And then she was topless and his hands were running over her breasts and his warm breath came in bursts on her skin. She’d had one other brief sexual experience, but it had been nothing like this. Leo pulled off his T-shirt, and his gaze ran over her with such lust that she shivered and pressed her palms against his chest as he lifted her onto a desk in the corner of the room, next to a window that looked down from the flat onto the street below. Her skirt was up round her hips as he buried his face in her neck and she glanced between a crack in the curtains to see a bus pulling up beneath them, tyres sloshing in the rain. Reds and yellows and whites blurred and bounced off every soaked shop window and pavestone as the lights of town refracted in the rain water. Some boys fell off the bus and cut through the puddles towards a laneway, jostling in a friendly way with their shoulders hunched. She felt separated from it all by much more than a pane of glass. It was so easy to forget everything else, and to believe that this was all that mattered.
Afterwards, she slept for a while in his bed. She woke around midnight and texted her parents, telling them she would be staying over with Bethany, and then snuggled back down next to him. But when she came to again with the dawn, the world had changed. All the ecstatic certainty she had hidden behind in the low-lit evening became a tumult of emotions that began to face her down as the daylight grew stronger.
He was asleep next to her. The dawn light coming through the curtains gilded his features, their perfect contours giving her goose bumps. In the blissful hours they had spent together she had been aware of little else but how much they wanted each other. Yet now she was terrified. She could not keep lying to him while falling ever deeper in love.
She had stifled a sob. She didn’t want him to wake up and find her like this – with guilt written all over her. She climbed quietly out of bed and pulled on her clothes, all the time watching him, his features becalmed by sleep.
When she was ready to go she took one final look back, her chest heaving at the decision to leave. But what else could she do? While the truth had been sidelined last night, she knew they had gone too far. She could not live in the lie any longer. Nor could she confess while lying naked in his bed.
Surely he would understand, because she could not imagine anyone else so perfect, so meant for her. The blanket nestled against his waist, and a beam of golden light ran down across his face and along his muscled torso. He was so beautiful that she had felt for her phone in her pocket and flicked it onto the camera, framing him in the little square, knowing that although the moment couldn’t last, she could preserve the memory in this picture forever.
Then she had slipped out while Leo slept, breaking into a jog on the way home and not stopping until she reached her front door. She thought she could hide in the house, forget her decisions, but when she got home it was obviously too late for that. This wasn’t something she could outrun.
She had paced around her room all day, ignoring her family as much as she could, not able to stomach heading down for dinner, neither for food nor conversation. She had seen Leo’s texts, checking she was okay, telling her he’d had a great night, asking when he could see her again. He couldn’t hide his eagerness – he wanted more, just as much as Georgia did. She didn’t reply. Instead, she had Googled student–teacher affairs, craving comfort, but finding that even though she was over the age of consent, he was still in a ‘position of trust’. They had just done something illegal – if anyone found out, Leo would be in big trouble. She had put him in a terrible position, and he was oblivious to her deception. After that, she had gone into the bathroom and dry-retched.
She stalled for two days, trying to figure out what to do. It was too big a burden to carry alone. She went through a list of people she could confide in who might have some treasured piece of advice, some neat and easy way through this that she hadn’t thought of, a way of setting things right without causing pain. But when Leo sent her a text, asking if she would meet him at the spot they had first run into one another, the section he now knew as the spirit road, she had said yes. She knew that this couldn’t go on any longer. Leo had to know the truth.
? ? ?
He was waiting for her as she ran up to him, and one look at his face told her there was nothing left to confess.
‘I saw a photo of you at school yesterday,’ he said, his tone low and unforgiving. ‘Now I know why you’ve been avoiding me.’
She stared at him, mute and ashamed.
‘You knew, Georgia, and yet you came to my house – you let us . . . we . . .’ He could hardly say the words. As their eyes met, his distress was so acute that she felt her throat constrict. The anger in his gaze could not conceal his pain.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her words faint and her head swimming, but as soon as she began to speak he held up a hand to stop her.
‘This is a huge, huge promotion for me. I haven’t even started this job yet, and now I’m fucked. Do you know what you’ve done?’
‘I’m so sorry.’ She began to cry. ‘I’m so, so –’
‘Then why, Georgia?’ he interrupts. ‘Was this just a game to you – something to laugh about with your friends?’
‘Of course not,’ she wailed, ‘it wasn’t like that at all.’
‘So you haven’t told anyone about us?’ he asked, glaring at her, his hands on his hips.
‘No.’
He nodded. ‘Then, if you care anything at all for me, don’t. There’s nothing to tell any more.’
Her breath caught at his words. She took a step towards him, tears cascading freely down her face, but he waved a hand as though dismissing her. ‘Stay away from me, Georgia,’ he said, before he turned to go. ‘Just keep right away.’