Chapter 22: Crawling Out of the Friend Zone

It is easy to lump shifters and their tendencies together but when learning about a shifter, one must learn about their animal counterpart and assume that half of their mannerisms come from that side of them . . . " My eyes were wide as I focused on Dean's words. He had been reviewing the shifter unit for our end of the unit test when one of my classmates asked the dumbest question.

"Why are we learning about the different shifters?" The whole class had frozen when the question has arisen. "Don't they all have different animal shifts but act the same?"

I almost felt disgusted when I heard a few more mummers of agreement from other students, students who probably weren't shifters themselves. The twitch of irritation that Dean let loose was his only break of composure before he calmly shut the students down.

They had been learning the entire shifter unit yet they still didn't realize how different the shifters were? It might have been because our Dean talked about groups of animal shifters and talked generally about them but the shifters were all different. It blew my mind that I was in a class where some of the kids didn't see that.

After making that first statement, Dean went on to bring material from earlier in the unit and show how many contrasts existed between the groups. He was still making the guy who had asked the question look worse and worse when the bell finally rang to let us leave.

Dean sighed, threw a tensed hand over his wipe and made a large dramatic wave of his hand.

"Go." He said, watching the class with a calculated eye as we packed up to go. "I'll have all of class tomorrow to get those ignorant thoughts out of your heads." Sam and I were giggling at the glum faces around us as we shoved our stuff into our bags. We found it funny how sassy Dean got when some kids said something dumb in class. The two of us started to talk about what we thought Dean might do tomorrow and went to walk out of class.

I looked up and waved at Dean but instead of waving back and letting me go on my way he waved me over to him. I frowned in question before softly telling Sam not to wait up and walking over to Dean.

"What's up?" I asked him, twisting my bag strap in my hand to keep myself occupied. Dean looked intensely into my eyes for a few moments before cracking a small smile.

"Have you been to the pool area yet?" He asked me, slipping his hands into his jeans' pocket and rolling his shoulders. My eyes shot to the muscles around his neck and I blushed when I got a glimpse of his shoulder muscle tensing under the skin. I blinked a few times to focus on what his question was and slowly shook my head no.

"I thought that the pool was reserved for the swim club." I told him, confused as to why he would even mention the pool. Dean chuckled and I felt myself blush from embarrassment before I knew what I did wrong.

"I meant pool as in the pool tables." He explained, and my cheeks reddened even further. It was not uncommon for me to blush around him. That was mainly because I was very self-conscious around the man. Somehow, just by being around Dean, I felt as if everything I did was wrong. I knew that I had to get rid of that mindset if I wanted to form a real friendship with him, but it was hard when he had only been a holy vision in my mind for so long, and now he was a real guy that was talking to me.

Dean put his hand on my shoulder and gently rubbed the spot to ease my embarrassment.

"Don't get embarrassed about it, it doesn't matter." He told me, his deep and smooth voice calming my body and easing my mind. Dean smiled in self-satisfaction when he saw that I had relaxed. "I had asked you about it because I wanted to know if you wanted to go there with me after school tonight."

My eyes widened in surprise and I blinked up at him dumbly.

"Uhh . . . " I trailed awkwardly, blinking up at him even further. Seeing my loss for words, Dean continued to explain himself while continuing to touch me, much to my confusion.

"Well, I like to think of you as one of my friends but I realized that we haven't hung out together anytime other than right after class. I thought that this might be a good opportunity." Hearing it stated kindly made an odd feeling of guilt slowly start to seep into my chest. I knew that I didn't do anything wrong, but I felt guilty anyway. So, because I wanted to appease my guilt and because I really wanted to hang out with Dean I nodded.

"I'm busy tonight but I can meet up tomorrow." I told him, praying that he was free tomorrow. I had promised to meet with my mystery man tonight and there was no way that I would give that up for anyone, even for Dean.

Dean smiled widely, his bright white teeth making a flamboyant appearance.

"I'm free tomorrow, I will see you then, for sure."

~~~~~~~~~

By the time "tomorrow" came around and I was finally going to the pool area to meet Dean, I was very excited. I probably should have been a bit worried, as I had never played a game of pool in my life, but I wasn't. I paused in my steps as a thought came to me. Actually, I had never played any form of Pool before, not even an app or online game.

I hummed and continued walking.

This might actually be a very terrible idea, but I already agreed and certainly wasn't going to back out now. Besides, my -kinda- boyfriend had been encouraging me to do it as well. When I had told him about it, he said that it was a good idea to make more friends and jokingly said that maybe it could come in handy.

If it did come in handy, I wouldn't be opposed.

And if my mystery man thought that it was a good idea then I would definitely do it.

I arrived at the room and became wide-eyed when I saw how many pool tables were in there.

"This is nuts," I whispered, marvelling at the look of the warmly stained wood that filled the room. "They really put a ton of effort into this, it looks amazing."

"It sure does," I heard someone agree, and turned to my right to find Dean smiling at me happily. "You know, you do look a bit odd talking to yourself over here, Sebastian." I blushed, rolled my eyes, and crossed my arms.

"I don't really care if I look weird. With all the different types of species at this school, me talking to myself should be a very normal occurrence." I told Dean matter of factly, smiling when he laughed.

He stepped a bit closer to me and gave me a blinding smile.

"That is true." He said, tightening his hand around the cue stick in his hand. "But, if anyone gives you any problems, I'll protect you." Dean ended his statement with a slow wink and I blinked back in surprise. I opened my mouth to speak but stopped soon after. Dean had closed the distance between us and placed his left hand on my lower back before leading me to the table that we would be using.

Where I come from, people can definitely be touchy, but my family wasn't. I personally didn't like being too touchy with people casually, but I thought that it was normal. So, now I'm here wondering if he did this in a flirting way or to be casual.

When the two of us got to the pool table, the balls were already set up. So, Dean walked over to a nearby wall and pulled off one of the cue sticks hanging there for me. I went to take it from his hand but as he was giving it to me, he let his hand fall completely over mine. I waited a moment for him to lift it off but he didn't, and instead gave me a soft look. Deciding that I would take the initiative myself, I pulled my hand out of his grasp and walked to the other side of the pool table.

"So . . . " I trailed, looking down at the pool table balls instead of Dean's eyes. "How do we start this? I have never played before so I don't really know." Dean raised an eyebrow before a surprised look came over his features.

"Oh, you don't?" He asked, disbelief lacing his tone. I shook my head and after a second, Dean snapped his fingers. "Oh, I completely forgot, I had been talking to your brother Orlando a while back and he had mentioned that you never played before. But I must have forgotten. I'm sorry."

I shook my head and waved off his apology.

"No worries, I'm sure it won't be too hard to learn." I told Dean to ease his guilt. Dean shook his head, determination filling his eyes.

"No, I can't have you just winging it when I know how." He said, frowning as he took a moment to think. His eyes lit up right before he smiled as an idea came to mind. "I'll teach you as we play, it's the least I can do." I slowly nodded in agreement and Dean grinned.

"Perfect. I'll go first to show you how then I'll help you with your first shot."

Helping me with my first shot turned into helping me with every shot. There were a couple of instances where Dean let me try to play by myself, but I always ended up missing or not doing the best and Dean would insist on helping me again.

Helping me again meant that he would come up behind my back, placing each of my hands around the cue stick where they should be. Then, he would move my fingers, running his hands down my arms until he reached them and then slowly adjusting my fingers until they were perfect. After that, he would tell me to lean forward, pressing his strong chest right up against my back and breathing softly onto my neck.

The two of us would stay in that position for a while, our bodies aligned and completely still because Dean says that we have to wait for the perfect moment. Then, we would push the cue stick and hit the white ball, hoping that we lined up the shot right. When Dean would pull his body off of mine, he would always accidentally trail his hands down my arms and body before taking his turn. This happened every single time.

Adding it on to his constant stares, winks, and biting of his lips, I ended up wondering if Dean might have been . . . flirting. The most alarming statement of his was when he had stopped his turn to simply stare at me.

I had laughed out loud because he had started to wiggle his bum to "get in the groove" before he took his shot. When I asked why he was starting at me he had told me,

"Your smile is cute, Sebastian." I had blushed like mad and tried to look at anything but him. "You should really smile more, it suits you."

Ending it with a wink had officially made me suspicious. If this were any other person, that would have been the only reasonable conclusion, he was flirting with me.

But, this was my teacher we were talking about here. My very mature for his age, sexy, and straight teacher.

Well, I assumed the straight part but it was probably true. Dean was way too great to be interested in me, so I ignored his odd behaviour and just enjoyed the night of games. In the end, we ended up winning, but it wouldn't have mattered much either way because Dean was playing the whole time. Yet, I still enjoyed it and had a large smile on my face when we parted for the night.

I was definitely going to tell all my friends about what happened tomorrow, they would get a kick out of Dean's weird behaviour.

I chuckled, thinking about how it would all play out myself. At least I would get a gold laugh out of having to sacrifice my poor cheeks. They had to blush far too much.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hey guys!

It is great to be back on Wattpad after my last week of crazy school work.

Before I talk about this book, are any of you guys following authors who are writing stories for NaNoWriMo this year?

I'm closely following about three and all of their books are amazing.

@admissable @Spotlight_ and

Believe it or not, I am not their spokesperson.

But their stories are really great and all three of them are trying to update every day for NaNoWriMo so you guys should definitely check them out.

Anywho,

Anywhore,