Fissure (The Patrick Chronicles 1)

“We’re a merciless, brutal bunch of rebels,” I said, lowering my voice too, “so you have to swear to me you won’t tell anyone I was in class two days in a row. That’s a sin so severe they’d leave the casket open just to prove a point to everyone else.”

She put on a face of overdone shock. “How about this? I’ll promise not to tell a single soul about your perfect two day attendance record if you tell me what inspired such an act.”

I looked over my shoulder, then the other, secret agent style, before curling my finger at her. She leaned in, so close I felt goose bumps surface over the back of my neck, but it wasn’t close enough. I felt a hunger so deep I wasn’t sure I could ever sate it.

I closed the last few inches between us, knowing I was beyond pressing my luck with her, half waiting for her to slap me, half wanting to tilt her mouth up until it connected with mine, and whispered in her ear, “I came to see about a girl.”

I felt her stiffen, I sensed the tension steal over her body, right before she snapped away from me like I was toxic. She settled her hair behind her ears, then moved on to smoothing her skirt. So much for my world-renowned smoothness. It went over with her as well as silk over sandpaper.

When she started tapping her pencil over her desk, I couldn’t take anymore of her spastic releases of discomfort. Especially knowing I was the idiot who’d induced it. When all else fails, I’d learned this great trick called changing the subject and acting like nothing had happened. Was a godsend.

“So where’s Ty today?” I asked, facing forward in my seat and putting my voice back together.

She cleared her throat, throwing me a quick look from the side. Super, I’d taken one step forward only to take about a hundred back. “He’s not feeling well,” she answered, pulling at a thread dangling from the sleeve of her sweater.

I was going to mention something about a weekend of binge drinking generally equating to waking up Monday morning with a not-feeling-well result, but a blotch of purple kept poking to the surface each time Emma would pull the thread.

Without thinking, I reached for her wrist and slid the sweater sleeve up to her elbow. She automatically recoiled, pulling the sleeve back into place.

“More bruises?” I whispered, knowing my hackles would be rising if I had any. “Maybe you need to take a multi-vitamin or something.”

She chuckled, but I wasn’t joking. I’d never seen a girl as bruised as her. She had to have some sort of vitamin deficiency or something. Either that or she was a magnet for bruises far and wide.

“What can I say? Volleyball’s a killer sport and I’m not the kind of girl that dodges a ball when it’s firing at me.” She sounded proud of herself.

I was about to reply that I hadn’t seen her take any balls or hits to the forearms at Friday night’s game when the good professor decided that late was better than never. I happened to believe in the other way around.

“Sit down and shut up,” he hollered, grabbing his temples and grimacing at his own voice. Looked like students at Stanford weren’t the only ones that liked to have a good time during the weekend.

The room went from a dull roar to Sunday morning silent. The man had skills of persuasion, I had to give him that.

“I’m not in the mood to give out a lecture today on Freudian theory and, from the grimaces I just detected on your faces, you’re not ready to hear it either,” he announced, his voice barely making it through the room as he snapped his briefcase open and began rummaging through it. “So I’m going to give you the details—the brief details—on your semester project that will account for half of your grade.”

Professor Camp grimaced, reaching again for his temples as a communicable groan vibrated the room. He twisted open an aspirin bottle and tipped it to his lips, shaking it back until two, three, or twenty went down the hatch.

“Love,” he said, letting us simmer over the topic a minute as he tore open an alka-seltzer packet and tipped its tablets into his coffee cup. Emma snickered, beating me to it.

“Love,” he repeated. “The most controversial, most sought after, men die over, women faint over, biggest piece of monkey crap to ever be conjured up by mankind.”

You could feel the jaws dropping around us, the reaction was that strong.

“Just joking,” he said. “Kind of,” he added as he tipped his cup at us before chugging it down in a single gulp.

Emma’s pencil was primed at the ready, nothing more than Love scrolled under the date.

“Love is emotional, love is physical, love makes you mental,”—I tried not to laugh at the personal relevance—“but love is most definitely psychological. And, in case you weren’t aware of the class you were in, that’s just what we are supposed to be studying,” he went on, yawning. “Myself and my other peers in the Psychology department hold to two schools of thought. Since I’m the teacher and you’re the students paying fifty grand a year and will pretty much do anything I ask you to for an A, you’ll be my guinea pigs to put love to the test.”

He was the poster child for the kind of teacher that should have retired twenty years ago and probably shouldn’t have ever chosen teaching as a career since he hated youth, but he had a keen sense for holding his students captive. I hadn’t heard so much as a one word whisper since he’d stumbled into the room.

“Is love meant to be? You know, love at first sight, true love, soul mates,” he droned, waving his hand around, “all that mumbo jumbo load of crap?” Emma’s pencil screeched to a halt. “Or can it be forced to the surface over the course of time? Could you”—he pointed his finger at several gape mouthed students—“fall in love with absolutely anyone if you spent enough time and life experience with them?” He braced his arms over the lectern. “I know, but you’re about to find out.”

I guessed the edge in his voice and the bitter smirk used when discussing love had to do with the tan lines framing a white ring of skin where I guessed a band had recently been.

“I’ve paired you up and, while I’m a man of the times and have no problem with same sex, multi sex, whatever sex marriages that float your ding-dong, for our purposes—and so I don’t get a mountain of complaint mail from your rich, conservative, right wing parents—I’ve paired you into male/female groups.” He shuffled through his briefcase, pulling a sheet free from a binder. “This will be your partner for the rest of the semester, and who knows? Maybe the rest of your lives, and I can retire as a professor and move on to match-making?”

A few laughs came from the class, but they were the forced kind. The throw-the-poor-bitter-professor-a-bone kind of laugh.

“Some of you may be in committed relationships already. Good for you,” he said, making a whoop-dee-doo twirl of his finger. “Let me offer you some advice. Break up with the love of your life. Call it quits with your soul mate, at least if you care about getting a good grade in this class. If you are so moved, you can always pick up right where you left off at the end of the quarter.”

This time a sound broke the silence. It was Emma’s gasp.

I couldn’t believe my luck. I knew Emma and Ty had been together for awhile, but she struck me as the kind of girl that followed her teacher’s orders. The kind of straight A student that didn’t know how to get a B. And here was our professor all but demanding that we break up with our girlfriends and boyfriends. Was it on the up and up? Probably not. Was it legal? I doubted it. Would the school hesitate in firing him if they heard? Definitely not. But was he serious? Abso-flippin’-lutely.

I had a new favorite teacher.

“There are assigned dates every weekend, but you need to spend more time than a few cutesy little dates together. Much more time. If I walk into the cafeteria, I want to see you together. If I sneak into the dorm halls after hours, I expect you all to be breaking curfew with your partner like any self-respecting college student in love.”

More laughter. This time, the real kind. The only person who did not seem into this whole mad scientist experiment was Emma. She couldn’t have looked more uncomfortable if she’d come to class nak*d.

“I need to stress that in order for this project’s findings to be accurate, I need you to spend every other waking minute with your partner. The only way to prove or disprove if love is nothing more than a result of time and familiarity is to . . .”—his eyes circled the room—“you guessed it, spend time with each other. Simple enough? Any questions?” he asked, eyes on his sheet of paper and wasting no time, obviously unconcerned if there were any questions.

I didn’t need air, so it wasn’t any big deal that I was holding my breath, but when I started to feel dizzy, I knew it wasn’t a result of the lack of oxygen. It had everything to do with the anticipation of hearing my name called out with Emma’s.

In a class close to one hundred, it was what I suppose you could call a forlorn wish, but those were the best kind to hope for. The absolute unlikelihood of them coming to fruition made the personal angst that much more intense. I could feel it pulsing through my blood.

I leaned forward in my seat as Professor Camp called out the first pair while Emma seemed to slink so far back into her seat it was like she was melting into it. What was she so uneasy about? The assignment itself, being told to break up with Ty the bonehead, who she’d be paired with . . . wondering, hoping, guessing it could be me? Or praying it wouldn’t be me?

I couldn’t tell, and I knew I shouldn’t ask, but I did anyways.

“What’s wrong?” I whispered over to her as the announcement of names continued on at an agonizingly slow pace.

She waved me off, working her tongue into the side of her cheek and wringing her hand in her skirt.

I felt something then. Seeing her so uncomfortable, but it went beyond seeing. I could feel her discomfort, with such clarity it could have been my own. It was jarring and intimate . . . and a first. Setting all of myself aside, nothing else was on my mind but easing hers. I was just reaching for one of her hands and searching for the right words of comfort when I heard her name called out from down front.

“Emma Scarlett, your partner is . . .”—I sucked in a breath; she did too. I had just enough time to send out another prayer into the waiting universe before the good professor finished, “Patrick Hayward.”

And then, I did something I had no control over. Something that had the whole class busting a gut. I leapt from my seat, threw both arms in the air, and screamed, “YES!”

When I realized what I’d done, I didn’t blush, I didn’t sit back in my seat and duck my head like anyone who had a shred of self worth would. Too late to worry about my delicate male ego. Way too late.

Instead I turned around and gave a bow, which was followed by another round of laughter with some applause tossed in.

“Glad to have made your day, Mr. Hayward,” Camp said, trying his best to look irritated. “Happy love making . . . errrr . . . finding,” he edited before going on to the next pair on his sheet.

o;We’re a merciless, brutal bunch of rebels,” I said, lowering my voice too, “so you have to swear to me you won’t tell anyone I was in class two days in a row. That’s a sin so severe they’d leave the casket open just to prove a point to everyone else.”