Student next door, p.1
Student Next Door, page 1
Published by EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING ® at Smashwords
www.evernightpublishing.com
Copyright© 2022 Sam Crescent
ISBN: 978-0-3695-0722-8
Cover Artist: Jay Aheer
Editor: Audrey Bobak
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
STUDENT NEXT DOOR
Sam Crescent
Copyright © 2022
Chapter One
Teal Larson stared out of her bedroom window while listening to her mother beg for forgiveness. Moving into this stupid house was supposed to be a do-over. The new start. A chance for her parents.
Which was actually her constantly listening to her mother beg for him to return. David and Bethany Larson had once been a power couple, and now they are verging on divorce because her mother had an affair.
“Look, David, I’m trying here. I quit my job. I found this house in the middle of nowhere. You have got to stop acting like this child. I did everything I told you I would.”
Teal turned toward her bedroom door to see her mother pass by as she slammed into the bedroom.
Even with her father overseas, they were still fighting. Still arguing. It was nonstop. Looking back outside, she couldn’t help but admire their neighbor, Jaxson Rebel. She nibbled on her lip as she watched him.
He wore no shirt, a pair of jeans that rode low on his body, and well, she’d never been the kind of girl to admire any boy, let alone a guy. A much older guy. There he was, for all to see. Well, for her to see, and her mother, if she paid attention.
Jaxson was cleaning out his backyard. He’d pulled up all of the old rose bushes and flowers and seemed to replace them with green ferns or something like that.
She knew he was a brand-new teacher at the local high school. Just as she was a brand-new student. Teal had never lived here before.
Both of her parents had been in advertising. Rival firms, which they thought was hilarious. They were constantly stealing each other’s clients and stuff like that. Sure, they argued a lot, but she knew her parents loved each other, immensely. That had all changed with her mother’s affair.
At first, Teal had thought her dad had been unfaithful. Over the course of the last few weeks, she had learned the truth. Her mother’s late nights hadn’t been for a client, but for her boss. It had resulted in her father taking an assignment overseas, her mother quitting her job, and them moving into this house. This was all an attempt to bring him back.
Teal had a feeling her father wasn’t coming back. He hadn’t spoken to her in days, which was unlike him. She’d sent him several texts, all of which had gone unanswered, so she had decided no more texts. No more reaching out.
This hadn’t just fucked up his world, but it had messed up hers as well. Back home, in the city, she had several tutors who helped her with the classes she’d been failing. She was the epitome of parental disappointment. Her parents were geniuses in their own way, hunted by independent companies to work for them. The names and stuff that went with graduating at the top and all of that crap.
She failed math, science, English, history, and pretty much most subjects. It wasn’t that she didn’t get it. She did. She got it a whole lot, and if someone had a conversation with her, then they would know she took it all in. Her biggest problem was that she didn’t test well. The whole pressure of sitting in silence, not able to feel like you could even glance around the main hall, had made her panic. She failed all her tests.
According to stupid pieces of paper, she hadn’t learned a single thing since she was a kid. If someone was to actually ask her the questions in a conversation-like manner, they would know she was perfectly adept to learn. She hadn’t told her parents, but she could retain and even remember where each little fact came from.
All she had to do was read the books, which she did. A photographic memory, or close to it. Teal had never told anyone she remembered it all. Whenever she got questions about her bad results, she just shrugged, much to her parents’ fury. At least it stopped them from making plans in taking her everywhere they want to go. All the parties had stopped. Nothing like taking who they considered a dumb daughter to any of their important office events. If they had, she might have been able to stop her father from opening the door to her mother’s office while she’d been deep in the throes of getting fucked by her boss.
But hey, she wasn’t one to judge, and besides, what did she know? She was stupid. That was what she heard her mother call her. If only she knew.
The sound of the doorbell pulled her out of her anger, and she made her way downstairs to find the mailman waiting with a package.
“Thank you,” she said, closing the door.
Glancing down at the name, she frowned. It was clearly for next door.
She quickly opened the door, but the mailman and his van were gone.
Teal looked up the street, but there wasn’t even a scent of an engine in the street either. It was like he didn’t even exist, which was crazy. The mailman had handed her the wrong package meant for Jaxson.
She couldn’t go and stop her parents’ fight. They would just start asking her no end of questions. Even though they’d been the ones to uproot her life, they had told her, seeing as she didn’t take her learning seriously, that it was up to her to find her tutors.
Yay. And yeah, that was never going to happen. Her tutors were well aware of what she was and wasn’t capable of. They knew. What they tried to do was create the examination environment that would help her become accustomed to testing.
It never, ever worked.
All she did was flunk, and it was so freaking weird because it wasn’t like she was any stranger to pressure. Two corporate parents. The parties. Having to study while mingling, holding conversations, and she had done it all.
Yet, out of nowhere, she had this huge problem, and she couldn’t even fathom why.
Examinations weren’t that big of a deal. It was silence, for however long you tested. It was complete and total attention.
She had passed in her old school, piece of cake. All the practice runs, everything. Then out of the blue, taking a couple of exams before the end of the year, and it was like her whole world came crashing down.
Why?
None of it made any sense.
She was in her final year of high school. The crucial year. This was where she needed to keep a level head and to test well. Where had it come from?
After stepping out of her home, she walked down the small path and then turned toward Jaxon’s home.
They hadn’t spoken much. A few choice words and greetings here and there. Her mother had been rude, not even noticing him. Teal noticed him. She walked up to his front door. To her, she felt rude, just crossing over their yards, so she always walked up her path, took the few short feet, and then down toward his home.
Mail had turned up for him a few times. Letters, which she shoved through his letter box. This was the first package. She couldn’t just shove it through his letterbox. This required her knocking. If she knocked and didn’t bother ringing the doorbell, then she could leave his package outside, and there wouldn’t be anything she’d done wrong.
She would have done her duty as a friendly neighbor.
Easy. Easy peasy. Ugh, she hated peas.
After drawing her wrist back, she knocked on the door and waited.
Was it polite to knock more than once?
No, the point of knocking was to make sure he wasn’t at the door, ready to answer. All she had to do was leave the package, and then ring his doorbell as one final warning.
She was just about to do that when the door opened.
Jaxson, naked, apart from his low-riding jeans, opened the door. “Teal,” he said. He’d learned her name on their first day moving in. Her mother had constantly been shouting it, telling her where to take the boxes to and fro.
“Mr. Rebel.” Her mouth felt so dry.
Was it her imagination or did he smell really good? “Er, the mailman delivered this to our home.”
Jaxson took the box from her, and Teal smiled at him.
“Strange, I haven’t ordered anything.”
“I don’t know what it can be, but it is addressed to you.”
“Thank you.”
She offered a smile and then held her hand up as if to say goodbye.
“How have you settled in?” he asked.
“Oh, er, fine, I think. Yeah, everything is fine. It is all fine.” She had said the same word at least three times. She had to stop. “How about you?”
Why was this conversation so hard?
****
Teal Larson was a very beautiful young woman.
Jaxson knew he should have let her leave the box and ignore her, just like he’d been trying to ignore her for several weeks now.
It was next to impossible. For some fucking reason, every time he arrived home, Teal was out in the yard, and he wasn’t a rude guy. Life would be so much easier if he did just ignore her.
He knew she watched him. He’d seen her standing at her bedroom window, looking down at him, watching him. Normally, any woman watching him so blat
Teal was different. He saw it in her eyes. And of course, he heard it in her voice whenever he overheard a conversation with her mother. Her relationship with her parents was strained. Not that he could blame her, even between her parents, their relationship was strained.
Originally, when he moved in, he believed the story Bethany had told him. About moving here for Teal’s education and college applications, all that crap.
It wasn’t. Bethany had an affair. Her husband wasn’t around, and she was trying to make it work. That was what he heard all the time. Her on the phone, trying to make it work, while Teal just seemed to be ignored. They were both due to start the new high school next week.
Jaxson wasn’t worried. He didn’t get why he’d moved from his private school job to this one. He’d been happy teaching math to a bunch of privileged kids. Their parents had too much money, and the kids grew up with a whole bunch of issues, or whatever their excuse was for being less than perfect.
The job had been damn good. Sure, he had to ward off a few clingers and made sure to never be alone with some of the girls who thought he wanted them. None of them appealed to him.
The job, teaching, that was what he loved. It also earned well. He had good savings and an amazing reputation, which was why he didn’t know why he saw and answered the advertisement for a new math teacher at the local high school in a place he’d never heard of.
Even this house, he wasn’t a house kind of guy. He preferred his apartment with no yard. He hated gardening. It was why he’d just ripped out all the rose bushes and flowers. He didn’t have green fingers. Everything that required watering died in his care.
There was a time when he attempted to keep plants, but after they all died, he decided they were a waste of money and just stopped. Now he had a garden. Even the grass on his back lawn looked brownish. Had he killed the grass now as well?
“Yeah, everything is going well. All moved in to my new house.” A house he didn’t want. Still didn’t make any sense to him. Not a single bit. “I made some lemonade. Would you like to come in?”
Teal glanced back at her home and then sank her teeth into her lip. “Yeah, er, sure.” She nodded, and he gave her some room to enter his home.
Why was he inviting the neighbor’s daughter into his home?
She moved past him, and he couldn’t help but notice how nice she smelled. These were things he never should notice. She was his student. Or might be his student. He hadn’t seen his class yet. From what Bethany had told him, in between begs and pleads to her husband, Teal had a problem in school.
What Bethany had coldly said was that her daughter was a little stupid. That she hadn’t been able to retain any of the information she’d been taught, and she needed special care and attention.
“Your home is nice,” Teal said.
He closed the door and got an overwhelming scent of roses.
With Teal distracted with looking at his home, he lifted his hands to his face. The scent of roses wasn’t on him from tearing out the rose bushes. Were they haunting him? He’d worn freaking gloves. It couldn’t be on him.
“I’m sure our homes look the same,” he said.
“Yeah, similar. The main setup is the same, but there are differences. I mean, we do have a pool.”
“Yeah,” Jaxson said. “I thought I was the one with the pool at one point.” He frowned. He was sure he saw it in the deeds, but again, everything about this move was odd. So was the scent of roses.
There was only one reason he’d be able to smell roses. He stepped a bit closer to Teal, and sure enough, the smell was coming from her. Why did she have to smell so good?
“Let’s get you that lemonade.” And while he did, he could remind himself that while she was eighteen years old, he was forty. A grown man. Not interested in dating a student, or for that matter, living here.
His old school had already been in touch, telling him that a place was always available for him. The teachers liked him, as did the parents. The students had a love-hate relationship with him. He didn’t mind them slacking off, being a bullshitter in his class, but they had to pass his class. Otherwise, they were in for one hell of a semester because he made them study their asses off. Student education was important to him.
Stepping into his kitchen, he put the package on the counter, and then he opened up the door of the fridge, finding his lemonade.
Teal had taken a seat, and he grabbed two glasses before handing her one.
“So, how are things with your parents?” he asked.
She smiled. “Same as always. I think they’re going to get a divorce, you know.”
“It’s not working out?”
“Mom spends hours convincing him that she is changed. That she is here. It doesn’t matter. He’s not going to come.”
“Is that what he’s told you?”
“No. That would require speaking to me, and it seems David Larson no longer has a daughter.” She shook her head. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to— He hasn’t answered any of my calls, but that’s because I’m a huge disappointment to him. To both of them.”
“I don’t imagine that’s true.”
She laughed. “Trust me, it’s very much true.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be talking about my problems.”
“There is a high chance that you and I are going to be seeing a lot of each other this year,” he said. “Tell me.”
Teal looked at him. Her brown eyes were filled with sadness. Her long, brown hair was pulled back at the base of her neck, and he, for some odd reason, wanted to see it flowing down her back.
Or better yet, spread out over my pillow.
Jaxson ran a hand down his face. What he needed to do was slap himself silly. That way, he would be able to see that lusting after a young girl, which was what Teal was, was deeply inappropriate. Eighteen or not. He didn’t fall for or lust after young girls.
He loved women. Full women. Nice big tits, full hips. Thick, juicy thighs. A woman who could take a nice big pounding and beg for more.
Teal was young. But she looked all freaking woman.
The large shirt she wore didn’t hide the body beneath, as he’d seen that before.
One day, he’d been cleaning the house, something else he never did, but he’d randomly decided to do it when he caught sight of her outside in a swimsuit. He shouldn’t have looked.
No way he should have looked, but he had. He’d seen Teal without anything to cover up her beautiful body, and she was so freaking beautiful.
Large tits, a small waist, curved hips, and thick, juicy thighs. The kind that were meant to go around a man’s waist as he fucked her hard.
Wrong images.
Wrong thoughts.
“My parents are disappointed in me. They don’t want to take me to their parties or even acknowledge my existence. My dad won’t talk to me, and Mom keeps telling me to study. That the key to getting good grades is to study.” She blew out a breath. “I know she told you I was thick or something.”
“She … kind of said that.” He didn’t want to lie to her.
“Trust me when I tell you that is one of the nicest things she has said to me lately.” She shrugged. “It’s fine. Everything will be fine. Next week is a new year, and I’ll be able to figure out what went wrong.”
“Well, we’re both going to be new next week. A new start.” For a reason he had no reason for, he held up his lemonade, and Teal clinked her glass to his.
The box she had brought to him caught his attention. After putting his lemonade down, he went to the box and opened it, only to find nothing in the box.
That was so odd.
Chapter Two
School sucked. It sucked hard.
Arriving back home by Friday after a week of classes with new teachers and new students, Teal just wanted to curl up on the sofa, eat ice cream, and watch crappy shows on the big screen.
Of course, that wasn’t going to happen because her mother sat curled up on one of the chairs. Tears streamed from her eyes.
