Some More Story!! (Feel free to leave comments of critique, or positivity!)

Mallory knew she was damaged. She could accept it, too.

The endless hours of piano practice, and the early mornings where she swam laps until she was so tired she nearly drowned. She cringed at the thought of cramping fingers. She played even more now, though, the fingers accepting their fate.

From her chair with the attached desk, she looked. She looked at that glorious man, his eyes snapping with good energy, a smile hinting at the edge of his deliciously sexy lips. She knew he wasnt unhappy. She didn't want him to be either. No one deserved the parents that screamed when she asked to go a school dance. The ones that homeschooled her so she would become the best pianist of all time. Or the most socially awkward, manly-bodied girl this college had ever seen.

This would never have been her first choice. She knew another college would give her a musical scholarship too. But her she was, forty minutes from home, surprise visits so easy. All-girls to prevent distractions. Mallory looked at Professor Ridger. So much for no distractions.... She smiled dreamily.

Another girl, Christa, spoke. "Professor, it's past noon."

Mallory looked at the other girls. Some looked bored, tired, anxious, and hungry. It was time to eat. He quickly dismissed the class with an apologetic smile. She stood up, about to leave with the other girls, when a tiny, dirty-blonde woman ran in.

"Hey Lars--you forgot something," she smiled as she spoke. She held out a brown paper bag with "Ridger" written on it in swirly cursive.

"Thanks, babe," he gave her a light kiss on the lips. She seemed to glow with the simple show of affection.

"You had better," she said putting a hand on her stomach, which bulged slightly out of her dress, the plum-colored cotton fluttering in the air conditioning. Mallory's breath caught under her tongue. She slung her bag over one shoulder and walked out of the room as quickly as she could without her chunky white sneaker squeaking on the hardwood floors. She flew down the stairs, and out the door. She slid into the grass, her back against the rusty red brick of the hall.

She knew he loved another. The pictures on the desk. A woman in dazzling white, next to him. The only word that would come to her mind was horribly old-fashioned: dashing. She knew he couldn't love her. Not publicly, not now. He was still her teacher, though there wasnt much he could teach her; her piano skills were superior to his, she knew. Something she could blame on the obsessive parents, too selfish to see her.

The people who saw only a beautiful girl sitting at a piano in a sold-out arena. A beautiful rhapsody, or perhaps a symphony. Her broad swimmer's body was not beautiful or delicate. The failure choked her up; wouldn't ever be what her parents desired of her. She grabbed at her dry, short black hair. It was so ugly.

But, at that moment, it was not why she felt distraught. That woman, she was petite, with dark blonde hair that curled just past her shoulders. Beautiful. Everything she wasn't.

That bothered Mallory the way a rainstorm would bother a spider building a web. Almost terminally.