He placed something on the desk, and I raised my eyes just slightly to make out his movements. He flipped open the flap of his messenger bag, pulling items from it and placing them with such control on the desk. His hands moved quickly, but not nervously, as if he had rehearsed these movements a hundred times. When he turned around, I lifted my head and watched him scrawl something across the board.
There was a low murmur across the room as he wrote, the entire class paying attention to what he was writing.
I found myself admiring not just the way his slacks fell off his hips, but the power he had over all of our attention. He wasn’t a man to ask for attention; his very presence demanded it.
I closed my eyes briefly, as the flash of him thrusting above me, eyes piercing mine in the dark, infiltrated my concentration.
The sound of something vibrating across a desk interrupted my thoughts and my eyes popped open, glancing to the left.
All eyes were on the female student two rows back, five seats down, as she hurriedly snapped up her phone and nearly dropped it in her frantic attempts to silence it.
His voice was firm, strained. Goosebumps lit up my flesh when he spoke. “Do you need me to go over Student Responsibilities, Miss…?”
The girl’s face fell, her brunette curls accentuating her pallor. “Ashley. Ashley McInerney. And n-no,” she stammered.
“Apparently you do. Let me enlighten you.”
I touched the glasses hanging on the front of my shirt, feeling like they brought me closer to the man I’d fucked on Friday night, the opposite of the man in front of me.
“All students are expected to turn off their cell phones or set them on silent—not vibrate—during class. No laptop, cell phone, iPad, tablet, etc. use is permitted for the duration of class. This is a writing class. While your final assignments will be typed, you will not be doing any typing in my class.” Professor Easton walked around the room, slowly, completely sure of himself. “In my class you will be learning, as is your responsibility as my student. You are expected to conduct yourselves in an adult manner and if you are disruptive, you will be withdrawn.” He pinned Ashley with his gaze and she visibly shrunk deeper into her seat.
“Now, let’s begin.” He walked over to the whiteboard, slammed his palm under the words he’d written.
Why are you here?
He turned his head, eyes scanning the crowd. His eyes passed over me quickly without a trace of recognition. It was if he was just glazing over us, not really focused on any of us in particular.
He pushed away from the board and walked to one end of the room, his hands tucked into his fitted slacks.
“Why are you here?”
The student he asked looked around him, as if expecting the professor’s singular gaze to be focused on someone else.
“Uh…” The student shrugged. “I needed an elective.”
It was if all the air was sucked out of the room with his admission. Everyone sat still, waiting for the professor’s reaction.
He rocked back on his heels, tilted his head so he looked at the ceiling a moment. And then he brought his head down and pointed a finger at the student. “At least you’re honest.” He walked further down the line, pointed to another student. “What’s your why?”
Her answer came quicker, but her tone was less confident. “Because I want to be a writer.”
“No.” His answer was swift. “You don’t want to be a writer. You either are or you’re not. You don’t take my class and—” he held his hands, fingers balled into fists, in the air, “—POOF!” he opened his fists, “become a writer.” He shook his head and the girl visibly shrunk into her seat. “Why are you here?” he asked, moving down the line, steps closer to me.
“Because my parents think I can write.”
The professor paused with her answer. His eyes narrowed and he brought his finger to the bridge of his nose, made a slight movement. It was then that I realized what he was doing, something out of habit.
Pushing his glasses further up. Except he wasn’t wearing his glasses. Because they were hanging from my shirt.
Ten feet away. Four students away.
He continued asking people as he moved down, but their answers were dull echoes in the room because all I could think about was the fact that he was coming closer and closer.
The faintest scent of his aftershave hit me when he was two students away.
I took a quiet breath in, inhaling his scent and the memories that came from it. And then I lifted my head just as the slacks came into my view.
I stared up at him and watched as his face changed. From indifference to confusion to awareness, he stared at me for a beat longer than he’d stared at any of the other students.
He turned his head to the left, giving me a view of his chiseled jaw and I watched as he clenched his teeth, the muscles around his mouth shifting, seemingly composing himself. His profile was strong, sturdy, and when his eyes turned back to mine they were devoid of everything.
“Why am I here, Professor Easton?” I prompted, my voice soft. My hand came up to the glasses hanging in my shirt and I watched his eyes follow the movement. One eyebrow lifted in reaction and he flicked his eyes to mine again.
“For you, of course.” My words were breathy and seemed to hold him still in my grasp.
Leaning back in my chair, I tilted my head and said at a regular volume, “I heard you’re a good teacher.” My lips curved slightly, a wry smile beckoning. His eyes were twin storms of several kinds of frustration and I lifted my shoulders a half inch, the picture of nonchalance.
The voices around us were murmured, no doubt people assuming I was just another desperate Professor Easton fangirl, eager for whatever sprinkles of attention he’d bestow upon me. He backed away, turned toward the board, erased the question and began the class as if nothing had been exchanged between us.
But I caught him, more than once, glancing at me, to the glasses hooked on my shirt.
Chapter Four
Almost four years had passed like it was ten times that long. That’s the thing about death—you start measuring your days in a way you’d never done before. Like the fact that the first Tuesday of every October was when she and I would go to the farmer’s market and pick out pumpkins and those stupid fucking little gourds she liked to decorate the house with. But now, the first Tuesday of every October just made me want to punch something. I’d done it for three years when it came around, and I was slowly counting down the days until the fourth time it rolled past my calendar. Just one more day that got covered in a thick black x when it dragged to a close. The sluggish passing of time that never bothered me, because it was all I deserved.
Until last week. I’d kept myself out of trouble. I’d refrained from any sort of empty release for almost that long, because if my wife couldn’t be around to breathe the same oxygen as me, then I shouldn’t be able to indulge myself in anything that might make me happy. Might make me forget.
But walking down the hallway of a bar that I didn’t really want to be at, she’d ran into me, knocked into me with the subtlety of a rabid nuclear bomb, with her skintight black pants and fake black leather jacket and smirking lips made to drive a man down to his knees. The lips that I had no intention of ever seeing again. Because all I’d needed from her was the perfect moment of oblivion she’d given me; the way she’d let me use her and debase her and bruise her was exactly how I should have introduced my sorely neglected cock after so long of a celibacy.