Beautiful Mistake

“Ummm, Ava, we should go out the front. He’s standing at the back door now.”

She looked around the room. “No, he’s at the front door talking to Sal, the new waiter.”

She was more wasted than I thought. I lifted my chin toward the rear exit, a straight line to Owen. “That’s the back door, Ava.”

“I know. Owen’s at the front door.”

I furrowed my brow. “Isn’t that Owen? With the blue button-up shirt?”

She drunk-snorted. “I said he was the good-looking guy in the blue shirt, not the Greek god modeling one.”

My head whipped to the front of the bar. There was only one guy near the front door who I didn’t know, and he was talking to Sal. “Owen is talking to the new waiter right now?”

She looked again and then sighed and nodded. “I should tell Sal to punch him.”

“Ava—the guy talking to Sal right now, right at this moment, is Owen?”

“Yes.”

“His shirt is brown, Ava. Not blue.”

She turned again toward the front door, squinted, and shrugged. “Maybe. I can’t see so good. My contacts are all smudgy from my makeup and crying.”

When she’d said her ex had just walked into the bar and pointed in the general direction of the front door, there’d been only one guy with a blue button-up on.

Shit.

I’d told off the wrong guy.

Since I couldn’t very well make Ava leave through the front door where the real Owen was standing, I sucked it up. Of course, Not Owen had his eye on me, with a smirk, the entire way to the back door.

He nodded at my friend as we passed. “Have a good night, Ava. ’Night, Feisty.”

I took the cowardly way out and kept my head straight, not making eye contact with the guy, until we were out the door.

Ava wasn’t so strong willed. Her head turned as she kept her eyes fixed on Not Owen, even as we made our way into the alley. She might have been drunk with smudgy contacts, but she wasn’t blind.

“Holy shit. Did you see that guy? And did he just say my name?”

I glanced back just as the bar door was closing. Not Owen waved with a cheeky grin.

“You’re hearing things.”

God, I was going to be late.

As if Monday classes weren’t bad enough after working a double shift on Sunday, I had a stain on my blouse from spilling my coffee when I had to jam on the brakes for an old man driving an enormous Cadillac. He’d decided he needed to make a left…from the right lane.

The first day of school was always a nightmare. People wandered around campus, standing in the middle of the road while giving fellow classmates directions to various buildings. I honked my horn at two underclassmen doing just that. They looked at me like I was the annoying one.

Come on. Move it, people.

After circling the parking lot three times, I parked in a reserved spot in front of Nordic Hall. Leaning over, I rummaged through the glove compartment, half of the contents falling to the floor as I searched for what I needed.

Got it.

I tucked an old ticket under my windshield wiper and took off for lecture hall 208. I really needed to pee, but was going to have to hold it until after class. I knew three things about Professor West, other than that he was in the music composition department. One: He’d gotten rid of his last TA because she refused to grade as hard as he wanted her to. Two: For the last week, whenever I told anyone I’d been reassigned to Professor West, they made a face—not an encouraging one—and said he was an asshole who almost got fired a few years back. And, three: He hated when students were late. He was known to lock the door as class started so latecomers couldn’t interrupt his lecture.

None of those boded well for me. But what choice did I have? My TA position with Professor Clarence had been eliminated when he died suddenly three weeks ago from an aneurysm. I was lucky to secure anything, at this point. And without a teaching assistant position, there was no way I’d be able to afford the tuition at the Music Conservatory. I was already waitressing full time at O’Leary’s just to pay my rent and partially reduced tuition.

Beads of sweat trickled into my cleavage as I arrived at the classroom. The door was closed, so I took a minute in an attempt to make myself presentable, smoothing down my dark, wild curls as best I could, considering the humidity. It was hopeless to try to fix the stain that pretty much covered my right breast, so instead I switched hands and hid it with the leather portfolio I was carrying. Taking a deep breath, I reached for the door handle.

Locked.

Shit.

Now what? I checked the time on my phone. I was only eight minutes late, and it was the first day of the fall semester, yet I heard the professor already lecturing inside. Did I knock and interrupt the class, knowing it was his pet peeve? Or did I pull a no-show on day one of my new position?

Lateness was the lesser of two evils.

Or so I thought.

Rapping my knuckles lightly on the door a few times, I hoped a student at the back of the classroom would hear it, and I could slip in unnoticed.

The professor’s booming voice silenced just as the door opened. It was a stadium-seating lecture hall, so I was entering at the top row, while the professor was down at the bottom. Luckily for me, he was facing the other way and writing on the board when I tiptoed in. “Thanks,” I whispered as I settled into the closest seat in the back and let out a relieved breath.

But perhaps that feeling of reprieve was premature.

The professor continued to write as he spoke. “Who arrived late?”

Ugh.

I wanted to sink down into my seat and pretend it wasn’t me. But I was the TA, not a student. I needed them to respect me, as I’d be teaching this class on occasion.

I cleared my throat. “I was late, Professor.”

He capped the dry erase marker and turned around.

I blinked a few times. My eyes had to be screwing with me. Reaching into my purse, I pulled out my glasses and slipped them on—even though my distance vision was perfectly fine—as if by some miracle putting on my reading glasses would make the man standing in front of the room someone other than who he was.

But he wasn’t someone else.

There was no mistaking that. He had a face people didn’t forget.

A damn gorgeous one.

It was him.

Holy shit.

It was really him.

Screwed.