[Author's note: All characters are age 18 or older. This is a work of fiction, and NSFW.
I needed to get this narrative out of my system. It's a quick story (at least, it was originally meant to be), but I needed to put it into words on a screen. It's been in my memory for more than two decades, and I've only ever spoken of it to one person.
This is a "so-close-to-true" story. Certain identifying or incriminating details have been changed, and the setting has been moved to rehearsal instead of a class (it just came out that way when I sat at the computer, and, if I'm being honest, it reads better this way), but the dialogue remains as word-for-word as I can remember it.
There's no actual sex in the story. There is, however, explicit teasing and some intimate physical contact.
It happened more than 20 years ago, and to this day, I remember it clearly.
I still can't believe how clueless I was.]
--
It was my senior year of high school, and while I wasn't one of the "popular" guys, I was well-liked enough by a broad enough spectrum of people that I may as well have been. I was generally non-threatening, and because even the assholes one is bound to encounter in high school couldn't hold out from my combination of friendly/funny for too long, I ended up being somewhat of at least a hanger-on with every "clique" that existed at our school.
It was because of the theatre, funnily enough. We were in no way a performing arts high school, but every drama club production also had at least one performance during school hours, that students could attend, buying their way out of at least one class, for just one dollar. That led to packed houses for the "buy-out" shows, and even if not many people paid attention, enough people paid enough attention that I was recognized as one of the people who "got them out of class" a few times a year, and that got me a fair amount of goodwill.
In drama club itself, I guess I was one of the guys that people looked to for direction, even if I wasn't a strong leader, per se. I was one of the senior members of the group, and I had a modicum of talent, so in that one particular area of the school, the auditorium, everyone knew me and liked me.
The girls especially liked me. At the time, I thought it was due to my being pretty damn effeminate for a "straight" guy (I'm actually bisexual, I just didn't really know it at the time - that's for another story), and they felt safe around me. That was also likely true, but when half of the female membership of the club took turns sitting in my lap, or giving/receiving foot rubs or massages from me, or otherwise finding ways to touch me or be touched by me for extended periods of time, and our drama club was made up of about 40 girls and 5 guys...
I'm not trying to appear conceited, but like I said, I was clueless.
Even a clod like me, however, could figure out *eventually* that a girl liked me; it usually involved them finding me at a party, kissing me, and telling me that we should go out, or at least go somewhere else with fewer people. I was smart, but boy, was I dumb. I was cute, though, so I never stayed single for very long. As I remember it, I had started dating a girl in drama (that I'd known for a couple of years) the week before the events in this story take place. Her name was Laura, but you probably won't see her name again in the story, except for maybe twice. No; this is about Hannah. We'll get to her, I promise.
That spring, we were staging Fiddler on the Roof, and I was the stage manager. I usually acted in the spring plays, but musicals were...tough for me. My singing voice wasn't the problem, exactly; it was my ear. Tone hard-of-hearing, we called it. My voice sounded pretty, in terms of tambre, I just couldn't hit a note until the fifteenth try. I could design lights and call a show just fine, though, and so I had my job.
I was a senior, and in a way, it was my "turn" to take on an actual leadership role during a production other than the lead role and helping other actors discover choices they hadn't made. So, I ran rehearsals in terms of internal scheduling, breaks, and production meetings. The drama teacher directed and handled the money stuff; we did most everything else ourselves, with her guidance.
School had just ended, and my last class of the day was Stagecraft, so I was always ready for rehearsals before anyone else showed up. I spent the ten or fifteen minutes between the bell and the start of rehearsal talking to friends and trying not to flirt with Hannah. We were good friends, and she made me nervous. Before I met her, I didn't understand other guys' obsession with redheads. After, I thought I understood it, but didn't realize that it wasn't the fact that her hair was red; that was just one thing that happened to be easy to spot, and blame an infatuation on. No, it wasn't the hair. She glowed, and anyone could see that there was something special about her energy.