Chapter Thirteen

Watching Maeve grade these midterms, it's clear how considerate she is, how much she cares about her students. It's rare for me to bump up against people who feel this much compassion for other humans. I follow her lead, and the marking goes remarkably quickly.

"So for Rocketman," I say as I pull up YouTube, "we're dealing with a very deliberate mix of diegetic and non-diegetic music, all of it attached to emotional moments rather than simply playing Elton John's songs in chronological order. The film relies on fantasy and a campy, heightened world to represent Elton's tumultuous emotions. To illustrate the point, I'll rely mostly on set pieces. We'll discuss the primary emotion being expressed in the scene and where the scene sits on a realism/fabulist scale."

Maeve nods as she watches my mouse move across the screen. She's on the couch with me, and the laptop sits on both our legs. Her thigh is pressed against mine, and I'm doing everything I can to ignore the heat that stretches from my kneecap to my stomach. "So what clips do you plan to use?"

"Hmm," I say. I click on "Honky Cat." "So here we have non-diegetic music, which uses a lack of cuts and long pans to represent time melting into itself. It's like being in love, which Elton is in this scene. Even within the movie's universe, movements, costumes, and facial expressions are more animated in this scene, especially Egerton's expressions, and especially compared to Madden's. You can see some darker themes haunt the whimsical scene—Madden eyeing the waiter is the biggest example."

Maeve leans in, closer to me. "And the visuals in the background too, right? It's never explicit, but you see it when Bernie breaks up with Heather."

I smile. "Exactly!"

"You really know your technical filmmaking. It's so impressive."

I flush. "Just a bit from the directing."

"I still need to see the TV episodes you directed. I bet they're great." Maeve takes her fingertip to the trackpad and clicks on "Rocketman." "This song employed a lot of heightened reality, didn't it?"

"Uh, yeah, it talks about your deepest pain coming to you in your darkest hours…"

I take a deep breath, hoping to steady the chills running through my body.

"But it's one of the few songs that pauses to return to reality," Maeve says, pausing the clip. "We exit his head to see how the real people around him are actually reacting to the suicide attempt."

I smile briefly, despite myself. "Yeah, it's a heavy scene. I know when I—"

Maeve sets the laptop aside, turns to face me. Our thighs pull apart, but she's pressing her knees hard into mine. "When you…?"

I take a deep breath. "I've—I've just felt that devastated when it comes to mental health and fame. Winston wasn't even the worst interview I've done. This one guy—"

"John Henry."

Jesus, she saw that one? It was from my really early, Oscar-buzz days. Before I was out, he was one of the most aggressive interviewers asking about my dating life and the mystery surrounding it. She seems to read my mind.

"Yeah, it was one of the ones I watched to try to figure out what your favorite food was." She pauses, chewing on her cheek. "It was painful."

I look back to the paused frame of Rocketman. "That scene has always spoken to me. Being trapped in a world of pain people refuse to see because your purpose has become making others happy. The anger that comes with that. The vicious desire for everyone to see what pain they've caused you."

She slips her hand in mine. The butterflies flap inside me.

"You don't have to talk about that scene if it hurts too much," she says. "But your analysis is wonderful."

I break out in a tiny smile. "It's okay. It's just my first time seeing it in a while. It hits differently."

She looks back to the laptop. "So what's your favorite song in the movie?"

I shrug. "I really like the mix on ‘Crocodile Rock.'?"

"?‘Crocodile Rock,'?" she says, her mouth wrapping around every syllable. My throat tightens watching her.

She pulls up ‘Crocodile Rock' and places the laptop on one side of her desk.

"Why'd you move the laptop?" I ask.

She smiles. "Let's just enjoy it for a moment." She puts the song on, a smile forming on her beautiful lips when the first line hits. "I love this song!"

She giggles as the next couple of lines play.

Then she starts singing. As the piano picks up, she sings along, that dopey grin still on her face. And her voice is beautiful. Beautiful and lively and—fuck—I could listen to it all night. She beckons me up off the couch with one tug. And before I know it, I'm joining her, our hands clasped as we move to the upbeat tempo. I know this song and these lyrics so well, but it feels like I'm hearing them for the first time. Our hands are growing slick, yet they anchor us together as our bodies move to the music.

I grin as I execute Elton's signature foot-on-the-piano move by slamming the toe of my shoe onto Maeve's (mercifully low) desk like a fucking showgirl. Maeve squeals, laughing as she says, "My god, you're flexible!"

Flexible, sure, but not coordinated. I lose my footing as I yank my shoe off her desk and drop back to the coach. But because we're still holding hands, Maeve goes down with me.

I'll admit that the initial impact of her full body weight knocks the wind out of me. It leaves my head a little fuzzy when we finally make eye contact.

We're close. We're so close, close enough that I can see her individual eyelashes and the lick of lipstick still stuck to her lips. She breathes on me, her chest and stomach rising and falling on mine. Heat. She's so warm. So warm and so close and on the screen "Crocodile Rock" is in the time-stopping sequence, the crescendo of "la, la-la-la-la." We look right at each other, already mixing breath.

So I kiss her.

I kiss her forcefully yet as tender as I can manage. She kisses me back so fast I'm practically woozy. She pushes her lips to mine, dropping her body weight onto me as if she forgot about everything but our mouths connecting. We hold our breath as we hold each other, starving the rest of our senses. I'm dizzy. Yes, kissing her is dizzying.

I pull away, and Maeve drops to her knees in front of me.

"Are you sure about this?" I ask.

"Yes," she replies before climbing into my lap, kicking off her shoes.

Her hands go straight for my jaw, dig into my hair. And god, she holds me tight. Maeve, who I thought was so delicate and gentle, is pressing her fingers into my bones, pulling my hair by the roots. I'm sighing into her mouth before I've even settled my hands on her lower back. My own grip on her grows as urgent as hers is on me when my fingers trail under her blazer and blouse to finally feel that hot, soft skin. Her quickening breath digs into my insides.

We kiss like we're trying to devour each other. The way you'd hold on to someone you were determined to keep. It's a hunger with a beating heart that says I'm only this ravenous for you. Then thoughts start to poke through the veil as oxygen reenters my brain. Maeve could be kissing any woman like this if she just missed a woman's touch. But she's kissing me like this. She's kissing me like she's waited half her life to have my lips on hers. And even though as I can't fully admit it to myself, I feel the same way.

My brain's swimming, but clarity shoots out like a rocket when she suddenly pulls away. "I want you on top," she says, her words ragged.

And who am I to deny her?

I hold on to her as I climb into her lap. Lower myself until our hips align. But as I make adjustments, Maeve grabs for my blouse, swiftly pulling the buttons apart. The moment her finger pads leave my goose bump–covered flesh, her mouth is on my breasts. Kissing, licking, pushing my bra aside.

"Is this illegal?" I ask, barely keeping a moan at bay. I can't believe Maeve Arko is touching me like this.

Her lips and teeth pull at my skin. "Two teachers kissing?"

I glance around the office for just a moment. "On school property."

Maeve snorts a laugh. "No, it's a private school."

She pulls her hips up, bucking against me. And god, just that one tease, that one promise of what we could do to destroy each other. My own breath picks up with hers, that knot of pleasure clenched, growing bigger by the second. I mount her, pressing all my weight and contorting my body in such a way that the pressure hits hardest between our hips. And as I grind against her, I muffle the sweet taste of her moans with my mouth on hers. She tastes like salted caramel and chocolate still, and I'm starved for her. Nothing's ever tasted better. Nothing's built this fast before. My heartbeat is throbbing in my lips, my fingertips grab her ass to pull us closer together, my stomach jumps, and the desire between my legs deepens as we dig into each other.

Her hands slide against the GG buckle on my red belt, and I feel like I'm nineteen in a dorm room, hooking up with a girl for the first time, her hands running along my waistband. I grin through our kiss, pulling away. I know this game. I know what I am, how I look, what to do with the hunger in Maeve's eyes as she watches me place one set of fingers on the end of the belt and the other on the clasp.

Charlie and I did one late-night interview together very shortly after I came out, before things went sideways. We'd decided beforehand on a bit where Charlie, me, and the middle-aged host would show off our abs to tease out a few whoops and laughs from the studio audience. I looked great then, plus Charlie had to be subjected to the same amount of objectification, so I didn't care. But my stylist had put me in high-waisted pants, cinched by a Hermès belt. I knew exactly how to control showing a late-night audience only my abs, but it still involved unbuckling my belt and sliding the front of my pants down. Charlie, lovely and hyperaware of the fact that my part was extra sexual, made some joke about how everyone in the audience should know this is just what I looked like on the toilet. It'd gotten its belly laugh from the audience; I'd gotten to finish the bit without feeling uncomfortable.

But the thing is, here with Maeve, I know Charlie wasn't right. Pulling off this belt is the fucking sexiest thing in the world. Maeve is drinking in my movement, the crooked smile on my face, the tendons in my hands as they flex. It's been so long since I've felt like this. Like I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.

Maeve grabs the clasp and zipper on my pants. God, just the pressure of her touch has me nearly ready to burst—

And someone knocks at the door.

I barely manage not to fall back on my ass in the space between the couch and Maeve's desk. Still, I'm on my back trying to zip, clip, and resecure my belt. Maeve runs a hand through her clearly makeout-tousled hair, but otherwise looks much less worse for wear than I do.

"Ty?" Maeve says to the other side of the door.

"Uh, yeah. I was gonna pick up the midterms."

Maeve looks down at me. My pants are now secure, but my blouse is buttoned a few buttons too low and our shoes are scattered around the room. She motions to the door, as if asking me if she should let him in. I roll back to my knees and stand up. Maeve moves to the door, grabbing the midterms as she goes.

Ty looks perfectly innocent as he steps into the office. Some Elton John mix is now playing from the laptop. I'm curious to see how many songs played during that makeout. "Hey, Val."

"Hey." My voice is hoarse. I clear it back to its signature dumb Valley girl range. "How are you?"

Maeve shoots me a look, but Ty doesn't notice. "Good, how are you?"

I press my lips together, the light pink lipstick I had on for lecture totally gone. "Not bad."

"These are our samples," Maeve says, her voice back in perfect professor mode. In fact, if I didn't still have the taste of her skin and mouth in mine, I wouldn't know she was about to stick her hand down my pants less than a minute ago. "Let's all aim for a week from today to get these marked, but if you have to give them back in sections next week, that's fine too."

"Okay, cool," he says as he accepts the papers. "Have a safe drive home!"

Ty steps out of the office and leaves the door open. My muscles are taut, but that ajar door feels more symbolic than it should. Maeve and I hold eye contact for a long moment.

She sighs. "I…think we should be heading out too. Traffic's down."

I glance at the laptop clock. Yeah, it's almost seven.

I take a deep breath, hoping the aching feeling will fade fast. "Yeah. Of course, traffic."

The mood's killed. I can accept that much.

She grabs my shoulder as I try to walk out with my stuff. Leans in so her breath is back on my ear. "But worth the risk."

My heart's speeding again, and I choose action over thought. I turn to her, tug our lips together quickly before she pulls away.

We separate for real this time.

Not even my long car ride can unwind the knot of desire from inside me.