Chapter 7

Gavin:

I practically tiptoe out the door Wednesday morning. The last thing I need is another kitchen catastrophe with Sam at the epicenter like yesterday. As much as I wanted to be annoyed by having to clean up the mess she made, in truth, I just found the entire thing endearing. She was trying so hard to impress and instead mucked it all up. Been there.

But as cute as she was in her embarrassment, I’m not aiming for a repeat. And so I head for campus early. Over an hour early. I’ll just hang out in Peterson’s office and review my lecture plans until my first class starts. Because I’ve got a good thing here and getting involved with Robby’s cousin would be a mistake, a messy mistake. I’m not about to throw away my friendship with Robby and the crazy cheap rent he charges on this great apartment close to campus just to get my rocks off with some chick I barely know. If I were looking for some strange, I could find it with any one of the gym bunnies I run into at my other job.

When I get to campus, the place is still fairly deserted, given the early hour, but there is an early morning class going on in the room where I teach both of my classes later. So, I can’t go there. Instead, I head upstairs to Peterson’s office—temporarily my office. For the rest of the semester anyway. I settle in, opting to kill time by reviewing my lecture plans for the day. I already know the material forward and backward, practically have every word I’m going to say memorized. I could probably recite it verbatim without ever looking at my notes. But that doesn’t stop me from wanting to check for the hundredth time that I haven’t missed some vital piece of information.

I would never wish hard times on anyone, certainly not Dr. Peterson, whose been a mentor to me since I started as his TA last year. But if the man has to be out to care for his sick wife, I’m going to make the most of it by showing Dr. Peterson—who just happens to be the department head—what a great choice he made having me fill in. And when I finish my PhD in the spring, maybe it will help me land an adjunct position. So I review my plans for only the hundred and first time this week.

I don’t know how long I’ve been reviewing my lesson plans when my phone alarm goes off, blaring Chopin and buzzing violently on the desktop in front of me. That’s my 8:45 alarm, warning me that class is going to start in five minutes. How did I lose track of the time so easily? I race to gather my things, lock up the office, and get downstairs just in the nick of time. The time on my phone turns to 8:51 just as I make it into the classroom where the whole class is already waiting for me. The door clangs shut behind me.

“Good morning, class!” I call as I head for the desk, set down my papers and my phone, and drop my briefcase on the floor next to the chair. I don’t address my near tardiness. I don’t want to point it out to anyone who may not have noticed. Instead, I gather my notes and move to the oversized wood podium front and center. It’s an antiquated piece, a little too ornate for a relatively small college classroom. I almost feel a little silly standing behind it. It’s so wide, it could probably cover two of me. I shake away the thought, straighten my papers and look out at the class, preparing to start my lecture. It might be my imagination, but the class seems fuller today than it did on Monday. I don’t remember there being this many students. Or maybe it’s just my nerves giving me the impression that the group I’m lecturing to is larger than it actually is. I tamp down my nerves and smile broadly at the class.

And then I see her. Sam. She’s seated in the far row, very back corner. About as far away from me as she can possibly get, but I feel her presence as if she were standing right next to me, shoulder to shoulder. Suddenly the room is too small, too crowded. What is she doing here? How did I not realize when I met her the other night that she was one of Dr. Peterson’s Anthropology students—one of my students?

Maybe because you were too busy trying not to look at her naked body to notice her face? I feel like I’ve been kicked in the gut, and she looks as stricken as I feel, pale face, eyes wide, balanced on the edge of her seat. She looks like she’s about ready to run from the room. She had to have known I was her teacher, didn’t she? This can’t possibly be a surprise to her.

Unless she wasn’t in class on Monday. Yes, that must be it. Otherwise, she would have said something.

Convincing myself that this is as much a surprise to her as it is to me, I pull my gaze away from her, clear my throat, and look down at my notes. But the words swim on the page. What the hell am I teaching on today? I’ll never be able to make sense of it in my current flustered state. Determining to teach this class to the best of my ability, and doing my best to ignore Sam staring at me from the back of the room, I dive into the lesson, what I can remember of it anyway. I ignore all of my notes and wing it.

I manage to keep my gaze off Sam for the entire class, even though my whole focus is glued to her, and by the end of the lesson, I can’t recall a single thing I taught during that hour or so that I stood at the front of the room speaking. Hopefully, I managed to be at least somewhat coherent and get the important points of the chapter across, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that I just babbled gibberish the entire time. The students all look like they’re getting it though, so maybe I’m actually pulling off a halfway successful lecture.

Finally, I give up. The clock on the opposite wall has been taunting me for close to an hour, and I can’t take the stress anymore, each second ticking by at half speed. Ten minutes before class is supposed to end, I’m almost certain I’ve been standing here saying random words for days. I stop lecturing and drop my forearms onto the podium in front of me. “You’re dismissed. Read chapters twenty-seven through thirty for homework, and make sure you have your final report topic defined and ready to turn in for approval. I’ll see you all on Monday.” One of you sooner, I think sourly.

As the students begin packing up, I sneak a peek at Sam. She’s looking down at her backpack as if packing her things away is the most important thing she’s ever done while a tall, dark-haired woman chatters away next to her, obviously waiting for her.

And suddenly, I’m not ready for her to leave. I need answers. “Sam,” I call out, without thinking. Is it acceptable for me to call her by her first name in this setting? If not, it’s too late now.

She looks up at me in surprise, and her chatty friend stops talking mid-sentence. The friend gazes back and forth between us, mouth agape.

“Can you stay for a moment?” I ask quietly, hopefully avoiding attention from any of the other students still making their way out of the room.

She says something quietly to her friend, and the other girl answers with, “I’ll wait for you outside,” and leaves the room slowly, watching me with curiosity the whole way. Great, I’ve made a spectacle of myself, of us. There is no us. I remind myself.

Sam approaches and stops in front of me expectantly, but I wait until the last straggling students have left the room and the door shuts behind them before I begin.

“Did you know?”

“Know?” She tries to play dumb, but I can tell by the look in her eyes that she knows exactly what I’m asking her. When I don’t elaborate, she sighs and says, “I didn’t know who you were when I asked Robby if I could stay with him. I swear. I didn’t even know he had a roommate until Poofie and I were standing at his door with no place else to go.”

I hear the sincerity in her tone, and I believe her. But there’s something she’s leaving out; I’m certain of it. “But after you saw me…”

She doesn’t answer for a long moment. Then the words come pouring out of her. “Yeah, I recognized you as soon as I saw you that first night, but you didn’t say anything, and we had such a weird first meeting. I didn’t want you to tell me to find somewhere else to stay. It’s not exactly normal for a teacher to be living with his student. I mean, you’ve seen me naked, for goodness sake!” She slams her mouth shut on those words and purses her lips like she didn’t mean to say that and she’s trying to keep any other words from falling out. She looks around the room nervously as if to confirm that we’re alone and no one overheard her admission.

I shoot a paranoid look around, too, even though I know we’re alone in the room. Hearing my student say out loud that I’ve seen her naked makes my skin itch, and my muscles tense. It feels wrong. But at the same time, I’m so damn attracted to her, it almost feels wrong in the good kind of way. Dangerous but hot.

She clears her throat, drawing my attention back to what she said. She didn’t tell me because she was worried I’d kick her out. I can’t fault her logic. If she had told me that first night, yeah, I probably would have asked her to find another place to stay. Part of me is still tempted to. But that would be a shitty thing to do. “I’m not going to send you packing, but can we please try to keep it between us that you’re staying with me?” It definitely wouldn’t look good if Dr. Peterson found out.

“Of course!” she answers quickly. “I mean, really, I’m not staying with you. I’m staying with my cousin. You just happen to live there too.”

I can’t argue with her logic. I nod and, not knowing what else to say, turn my attention toward the stack of papers in front of me, pick them up, shuffle them, and straighten them on the podium surface.

She must take that as her cue to leave because she backs away toward the exit. “Okay, so I’ll see you at home later,” she calls awkwardly and turns toward the door.

That’s exactly what I’m afraid of, I think as I watch her leave, wishing for all the world that I was anyone else right now.