Fragile

Mary and I stepped into our first block class: English. The room looked like any other classroom in any other school in the United States. We choose a seat in the back corner of the class, hoping that we could pass notes without being seen during the rest of the semester. Once we sat down, I scanned the room with my hazel eyes. I saw many of the same people that I had known since pre-school. There were a few new students that I’m sure I will know the names of sometime this year.

My lips formed a smile when my boyfriend, Jay, walked into the classroom. He returned my smile when he spotted me and made his way to sit in front of me.

He gave me a kiss on my lips, before saying, “Hey, beautiful.”

“Hey, Jay,” I responded, not really wanting to call him a pet name. He had always said that he hated pet names, so I never called him them unless we were alone.

“So, how was your summer, Jay?” Mary asked him while looking at her perfectly polished nails. She must have gotten them done a couple of days ago. I was kind of jealous. We had planned on going together, but I ended up not going because I had forgotten that Jay and I were going on a date that same day.

Jay just shrugged his broad shoulders and answered, “It was good. You know the usual. I spent most of my time with you guys or my buds. How about you, Mary?”

“Mine was amazing! Besides hanging out with your two,” she said while pointing to both of us, “I spent a lot of my time with boys.”

“Hum, boys? As is the plural of boy?” I teased.

“Ha, ha, ha. Hilarious, Leah. Yes, boys. Plural,” she explained.

“Did you have a relationship longer than one night?” Jay asked curiously.

“I am not talking to you about my sex life, dumbass,” Mary retorted. Yeah, she defiantly is not a saint, that’s for sure.

“Who said anything about your sex life?” Jay asked.

Just as the bell for first block to start rang, Mary reached over and slapped Jay on the arm. He grabbed it and made a gasping noise with a shocked look on his face. Mary and I both laughed at him and looked towards the front of the classroom, waiting for class to start. Apparently, the teacher was running late because no one was standing in front of the class. Everyone then began talking again, obviously not caring that there was no teacher in the room telling us to quiet down.

“So, isn’t this Mr. Haner guy a new teacher or something?” I asked Mary and Jay.

Jay turned his body to look at me before answering, “That’s what I heard. Everyone keeps saying that he’s some old geezer that drools too much.”

Mary scrunched her face up in disgust and commented, “Ew! That is so gross! I was hoping that he would be some hot man candy that I could enjoy looking at for a semester.”

Just as Mary finished her sentence, the door to the classroom opened. All of the students looked up to see who had walked into the teacherless classroom.

“Morning class,” the man who walked in, I’m presume to be Mr. Haner, said. “I’m Mr. Haner.”

Well, Jay had been dead wrong about Mr. Haner being an old geezer that drools too much. He looked to be about twenty-three or twenty-four with strong features like high cheekbones and a cute nose. His lips had a small smirk on his face that, no doubt, could steal any girl’s heart. Mr. Haner walked his tall and muscular frame over to his desk, picking up papers from the top of the wooden table. He wore dark-washed jeans that were ripped at the knee, a white V-neck shirt, and a pair of black and white Nike Cortez shoes. Tattoos detailed his big, muscular arms, and I would barely make out a nose stud on the side of his nose.His dark brown hair was spiked in every direction. I wonder if it was actually soft when you touched it. I would never get the answer to that, though. I can’t just touch a teacher’s hair because I would be creeper for doing that, and I’d rather not be the school creeper. His chocolate brown eyes looked at every face in classroom, not giving away any emotion at all.

“Okay, so I’m your English teacher for you guys’ senior year. I don’t plan on making your lives hard, but I don’t want you guys slacking off in class either,” he told us. “Today, we aren’t really going to do anything except get to know each other, alright?”

A girl from the front row with blond hair raised her hand, patiently waiting for him to call on her. Mr. Haner glanced at her and pointed in her direction and asked, “Yes?”

“How old are you?” she asked quickly. Oh God. Could she be any more obvious about her crush on her teacher?

Mr. Haner chuckled lightly before answering, “Twenty-four.”

The girl who had raised her hand, I think her name was Becky, stuck her lip out in a pout, before she began drooling over the new English teacher again. I shouldn’t really be talking, though. I was drooling over him too. Who wouldn’t, though? He was young and not to mention sexy as all get out! If he was single, then something must be wrong with women his age. There was the possibility that he was gay, but I don’t think someone as hot as him would go from straight to gay.

“Looks like you got your man candy,” Jay whispered in Mary’s direction.

Mary didn’t blush like any other girl would. Instead, she smiled softly and replied, “Hell yeah, I do.”