, and then waited by the window.  She didn't move until she
saw him walk out in surfer's baggies and dive into the pool.  Then she put
on a short robe and, barefoot, headed downstairs to the pool.

   =====================================

   Bob had swum four laps by the time he saw her come out of the house. 
She had on a short terrycloth robe that would double as a towel.  He
berated himself mildly for being so out of practice at this kind of thing
that he'd forgotten to bring towels out.

   He swam to the shallow end and stood up, figuring she would get in that
end and they would talk while she soaked in the cool water.  She took the
robe off and he stared.

   What she was wearing was no black one-piece suit.  It was Canary yellow
and it went beautifully with her hair, which was down now.  Compared to
some, it could be called modest, but it was made to show off what it
covered, while covering it.  The cups covered enough, but left a wide swath
of skin bare between her breasts and were connected in the front by two
silver rings that weren't quite complete circles and could obviously be
unhooked easily.  From the front the bottoms appeared as a short, wide V,
with the straps rising high over the hips.  The bottom part exposed an area
of skin that, on most women, would grow pubic hair.

   She spun in a slow circle, and he saw that the fabric in this bikini was
so thin as to telegraph the shape of the skin under it, rather than conceal
it.  Her nipples were prominent, and he could clearly see the shape of her
pussy lips.

   "Do you like it?" she asked.  She walked towards him and his eyes seemed
to bounce up and down in time with her breasts.  A very small part of his
mind notified him that this suit was NOT actually designed for swimming.

   She stepped down the steps, coming toward him with a tentative smile on
her face.

   ============================

   Cecelia knew how she looked.  She'd gone shopping that morning for the
suit, but had to go all the way to a really big mall in a city forty miles
away to find it.  She had stared at her reflection in the mirror for almost
half an hour before she decided to buy it.  It had taken her the rest of
the day to get ready for her body to be displayed in that suit, and her
body itself was no problem.

   But her insides were seething.  She was afraid this was all a horrible
mistake, that she was acting like a slut, and that he would SEE her as a
slut.  From her viewpoint nothing was farther from the truth.  The fact was
that he was the only person on earth who would EVER see her in this suit.
But he didn't know that.

   "I got it just for you," she said, trying to tell him something she
didn't know how to say.

   "Cecelia," he said, his voice low and slow.

   "Hear me out," she said, before he could tell her to go get some clothes
on.  "I think I know what happened in class, and I think I know why what
happened between us was so ...  unhappy."

   He didn't know what to do with his eyes.  He couldn't keep them off her
breasts, but he knew he should look at her face.  He was confused, because
she had SHOWN him the other suit, and this one didn't make any sense at
all.

   "It was a one-piece," he said dully.  "I know it was."

   "I couldn't show you this one until you were already out here," she
said. "You wouldn't have gotten in the pool with me."

   "Why?" he asked.  "What's going on?"

   "When I was assigned to you we did lots of planning for the class," she
said.

   "Yes," he agreed.

   "We felt things for each other ...  right?" This was one of two parts
she wasn't sure about.  His actions the night before had suggested he was
much more interested than she'd originally thought, but maybe it was just
hormones.

   He looked conflicted.

   "Tell me the truth, Bob," she said.

   "OK, yes," he admitted.  "But I didn't think you wanted that."

   "I didn't either," she said.  "Please, just let me go on."

   "OK."

   "We felt things for each other but didn't think it would be a good idea
to pursue that.  I don't know how you felt, but It was driving me crazy.  I
had this huge crush on you when I was in high school, and I kept telling
myself that was all this was ...  that crush ...  rekindled or something."

   He nodded.

   "But it was more than that," she said.  "When we tried to MAKE it go
away, I couldn't get over it.  And it affected how you taught.  That means
YOU can't get over it either ...  right?" This was the other part she
wasn't sure about.  She was making an assumption, and she couldn't demand
the truth this time.

   He frowned.  He knew she was right, but he wasn't sure admitting it
would be the right thing.  Her suit spoke volumes, but he was nervous that
her inexperience might be sending her false signals.  Then again, she was
adult enough to face this head on.  How could he do less?

   "OK," he said.  "I told you something when we were at the restaurant,
but you were drunk and didn't remember it the next day.  I was going to let
it go, because I was sure YOU didn't want anything between us."

   "What was it?" she asked.

   "I had a crush on you when you were in my class too," he said, feeling
foolish.  "And when you walked in the door as my student teacher ...  it
was still there.  I thought I could beat it, but you're right.  I don't
think I can any more."

   She licked her lips and, for the first time, looked nervous.

   "When we work together on something ...  we do it very well," she said.
"I'm not tooting my own horn, and I've only taught one class, but you said
I was good."

   "You are," he said firmly.

   "So my plan is ..." She blinked.  Her hands reached behind her neck. 
"My plan is that we need to work on this other problem ...  together."

   Her hands went to the two silver rings between her bra cups.  They came
apart ridiculously easily once she had pulled the breasts toward each
other, deepening the cleavage.  Once they were unhooked, she let them slip
from her fingers and the tension on the back strap of the bra whisked the
cups under her arms.  With a shrug that made her breasts jiggle, the top
was lying in the water behind her.  She pulled it around with one hand and
tossed it toward the deck.  It fell short, but she stayed where she was,
letting Bob see her bare breasts.

   "I think we just need to be more thoughtful about how we go about it,"
she almost whispered.  "Maybe not so fast and furious."

   "I don't believe this," he sighed.

   "I really think we could make this relationship work if we just
approached it positively, instead of negatively," she said.  She bent over,
dipping hair and breasts in the water while her hands worked under it. 
They came up with the bottom of her bikini.  This time there was a splat as
she tossed it on the deck.  As she stood up the bottom half of her hair
fell forward to make her nipples play hide and seek between the strands. 
She looked down at them, then ducked under the water, rising with her face
looking up so that her hair was all down her back.  The cool water had
spiked her nipples back into the cones he had sucked on the night before.

   "I think it can be better than it was last night," she said, her voice
trembling.  "I mean I really liked a lot of last night ...  almost all of
it ...  except for the pain.  People just wouldn't keep doing it if it
didn't get better than that ...  right?" She sounded nervous.

   "Oh Cee Cee," he sighed.  His face twisted.  "I mean Cecelia!"

   "It doesn't matter," she said.  "I don't care what you call me.  You're
not my teacher any more.  You're just Bob right now, and I want Bob to do
things to me I've never let any other man do."

   Chapter Ten

   Of course it wasn't as seamless and simple as either might have wished
their second time to be.  Cecelia had assumed she would get her second
sample right there in the pool.  Bob knew that the water might wash away
her natural lubrication, and cause pain, which was the last thing he
wanted. And, while she was more comfortable than she'd believed she'd be,
naked in the pool, when he took her hand to lead her to the house, she was
suddenly shy.

   "I'm naked!" she moaned as he tried to pull her up the steps she had so
recently walked down.

   "I know," he said, smiling.  "Nobody can see you but me." he assured
her.

   "Are you sure?" she asked, looking all around.

   "The privacy the landscaping provides is intentional." he grinned.

   Then, once she was sure only Bob could see her, feeling the sun, on ALL
of her felt deliciously naughty.

   "You too," she demanded, looking at his baggy suit.  "Is it hard?"

   "Not yet," he admitted.  "I think my brain is convinced this is only a
dream."

   She thought about kissing him, but wasn't sure that was the right thing
to do.  The kiss yesterday had caused problems.

   "You too!" she insisted.

   He was slow about it ...  slow enough that she got impatient, but she
controlled herself as he bent over and shoved his suit down.  When he stood
she stared.  She'd seen plenty of these on the internet, but it wasn't the
same.  It was only about four inches long, for one thing.  It looked like
an under-stuffed sausage, maybe.  The foreskin covered the tip, but there
was a raised ring in the loose skin about an inch back that went all the
way around it.  She saw a thick blue vein, visible through the skin.  It
was fascinating, both because she wanted to touch it, and because she
couldn't believe it was possible for that to have caused her so much pain.

   As she watched, it lengthened and lifted off the soft round sack it was
lying on.  It was like it had a life of its own.

   "Come on," he said, reaching for her hand.  "Let's go inside."

   "Don't rush me," she said, watching his penis move.  "I've never gotten
a close look at one of those before ...  not a real one, anyway."

   "We're standing in the middle of the patio," he pointed out.

   "And you said nobody could see us," she said in return.

   "OK," he said, realizing this wasn't going to be like anything he had
ever done before.  His ex-wife would have nothing to do with
skinny-dipping, or wandering around the house naked, landscaping or no
landscaping.

   While he let her examine him, he did some examining of his own.  He'd
never seen breasts quite like hers.  The heavy globes looked like others
he'd seen, round, with maybe just enough sag to hold a pencil, but they
certainly didn't droop.  It was the nipples that were so fascinating.  They
had bases around the areolas like puffy nipples, but the tips themselves
were thin like pencil erasers.  The over all result was a cone that had a
very stiff point on it.  He remembered how his tongue could play with the
stiff part, while his lips sealed around the soft base.  They were
eminently suckable nipples, and he licked his lips in anticipation of doing
that.

   His eyes dropped and he saw evidence that a razor had recently been used
on tender skin.  The long, vertical line of reddish brown hair that was
left was flanked by pinkish skin that hadn't liked being scraped clean. 
Below that were labia that looked full and swollen, but which were too pale
to be in full arousal.

   "Oh my," she sighed.

   He looked at her eyes and then at his prick, which she was still staring
at.  While he'd been ogling her, he'd gotten fully hard.

   "I see why it hurt now," she whispered.  "It's so different from a
minute ago!"

   "I won't hurt you again," he said.  "I promise."

   "I was hoping you'd say that," she said, staring at his rigid cock
nervously.

   "Can we go in now?" he asked.  "There are parts of us I don't want to
get sunburned."

   She blinked and then giggled at the thought of that long pale thing
being bright red and painful.

   Inside, he stopped, unable to wait any longer.  Almost carefully he
pulled her to him and stared into her eyes as he felt her breasts press
into his chest.  He didn't know whether to push his ass back, to avoid
poking her with his meat, or let her feel it.

   "When did you decide to do this," he asked.

   "Last night."

   "Are you having second thoughts?"

   "Maybe a little," she admitted.

   "I was rough with you last night," he said.

   "You sure were," she agreed.

   "I'm embarrassed about that."

   "Can you really do it without it hurting like that?" Her eyes were
steady.

   "I believe I can.  There's a way you can control everything."

   "How?"

   "Come with me."

   He got towels so they could be dry when they got on the bed.  He pushed
her down gently.  She felt like spreading her legs, but was afraid that
would make her seem slutty.  Suddenly she didn't care, and she just did it.
His eyes went to her pussy and she saw on his face that what she'd done was
the right thing.

   "Beautiful," he sighed.  "You're so beautiful."

   "Thank you," she said, feeling silly.

   "I'm going to get you ready," he said, crawling between her legs.

   When she saw how he planned on getting her ready, her conservative
upbringing reared its head.  Then, before she could protest, she felt his
tongue split her pussy lips.  She told the busybody voice in her head to go
away and spread her legs as widely as she could, tilting her pussy upwards
into his face.  What he was doing felt too luscious to be a dirty thing.

   Within two or three minutes, as she got fully used to what he was doing
down there, and as he explored and found buttons to push, her plan to go
slow began to fray around the edges.  This time she was able to pay more
attention to the feelings inside her as the pressure built.  It felt like
her nerves were on fire, but that the fire was somehow cool, instead of
hot. She knew what the precursor of an orgasm felt like because her
masturbation sessions had made that common.  So she felt the orgasm coming,
and it felt normal.  But when it hit, it was nothing like what her fingers
brought out of her.  That was when her plan to go slow tattered.  She
grunted and gasped and made what she was quite sure were slutty, loud
sounds, little yips and whines and long, drawn-out groans as he lapped and
sucked, holding his hands under her butt so she couldn't get away, even if
she wanted to.

   It felt like her whole body had lifted off the bed three feet, and was
slowly falling back down.  While that happened he lifted his face,
grinning, and kissed his way up over her belly.  She knew he was going to
suck her nipples, and couldn't wait to feel that again.  As he did, she
felt pressure at her pussy lips, and then inside her body.

   She knew it was his finger.  She'd tried to slip one of her own fingers
in her before, trying to wiggle it past her hymen.  She had been able to
get it in to the first knuckle before pain told her to quit.  HIS finger
was deep inside her though, and the way he was wiggling it around was
exactly like she'd wished she could wiggle her own finger around up in
there so many times before.  Her hips wiggled with him, trying to
communicate that she liked this.  Then her nipple distracted her as he
sucked and bit it gently.

   "Ohhhh wow," she groaned, suddenly able to feel both sensations at the
same time.

   He switched to the other nipple and slid his finger in and out of her
pussy, letting the web between his fingers brush her clit each time he went
in.  Somehow she knew it was time.

   "I'm ready!" she gasped.

   He lifted his face from her nipple.  "You sure?"

   "I'm sure!" she panted.

   He flopped down beside her, lying on his back, and she didn't understand
until he pulled her toward him.

   "With you on top you can go as fast or slow as you want," he said.

   She looked at his prick, which suddenly looked the size of a baseball
bat.

   There was a moment of awkwardness as she found she had to actually stand
up to get into the right position.  She felt foolish standing on the bed,
straddling a naked man, her thighs wide open to his gaze.  He held his
penis up for her as she squatted, but she missed.  She tried again and
missed that time too.  It felt strange to reach for his penis, not because
she was averse to touching it, but because it was just such an unfamiliar
thing to do.  But once she had it, she hit the spot unerringly and felt the
pressure as the head pressed into her.

   She held herself there, scared to let herself down.  What if it hurt
again?  Her straining thighs began to burn, and she put her hands on his
chest, bent over in a patently silly position with only three points of her
body holding her up.  For some reason the image of Gollum, crouching over a
fish he'd caught, popped into her mind and she almost laughed hysterically.
To avoid that she let her head drop and looked down at the thing prodding
her.  Her hair fell on his face.  He blew and held it up, wrinkling his
nose at the tickling sensation.  His face was calm.  He was letting her
take as much time as she wanted.

   Her thighs complained louder and she sagged enough that the head spread
her as wide as it ever would.  It wasn't in her yet, but her opening was
stretched as much as would happen.

   There was pressure ...  but not really pain.

   He reached up and squeezed both nipples, pulling them away from her body
gently.  Electric sensations shot to her pussy and, without thinking, she
obeyed the sudden impulse to sit down.

   "Ohhhhhh fuuuuuck," she groaned as she was filled with hard,
astonishingly hot prick.

   "You went too fast," he said softly.

   She rested as much of her weight on her arms as she could and just
'felt' her body.  She was stuffed.  Where the excruciating pain had been
last night was a dull ache, but she wouldn't give it the honor of being
called pain.  He squeezed her nipples again and she felt something in her
belly relax.  Suddenly she was aware of muscles she'd never used before,
and they flexed experimentally.  He rolled her nipples between his thumbs
and fingers, massaging them, and she felt those muscles relax in sympathy
with the streaks of pleasure.

   She pushed with her arms, settling a little more weight on her butt.

   The tip of his prick ran into something deep inside her.  That caused
pain too, but it was a different kind of pain.  It was almost a sweet pain,
and not a bad thing.  She could tell it had the potential for really
hurting, but it didn't yet.

   "Lift up a little," he said.

   She did, and the feel of the bumps on his cock sliding along those newly
discovered muscles was astonishing.  She didn't have to be told to sit back
down.

   She looked down at him, throwing her hair over her back so she could see
him clearly.

   "This is the kind of input I was thinking about when I said I needed
yours.  I'm going to like this," she said, her voice thick with passion. 
"I'm going to like this a lot."

   ===================================

   She did like it a lot.  Every few seconds she seemed to feel a new
sensation, in a slightly different place in her body.  Altering her posture
caused incredibly different feelings.  Leaning forward made her clitty want
to scream as it was scraped and crushed.  But sitting up straight let her
examine that strange attractive pain the tip of his prick caused deep
inside her.

   She let him pull her forward because that felt so good, but when his
lips found her nipples and began sucking and chewing at them, she lost her
ability to calmly, rationally explore what was happening to her body.  His
hands on her hips showed her a short, jerking rhythm that fairly bellowed
it would give her an orgasm very soon as long as she kept doing it. 
Instinctively she involved what she thought of as her "sit up" muscles, and
the rhythm smoothed out as her breathing deepened.

   She whimpered as she sped up, now eager to feel what an orgasm would be
like with this thick beautiful thing stretching her so wonderfully.  And,
when it washed over her and he pulled her head down to suck at her lips,
she took a few split seconds out of the incredible pleasure of it all to
admit to herself that, from now on, she would BE a slut.

   At least when it came to Bob.

   ================================

   Half an hour and two orgasms later, with Bob on top, pinning Cecelia to
his now sweat-soaked sheets, he suddenly stopped thrusting.

   She grunted "Don't stop!"

   "I have to," he gasped.

   "Why?" she whined.

   "Because I'm going to cum!"

   "Oh." She panted some more, thrusting her hips and trying to trip
another orgasm before it was too late.  She knew that when a man had his
own orgasm that things stopped.  "Will you be able go more later?"

   He laughed with a gurgling, oxygen-starved sound that turned into a long
groan.

   "Are you on the pill?" he gasped.

   "No, but it's OK," she gasped.  "I got something to take care of that."

   "Oh thank you," he groaned.  He let loose of the little control he still
had then, and drove deep into this beautiful young woman who he had wanted
for so long.  The spurts not only soothed his penis, but his whole
consciousness seemed to be soothed as well as all the tension of trying to
avoid this jetted away like rays of light from his mind.

   She looked up at him and was amazed at the contortions his face
displayed as she felt him stop and then felt a ball of heat expand from the
tip of his penis.  She knew it was his sperm flowing into her.  She had
thought about this before she decided to take this step with him.  She knew
that it might be hard to get him to agree, and that once he DID agree she
didn't want them to have to stop to install some kind of protection.

   She hadn't had time to get on the pill once she'd decided to become
Bob's lover.

   She hadn't wanted to wait until she could see a doctor and get a
diaphragm fitted.

   She didn't want to interrupt the proceedings while trying to install a
condom for the first time in her life.

   That was why she had chosen a spermicidal to protect her from what she
was now feeling.  She'd inserted the suppository up in the bedroom, before
she went swimming, just in case her plan worked.

   What she hadn't read were copious lines of tiny print on the
instructions.  Most of it wouldn't have mattered anyway.  But there was one
line that would have been good for her to read.  That was the one that said
immersion of the body in water after insertion might render the product
useless.

   Chapter Eleven

   Bob woke, aware that something was wrong.  He blinked.  It was light
outside, and his brain told him that the angle of the light coming in the
windows meant it was evening.  Then he realized what was wrong as he heard
his ex-wife's hair dryer running in the master bathroom.

   He was lying on his stomach and rolled over, recognizing that he was
naked as he did so.  Clarity of memory burst upon him and he realized who
was using the hair dryer his wife had left behind, and which he'd never
tossed out.

   As if to confirm his guess, the dryer went off and she appeared, with
soft brown hair falling all over her shoulders.  But for the washcloth
gripped in her left hand, she was gloriously naked, and this time she
wasn't shy about it in the slightest.

   "Good," she said, staring at him.  "You're awake."

   She crawled onto the foot of the bed looking like some kind of great
cat, personified.  Her teeth gleamed, and her smile was wide enough that
her canines showed.

   "I want to find out what it's like with my hair dry," she said.

   He found out what the washcloth was for when she cleaned his penis and
balls with it, taking long enough to do so that he was hard when she
finished.

   "I've never done this before," she said, staring at his penis, which was
gripped in her right hand.  "So tell me if I hurt you or anything."

   With that she opened her mouth and dropped it over the tip of his cock,
just using her lips to touch it at first, and then the tip of her tongue.
The evolution of her exploration moved quickly as her cheeks collapsed and
she sucked tentatively.  Within five minutes she had learned to pull the
foreskin off his knob so that it could be sucked while her hand moved the
loose skin on his shaft up and down.  She reduced him to a blubbering
simpleton as instinct led her towards becoming an expert cock sucker.

   "Gonna cum!" he squealed.

   She stopped, sensing by more instinct that squeezing his prick firmly
might avoid what he was warning her of.

   "I TOLD you I wanted to know what it was like with my hair dry!" she
pouted.

   She scrambled up, notched the tip of the thing she was squeezing in her
opening and sank down on it, using her internal muscles to squeeze and
fondle it.  He gasped and she felt the ball of heat explode up inside her.

   "It happens a lot faster when my hair is dry," she said sadly.

   ================================

   It was dark when she finally said they could stop for a while.  They
were both so tired by then that when he pulled her into the shower with
him, all they did was slowly wash each other off and engage in a few
harmless kisses.

   She went through his drawers until she found one with T shirts in it and
appropriated one.  It barely covered her pussy, but she didn't care.  She
picked another one for him, which he put on.  His limp penis dangled well
below the hem and he took it back off.

   "I'll just go naked," he said, grinning.  "Want something to eat?"

   "I'm starved," she said.  "If you're going naked, I should too."

   "Maybe not," he said.  "I need to pay attention to the food."

   "Aren't you sweet," she purred as she followed him to the kitchen.

   "After all the sugar you poured on me today, I'm probably just one big
cavity," he sighed as he got leftovers out of the fridge.

   She blinked.  "That's my favorite song!"

   "Really." He smiled.  "I really like it too."

   "No, you don't get it," she said, her eyes wide.  "When I was in high
school, and I got all hot and bothered in your class, I'd go home and play
air guitar to that song until I was so worked up that I did naughty things
by myself in bed!"

   "So much time wasted," he said in mock sadness.  He put a plate of food
in the microwave and started it.  "If only I'd known then what I know now."

   "What would you have done?" she asked, reaching to touch his side. 
"Told me to report to your room after school and then ravished me?"

   "I thought about it," he admitted.

   "I'm glad you didn't," she said firmly.

   He raised an eyebrow.

   "Well, you were married back then," she said.  "And it would have hurt
then, just like it hurt yesterday, but I wouldn't have reacted to it the
same way then.  I probably would have hated it and been traumatized for
life."

   "You're probably right," he said.

   "Of course I am.  This way was much better.  Now I get you all to myself
and I can come see you whenever I want." She blushed suddenly.  "Oh Bob,
I'm sorry.  That's really presumptuous of me ...  isn't it."

   He folded his arms and stared at her.

   "I'm pretty much a one woman man, Cee Cee," he said softly.  "I've been
tempted before ...  when I was married, I mean ...  and I'm not stupid
enough to tell you that I'll never be tempted again by somebody other than
you.  But the fact is I'm not in the market for a girlfriend."

   "Oh." She looked like she might burst into tears any second.

   "I don't need a girlfriend," he said quickly.  "I already have my
student teacher."

   "Oh!" Her agony disappeared instantly.  "Wait!" She frowned.  "What
happens when the summer is over and I'm no longer a student teacher?"

   "I'll be tempted to recommend to Grimes that he hire you permanently,"
sighed Bob.  "I can't do that, of course, because as much as I'm sure
you'll be a great teacher, I have ulterior motives."

   "We only have two months?" She sounded tragic again.

   "Look on the bright side," he said.

   "I can't think of a bright side," she moaned.

   "When the summer is over I WILL need a girlfriend." He looked around. 
"You wouldn't just happen to know of anybody who might be interested, would
you?"

   She whipped the T shirt off, secure in the knowledge that she could
manipulate this man, at least to some degree.  She was right too.  While
the food cooled in the microwave, she found out one can have sex by sitting
on a man's lap, facing him while he sits in a straight backed chair.

   She decided she liked this way a lot, because it made sucking her
nipples easy for him while he put another ball of warmth deep in her belly.

   ======================================

   "I wish you could stay," he said sadly as she moved reluctantly toward
the front door.

   "I do too," she moaned.  "But my mother would have a hissy fit if I just
stayed out all night."

   "You're a grown woman, Cee Cee," he said.

   "I know," she said.  "I'm working on the dynamic, but she's a very
traditional woman."

   "I know," he said.  "Are you sure we shouldn't see each other tomorrow
either?"

   She stopped and faced him.  "Bob, listen to me.  Look at what happened
to us today.  I turned into a slut, Bob." He opened his mouth to object and
she shushed him.  "I don't mean that in a bad way, but the truth is I can't
keep my hands off of you, and even if you wanted to keep your hands off of
me I wouldn't let you.  Things are moving kind of fast all of a sudden.  I
wanted that to happen, but I also want to feel comfortable with it.  I have
these very strong feelings for you that make me want to say things I take
very seriously.  I need to be able to think about that.  I think you need
to think about it too, Bob.  You said you were a one woman man.  Well I'm a
one man woman too.  I didn't do all this today just for fun."

   "I know that," he said softly.

   "Then some time apart for us to think things over might keep one of us
from getting hurt.  I don't want to get hurt, and I don't want to hurt you.
What happened today is too precious to me for there to be any hurt."

   "I agree," he said.

   "Now please let me go before I start taking my clothes off again," she
pleaded.

   "All right," he said.  He went around her to the door and reached for
the handle, as if he were going to open it for her.  His fingers moved
quickly to the dead bolt instead and he threw it.

   "Now you're locked in." He huffed a sinister laugh, while twirling the
ends of an imaginary moustache.  "Yell for help all you want, my pretty,"
he rasped.  "Nobody can hear you ...  heh heh heh."

   Cecelia folded her arms under her breasts.  She glared at him.  "My
mother knows I'm here," she said.

   "She can't help you," he grinned.

   "No, but I know my mother and if I'm not home soon she'll come looking
for me.  Do you want her to find me naked, moaning under a big hulking
crazed beast of a man?  Because if she finds me that way Bob, she'll do
something crazy.  She'll try to have me committed.  She'll try to have YOU
committed!  She'll scream long and loud to Mr.  Grimes, Bob.  She'll demand
that my father find his shotgun and that you marry me.  Is that what you
want?"

   "I was just playacting," he whined.

   "Well save it for when I have time to play act with you," she said.  "I
have to go home and act normal, and I'm not sure I can pull it off.  So
tell me you'll see me Monday and get out of my way!"

   "I'll see you Monday," he said, acting cowed.  He unlocked the door and
opened it.

   As she stepped through, though, he struck, reaching for her waist and
pulling her suddenly struggling body against his.  With one hand on a
breast he raised the other behind her head to force her lips against his.
Within five or six seconds the fight went out of her and she kissed him
back.  He held the kiss for fifteen or twenty seconds more and then let her
go.

   "I just want you to remember there's something here for you," he said
softly.

   "Like I could forget," she whispered.  "Are all men idiots?"

   ==================================

   She had said that Sunday was for thinking about things, and Bob did
that. It was difficult, in some ways, because it seemed like he had known
this woman - and wanted her - for years.  At the same time he had to admit
to himself that that knowing and wanting had been a shallow thing.  He had
really only met her a few weeks previously.

   He was aware that these days things in the bedroom moved much more
quickly than they had when he was entering his twenties.  But Cecelia
wasn't like that.  She had been a virgin!  It still shocked him, because he
had become convinced there weren't any virgins in the world over the age of
about thirteen any more.

   He had to examine his life, as it had been since Sherry had left him. 
It hadn't been a bad life.  He had his teaching and his gardens.  He
thought about the day before.  As a Saturday, it would stand out from every
other Saturday he'd ever had.  He had to be insane to try to try to
convince himself that going back to just teaching and gardening would be
fine, now that he'd tasted the delights of being intimate with Cecelia.

   Her comment that she was a one man woman made it clear that she expected
some kind of commitment from him, if they continued this relationship.  He
thought about his failed marriage.  He told himself it hadn't failed
because of any lack of commitment on his part.  Then he had to admit that
it HAD failed because of commitment issues ...  in a way.  He had been
committed to teaching, and that had taken precedence over being the man his
wife had wanted him to become.

   It was impossible for him to envision himself and Cecelia as married. 
The idea of it didn't bother him, exactly, but there were too many unknowns
to give it substance as a concept in his mind.  It was too soon, for one
thing.  She might laugh at the idea, for another.

   He realized time would tell, concerning where their relationship would
go.  And he realized she had been right to insist that they take a day
apart from each other.  That kind of time DID make him think about what
form that future relationship should take.

   He wondered if that might have made a difference when he was dating his
ex-wife.

   =================================

   Monday started remarkably smoothly.  Both Bob and Cecelia were
determined to behave in a professional manner, and it worked ...  to a
point.

   Their morning greeting was warm, but controlled.  Their pre-class
conference was to the point.  She agreed to take the afternoon portion of
the day's material and felt like she was already prepared to handle it. 
When the kids came in, they were sure that nobody noticed any difference.

   They were wrong about the last part, of course.  There was still tension
between them, though it was a different sort of tension than had been there
on Friday.  Teenagers soak in sexual tension during their high school
years. Sexual tension permeates almost every situation they are exposed to.
And, while they don't necessarily think about it consciously, teens respond
to sexual tension in routine and identifiable ways.

   In short, most of the class noticed the energy-charged environment in
the room and responded to it with interest.

   Bob took them through the crusade for racial equality that began on a
serious note in the forties and blossomed in the sixties.  There was heated
discussion between the students about whether or not racial equality
actually existed in the current world.  About half the class was black or
Hispanic, and the consensus among them was that things were still not
equal. One white girl summed up the other side by saying: "You know, if my
grandparents, or great grandparents had been slaves, who owned nothing and
got paid nothing, looking at my life now - which sucks, by the way - I'd
say things had improved a hell of a lot.

   Bob finally called the discussion to a halt.  "The fact that we can't
reach a consensus on the issue is evidence, in my opinion, that there is
work to be done in this area.  Can everyone agree on that?"

   They did, and he moved on to the impact of the space race, and of men
landing on the moon, on America and the world.

   ====================================

   It was a very close thing during lunch.  Drawn unconsciously towards
each other, they got trays from the cafeteria and sat together in the
teachers' lounge.  Both paid special attention to trying to act normal,
which they thought meant interacting with everyone but each other.  That
was difficult, though, because it being a Monday, and most teachers being
just like anybody else on a Monday, conversation was light.  They finished
lunch early, therefore, and there was really no place else to go but the
classroom.  Cecelia said she wanted to get her materials ready to cover the
computer revolution, anyway.

   It was almost an accident that, while standing next to each other
looking at the material, Bob's hand casually raised and rested on the small
of her back.  It wasn't so casual when he felt the urge to run his hand
down over her rounded butt.

   Her face turned and her eyes looked into his.  Tension made them both
almost stiff.

   "I suppose this isn't a good idea," he said, rubbing his hand in a small
circle in her back, just along her panty line.

   "No," she said softly.

   "Damn," he sighed.

   "Behave yourself," she admonished.

   "Yes Ma'am."

   The class went well until it became clear that some of the kids knew
more about modern computers than the teachers did.  There was a role
reversal, of sorts, as Bob suggested that some of the kids come up front
and explain how this or that thing worked.  Some of them did well at
teaching, and some not so well.  It was educational for all of them to see
or be put in those roles.

   The afternoon bell rang and the kids filed out.

   "Lock the door," said Cecelia, her voice tight.

   "The door?" asked Bob.

   "Lock it.  I need to speak to you in the supply closet, please."

   She was already in the tiny room when he entered it.  Her panties were
in one hand.

   "Now you can misbehave," she said, raising her skirt to let him see her
nakedness.

   She gleefully proved her hypothesis that it can be done standing up.  It
wasn't the most comfortable of positions, and it strained a lot of muscles,
but it provided a temporary soothing effect as she had an orgasm.  Her
pulsing pussy muscles sucked the spunk from his balls, soothing him too. 
As he was soothed she made a mental note to keep her spermicidal in her
purse from now on, so that she could slip a suppository in her at a
moment's notice.  She hadn't planned on this hasty tryst, but hadn't been
able to resist.

   When they had recovered their breath, and Cecelia had pulled her panties
back on, they returned to the classroom.

   "I need you to load me down with work tonight," she said.

   "What?"

   "You need to give me a ton of work to do at home, where my parents can
see how busy I am."

   "OK ...  and why is this?"

   "Because I need to convince them that I have so much work to do that I'm
going to need to spend a lot of evenings at your house."

   Chapter Twelve

   The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war took the
rest of the week, because its effects were so wide-spread and continuing.
Cecelia's parents thought it was unfair that teachers had so much work to
do out of the classroom, and became ardent supporters of teachers getting
better pay.

   Cecelia, while her parents were muttering about low pay and long hours,
was spreading her legs for Bob, and muttering for him to go deeper, and
keep going longer, as she bucked her hips up at his penetrating rod.

   "I love this," she moaned as he stroked languidly in her.  "I can't
believe I waited so long to feel it."

   "It wouldn't be nearly this good with any other man," he panted.  "I'm
an expert, you know."

   She laughed, and wrapped her legs around him, milking him with her pussy
muscles and nibbling on his earlobe.

   "Cum in me," she whispered.  "Give me your hot stuff, Bob.  I want to
feel you spurting in my pussy."

   With a groan he gave in to the almost instant urge to do exactly what
she was asking for, and let the streams of semen flow.

   She squeezed hard with her legs, holding him firmly in her, and giggled.
"Who's the expert?"

   =============================

   Knowing they'd be able to sate their mutual lust after school, while
they "prepared" for the next day, allowed them to feel less tension during
the days in the classroom.  Instead, they felt anticipation.  If they'd
have thought about it consciously, they would have believed that nobody
noticed that either.

   As education proceeded in their school-room, a school of sorts also went
on in Bob's house.  She had said he wasn't her teacher any more, but that
was a conditional statement.  She became his willing student in a different
sense of the word, eager to learn all the different ways a man could make
love with a woman, and vice versa.  She even went so far as to check out a
copy of The Kama Sutra from the library, and demanded that they try a
different position each night.

   The weeks flowed by as both teachers had a summer that, by some
standards, was better than that of the teachers who HAD been able to go to
Cancun on vacation.  And through it all, they were quite sure nobody other
than themselves had any clue as to how close they had become.

   ==============================

   There is an odd trait that humans have.  They like the familiar.  And
what's familiar often becomes habit, without establishing the habit on
rational thought.  While Cecelia loved to experiment with different
positions to be in while Bob's lovely fat prick penetrated her, the
familiarity she had established with spermicidal suppositories settled into
a habit.  She never pursued getting on the pill for the simple reason that
it was just as easy to slip an egg-shaped giant pill in her pussy ten or
fifteen minutes before it might be needed.

   Sometimes, of course, it was only five minutes before it was needed, and
on more than one occasion, she dropped her panties, reached for a
suppository and pushed it between the folds of her labia as she crawled
into bed.

   On at least ten occasions, Bob's penis pushed the undissolved
prophylactic deep in her pussy where, presumably, it was a better place to
be anyway.

   Unless he spurted before it dissolved, of course.

   And Cecelia WAS an expert, in her own way.  Most women view premature
ejaculation as a hindrance to sustained pleasure.  And Bob always
apologized when he popped off early.  But for Cecelia, who really had
nothing to compare Bob with, she took special delight in being able to
manipulate him into bursting within her quickly.  It made her feel
astonishingly desirable to know that he couldn't control himself when she
really poured it on.

   And, from her perspective, when he came like that, she knew she was in
for half an hour of intensive foreplay while he recharged, and that the
SECOND time would last long enough for her to have half a dozen orgasms
before he spurted in her again.

   ====================================

   Over the rest of the course Bob and Cecelia covered, among other things,
the beginnings of cloning and genetic surgery, the movement to protect and
rescue the environment, the resurgence of religious fundamentalism on every
continent, the rise of global markets with the increase in economic
inequalities both within and among nations, and the evolution of
television, and its dominance in forming world opinion.

   By the end of the class it was unusual if Bob or Cecelia had enough time
to present all the intended points, because the kids had studied ahead and
were prepared to discuss the subject.  Examples of issues in their own
lives, or that of someone close to them were routine now, and a sense of
almost militancy evolved as the students identified things adults were
doing that were causing problems that these very students felt like they'd
have to clean up some day.

   "It's a tough world," said Bob.  "Those with power call the shots, quite
often.  And power often corrupts.  That's why you rarely want to elect
somebody who's actually running for office.  The ideal thing would be to
draft people into office for one term and then kick them out.  Never trust
a career politician.  That's my motto." He grinned.

   The kids did not.

   =================================

   The last week require more intensive work from both teachers, both to
fine tune a final exam, and to do the paperwork associated with the end of
a class.  Five of their students could graduate if they completed this
class successfully.  Bob wasn't worried about that because based on what he
had seen nobody would get less than a C in the class at all.  Kids COULD
learn, if they were motivated to do so.

   But while Bob and Cecelia still spent time together outside of the
classroom in that last week, there was less time to fool around.  Their
circumstances were a little different than would be usual for most teachers
in their situation.  There would be one more week of wrap-up after the
students were gone.  That would be for Bob's evaluation of Cecelia, and for
her to write the reports required by the evaluation board back at her
university.  Because of the way things had worked out, once her student
teaching was successfully accomplished, she would have one more semester of
college to complete before she graduated.  And because of THAT, she was in
a position to apply for jobs now.  There were always positions vacated mid
year, for one reason or another, and quite often the principal knew that
before school even started.

   So most people in their situation would be looking forward to what was
left of the summer.  In Cecelia's case, it might be the excitement of
applying for jobs and getting ready for her last semester of college.  For
Bob he had a whole month to spend doing anything he wanted to.

   What was uppermost in both of their minds, though, was that in another
week, neither would have any "legitimate" excuse to spend lots of time with
the other.

   =================================

   It was Friday, and the final exams were in Bob's briefcase, ready to be
graded.  He had issued the test in the morning, and all of the kids had
turned it in before lunch.  That was a good sign, though he'd planned it
that way, so they could take off early.  Cecelia had said she needed to run
an errand, so he was sitting at a table in the teacher's lounge by himself
with Denny sat down opposite him.  It occurred to Bob that he'd spent very
little time with Denny lately.

   "Where have you been?" he asked, impulsively.

   "Right here, bro," said his friend, smiling widely.  "I'm glad I got
this chance to talk to you, though."

   "This chance?"

   "With her not here," said Denny.

   "Her."

   "Don't give me that," scoffed Denny.  "You know exactly who I'm talking
about."

   "I do, huh." said Bob.

   "Oh, everybody's all happy about it," said Denny casually.  "Even me,
despite the fact that it cost me my best friend."

   "Happy about what?" asked Bob.

   "You two, of course," said Denny.  "Most everybody thought you needed to
move on after Sherry shit on you, and they're glad you have."

   "I haven't moved on," said Bob, getting a bad feeling in the pit of his
stomach.

   "Yeah, right," said Denny.  "And you haven't been tapping that sweet
slice of happiness long deep and continuous either."

   "I don't know what you're talking about," said Bob tersely.  "And pipe
down.  Somebody will hear you!"

   "Oh ...  sure ...  OK." Denny grinned.  "You are so sad."

   "I'm not sad."

   "All right, pathetic then.  Do you really think you could hide it from
everybody?  Even the people who don't know you all that well can see it."

   "See what?"

   "That you and your student teacher are head over heels for each other,"
said Denny.  "Mrs.  Miller was even all happy about it, saying it was about
time."

   "Shit," said Bob, dismally.  "If she knows, Horace knows."

   "Of course he knows," said Denny.  "He'd deny it, but I'd be willing to
bet that he's the one who came up with the pool on when you two will go
public with things."

   "Pool?" Bob's eyebrows arched.  "You're shitting me."

   "Not at all," said Denny.  "I chose way too early, so I'm out of the
running, which is the only reason I'm willing to talk about it.  Wouldn't
want to be accused of finagling the results, you know."

   "There's a fucking pool on us?" Bob groaned.

   "Well, it's highly confidential, of course.  School personnel only. 
Horace insisted on that.  While everybody here at school thinks it's a
great idea, we don't want the school board knowing about anything until
after she's finished being your student teacher.  I can't tell you who, of
course, but there were a bunch of people who put down dates clear into
August, saying you were much too savvy to get public with things until
then.

   "I thought I was savvy enough to keep it a secret completely," sighed
Bob.

   "Yeah, right," laughed Denny.  "With the two of you mooning over each
other every day?"

   "We didn't moon," objected Bob.

   "Actually, what probably gave it away was that neither of you ever
joined the bitching sessions.  You were always smiling and she was always
happy as a lark.  When was the last time you saw a student teacher happy as
a lark, Bob?"

   Bob thought about how he had a point.  Most student teachers were
harried, harassed, nervous and tired all the time.  At least they acted
that way.  And most supervising teachers complained about the extra
workload.

   "It was that obvious?" he moaned.

   "Oh yeah," said Denny.  "I had to back off for fear that people would
think I was trying to rig the outcome.  Besides, you were obviously busy
most nights." He grinned.  "And just so you know, I won't ask.  Helen
absolutely forbade me to, even though I'm dying to hear all the good
parts." He grinned again.  "But that doesn't mean you can't volunteer some
juicy descriptions."

   ==================================

   After lunch Bob was grading finals when Cecelia got back.

   "Sorry I'm late," she said.  "I had to go replenish the supply of my
little friends."

   "Your little friends?"

   "OUR little friends, actually," she said, putting her purse down.  "The
ones that keep you from becoming a daddy."

   "Ahhhh, THOSE little friends," said Bob, assuming she was referring to
the pill.  "Well it's interesting that our little friends kept you from
lunch, because I found out something I wouldn't have if you'd been there."

   Five minutes later Cecelia was pale and shaken.

   "EVERYBODY knows?" she moaned.

   "Sounds like it," said Bob.

   "Even Mr.  Grimes?"

   "Especially Mr.  Grimes," said Bob.  "He apparently announced rules
about when, where and with whom it could be discussed."

   "Ohhh shit," she sighed.  "I can't apply here, then."

   "Why not?" asked Bob, feeling the first true stab of panic at the idea
of her being gone from here.

   "Because he'll think it's because of you, instead of the school," she
said.

   "I'd like to think it IS because of me instead of the school," he
replied.

   She looked sharply at him.

   "This is serious, Bob."

   "I know that."

   "And if he knows about us, he wouldn't take your recommendation
seriously either."

   "The way Denny was talking I'm not so sure about that," said Bob.

   "Well I am," she snapped.

   "Let's not get ahead of ourselves here," Bob said softly.  "You have a
semester to finish.  There may not even be any midterm positions available
here.  You may end up somewhere else anyway."

   She looked worried.  "What will we do then?"

   "I guess it all depends on where you get a job," he said.

   "Why?  Anyplace but here will be too far away from you," she complained.

   "Maybe I can get a job wherever you get a job," said Bob.

   She looked shocked.  "You'd DO THAT?"

   "I've gotten kind of attached to you, Cee Cee," he said.

   "I KNOW that, but ...  that's a big step, Bob!"

   "Giving me your virginity was a big step too," he reminded her.

   "Yes, but that just kind of happened," she equivocated.

   "Are you sorry?"

   "You KNOW I'm not!" she growled.

   "Me either," he said firmly.  "And I also know I'd be a lot happier with
you than without you."

   She stared at him.  "I'm scared," she said.

   "There's nothing to be afraid of.  We've got six months or a year to get
through and then we can live something like normal lives.  It will be hard,
but we can do it."

   "That's not what I'm scared about," she whispered.

   "What then?"

   "I'm scared because I feel like telling you that ..." She swallowed "I
love you," she whispered.

   He blinked.  He'd wanted to say the same thing, but hadn't, because he
didn't want to do it while they were making love.  It always seemed suspect
when said during sex.  At least he felt that way, because the first time he
and Sherry had exchanged that little endearment was while they were having
sex.  And it had been a lie.

   "And you're afraid I don't love you back?" His experience worked for him
in this situation.

   "Yes."

   "Well don't worry, because I do."

   "You never said so."

   "Because I wanted to be able to say it at the right time.  I think this
is the right time.  I love you, Cee Cee."

   She blinked and her eyes filled with tears.

   "Don't cry," he sighed.

   "That's the first time a man ever said that and I actually believe him,"
she sniffled.  "I'll cry if I want to!"

   ===================================

   When she appeared to have her sniffles under control, she kissed him,
somewhat quickly and tentatively, before reaching for her purse.

   "I'll be right back," she said.  "Get the supply closet ready please."

   Before he could answer she left the room.  When she got back, there was
a smoky look in her eye, but Bob held up his hand.

   "Let's get these graded and then go home," he said.  "Let's wait until
we can use the bed."

   "How about if we grade these at your house?" she countered.

   "Because if we try that they won't get graded," he smiled.

   She pouted.  "OK, you're right.  But let's hurry.  I need you."

   "We can't hurry," he said.  "And you know that.  This is why you're here
this summer, Miss Carter.  You need to pay attention to this last matter
and THEN you can concentrate on fun and frolic."

   "You don't love me," she grumbled.  "You want to torture me."

   "I DO love you," he said.  "I just want to be able to do that
comfortably." He looked around, as if checking to see if anyone could hear
him.  "Besides," he whispered, "we don't know if they secretly installed a
video camera in here somewhere ...  now do we?"

   "Oh you!" She slapped at his shoulder, and then relaxed.  "All right. 
Work first.  Then play.  You'd better be ready, mister!"

   "Oh, I'll be ready," he said.

   ==================================

   He WAS ready, as promised.  When they stepped through the front door of
his house, four hours later, he was already rigid and eager to hear her
moans of completion.  He managed to go for thirty minutes, using his mouth,
hands and finally his prick to elicit high pitched orgasmic groans from her
throat.

   He let her ride him, initially, since he could last longer that way.

   "I just can't decide," she panted as she rocked back and forth.

   "Decide what?"

   "Whether I like it more this way, or like when you took my virginity and
were so rough.  You never finished, that time, so I don't know how it would
have ended, but there was something about it I liked."

   She may have just been talking to talk, but what he heard was a
challenge.  He bucked her off, rolled her over and then lifted her knees to
hook them over his shoulders.  Bending her in half, he leaned forward and
skewered her defenseless pussy, sliding in hard in one long lunge.  Then he
fucked her almost savagely, pounding her until, with the tip of his prick
nuzzled against her cervix, he produced five thick ropes of rich semen that
soaked her to the core.

   When he let her breathe, her face was red and her eyes sparkled.

   "Don't ask me why," she panted.  "But THAT'S what I'm talking about!  I
don't want it like that all the time, but once in a while that kind of sex
is going to be a requirement."

   "At your service," he sighed, gasping for air.

   They then continued paying attention to each other, nuzzling and
cuddling ...  enjoying the potential for another round of hot, satisfying
sexual games, now that the academic games were finished for a while.

   There was one academic game that shouldn't have taken a back seat to
pleasure, though.  That was the one in which Cecelia read the instructions
about the spermicidal suppository she had put in place when she left the
school room ...  when she thought she was going to come back to the room
and make love ...  instead of spending four hours grading tests.  Had she
read the instructions and warnings, she would have known that the
suppository was only a viable deterrent to conception within three hours of
insertion.

   As it was ...  she failed her own "final" exam, of sorts, when one of
Bob's sperm, produced and injected into her fully eight hours after the
afore-mentioned suppository was used, wiggled up to the egg in Cee Cee's
fallopian tube and said "Whew!  Salmon ain't got nothing on me, babe!  I've
been looking for you for hours and had to dodge two ambushes!" The egg,
looking as coy as an egg can look, simply made space for the head of the
sperm cell to penetrate the cell wall and wiggle on inside.

   By the time she got home in the morning, to face her mother's insistent
questions about where she had been all night, she was actually having her
first conversation with her baby's grandmother.

   Of course neither of them knew that then.

   Chapter Thirteen

   There was a lot going on during August, after her student teaching was
done.  She had three weeks of staying with her parents before she went back
to school.  She had not yet had the courage to tell her mother she had a
boyfriend, because of who that boyfriend was.

   It was tough for Bob and her to get any real quality time together.  Bob
insisted that everybody but her parents knew what was going on, but she
still resisted telling them, or making it public, particularly until she
could make Horace Grimes admit to her that he wasn't going to offer her a
job.

   That had happened a week before she had to go back to school.  She'd
been trying to get an appointment with him for two weeks when he finally
said he had time to see her.

   "You did splendidly in your student teaching," he said, smiling.  "As I
knew you would."

   "So does that mean I have a chance at a position here at Harper High?"
she asked, her voice trembling.

   "Unfortunately, the requirement for you to finish your degree prevents
that," he said.  "I don't have any vacancies at mid term either that I'm
aware of now.  Of course you could check back with me any time you're in
town on break this semester, but I really don't expect anything to open
up."

   "I see," she said, subdued by his skill in making it look like he really
didn't have any openings.

   She cried to Bob, who held her at first, and then distracted her in
other ways, telling her that they still had lots of options and just needed
to be patient.

   "Besides," he said at one point.  "You might meet some nice young man
your own age back at school and fall madly in love."

   He yelped as his balls were suddenly squeezed firmly.

   "Don't you ever say anything like that again," she hissed.

   "Yes ma'am," he winced.

   The mood was broken, though, and she said she had to go home.

   They only got, in fact, one more opportunity to spend more than a few
hours together before she climbed in her car and drove back to school.

   =================================

   Back at the university, about to start her last semester of college,
Cecelia decided to get in to see the doctor in the clinic before classes
started.  She'd had a persistent touch of stomach flu and wanted to get it
under control before she had to sit in class again.  It had actually been
bothering her back in Harper, but she wasn't on her parents' insurance any
more, so she had to wait to get back to the student clinic, where her
tuition gave her coverage.

   She'd never actually been to the clinic before, because she rarely got
sick.  So she didn't know the middle-aged dumpy man who eventually saw her
and asked her dozens of questions.

   Finally he asked if she was sexually active.

   "I beg your pardon?" she gasped.  Some of his other questions were
personal enough to bother her.  This was even worse.

   "Have you been engaging in sexual intercourse?" asked the doctor
patiently.

   She flushed dark red.

   "I'll take that as a yes," said the doctor, who saw this kind of thing
all the time.  "What kind of protection did you use, if any?"

   "Sup-p-positories," she whispered finally.

   "I'll need a urine sample," he said.  "Go see the nurse and she'll tell
you what to do."

   "Aren't you going to give me something?" she asked.

   "Depends on the tests," he said.  "If I need to write you a prescription
I'll have the nurse call you.  In the meantime, get yourself a box of
saltines.  If you start feeling nauseous eat one or two.  Sometimes it
helps settle the stomach."

   So she peed in a little plastic cup, which was unsettling because it was
so small and she got some on her hand.  Then after the nurse made sure she
had a good working phone number, she was told to go home.  All in all she
thought it was a pretty rinky dink operation, considering nobody had done
anything for her at all except tell her to eat crackers.

   Which was why, four days later when she found a voice mail from the
clinic and called them back, she was completely unprepared to be told she
was pregnant.

   ==================================

   "I can't be pregnant," she moaned to the doctor, who had already
silently congratulated himself for calling it right before the test even
came back.

   "You can be pregnant," said the doctor.  "It happens all the time."

   "But I used spermicidal!" she moaned.

   "That works about thirty percent of the time," said the doctor.  "How
many times do you have intercourse per month, on average?"

   "I DON'T have intercourse!" she started, because, in fact, she wasn't.
The only man she'd have it with was three hundred miles away.  "I mean I'm
not now.  I was with my boyfriend over the summer."

   "And what was the average per week you had intercourse?" he asked.

   "I don't see what this has to do with anything," she objected.

   "You wanted to know how you could be pregnant," he said, shrugging. 
"Other than saying you are, I can't be of much help if I don't have the
facts."

   "Every day," she said stiffly.

   "OK, then," said the doctor smoothly.  "For all but five or six of those
days each month you were relatively safe anyway, which means you had sex
roughly ten or fifteen times when you were fertile.  Since spermicidal
alone is only effective 30% of the time anyway, that means that, for all
intents and purposes, you had unprotected sex ten times.  That's probably
how you got pregnant."

   "But ..." She didn't know what else to say.

   "Read the instructions," he said.  "Every method of birth control except
the pill suggests that you use multiple barriers and never depend on only
one.  If you had used the spermicidal with a diaphragm or a condom, we
probably wouldn't be having this conversation." He stared at her.  "So ...
what do you want to do?"

   "What do I want to do?" She sounded confused.

   "I'm required by law to spell out all your options," he sighed.  "I can
refer you to another doctor for an abortion, if you like."

   "No!" Her answer was instant and very firm.

   "Then I can set you up for regular prenatal care and counseling.  If you
like I can refer you to an adoption agency too.  There are several who work
with the university on a non profit basis."

   "Prenatal care is all I'll be needing," she said tightly.  Her mind was
whirling and it wouldn't be until much, much later that she thought about
adoption.  Right now she was just trying to cope with the fact that her
world had fallen in around her.

   ======================================

   Age is thought to impart wisdom, but that's a crock.  Maybe OLD age
imparts some wisdom, but not just any age.  A lot of people, particularly
young people, seem to think that if you just don't pay any attention to a
problem, it might go away.

   This is not to say that Cecelia was hoping for a miscarriage, or
anything like that.  She just hoped the test was wrong, and decided to
ignore it for now.

   That meant she didn't tell her parents about it, nor did she call Bob,
who she knew had started school again and was too busy to deal with
something like this ...  especially if it was all a false alarm.  The
morning sickness went away, in fact, which only supported her firm resolve
to believe she wasn't pregnant.

   Having missed one period and not realizing it until ten days later, she
couldn't help but pay attention to the dates of the next scheduled one. 
Her wall of disbelief developed some serious cracks when that period failed
to materialize too.

   It was Thanksgiving by the time she knew she had to do something.

   That's when she thought about all the options she hadn't given any
consideration to until now.  She gave some serious thought to offering the
baby up for adoption, not telling anybody about it until it was over and
done with.

   That presented several problems.  The obvious one was that she'd be five
months pregnant when she graduated, and she didn't think there was any way
in the entire world to prevent her parents from coming for graduation. 
Nor, if they did, was there any way in the world she could disguise her
condition from them.  And Bob might come too, for that matter.

   That made her think of Bob.  It must be understood that, for some women,
the initial thoughts dealing with an unplanned pregnancy pertain only to
the woman herself.  It is SHE who is pregnant.  It is HER life that is
affected.  Initially, the male is unimportant, with the exception that he
MADE her pregnant.  It isn't that these women don't care about the man. 
They just deal with how it affects themselves first.

   So, when Cecelia finally DID think about Bob, and realized that if he
knew about this baby, he might disagree with the idea of her giving it away
to some stranger.  That complicated things significantly.  Some women hate
the man who got them pregnant, or at least have no interest in a continued
relationship with him.  For others, that is not the case, and the man is an
important part of plans to be made.

   Cecelia knew she had to tell Bob.  Her parents could wait, but she had
to tell Bob.  She realized she should have told him already, because, with
horror, she realized she was already four months along.

   She'd just been wearing looser and looser clothes to cover the growing
hump that was her belly.  She had plenty of those clothes, because they
were what she'd always hidden her body in.  People who knew her saw nothing
different.  She seemed to be the same woman who had left for the summer to
do her student teaching.

   She'd exchanged numerous emails with him since school had started. 
Those were somewhat compartmentalized in her mind.  When she saw an email
from him she answered it immediately, speaking to whatever points he made
or questions he asked.  Since he never asked "By the way, are you
pregnant?" she hadn't answered that question.  That was how she looked at
it.  So she knew she couldn't just send him an email that said "By the way,
I'm pregnant."

   Using a prepaid cell phone card was a habit she'd picked up along the
way because she could control her expenses better that way.  She didn't
call anyone but her parents really, or never had in the past.  She would
have liked to have called Bob more often, but the burden of her pregnancy
was such that she was sure he'd hear it in her voice, so she called him
rarely.  Emails were much easier to control, since there was no tone of
voice to worry about.  So she didn't call him very often.  When she dialed
his number the night before Thanksgiving break, he was therefore very happy
to hear her voice.

   "Hey, sweet thing," he sighed.  "I feel so much better now."

   "Have you been sick?"

   "No.  Hearing your voice just makes me feel better," he said.

   She felt something flutter in her belly and wondered if it was the baby.

   "I have to tell you something," she said softly.

   "OK," he said.  "I sure hope it's not that you have decided to stay
there for Thanksgiving."

   "No." She kicked herself mentally for not thinking of doing that.  She
might have been able to convince her parents that she had too much to do to
come home.  It still would only have avoided the inevitable, and she gave
up that thought.

   "OK," he said.

   There was silence on the line.  She felt panic.  What if he rejected
her?

   "Cee Cee?"

   "I'm here."

   "Uh oh," he said softly.  "This is something bad, isn't it."

   "I think so," she said, as tears started filling her eyes.

   "You found another boyfriend." He said it stolidly ...  firmly ...  as
if it were something he could easily believe.  It was that firmness of
belief that made her mad, because she remembered quite clearly telling him
NEVER to say anything like that to her again.  And he STILL believed she
could possibly love somebody other than him!

   "NO!" she shouted "YOU GOT ME PREGNANT, YOU PIG!"

   And then she viciously punched the off button on her phone.

   ======================================

   She left the phone off and went to get a chocolate shake instead of
thinking about Bob.  Of course that didn't work.  She went to the Museum to
see if she could put in a few hours of extra work, but her supervisor was
already gone for the day and the archives were locked up.

   She contemplated trying to get some sleep before driving home, where
she'd have to face her parents, and decided she'd never be able to get to
sleep anyway.  If she left now she wouldn't get home until after eleven,
and her mother always went to bed at nine-thirty sharp, after the early
evening news.  Her dad might still be up, but he would be more
understanding about her swelling belly.

   By the time she pulled into Harper, and the empty streets seemed to
welcome her home with their normality, she had convinced herself that her
father would give her a hug and tell her he loved her no matter what.  If
he did that, she was pretty sure she could make it through dealing with her
mother.  She had to, because pregnant like this nobody would hire her and
she had to have somewhere to stay after she graduated.

   There was a light on in the living room.  She checked her watch.  It was
eleven-forty-five.  Daddy must be watching one of the late night comedians
trying to be funny.  She left everything in the car.  She had clothes in
her room - all the clothes she'd worn while she GOT pregnant and had left
at home because they weren't school clothes.  Not university clothes
anyway. She'd find something to put on to come out and get her suitcase
tomorrow.

   Her coffee cup was half full.  She'd tried to cut back on caffeine,
because of the baby, but it had been necessary to stay awake on the way
home.  She decided to take it in so she could have some herbal tea before
she went to bed.  She tossed the coffee in a long arc across the lawn on
her way to the porch.

   The front door was open and she walked right into the living room, just
to get the meeting with her father over with.  She came to a skidding stop
as she saw three people looking at her.  Her father was there, of course.
But so was her mother and Bob.

   Chapter Fourteen

   "What a nice surprise," said her mother.  "We weren't expecting you
until tomorrow."

   Cecelia's hands went to the bulge that clearly showed through the T
shirt she was wearing.  The jeans she had on were the last pair she could
still wear, and they had to be pushed low to be comfortable.

   "Where is your suitcase, darling?" asked her mother.

   Cecelia wanted to shake her head to clear it.  She was sure her mother
must have seen by now.  She looked at her father, who was staring straight
at her hands, and then back to her mother, who was looking right at her
face.  She glanced at Bob, who was looking up and down rapidly.

   "Hi," he said.  That was it.  Just "Hi."

   "I left it in the car," Cecelia said weakly.  "I was going to get it in
the morning."

   "Your father will get it for you," she said.  She blinked.  "Unless Bob
wants to."

   Realization began to set in.  Bob could only be here for one reason. 
And the fact that her mother even CALLED him Bob, instead of Mr.  Hawkins
was proof positive that he had ratted her out to her parents.

   "You TOLD THEM!" she yipped, staring at Bob.

   "You didn't," he said, shrugging his shoulders.

   "I was GOING to!" she rasped.

   "I'm glad," he said, darting a glance at her mother.

   "Go on, dear," said her mother.

   Her father got up and started to walk past Cecelia to go outside.  He
stopped suddenly and gathered his daughter up in hug.

   "Welcome home," he said softly.  "I said yes."

   He kissed her on the cheek and stood back.

   "Yes?" She blinked.  Her eyes were all fuzzy and she blinked more
rapidly to clear them.

   "Uh huh." Her father grinned at her and then went out the front door.

   Her mother got up.  "I'm going to get some tea.  Would you like some
dear?" She reached for the cup Cecelia was holding and had to pull steadily
to get it away from her daughter.  She turned to Bob for some reason and
said "It should take me ten minutes or so.  Is that all right?" He nodded.

   When her mother was gone she turned to him.

   "What are you doing here?"

   "I came to talk to them," he said.  "They're nice folks."

   "You shouldn't have done that!" she barked.  "I should have been the one
to tell them!"

   "Maybe," he said shrugging again.  "You were upset on the phone, so I
thought maybe they deserved some warning."

   "I was upset on the phone because you were so STUPID!" she yelled.

   "I know," he said.  "I'm sorry." He frowned.  "It's just that you
sounded so sad, like something was horribly wrong, and the worst thing I
could think of was that ...  well ...  you know."

   "I was sad because I'm pregnant," she said.

   "I understand that now," he said.  "Actually, I don't understand it, but
I get what you mean."

   "What don't you understand?  I'm pregnant.  I'm going to have a baby in
April.  I won't have a job, and I'll have to beg my parents to live with
them until I can get one somewhere.  Horace has already made his excuses
about how I'll never have a job here."

   "What are you talking about?" asked Bob.  "You sound like you're in this
all alone."

   "I'm not making any claims on you," she said.  "I mismanaged my birth
control.  It was my fault.  I'm not blaming you."

   "Is that a fact," he said.  "Well that's a heck of a load off my
shoulders." The front door opened and her father trudged in, carrying her
suitcase and pillow.  Bob looked at him.  "John?  You know that question I
asked you a while back?  Well never mind.  It appears your daughter doesn't
want me to have anything to do with this baby."

   "Now hold on there, Bob," said her father, setting the suitcase down. 
"She's just like her mother.  Don't let what comes out of her mouth get you
all worked up.  Just let her calm down and she'll get civil again."

   "Daddy!" yipped Cecelia.  "I can NOT believe you said that!"

   Cecelia's mother came back into the room holding a tray with cups and a
pitcher on it.  She saw the two standing tensely.

   "Did you ask her yet?" she asked.

   "No," said Bob "I'm not sure this is the right time."

   "Yes it is.  Now hurry up.  The tea is getting cold." She turned around
and went back into the kitchen.  She looked over her shoulder and told her
husband to come with her.

   "What on earth is going on around here?" moaned Cecelia.  "She's acting
so strangely!"

   "It was a stupid idea I had," growled Bob.  "I came over here to ask
your father for your hand.  He said yes, but your mother grilled me for two
hours.  She finally said yes too, but it was contingent on you accepting. I
was supposed to ask you to marry me when you got here, but you've made it
quite clear you want nothing to do with me.  I don't know why.  I'm quite
sure, after you screamed at me that it's not another man and based on the
timing, I'm sure I'm the father, but I'll be the LAST person on earth to
force you to do anything you don't want to do."

   Her mouth dropped open.

   "So I'll just go on back home," he said.  He turned and headed for the
door.

   "Wait!"

   He turned.

   "You want to marry me?"

   "Of course I want to marry you.  You're pregnant with my child."

   "What if I wasn't pregnant?  What if this was just a beach ball?" Her
hands went to cup her belly.

   "I'd have asked you before you left, but I knew you'd say no."

   "How do you know?"

   "You wouldn't even tell your parents about us," he said, exasperated. 
"And when you found out you were pregnant, you didn't tell ANYBODY for
months!"

   "I told the doctor," she whined.  "I've been to all my checkups."

   He sighed.  "What do YOU want, Cecelia?  I know what I want, but what do
YOU want?"

   "I didn't think I could have what I want," she said softly.

   "Why not?"

   "Because it was clear that Mr.  Grimes was never going to offer me a
job. If I lived with you I'd just be a drag on your already tight finances.

   "Why do you think Horace will never offer you a job?"

   "He SAID so.  He said he had nothing for me!"

   "At mid term," said Bob.

   "Yes, of course."

   "Did it ever occur to you that he might be telling the truth?  That
there just aren't any openings in the middle of this year?"

   "Well of course, but he knew about us, and we talked about how if
anybody found out it would ruin things.  And he didn't tell me he'd hire me
if he could or anything like that.  He just said to check back after
school. I thought he was brushing me off because he disapproved of us being
in a relationship!"

   "Cee Cee, honey, don't you remember me telling you about the pool about
us?  He set up the rules on who could be offered a slot in that pool!"

   "Don't yell at me, Bob.  I did the best I could!"

   "Honey, I love you.  Don't shut me out of this.  I want to help you.  I
want to love you.  I want to marry you and raise this baby together."

   "You do ...  really?"

   "YES!" he shouted.

   ===================================

   In the kitchen John and Anna Carter stood as close to the open doorway
as they could without being seen.  They heard most of what was being said.

   "She's just as stubborn as you," whispered Anna, turning her head
briefly.

   John grinned at the back of her head.  Everyone who knew them knew Anna
was the stubborn one.  He felt his wife's body leave his as she started to
march into the living room, and grabbed for her waist.

   "Let me go!" she hissed.  "That fool girl is going to let him get away!"

   "He's not going anywhere," said John.  "This is none of our business,
Anna."

   "In a pig's eye it's none of our business.  That's my grandbaby in her
belly out there, and it's high time I had one!  And that's my son-in-law
out there too, and I like him.  And if she thinks she's going to live here
and disrupt this house with a baby twenty-four hours a day instead of
living with the man who made that baby with her, she's got another think
coming!"

   "Let them work it out," said John, pulling his wife back.  His hands
went around her and grasped her breasts, squeezing.

   "Stop that!" she hissed, but she didn't make him stop.

   "Speaking of babies," he whispered in her ear.

   "You old goat.  You haven't been so interested lately."

   "Seeing my daughter like that puts ideas in my head," he admitted.

   "I'm supposed to be taking them tea," whispered his wife.

   "They don't need tea right now ...  and neither do we."

   "Let me go!"

   "All right, but you stay here."

   "Why?"

   "Because I'm the husband and I said so, that's why!"

   John walked into the living room.

   "Cecelia!" he barked.

   She whirled.

   "Do you love him?"

   She looked at him wide eyed.

   "Do you?" he asked, louder.

   "Yes!" she yipped.

   "And is that his baby in there?"

   "DADDY!"

   "WELL IS IT?" he roared.

   "YES!" she shouted, angrily.

   "Then tell the boy you'll marry him and go somewhere to be all lovey
dovey.  Your mother and I have something we need to talk about and we need
privacy to do it.  You two spend the night at his house or something and
come back for breakfast in the morning."

   "Daddy?" Cecelia's voice was so high it squeaked.

   "You heard me girl!" barked her normally meek father.  "Are you going to
marry him or not?"

   "Yes!" she wailed.

   "All right then," he said.  He looked at Bob.  "Congratulations, son."

   "Thank you, sir," said Bob, who looked a little shell shocked.

   "Got to be going.  See you for breakfast." With that John turned and
hurried back to the kitchen.

   As Bob ushered a clearly confused Cecelia out of the door, they heard
some yelling, and laughing, and one long feminine squeal come from the
kitchen before the closing door silenced the sounds.

   ==================================

   "You feel better now?" asked Bob.  She had ridden him through five
orgasms, each one louder than the last, until she'd finally fallen forward
on him, rolling so that she wouldn't crush the baby.

   "Mmm hmm." Cecelia lay loosely in his arms.  Her pregnant belly was
pressed against his flat one.  It felt so good to be naked with him again
it was almost like a dream.

   "Are you really going to marry me?" he asked.

   "Mmm hmm," she purred again.

   "When?" he asked.

   "Let me think about it," she pouted.  "I've only known it was going to
happen for an hour."

   "OK," he said, pulling her closer to him.  "But your mother is going to
want to know in the morning."

   "You mean my father," she murmured.

   "Both."

   "I'm tired," she sighed.  "I want to sleep now."

   "OK," he said, laying his hand on the side of her belly and sliding it
slowly around.

   "That feels nice," she sighed.

   "Yes it does," he agreed.

   =================================

   They showered together the next morning.  She was much more awake, and
much calmer.  He gave her one orgasm with his mouth, rubbing her belly
while he did so and she got on her knees and sucked him to completion while
the warm water cascaded down on both of them.

   When they got to her house, she walked in like nothing was wrong.  She
found her parents in the kitchen.  Her dad was reading the paper and
drinking a cup of coffee.  Her mother appeared to be cooking for an army.

   "Sometime after I graduate," announced Cecelia.  "We don't know exactly
when.  The wedding will be here, in Harper.  I don't care what kind of
wedding it is, small or large.  Small would be cheaper."

   "Darling," said her mother.  "If you're in love, why not get married
now?"

   "Because there's no time to plan, and because I'm not sure I want to
walk down the aisle with my belly sticking out.  I'm incredibly thankful to
the two of you for being so cool about this, but I don't expect anybody
else to be." She looked at Bob.  "But mostly because when I leave the
church married, I want to live with my husband, and not have to go back to
school."

   "So you want to wait until June, when my grandbaby will be two months
old, so I can hold her during the ceremony," said Anna.

   "I hadn't thought of that," said Cecelia.  "I have to admit I haven't
thought about a lot of things."

   "That's what mothers are for," said Anna.  "We'll talk and think about
all sorts of things.  OK?"

   Cecelia looked at her father, who seemed to be ignoring everybody.  She
wondered what had happened to the take-charge man she had seen briefly last
night.

   "Sure, Mom," she said.

   Her mother beamed.

   =================================

   Epilogue

   The wedding was during Christmas break, for the simple reason that it
put Cecelia on Bob's medical insurance through the school district.  It was
supposed to be a small event, but was crashed by a group of eighteen
teachers and ten students from the summer school class.  In actuality,
"crashed" is probably the wrong word to use.  They showed up and were
seated as if they'd been invited.

   Cecelia's parents went all out on the dress, having one made specially
for her that was cut to honor one of the reasons for the wedding, instead
of trying to hide it.  She was obviously pregnant as her father walked her
down the aisle.  Both of them were obviously proud too.  Even Anna was so
happy that she leaked tears of joy as her little girl got married to a man
Anna had respected since the first time she met him, five or so years ago.

   Anna went a lot further than just accepting things as they were, though.
In April, she went to stay with Cecelia, going to classes and taking notes
for her, and bringing her homework assignments back to the little house
where Cecelia had one of three bedrooms.  Cecelia insisted on having the
baby there, because she was so close to finishing school that being gone
for any period of time could wreck her plans to graduate.  Her mother went
with her through labor and delivery, until Bob finally got there and Anna
could sink into a deep sleep.  Bob stayed for a week, helping his wife
recover enough that she could start going back to classes while Grandma
took care of her infant granddaughter.

   Cecelia would have skipped the graduation ceremony itself, if Bob had
let her.  He insisted that she walk across the stage, though, and she did,
while he held their daughter and her folks looked on proudly.  Neither of
her parents had gone to college, and they were fit to burst with pride as
their daughter received the requisite handshake and blank roll of paper
that purported to be a diploma.

   Then it was finally the long trip home, where Cecelia found her mother
had been busy in the upstairs bedroom of Bob's house, closest to the master
bedroom.  She had created a complete nursery, where Cecelia finally got to
sit and rock peacefully while Sara Jean sucked lustily at a milk-filled
nipple.

   There were visitors, to welcome her home, of course.  Denny and Helen
came over, as did a few other teachers.  One day in July, when Cecelia went
to answer the doorbell, it was Horace Grimes.

   "Bob's at summer school," she said.  She grimaced.  "But you obviously
know that."

   "I do," he said.  "It was you I wanted to see anyway, if you have time."

   "I have all day," she said.

   Sarah Jean started fussing so Cecelia picked her up and rocked her while
she waited for Grimes to speak.

   "How long are you going to stay out with your daughter?" Horace asked,
coming right to the point.

   "I don't know," said Cecelia, honestly.

   "She was born in April, right?" he asked.

   "Yes."

   "We started a daycare center at the school this year," he said.  Babies
three months and older are eligible for enrollment."

   "That's a little young for preschool, don't you think?" said Cecelia.

   "It's for the children of teachers," said Horace, smiling.

   "Bob doesn't need a daycare center," said Cecelia.  "He's got me." She
grinned to show she didn't mind taking care of her baby.

   "True," said Horace.  "But who will take care of little Sarah while YOU
are teaching?"

   "Me?"

   "I have an opening for a civics teacher," he said.  "It's a junior
class, and is required in the curriculum.  I have to admit it's not the
easiest class to teach, and there's a lot of stress."

   "You're offering me a job?"

   "Yes.  What did you think I was here for?"

   "I don't' know.  I thought you ...  um ...  I thought that because Bob
and I ...  last year ..."

   "You thought wrong," he said.  "Now ...  I need an answer by Tuesday, if
possible, so please talk to Bob and let me know." His eyes fell to her
chest, and then bounced back up.  "I understand you're breast feeding. 
Remember that with Sarah in the child care center you can take breaks
during the day to feed her." His eyes dropped to her breasts again.

   "You're staring at my breasts, Horace," she said, with only the
slightest of tremors in her voice.

   "I'm sorry," he said, and his face darkened.  "It's just that ..." He
trailed off.

   "Just that what?" she asked.

   "Well, it's embarrassing," he said.  "It's just that I can't seem to get
your nickname out of my head.  I really feel bad about that."

   "Bob's the only person who gets to call me that now," she said, smiling
because somehow it didn't bother her so much any more that Horace Grimes
knew what her nickname meant.

   "Of course," said Horace, taking a step back.  "Besides, it really
doesn't fit you any more, does it?"

   "Doesn't fit?" she asked.

   The principal of Harper High School shrugged and gave her a lopsided
grin.

   "Since the baby came and all, it looks more like you should be called
Dee Dee."

   The End






   
