CHAPTER 7

The three of us gawked a little while longer. My buddies because they just saw a hot girl. No surprise there. But me? I watched in awe as she danced and could not believe it. My mind was racing. She couldn’t know that I would be here… This is just the biggest coincidence ever… I can’t let her stay… But I can’t go *talk* to her…

“I think I feel like dancing about now,” Scott grinned to us. He started to get up from the table.

“You can’t!” I blurted out.

He paused. “Why the hell not? You got a girlfriend and I saw her first… that’s two for two!”

I panicked. “No she’s- she’s not supposed to be here…”

“Uh huh,” he laughed, “I’ll get her out of here, don’t worry!”

My face started to turn red. He has no fucking clue. The words spilled out of my mouth. “She’s a teenager!”

Both of them looked at me quizzically.

“She’s… She’s uh, a student at the high school….”

“Your student?” Scott asked incredulously.

I blushed worse, “Yeah.”

He looked back to Autumn. “Buuullshit…”

“Look, I’m serious… I don’t know how she got in here but, uh…” I started to get out of my seat. “I mean, obviously she can’t stay. She’s underage…” Yeah, too young to be looking *that* fuckin’ good.

My friends mumbled something about it not being my responsibility, but I ignored them. Honestly, I wasn’t going over there because I wanted to. I did feel some obligation to do the right thing. I was, after all, a public servant… right?

I moved up to the dance floor; I could barely see Autumn anymore because she had melted back into a crowd at the start of a new song. Taking a deep breath in to calm myself down, I did my best to assertively push my way through the dancers to find her. As I finally got near her, another young guy irritatingly tried to shove me out of the way, annoyed at my advance. I ignored him and called out, “Autumn!”

Her head jerked around, hair dangling down in front of her face, looking passionate and wild. She had this surprised look on her face, like she was shocked to hear her own name. Her body ungracefully snapped upright once she saw me. She wasn’t dancing anymore.

“Uh… hi!” she stammered.

Rolling into disciplinarian mode, I raised my finger and beckoned her to come off the dance floor. “I’d like to talk to you.”

The music was still blaring and most of the dancers ignored us, but some stopped to see who this asshole was that was making the pretty young girl upset. For a moment, she looked around her. I wondered if she would ignore my authority, realizing I had no real power over her outside the classroom. But she acquiesced anyway. She probably thinks I’ll narc her out.

We moved off the dance floor and moved to a back wall. “Nice to, um- see you…” she offered innocently.

“Yeah… Imagine my surprise when I noticed one of my own students. In a bar,” I emphasized.

“I was only dancing…”

“In a bar,” I repeated.

She flopped her hands down to her sides, almost in a pout. “I haven’t been drinking! It’s not a big deal!” Ah, there’s the teenager in her. Not so much confidence now…

“You and I both know you shouldn’t be here, Autumn. Now, I’m willing to forget about this if you leave right now.”

She let out an annoyed sigh. “Come on! I’m not in school right now…”

“This is true... But either you leave, or I will have to let someone know that you are nowhere near twenty-one.”

An irritated little scoff coughed out of her mouth as she turned towards the rest of the bar. Her hands fidgeted on the hem of that short skirt, absent-mindedly pulling it up an inch. I found my own eyes paying way too much attention to those alluring thighs and snapped my gaze back up. Her head turned back to me and stared intently. Oh shit, please don’t let her have noticed…

“I won’t have a ride until way later!”

I blinked in momentary confusion. She’s still trying to reason with me? “Well I’m sure you can call somebody.”

“No way! All my friends are out! They aren’t going to, like, come all the way out here!”

“There’s always your parents,” I offered. That ought to scare her.

“Fuck no!” she cried. As soon as she set it, a hand shot up to cover her mouth. “Oh my gosh!” she slurred, “I mean, they’d kill me!”

For a moment, I actually pitied her. I mean, it’s not like I hadn’t done my fair share of bending the rules as a kid. And she wasn’t a bad student or anything. “Well… How far away do you live?”

Oh brother, did I really ask that? Now honestly. I wasn’t thinking anything impure. Not at that moment anyway.

She looked at me quizzically, then dropped her gaze down to her own body. “Um… Maybe like, twenty minutes or something.” Her hands smoothed out her skirt on the front of her legs. I tried not to watch her fiddling, to see her in that tiny skirt… her entire tummy exposed… “But, I can’t walk all the way back! It’s too late!” she objected.

I sighed. “Look, there is no way you can stay here. If you honestly cannot get a ride, I will drive you back.” Okay, it was the right thing to say. And the right thing to do… Right?

Autumn’s eyes lit up in a brief moment of surprise. “Uh- you don’t… you don’t need to do that…”

She didn’t sound particularly convincing. “Then you do have another way to get home,” I insinuated.

She sighed back at me, “No… I don’t.”

“Come on then.”