Page 381 of Dirty Discipline, Vol. 1

“What’s the matter with you?” Touch demanded, snatching the napkin aside. “Why are you all of a sudden hanging around with this dweeb?”

Morgan mouthed, ‘Study partners,’ but Audrey never had a change to repeat the excuse.

“Hey!” Touch snapped. “I saw that! What, you think you’re going to move in on my girl?” He reached across the table to punch him in the arm.

“Don’t!” Audrey told him. When he turned a jealous glare on her, she dutifully added, “Nobody’s moving in on me. Mor—I mean, Peter’s been helping me look for my” —she rolled her eyes and sighed— “my father.”

Touch looked from Morgan to her. Gradually, seeming to accept the excuse, he leaned back in his chair. “Oh. How’s that going, then? You think you’ll find the old man in time to go with me to the dance?”

Audrey opened her mouth and Morgan applied a little more pressure to the top of her foot. “Yes,” she said unenthusiastically. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world. Unfortunately.”

Touch wrapped his arm around her shoulders, hooking her around the neck and hugging her close. “Great. I’ll pick you up at five on Friday.”

Audrey couldn’t get out of his arm fast enough to avoid a full front-on kiss on the lips, but the minute her ‘boyfriend’ and his high school aged thugs got up from the table, she swiped the back of her hand across her lips. “I’m not going,” she said flatly, a disgusted look on her face.

“Yes, you are,” Morgan corrected. He flexed his right hand meaningfully.

Audrey slumped in her seat, cursing her promise and the fact that she seemed perpetually unable to run faster than he could. “Fine. I’ll go. But if he gets fresh with me in the car, I’m going to take his head off.”

“No, you won’t. Because it’s not in the script.”

Jerking her foot out from under his beneath the table, she snapped, “This script needed better writers.”

He chuckled. “I won’t argue that.”

Two giggling girls came up to their table, sliding into the booth to sit beside Morgan while giving him wide-eyed adulating stares.

“Will you sing something for us, Peter?” asked the little blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty-queen wannabe as she lay her hand coyly upon his forearm, surreptitious feeling him up.

Not making future happy plans aside, Audrey had the most absurd urge to snatch the teenie-bopper bald. She struggled to swallow the tidbit of jealousy she felt when Morgan draped his arm across the back of the seat, encompassing both girls and said, “Sure.” Her jealousy turned to barely contained laughter, however, when he added. “Hand me my ukulele.”

“Ukulele?” she echoed. “What are you? School yard geek by day and soda shop Sinatra by night?”

Scooting the girls out of the booth, he smiled at her though it didn’t quite reach as far as his eyes and stood up. “I hate this song. Words cannot describe how much I hate it. I could have sung Elvis, or even the Beatles. Hell, I could have sung the Monkeys. But no. What do I sing?”

One of the cutesy twins handed him a ukulele out of nowhere and said, “Sing the one about the frog!”

Audrey covered her mouth with her hand, hiding her laugh. Morgan didn’t miss it. Without losing his smile, he stood and leaned towards her. “Only four more scenes to go.”

“For what?” she asked, before she did the math in her head and the realization hit her. “Oh yeah.” She frowned, slumping down that much further in the booth. As if her bottom wasn’t already sore enough as it was. Of course, even that wasn’t as sore as some other parts of her. She rubbed her right shoulder where a particularly sharp rock had left a fist-sized bruise on her skin.

“If you’re very good,” he said, “I’ll only pretend to spank your adorably cute and ever so wiggly bottom.” He ruined the promise by winking, then hefted the musical instrument to serenade his adoring audience.

“Yeah, sure you will,” Audrey drawled, drilling a knowing look into his back. She didn’t think it was in her to be that good for another four scenes.

Sipping on the soda he’d bought her, Audrey sat in the gray sunlight of only a partially victorious day, and listened with a half-astonished ear while Morgan crooned four off-key refrains about a melancholy toad. Someone must have licked it, she decided partway through the second chorus, to have written such a song in the first place.

And yet Morgan looked very cute singing it. His broad shoulders moved ever so slightly, the muscles of his back barely rippling as he strummed the silly ukulele. His big hands moved over the strings with a comfort most likely born of learning how to play the instrument only because he lacked something else to do. And damn if his tight little butt wasn’t packed into form-revealing jeans, leaned up against the edge of the table close enough for her to goose him.

No future happy plans, Audrey told herself. She sighed.

Right.

Chapter 6

The happy strains of Bill Haley and His Comet’s ‘Rock Around the Clock’ were pouring from the record jockey’s station inside the school gymnasium. There were lights everywhere, including on the outside basketball court, and teenagers were flocking in couples and small groups towards the open gym doors. Poodle skirts, bobbysocks and ducktails abounded. James Dean wannabes snuck away from the well-lit areas to sneak a smoke outside of the watchful eyes of the teachers, principal and moral chaperones. One in particular, still safely ensconced in his father’s station wagon, was sneaking a drink out of a stolen silver flask.

“I got it out of my father’s dresser,” Trevor said, wincing and coughing even as he took a drink and passed the rest to Audrey. “Good whiskey,” he wheezed.

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