Bloomington As I watched her walk off the campus from my office window, I wanted to cry. Not because I had lost my job, or because I wouldn't be working as a teacher anymore, but because she was gone. I opened the window and watched her for another second, walking away from me and us and from all the memories and all the future we could have had. "Wait! Jackie! Wait!" She turned around and looked back to me. She knew it was me calling for her. "Wait!" I ran out of my office, down the stairs and straight up to her. "Don't go. Jackie, please don't go! Don't leave me like this." I almost started crying. "Catherine." "I am sorry. I am so sorry for saying you are not worth it. I don't care about all the other people, as long as I can be with you. You are worth it, and you are different. You are so different and so worth it." I could hardly get air and I noticed all the students and teachers as well as a camera team staring at us. "I am so sorry." She stepped up to me and I almost thought she would slap me, but she smiled and reached out for my neck to pull me closer. "I never wanted to leave you.", she said and kissed me. Mumbling started everywhere around us as I gave in and let her hug me and I just couldn't stand it anymore, all these rumors and all the hiding I had to do for years. "Yes, I slept with her. We slept with each other! And I am not a freaking vampire!" I shouted it out as if it would have eaten me up from the inside. Jackie laughed and just by then we realized the camera team was still filming us. And the pose we had been in was obvious enough to show that we were more than teacher and student. "Shit." I said and Jackie laughed even more. "What? Don't you want to do something against it?" And she took my hand and kissed me. "No. I don't want to do anything against anything. I just want to get back to your house." "Catherine, are you ready? Our flight leaves in less than 2 hours!" I was about to freak out. I never trusted anyone. Never. And now I agreed to be moving to LA with Jackie. "Uhm… yeah, I will be down in a second, honey!" But she knew me better and knocked at the door. "Can I come in?" She asked and when I nodded she opened her arms so I could slip into a hug. "What's up Catherine?" It felt like drowning. "I am not so sure if it's a good thing we are doing… I mean you are outed because of me and I am… older than you. Way older." Jackie looked up to me, and she seemed really happy. "I am outed, we are outed, and I don't care. Just like that, I don't care anymore, Babe. And if I would have cared about the age gap between us, we wouldn't even have come together." "Together?" I asked. "Yeah, like we would have never started our relationship." "We are not in a relationship." She laughed. "Babe, you are moving to LA with me. Like together. You know that, don't you?" And there, for the first time, I felt so stupid keeping all my fences up in front of Jackie, who was always honest and caring. "I know." I let my forehead sink against hers and took a deep breath. "I am scared." "Scared of what?" "That everyone is going to hate me. And that they will try to tear us apart. And remember when I picked you up from that family thing of yours? Your mom looked at us in such an angry way. I am older and a woman…" "So? I don't care about what my mom thinks, I just care about you." "And all the fans?" "What about them?" She asked so innocently that I couldn't believe it. "Well, what if they are going to hate us?" "Babe, they are just fans. They don't like me, just my work." She stroked over my backbone and suddenly I was so calm about everything. I just knew she was the right one. I looked out of the airplane window and couldn't help but notice that there were many, and I mean many, fans of Jackie's waiting in the arrival hall. "Oh shit." I said and leaned back into my first class seat. "You are kidding me, right?" Unfortunately I knew she wasn't and that it wasn't her fault either. Jackie picked out her phone. "Wade, where the hell do all these people know from that we are coming to LA today?" I could hear him answer: "Sweetie, you were all over the newspapers during the last days. It's no wonder that people know." "Shit, are we at least being picked up?" "You didn't want me to organize that for you, remember?" She hung up. "Shit. Shit. SHIT!" She grabbed her bag. "Please tell me you grabbed sun glasses." I nodded and picked them out of my bag. "Great. Listen, just keep walking and don't let my hand go, okay?" Again I nodded. "Jackie!" "Jackie! Here!" "Can we talk to you?" People, everywhere, just people, no matter where I tried to step or look, there were people all around and the only thing that kept me from falling or collapsing was Jackie, right in front of me, holding my hand as tight as possible. "No. Please, peeps, just let us get through. We are really tired and just want to get out of the airport." "Please talk to us!" "Since when are you together with your professor?" "How long did you two date before it became public?" "Isn't an age gap of 10 years a little much?" I pressed my lips together and held my back as close to me as possible, hoping we would be reaching the exit soon. "Miss Stark! Do you feel what you did with Jackie was right?" I tried to ignore them, just kept walking, but my luggage got stuck somewhere and I had to stop to get it out. "Miss Stark! Miss Stark! Tell us, how does it feel to lose your job for sleeping with a student?" They made me angry, but I needed to behave, at least for Jackie. I grabbed my luggage and tried to keep walking. Jackie turned around. "Babe, come on, we need to get out of here." I could barely see her through my sunglasses. I nodded and followed her. "Miss Stark! How could you creep on your student? How could you actually feel well with this? Getting turned on by innocent children! You are unbelievable!" Jackie stopped and I knew by the way she was breathing that she would get onto that woman who had just talked to me like that. "Jacks, no. Stop." I walked up to her and touched her arm. "Sweetie, please don't. Wade will kill you…" "Faggot!" And Jackie exploded right into that woman's face. "Faggot?! You just called us faggots? And you called my fiancée a creep? Seriously look at you! Do you think you are something better? Fuck you! Fuck you and all the other ignorant people!" She wanted to hit her, but I grabbed her arm and she rather focused on me. She grabbed my neck and kissed me. In front of all these people, homophobic or not. It wasn't one of the kisses we normally shared, it was hard and rough and filled with so much anger. "Let's go." She said and grabbed my hand. "I just want to get away from these fucking retarded people." We exited the airport and Jackie got us a taxi. "Uhm… Jackie?" She was checking her phone and I could see her scroll through the newest headlines about us. "Yeah?" I cleared my throat. "Did you… did you just call me your fiancée?" I asked and looked out of the window, so she couldn't see how nervous that made me. LA was beautiful and ugly in the same time. "Oh…" She looked up to me. "I am sorry… but I wanted to just make her shut up." I took a deep breath. "So… it wasn't meant?" I must have sounded pretty disappointed. "Why?" She asked. "Well… just like that. Curiosity." She put her phone down. "Babe, would you even say yes if I had asked you?" "I… I don't know… probably?" "This morning, you didn't even want to admit that we are in a relationship and now, you want to marry me?" She moved closer to me and smiled. "I like that. Quick steps forward." Suddenly I felt so stupid and turned away from Jackie. She reached for my hand and made me look at her. "You really would marry me?" She asked and because I didn't want to hide behind my fences anymore, I nodded. "I am the 'go big or go home' kind of girl." I put a piece of her hair behind her ear and she laughed. "So now, that you finally admitted our relationship and stuff, you go for the whole?" I nodded. "Wow. I am 24 and I am going to get married." The grin over my face couldn't have been wider. "So… yes? Like, we are going to get married?" "Yes. I guess, but I am not happy with the way this happened yet, so I need to think of a more romantic way to ask you again…" I grabbed her and kissed her with all my love. I started with her mouth, then kissed a line down her neck and back up to her ear. "Babe… you know that we are now kind of famous, yeah?" "Mmh…" She grabbed my leg and moaned. "Just saying… we are in a taxi…" "Oh." I sat back up and tried to cool myself down. "Sorry." She laughed. "Not there for. Wait until we arrive home." "Mother." "Jacqueline." "This is my fiancée Catherine Stark. Catherine this is my mother." "Nice to meet you Mrs. Mahoni." I offered my hand for a shake but the woman in front of me didn't seem to be too interested in me. "Jacqueline, now drop the charade. I know you are just doing this because you want to make me angry. And marriage is definitely not an option with a person like her." Bam. Right into my face, I guess I never experienced so much hate in one place. Jacky laughed. "No, mother, really not. Not the whole world spins around you. I am in love and I think I am old enough to know what I want. And I really want to marry Cat." Did she just call me Cat? "Whatever. This person is not going to sit by the same table as your family does." "Don't worry mother. We are just going to leave. Catherine is my family now." Jacky reached for my hand and intertwined our fingers. "I love her." She said while looking right into my eyes. I smiled and bend down a little so I could quickly kiss her. "And I fell for your daughter. I am sorry if I am not what you expected her to have in her life, but I am not that bad of a person." I got myself back together and built my fence back up, so this person couldn't hurt me. "Whatever." She turned around and walked away from us. "If you ever change your mind Jacqueline, you know how to reach me." "I am sorry." We were back in the taxi and finally on our way to Hollywood, where we would be living from now on. Jacky bought a house for us there. "You don't have to be." She looked out of the window and she had moved away from me as far as possible. "Sweetie, please, I can go back to Bloomington, if you want…" She looked at me. "I don't want you to go away. I just don't understand why my mother never understands me." I saw a tear running down her cheek. "Oh, honey." I moved towards her and pulled her into a hug. "I am so sorry."