Teacher's Pet

"Ropes course, man!" A tall, red-headed football player whacked me on the back. "Prof here killed the ropes course. He's a beast! I thought professors wore tweed to hide their skinny arms, but Prof Bauer's got pythons, man."

I shrugged him off and kept moving. "Keep that in mind, and don't let all of this get out of control."

"Aye, aye, Professor Bauer!"

I paused by the keg just to make the students slow down. It was entertaining to see them beeline across the dining room towards the keg, see me, and make abrupt turns. More than one student crashed into another as they tried to change directions. It was a good vantage point, but I still couldn't see Clarity anywhere.

Dean Dunkirk extricated himself from the dance floor and waved me over to the foot of the staircase. "I don't see her anywhere. Any luck?"

"None at all, sir," I said.

"Good lord, those girls are ogling you. I heard you blew the

students minds by mastering the ropes course," he said.

"Your daughter was the real star," I told him. "You should have seen her; she was fearless."

"Clarity did the ropes course?" Dean Dunkirk looked surprised. Then he scrubbed his chin. "That wasn't quite what I was thinking when I told her to try new things."

I laughed. "You meant for her to try out creative writing or maybe a modern dance class, didn't you?"

The dean looked up at me with worried eyes. "We have to find her."

I would have laughed again if I didn't share his sentiment. The party was tame, but Clarity did seem to be hell-bent on breaking out of her shell. Why else would she have accepted a date from the star quarterback? The memory still stung. She'd done it right in front of me.

"I'll take the kitchen," I said.

"I'll go around and check the backyard. Meet you out there," Clarity's father said.

A few students recognized me and cleared out as I headed down the narrow hallway to the kitchen. That’s when she appeared. My stomach dropped like a bucket into an empty well.

"Libby," I said.

"What are you doing here? We're not getting back together." Libby Blackwell tossed her bleached-blonde hair.

"We were never together." I stopped dead in the hallway. Libby wouldn't move, and there was no way I was going to try to squeeze around her.

"You know, even ex-boyfriends can be nice," Libby slurred. She stalked down the narrow hallway. "Don't you want to be nice to me, Professor Bauer?"

She swayed on spiky high heels and then threw herself into my arms. The sickly sweet smell of rum erupted from her giggle.

"You need to find your friends," I told her. "It's time for you to go home and sober up."

"You can take me home." She rubbed her cheek against my shoulder.

I took her shoulders with both hands and set her back against the opposite wall of the hallway. "Libby, this isn't okay. It never was. I made a mistake, and I'll be the first to admit it."

"Want me to tell your friend, the Dean of Students?" she asked while batting her eyelashes.

"Tell whomever you want. Like I said, I made a mistake, and I own it." Disgust rolled around in my stomach.

Libby Blackwell was the epitome of a privileged Landsman College student. Her parents had more money than the government of a small country, and she knew it. Libby flubbed her grades, flirted her way through projects, and expected that everything would be fine on the other end.

When I arrived on campus, I was angry. Angry with Wesley Barton for being a crook, angry with a system that served the wealthiest, and angry at myself for not knowing who to trust. Libby was wild, sexy, and an easy way for me to self-sabotage. I never regretted anything more in my life.

The worst part is she always threatened, but never told anyone. My department head, Florence Macken, suspected our brief affair, but no one else knew. A few times a year, I would run into Libby, and she would try to trade sex for silence. I knew I should be the one to approach the Honor Council and be done with the whole sordid affair, but I had tried uncovering the truth once and still felt the burn.

"Hey, Red," I called at the tall football player down the hallway. "Come help us out."