The other students leave. I hang back, putting my stuff into my bag as slowly as I can, trying to ensure that I’m casually the last one in line to speak with Professor Loveless as he goes over a particularly thorny problem from last week’s quiz. I half-listen, because it was the problem I lost points on, but I’m too distracted.
Then, finally, they leave and it’s my turn. I walk up to the lectern, heart kicking in my chest because I don’t know what he’s going to say and I don’t know what I’m going to say, but I’m pretty sure it’s not going to be about calculus.
Please don’t say we can’t see each other again, I think. We tried that and it didn’t work.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi,” he says, and he smiles.
Then he takes his glasses off, looks at them, folds them in one hand.
“Can you see without those?” I blurt out.
“Pretty well,” he answers, shrugging. “My eyesight actually isn’t too bad, I just think they make me look smart.”
“Right, your Dr. Loveless costume,” I say, and he laughs.
“Not a costume,” he says, putting them down on the lectern.
Then he looks at me, and I feel like his emerald eyes can see all the way to the bottom of my soul.
“I fucked up,” he says, his voice low and soft. “What happened Saturday night never should have, and I broke basically every ethical guideline pertaining to student-teacher relationships.”
I feel like a balloon, slowly deflating.
“It was wrong,” he goes on. “No two ways about it, Thalia, what we did was wrong as hell and if I had a lick of sense I’d never so much look in your direction again and pray you didn’t feel like going to the ethics committee.”
I’m not deflating any more.
“Is that why you asked to talk to me?” I ask, my voice matching his, soft and low. “To tell me how badly we fucked up and swear you’ll never look at me again?”
“It’s not,” he says. “It’s to ask what you’re doing Friday and whether you’d like to come over for dinner.”
He leans forward, his elbows on the lectern, his folded glasses in one hand.
“Just the two of us,” he says. “With locked doors and a couch in the living room and a bedroom upstairs and tiramisu for dessert.”
“Yes,” I say, then swallow hard and take a deep breath. “Yes. I’d like that.”
“Good,” he says, and then studies my face, a smile tugging at his lips. “I’d kiss you now if I thought I could get away with it.”
As if on cue, a student for the next class walks into the classroom and sits at a desk.
“I’ll pretend,” I say, and then we walk out of the classroom and somehow, we manage to make normal conversation and then we part ways.
Friday can’t come fast enough.Chapter ThirtyCalebI love research. I have a Ph.D. and work in academia; of course I love research. I love discovering information. I love digging deep into a topic I know nothing about. I love the way learning is its own reward. I love feeling prepared for every situation.
That said, I don’t recommend Googling first-time intercourse with a well-endowed man without Safe Search turned on. Most of what comes up isn’t educational in the least.
The last time I had sex with a virgin, I was sixteen. She was also sixteen. We were in her childhood bedroom while her parents were away for the weekend and inexplicably trusted her to stay home alone, and we did not know what we were doing. It’s probably a minor miracle that we managed to fit Tab A into Slot B at all, and an even bigger miracle that we enjoyed it.
In terms of logistics, I don’t know whether it matters that Thalia’s a virgin, but it seems like I should prepare for a range of possibilities. I go a little insane and buy seven different kinds of personal lubricant, then pay for fast shipping. I take notes from one of the few helpful articles I find — go slow, make sure she’s turned on, let her be on top so she can control speed and depth — and put them in my bedside drawer, just in case I need a handy, bullet-pointed reference sheet.
But beyond logistics, I don’t care that she’s a virgin. I see her face practically every time I close my eyes. Every time my mind wanders, it wanders to the sound she made when I slid two fingers into her, the way she arched her back. I want her beyond all reason and sanity.
Whether I’m her first lover or her fiftieth doesn’t really matter to me.* * *There has never been a longer week in the history of time. Pointless meetings have never dragged on more. My office hours have never gone slower, and since it’s shortly after midterms, every student who still hasn’t grasped basic integration is there, panicking right into my face.