Amy
Iwoke suddenly, the memory of last night shaking me from my dreams, and into reality. Crisp, expensive sheets and Aaron’s scent surrounded me. I breathed it in, a huge, greedy lungful, and pulled my face from the pillow with difficulty. I squinted toward the other side of the bed and saw it empty, the white sheets mocking me. Where was Aaron? I sat up, feeling sore all over, in the best way. I was pretty sure my body had plenty of marks on it from last night, palm marks, bite marks, bruises, undoubtedly, but I was also sure that Aaron’s had just as many. We were animals last night and I couldn’t bring myself to care at all.
“Aaron?” I called, and silence greeted me. There was no running shower sound, or clatters in the kitchen. A squirming feeling of unease filled me. Had I been naïve, after all? Was I the most gullible person around?
My phone vibrated wildly on the bedside table. I reached and grabbed it, my heart in my mouth.
“Hello?”
“Oh, good morning, Miss Mackintosh. This is the Dean. Would you be available to come into see me this morning? If it’s not too much trouble?” The dean said. Fear replaced everything else inside me. Oh my god, this was it. I’d finally followed through on my crazy, forbidden fantasy of sleeping with the professor I had a desperate crush on and was immediately in trouble. Wow, sometimes karma is a fast-acting bitch.
“Of course, I can be there by ten,” I said, glancing at the clock.
“Ok, great. Ten it is. See you soon.”
I threw myself out of bed and got dressed. How the fuck had we gotten caught so quickly?
I looked around the room, and made sure all my stuff was in my pockets, and headed for the door.
* * *
“Thankyou for coming so quickly, Miss Mackintosh. I hope I wasn’t interrupting you this morning,” the Dean said, and I searched his eyes wildly for some sign that he was fucking with me. He couldn’t possibly know I’d woken up in Professor Cole’s bed, my leg muscles still smarting from last night, right?
“No, it’s er, fine, of course,” I muttered, twisting the cuffs of my jacket nervously, a habit I’d thought I’d grown out of in tenth grade but apparently sitting in the dean’s office was the only trigger I needed to bring back the childish habit.
“Well, let me get down to the reason I asked you to come in. First, I apologise for the trouble on campus yesterday. Professor Cole reassured me he saw you safely off the premises?”
“Yes, he did,” I said. God, this was excruciating.
“Good, that is good. The other reason, other than to apologize, of course, is some bad news, I’m afraid. You’ll have to find another TA position, as Professor Cole is going to be leaving us, effective rather immediately, I’m afraid,” the Dean said. I was stunned. It was happening. My worst nightmare was happening. Aaron and I had given in to the electric chemistry between us, and now we were both in the shit. He’d lost his job. Guilt and worry filled me.
“Why?” I heard myself ask.
“You don’t know?” he said, raising an eyebrow at me. I tensed, squirming like never before. This was every school telling off I’d never had but had always feared times one hundred. “I was sure he would have shared it with you. He’s taking a break to work on a book deal he’s landed. Quite the lucrative offer, or so I gather.”
I blinked at him.
“A book deal?” I repeated. He nodded.
“Yes, our rising star professor is moving to greener pastures, but assures me he’ll always keep in touch, and come in for guest lectures when we need him. I let him out of his contract so quickly precisely to ensure that,” he said, smiling, as if he had done anything other than give Aaron what he’d wanted.
I couldn’t get my head around it. It was all so startling and odd, and I couldn’t help but want to get my phone out and call him right away. What was he doing? Thinking? Was I factoring into this thought process?
“So, you’ll have to find another job if we can’t find another teacher who is looking for a TA,” the Dean was saying. I nodded numbly, standing up.
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll work something out,” I told him, and turned from the room.
The campus was green,and peaceful this morning, after the mayhem of yesterday, though the marks remained. There was graffiti on the library, and benches and common spaces had been vandalised. The coffee shop’s windows were broken, and cones sat around the sizeable area of broken glass, sparkling in the morning light. I wondered in a bit of a daze along the path toward my building. My mind was racing, and I couldn’t ignore the shaky feeling in my gut that the thought of Aaron getting in trouble because of me flourished inside me. In my rational mind, I knew it took two to tango, and yet I felt wretched. I already cared for him so much, somehow. Had I liked him like this all along?
I turned toward my shoddy campus housing. After the beauty of Aaron’s place, it was going to feel especially cheap and less than cheerful, but what else could I do? I pulled my phone and checked it about a hundred times on the way. There were no missed calls. The silence was deafening.
As I rounded the corner to my building, tears tickling my eyelids madly at this point, I was grateful I was nearly there, so I could collapse in a heap in my room and cry my eyes out like a toddler. It was going to be an epic cry. I could feel it already.
And then, just like that, I saw him.
Before the building was a small van, and there were men walking up and down the stairs, carrying things. Someone was moving, it seemed, mid-semester, which was weird, but not unheard of. There, amid it all, was Professor Cole, directing the workers this way and that, a man in charge.
It seemed that the person who was moving was me.
Excitement and nerves and pure, bewilderment filled me as I made my way toward him. I saw my old chipped vanity table being carried down the stairs.
“Wait, are these my things?” I asked, catching up with one of the guys. He simply shrugged, and nodded toward Aaron, who had turned to me, and was watching me with that dark intensity I saw in my dreams. “Am I moving?” I asked him, unsure what to think. Was I being kicked out of uni after all for sleeping with a professor?
“Yes, of course, you are,” he said shortly, reaching for me as soon as I was close enough. His brawny arms went around my waist, and he pressed a kiss to my forehead.
“Where to?”
“My place, or I should say, our place,” he said simply, as if he hadn’t seemed to have lost his mind.
“We are moving in together?” I repeated incredulously. I should be mad at his highhandedness, or his pushy arrogance. I should feel something other than my heart pounding in my chest with excitement that I’d never felt before.
“I told you last night, Amy. I’m an all-or-nothing kind of man. You wanted me, you wanted this, so it’s all in for me. It makes little sense for my future wife to live in anything less than luxury while she follows her dreams and finishes her degree,” he said.
“That’s crazy,” I said numbly.
“Crazy or not, you want it… don’t you?” he pressed. Well, hell, there was only one answer to that question in my heart, and I couldn’t lie.
“What about your job?”
“Didn’t the dean tell you? I’m no longer your professor, as of this morning, and am no longer employed by the university.”
“But you loved that job,” I started, and broke off when Aaron laughed.
“I loved you, and would have taken any job to see you every day. Without you, I’d have packed in teaching months ago. It’s not for me.” His words echoed again and again in my head, like a deafening roar.
“You love me?” I repeated. He nodded.
“I do and you love me back. Don’t even try to deny it.”
I shook my head, a smile I couldn’t contain, jumping to my lips.
“I have no poker face, remember? I won’t try to deny it. There’s no point,” I agreed. He laughed, a booming sound that made me warm inside. “So, what’s the plan, then?” I asked, looking at my stuff filling up the truck.
“Finish your degree in a few months, and get married. I should probably write the book at some point. Choose on the map which city you want to work in, London, Paris, New York, you name it, and we go there. House, kids, delirious happiness etc,” he said, pulling me more firmly against him.
“Oh, is that all? You’ve not really put much thought into this, have you?” I teased him. He grinned.
“I came up with this very plan on our first class together, the one where you called me out on a fact that was outdated in my slides. I was so annoyed, and then, just like that… I was in love.”
“Just like that?” I repeated, wondering at the sheer madness and yet, undeniable truth of what he was saying. I understood his brand of madness, because I felt it too.
“All or nothing, remember?” he repeated, holding me close. I nodded. For this man, to be in his arms, to be his love and obsession, I would choose all, every single time.