Editor's Note: Dean's...redemption arc? Maybe? He's doing his best, ya'll. No TW's necessary, I don't think, but this is mostly plot with a sprinkle of smut at the end. Same warnings as usual though, be aware of POV changes and lack of a beta [and my laziness to re-read back through]. Not sure how I feel about the direction I've taken this, but thank you to the people who keep commenting, it means the world.
The room is spinning.
My ears are inhabited by a high, shrill squeal that I can't hear through.
I'm...not nearly sober enough to process this, and Jamie knows it.
Come on, come on. Pull yourself together, Sam. Deny, deny, deny, like your life depends on it. There's no time to question anything: how she knows, why she's invited me out to bring it up like this, what her motives are. Focus, focus, focus, come on.
I fabricate an expression that's deeply offended, offended to my bones. "Why would you...ask me something like that? Of course not, no!"
She laughs. "Oh, come on, Sammy. You think I wouldn't notice?"
Jamie hooks her finger in the collar of my shirt and tugs, pulling it beneath my clavicle. Clear as day, there's an ugly, purpled bite that's only just started to yellow around the edges. I slap her hand away. "That's not from--"
"From Dean? It is though, isn't it?"
"...it's not." It sounds weak and difficult to believe even to my own ears.
Jamie clicks her tongue, peering at me like I'm a four-year-old she's just caught wrist-deep in the cookie jar. "Mr. White might've bought that little story on Friday, but I'm afraid I'm not so simple-minded. Dean was the one who closed and locked your door, and even drew the little privacy curtain. When you opened it for Christopher, well..." She places the manicured nail of her index finger on her bottom lip, tugging it downwards, away from her teeth. "...right here, it was awfully puffy and red, as if you'd just been passionately kissed."
I stare firmly ahead. "That's totally circumstantial, if even that."
"It is, you're right, but I think...you're an honest guy, Sam. So honest, it's to your detriment. If I were to spread a little rumor, who knows what might happen."
She said 'if', which means there's something she's hoping to get out of this. "What the hell do you want from me?"
She leans back in the booth, folding her slender, smooth legs at the knee and lifting her beer from the tabletop to polish it off. "Well, don't you think you're being a little greedy?"
"...excuse me?"
"You're hogging the whole pie, Sammy. I just want a little slice, and Dean's...too tasty to pass up. You get it, right?"
I'm going to throw up, without a doubt: whether it's right here at the table, in the gravel outside, or in the safety of my bathroom. Perhaps the reason she was able to sniff it out so fast when no one else had, was because she's prone to those same proclivities.
"I have no control over what Dean does or doesn't do." I grit, honestly.
"Mm, I'm not so sure. You've clearly got him on some sort of leash, because rumor has it that he's been completely celibate for the past few months, all for sake of his 'out-of-town girlfriend' that no one's ever met."
"That has nothing to do with me."
"Look, I just want the chance to shoot my shot, that's all. Cut him loose. Whatever you think is going on between the two of you, it isn't. To Dean, you're just another warm body he's managed to conquer, and he'll move onto the next in a heartbeat the second you close the door in his face. Come summer, he's gone. He'll go on to make a name for himself in college, then maybe we'll see him on the big screen every Sunday night come Fall."
Everything she's said is true. It's all in the same vein of what I've already been thinking to myself, but to hear it out loud, from a woman like her...
I can't breathe. Is this how everything ends for me? Outed by Jamie Rosenthal, because she wants to sleep with the same student I'm currently sleeping with? Because I was stupid and weak enough to sleep with a student in the first place? Saliva is building up in my mouth at a telltale right, the uncomfortable feeling of nausea is climbing my throat like a ladder. I turn to look at her, doing my damndest to pull it together.
"I'll say it again. I have absolutely no control over Dean, and I've never cared about who he's fucking. Whatever you choose to do, I suppose that's up to you."
She juts her bottom lip out in a faux pout. "Oh, come on, don't look at me like that. I really do like you, Sam, and I want to be friends. Unfortunately, we're definitely not each other's type." She laughs. "I don't want to see you lose your job either, I was just making a suggestion, that's all."
I withdraw my wallet from my back pocket and leave two twenties on the table.
"It's been great. Goodnight."
Jamie doesn't stop me, simply bids me goodnight with a little wiggle of her fingers. I squeeze out of the booth, cross the main room towards the door, and leave Rodney's with my entire world on its head. I'm not piss drunk, but I'm not sober enough to drive. I do it anyway, because there's no one I can call. I'd rather not catch a cab and leave my car at a place like this, not with work in the morning. Maybe I'll die on the way home, we can only hope. My house is ten minutes away, and I spend the entirety of that time fighting back a panic attack.
Technically, I didn't admit to anything, but does that matter in the grand scheme? She sounded so...fucking confident.
I've never known regret as intimately as I do now. I want to blame Dean, but I can't bring myself to do it. It might not feel that way most of the time, but I'm in a position of authority over him. I'm in the wrong, no matter how you spin it. I should've put a stop to his antics as soon as they began, but I...I liked the attention, I guess. This town has nothing and no one in it for me except my father's ghost, so the slightest scrap of positive attention made me feel more alive than I had since his passing. Dean liked me enough to pursue me for months. He liked me enough to appear spontaneously at an airport two hours away to pick me up. He liked me enough to get me a gift for my birthday, the only one I received outside of my mother. He likes me enough to, apparently, not fuck anyone else, claiming a fake girlfriend.
Now, I find that I like him, too. I put myself in a position to let genuine feelings grow, despite knowing what the natural outcome would be, despite the potential consequences. Dean has his entire life ahead of him. He has plenty of chances to love, lose, and love again. I know I'm only thirty, but thirty is a tough age to have to admit you're so utterly alone. Liking him or not is moot in the grand scheme, because if Jamie lets a rumor slip or gathers some sort of hard evidence to present to the administration, it's over for me. I knew this could happen, and I did what I did anyway.
Dean, too. No matter how popular, athletic, and attractive he is, sleeping with a male teacher? He'll be right up there on the cross with me.
Maybe I should just resign early and move in with my mother in SoCal, get a head start on my life while I still can. If I do that, I'll be out of Jamie's way. I can only pray she leaves our reputations intact.
