It's not a particularly difficult project, you're glad to see. It's just a complicated list of questions about different reactions, referencing parts of the chemistry textbook most of the class hasn't read through yet. There's just enough of it that you can't reasonably expect to do it on your own— likely an intentional decision by Mrs Knopf, given her frequent complaints about students who don't work hard enough in her class. If you can't do it on your own, then quite a few students in here are going to have trouble completing it without working harder than they normally do.
This project does raise one sticking point, however.
Either you're going to have to sacrifice your lunchtimes with Madison, or you're going to have to invite Sophia over to your house. And you don't want to sacrifice your lunchtimes with Madison.
You sigh, resting your head in your hands. Damn it. And you'd had such a good day up until now, too.
"Right," you groan. "Sophia, do you have the time to do this project during lunch?"
She's already shaking her head by the time you finish your sentence. "Nope," she says. "Got track meetings tomorrow and Thursday, and I've got to see the principal on Friday. Only days I could do it are today and Wednesday."
"Damn it," you hiss. Briefly, you consider asking her if you could go over to her house, but— going over to Sophia's house? Placing yourself as Sophia's mercy? You toss that idea in the discard pile. "Damn it."
"Hey, it's not that bad." Sophia knits her brow. "We can just go after school and do it, track doesn't start until five-"
"I tutor Madison until five," you interrupt her. "And she needs the help. Damn it. And the town library closes at six."
Sophia shrugs beside you. "So come over my house, or I'll head over to yours. It's not that big of a deal-"
"Not that big a deal?" you repeat, faintly incredulous. "No, I'm not doing that, Sophia. No matter how hot you are."
She stares at you. "Fucking hell, Hebert," she swears. "Don't do this to me. I need my grades to stay up."
You grit your teeth. Unfortunately, it's true, and you know it. Sophia is intelligent enough, but she's not the kind of student who works well in an academic context— like Madison. Back when they'd still been actively bullying you, one of the few measures of reassurance you'd had was keeping an eye on their grades so you could assure yourself that at least you had that over them. That was when you'd started staying up so late studying, so even when they sabotaged some of your assignments, you were still able to keep your grades up. Sophia isn't able to do that, though— she consistently gets C's and D's, with only the occasional B. An important assignment really could be enough to throw off her grade average.
"Shit," you hiss. "Okay. Okay, Sophia, fine. We can work on it over at my house. But— you can't— you have to do what I say there. "
She stares at you for a moment. Her eyes dart over your face, as if she's searching for something. You're not sure if she finds it, but when she next speaks, her voice is softer. "Fine, I can respect that. Your house, your rules. But nowhere else. We're at school, or we meet in town, I do what I want. And if you ever come to my house, then you follow my rules, no complaints, no working around it, same as your house. Deal?"
You offer your hand. "Deal," you say firmly. You can live with those, you think. Besides— it's not like her restrictions matter. By the time you plan on going over to her house, Sophia is going to be begging to follow your rules. "When can you come over, then?"
She taps her fingers over her thighs. "I'll be busy today and tomorrow, but I should be free from seven from Wednesday on. That good for you?"
You nod. "Sounds perfect," you reply.
That afternoon, you head on over to the library with Madison. You'd spent a delicious lunch with Madison, eating a thoroughly stirred salad and a brownie that probably wasn't meant to be partially covered in balsamic vinegar. Okay, so maybe it hadn't been such a delicious lunch. You'd still spent the time with Madison, which makes it more than worth it.
Madison has a secretive smile on her face, as though she knows something you don't know. Madison can't actually keep a secret from you for her life, so you're content in letting her hold on to whatever she knows for now.
Sure enough, when she sits down at the table besides you, she quickly pulls a rolled-up letter from inside her jacket. "Taylor!" she squeals. "Guess what, guess what! We had a surprise test in Home Economics, and I got my results back?"
"Oh?" you ask. Judging by her reaction, she's done pretty good. And, indeed, she has— much better than you thought she'd been doing, actually. She unrolls it in front of you, proudly displaying the read 'A+' scrawled in red marker up the top.
"It was pretty hard," she rambles, "but I managed to get it all down. It was all about cooking and stuff, which helped, but I wouldn't have remembered it all if it wasn't for you helping me as much as you have." She smiles sweetly at you, then leans over to give you an affectionate hug.
You take it a step further, and push out your chair so you can pull her up into your lap. She lets out a happy squeal as you hold her in place and pepper her face with affectionate kisses, scrunching her nose as your hair tickles her face. She holds her face up, non-verbally asking you for a kiss; you're happy to oblige.
When you part, you lean in and steal another one from her before speaking. "Good job," you praise her. She closes her eyes again, preening at your compliment. You give her a kiss, then another, then another. "But don't give me the credit here, Madison. You're the girl who was smart enough to learn this stuff."
She giggles and holds her face up for another sweet kiss. After you give it to her, she shakes her head a little, accidentally rubbing her nose against yours in the process. It kind of tickles. "I learned it, but it's only because you taught me, Taylor. Thank you, thank you."
You chuckle again. "A teacher's only as good as their student," you inform her. Then, before she can try and refute you again, you lean and deliberately place a kiss along her jaw, just beneath her ear. She shudders against you, her argument dying off as she sucks in a shaky breath. You place another kiss there, then slowly trail your lips down, leaving a trail of wet kisses down to her neck, then her collarbone, then her shoulder. You look up and give her a devilish grin as you continue kissing even lower on her body, kissing down the front of her shoulder, then over her chest; her eyes flutter as you tug on her shirt, then her bra, freeing one of her breasts for you.
It's risky, playing around in here like this, but she deserves a reward for all her hard work.
You kiss lower, suckling your way down her breast until you're able to take her nipple into your mouth. You tug on it a few times with your teeth, thoroughly enjoying the way she tries to hold her moans in, then release it so you can finally reach your actual goal. There, you begin pressing wet kisses all over the side of her breast for a moment, before you lean in and begin sucking on it, hard. She lets out an actual moan at that, then quickly clamps a hand over her mouth to prevent another one escaping her. You don't stop, though, continuing to suck at her breast until you're sure a bruise will form. Then, and only then, do you tuck her breast back into her bra for her and lean up to give her another kiss on the mouth.
There; you're pretty sure she'll be satisfied with that as a reward. Being physically marked by you, the soft pain a reminder of the fact that you've claimed her as your own— well, you think the heaving of her chest and the wetness on your thigh as you spin her around to sit facing the table tells enough of the story.
You can't resist one last little promise, though.
"Keep getting good grades like that," you murmur in her ear, "and I might not be able to stop myself from doing that every time." To punctuate what you're saying, you give her a little nip on the neck.
She turns her head, giving you a sweet little smile. "You promise?" she asks.
"Of course." You nip her neck again. "I'd want everyone to know that such a smart girl is mine, after all."
She turns back to her work. Her happy smile doesn't fall off for the rest of the day.
The start of the next day also happens to be the first day at your new job. You get up even earlier than normal so you can wash yourself and still catch the earliest bus there.
You're not even sure how you'd fallen into the job, not really. You'd mentioned to Doctor Fitzpatrick last week that you were looking for a job to help out with the family finances, and he'd told you that one of his friends ran a movie theater and was looking for a casual assistant to work around the area. He'd offered to bring up your name, and you'd accepted. The next day, you'd come home to a phone call offering you a trial position at the theater. You'd accepted, of course, but that was it— a phone call and a notification that you'd be starting today.
The owner of the theater turns out to be a haggard man in... his late fourties, you would guess. He's dressed in a tailored suit, but his beard looks like he hasn't trimmed it in a few days. That's even grosser than a normal beard. He introduces himself as 'Mr. Harding', but hurriedly excuses you, leaving you with vague directions to go clean the place up a bit.
The job itself isn't very exciting, but you didn't really expect it to be. Mostly, you walk around with a long-handed dustpan and broom, sweeping the floors and picking up the trash left over from a midnight screening last night. You arrive at seven, and you're done by eight. One hour's work, at ten dollars an hour, a generous rate. Two to three mornings a week, and afternoon work on Mondays until eight. Four to five hours a week. It's not great, but it's something— and it could potentially lead to more. Plus, discounts on movie tickets. Always helpful.
You're content enough with it, in part because nobody tries to speak to you— not that there's anyone to speak to you, there's only two other workers working right then and there are virtually no customers— and in part because the work is finicky enough to require you to actually pay attention. You have to get in behind chairs and up the stairs, you have to clean in the aisles and try and get gum off the handrails, and all other sorts of weird places. You're not sure why people leave this kind of rubbish behind, but they do.
Mr Harding is kind enough to let you use the restroom to change out of your uniform and into your school clothes when it hits eight. He shows you to a locker with a blank white sticker on it, and asks that you keep your uniform in there when you're not using it. He has a contract with a dry cleaner, and will get them dry-cleaned every Sunday, when the theater isn't open.
You're content enough with the job. It's not exciting, but it's good money for the hours, and keeps you busy.
There's a bus running between the theater and school, but school's close enough that you don't feel you need to worry about it. You just jog there instead, and make it just in time to see your regular bus pull up— and, yes, the bus is on time again. Huh.
You're actually in a pretty good mood, right up until the point you walk up to your locker and find Emma leaning against it. She sees you at roughly the same time as you see her. You're tempted to just turn and walk away, but— you have to get to your locker eventually, and she knows it. She's never been one to be scared of cutting the first few minutes of class, either. Shit.
You take a deep breath and try to square your shoulders as you move towards your locker. It's not a very successful attempt.
"Emma," you greet her flatly.
"Taylor," she replies. "It's nice to see you."
You can't help but roll your eyes. "Yes, well. Could you move, please? I need to get to my locker."
She doesn't move. "Actually, I was hoping we could talk," she says.
You look around the halls, taking in all the people surrounding you— there are at least seven or eight people in the halls. None of them are close enough to hear your whispered conversation, but, yeah, no."
She grimaces. "After school," she compromises. "We can meet up at your house— or, no," she corrects herself hurriedly when you scowl, "my house? No? The library— look, just pick a place," she says. There's a faint note of exasperation in her voice, but also a pleading note in there. "Please, Taylor."
You scowl, but-
— you can't put this off forever. You know you can't. You created this entire damned plan of yours to get the entire Trio down on their knees before you. Sure, you've adapted some, compromised some— you won't be forcing Madison to do anything like you'd originally planned for her to do any time soon— but there are aspects of that plan that are kind of vital. Emma being one of the Trio is kind of the most intrinsic one of those.
And, you know Emma well enough to know that she won't give up. When there's something that she wants, she reaches out and she takes it. The fact that you don't want to talk to her won't deter her.
"Fine," you say bitterly. "I'll call you this afternoon and tell you where we can meet up. Bring your wallet. I'm not paying for it."
"Okay." She nods resolutely. "Okay. Please don't back out on this, Taylor."
You sigh. "Just get away from my locker," you mutter.
You can't even have two nice days in a row, you grumble to yourself. Something always comes along to spoil your fun.
The restaurant you chose is a small one, not too far from your house. It's called 'Moretti's Dining'. When you were a kid, it was called 'Mama Moretti's'. At some point, the woman who ran the restaurant died, and her children renamed it to what it's called now.
It's a small, cozy restaurant. Dad's taken you out here before. The prices are low enough that the two of you can afford to go out a couple of times a year, usually for each of your birthdays. The food is good, the atmosphere is friendly enough, and it's in one of the better parts of the district you live in.
The waiter— a man in his very early twenties— recognizes you as you walk in, bringing a small warmth to your stomach. "Aha!" he greets you. His nametag tells you his name is Trey. "It is good to see you again, Miss..."
"Taylor."
"Miss Taylor. You're not with your father today?"
You shake your head, clutching the sleeves of your jacket together. "No," you say quietly. "I'm here to meet with, uh, a.. a girl. Emma. Emma Barnes. Is she here yet?"
"Hmm," he hums. "There have been a lot of girls coming in tonight. Can you describe her to me?"
