I tried to act as normal as possible as Daphne and I walked down the hallway toward Brian's Creative Writing class the day after his father's funeral and burial, although I was nervous as hell knowing that I was about to see him for the first time since the kiss in his Jeep. Daphne was bitching about having to go to her recently-turned vegetarian aunt's house for Thanksgiving dinner the following Thursday.

"Why the fuck would my mom drag us over there when she is well aware that Aunt Tonya refuses to serve meat in her house?"

"I don't know," I mumbled a moment before Brian stepped out into the hallway looking as handsome as ever in a forest green button-up, dark gray slacks, and a matching striped tie.

"I mean, what's Thanksgiving dinner without a turkey, for God's sake?!" Daphne yelled to no one in particular.

"Amen, sister," Brian replied, high-fiving a giggling Daphne before she walked into the classroom ahead of me.

"Good morning, Mr. Taylor," Brian said to me, his hazel eyes reflecting the fluorescent lights overhead.

Okay, I guess we're on a last-name basis again...

"Mr. Kinney," I replied before going in and taking my usual seat.

"I know that Tonya and my mom trade off on who makes dinner each year," Daphne continued, "but couldn't she have waited until after the holidays before swearing off meat? Maybe my parents will let me eat at your house instead, because I know that your mom always makes a big-ass turkey."

The bell rang and Brian... uh, Mr. Kinney closed the door behind himself before walking over to his desk.

"My mom's not making Thanksgiving dinner this year," I said to Daphne.

"What?" Daphne asked. "But I thought she cooked every year."

"She told me and Molly over the weekend that she doesn't feel up for it," I said, looking toward the front of the room to see Mr. Kinney glance over at me as he rummaged through his brief case.

"Oh, because she and your dad...?" Daphne said, letting the rest of the sentence go unsaid.

"Yeah," I answered sadly. "Dad's going to his sister's house up in Butler and Mom wants me and Molly to go with him."

"Are you going?"

"Molly wants to, but I really don't want to be around my dad right now."

Daphne nodded in understanding. "What will you and your mom do, then?"

I shrugged before Mr. Kinney began taking attendance. After getting though his roster, he asked everyone to pass their short stories up to the front of the room saying that he expected nothing but great submissions since everyone had an extra two days to work on them.

Once he placed the papers into his brief case, he silently dropped my completed story that I had turned in early the previous week onto my desk. The assignment was to write a four-page, double-spaced and typed fantasy/adventure story.

I wrote mine about a ten-year old boy named Johnny who dreamed one night that he could fly. Johnny flew to different cities around the world and met a sketch artist in Paris, a pastry chef in Venice, and a mime in Berlin. After Johnny woke up in his bed the next morning, he promised himself that he would really go to those cities when he was a grown-up. I based Johnny on a younger version of myself, since I hoped to travel around the world in the future.

There was a big "100%" written in red ink in the right-hand corner of the top page along with notes in Brian's elegant handwriting stating, "Perfect sentence/paragraph structure, interesting plot and characters, and satisfying conclusion. Bravo!"

Although I wasn't surprised at the grade I received, I silently questioned when Brian had read my paper. Was it before or after his father's death? I had handed it to him the previous Thursday at the beginning of class and he was informed of Jack's death later that evening. With his comments being so upbeat, I guessed that he read it before Jack died. Or maybe he read it after and my feel-good tale temporarily cheered him up? But would it have been before or after I caught him in flagrante delicto in the backroom at Babylon on Friday, or after Monday night's viewing, or...?

I was pulled out of my state of contemplation when Daphne tilted in her seat to look at my grade, her curly pony tail coming into my field of vision, and whispered to me, "So, how's his dick taste?"

I quietly gasped and looked up at Brian who luckily didn't appear to have heard her as I wondered if she somehow knew about how close I had gotten to our teacher over the last few days. I had told her absolutely nothing about my previous afternoon with Brian, letting her believe that I was at home sick all day.

I blushed for a few moments as I replayed my and Brian's kiss in my mind for the millionth time before remembering the little game that Daphne and I had played for years, where one of us would accuse the other one of fucking the teacher when we would get an A on something as if that were the only way that we could ever get a good grade despite the fact that each of us were honors students.

"Delicious," I whispered back before Brian told us to open our textbooks.

Many times throughout the class period while he lectured us over anecdotes, I looked up and caught Brian staring at me and he would quickly look away. I already had a half-wood after trying to imagine how his dick really tasted and each time I met his eyes, my own dick would twitch in my pants.

Halfway through eating a ham and Swiss sandwich that I bought in the lunch line, I looked over to where Brian and Miss Peterson normally stood during their cafeteria monitoring duties. He was once again looking at me and he licked his lips before turning his head to say something to Miss Peterson.

That little peek of his tongue made my dick leak a bit.

During my afternoon English Literature class, Brian asked a few of my classmates to read the different characters' dialog aloud from Hamlet*. The first scene unfortunately had the word "cock" appearing a few times and several of my gutter-minded classmates chuckled each time it was read. Said "cock" was, of course, a bird, but alas...

I had managed to keep my own cock under control that far, since had I refrained from looking up at Brian. He called on me to read Horatio's last two paragraphs at the end of Act I, Scene I, where I had to say "cock" once. I could practically feel Brian's eyes burning into me as I spoke, but I didn't look at him until the scene was finished.

More of the same happened the next day, which was a Thursday and the day of our Book Club meeting after school. I caught Brian blatantly staring at me many times throughout the day, but we didn't speak to each other anymore than was necessary until he excused our club meeting at four o'clock.

I put on my coat and slung my backpack over my shoulders. I wanted to hustle my ass out of there and run home, but I didn't want to disappoint Brian by not helping him straighten up his classroom like I normally did at the end of our meeting.

I had my back turned as I gathered up a couple of candy wrappers that others had left behind and jumped as I heard the door to the classroom close with a loud thunk.

"Justin," Brian said, causing me to turn around to look at him.

I immediately felt myself break out in a sweat as my pulse suddenly picked up. "Yes, Mr. Kinney?"

He gave me a little smile. "I believe I told you that you can call me ‘Brian' when we're alone."

"Yes... Brian?" I nearly whispered, suddenly aware that we were indeed alone for the first time since he had driven me home two days before.

"Look, I..." Brian began, pausing to scratch his head as he briefly looked toward the windows. "What happened between you and me in my Jeep the other day..."

I waited for a few moments while watching him chew his bottom lip.

"Yes?" I asked.

"It shouldn't have happened," he finally blurted out. "I mean, you're my student and I could get into a shit-load of trouble if anyone-"

"I haven't told anyone, I swear," I insisted. "I would never tell anyone."

He closed his eyes for a moment, a brief look of relief on his handsome face. "Well, it was completely inappropriate, nonetheless. Hell, I should have just driven you home right after I caught you at the cemetery. Taking you to my mom's house was-"

"It was a mistake, I get it," I said forcefully, tears welling up in my eyes as I silently begged him to stop talking about it. "I shouldn't have gone to the cemetery or to the funeral home the night before. I had no right to barge into your personal life like that."

"Hey," Brian said as he walked closer to me. "It's not that I don't appreciate you showing concern for me after you heard about my dad's death, but-"

I stepped around him to throw the candy wrappers away in the trash can beside his desk. "But I should have stayed the fuck away," I finished for him. "I hear you loud and clear."

I grabbed the doorknob to leave.

"Justin, wait," Brian said, effectively halting my movements.

"Why did you kiss me?" I stage-whispered as I stared at the wooden door in front of me.

He didn't say anything for several seconds, so I turned to look at him. His lips were slightly parted and his eyes searched my face.

"What?" he asked.

"You heard me," I said, taking a few steps toward him. "Is it because you were somehow feeling vulnerable, since you had just buried your father and I was showing my concern over you, which made you want to kiss me, or... are you attracted to me?"

He sighed and looked up at the ceiling. "Yeah," he whispered.

My breath caught in my throat. "Wh... which one?"

"Well, both... but especially the second one."

I walked over to the desk closest to the door and sat down heavily. He then sat on the corner of his desk and crossed his arms over his chest.

I took several deep breaths while tons of questions flew through my head. I verbalized the most pressing one: "For how long?"

Brian chuckled a bit. "Uh... I don't know."

"Can you give me an estimate, because I've been in love with you since I first saw you back in my freshman year," I blurted out, which I immediately regretted. I looked down at the desk. "Shit... I don't really mean, ‘in love,' I just mean that I've... had a crush on you. A major one."

He chuckled again. "Well, I remember always thinking that you were a cute kid, what with that blonde hair of yours and those big, blue eyes... you look like a porcelain doll. But I guess I first started noticing you as more than just a ‘cute kid' at the beginning of the school year."

I looked back up with him.

I must have had a curious expression on my face, because he continued, "It looked like you grew up quite a bit over the summer."

I smiled. "Yeah, I grew three inches and put on about ten pounds, plus I gained a shoe size almost overnight. My mom had to buy me a whole new wardrobe and I had to get new school uniforms."

"You didn't just get taller," he said. "You look more mature than you did last year. You lost the baby fat in your cheeks and you just look more... manly, I guess."

His voice deepened towards the end of that sentence, causing my manly bits down below to come to life.

We sat in silence, just staring into each other's eyes for a few seconds until we heard what sounded like keys jingling outside the door. A janitor opened the door and was surprised to see us.

"Oh, I thought everyone would be gone by now," he said.

"Sorry," Brian said as he walked around his desk to retrieve his suit jacket, top coat, and brief case. The two of us walked out into the hall and began heading toward the exit.

"Want a ride?" he asked me as he held the door for me.

"Sure," I said.