Heat flushed my face, turning me red. I rarely got embarrassed. In fact, I really felt ashamed. I believed my body didn’t possess the ability to feel those things. I was stubborn, confident, and nothing could knock that. Nothing except for this, nothing except for Professor Stirling looking down at my kitten play clothes.
“Oh fuck,” I whispered, almost in a panic attack. “I—”
He grabbed at the outfit. “Wait,” he said, smiling. “You work at the kitten club. I bet they pay extra for jocks dressed like this.” He shook his head, looking me up and down. The judgement in his eyes was unbearable.
“It’s a fucking job,” I said. “How would you even know that?” I asked with a shrug. “What are you? Gay?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Everyone knows I’m gay. I have pride flags all over the classroom. I usually have one on my jacket, but it’s too hot to wear a jacket right now.”
My stomach did somersaults in the worst possible way. There was only one other person who knew I was bisexual, and that’s because we’d been hooking up for the better part of a year at the frat house. “I’m not gay,” I said.
“I never said you were,” he said, rubbing his fingers on the fabric of the outfit. “I’m curious how you got a job, or why you’d even go there to work?”
Now he was asking me questions I didn’t want to get into. This club was underground. It wasn’t something you’d stumble across easily. This was something you had to be actively searching for to find. At least, that’s how I’d found it.
“Dressing up is fun,” I said. “Plus, getting paid to do it, I’m in. Why? Do you go there?”
He made eye contact with me. “Knowing one of my students works there, it’s unethical. What’s the—the name of the place again?”
I shook my head. The place didn’t have a name. It was just a location, and only those who knew where it was could get in. This wasn’t a Google maps pinpoint a name situation. “Try again,” I said, stuffing the wet clothes into my bag. And now they were wet.
“You still have to clean this,” he said, his face regaining that tortured anger look. “If you want to make it for your shift. I suggest you move quickly.”
“Prof,” I said, shaking my head. “Now, I have to dry this off.”
“Not my fault, is it?”
It was his fault for holding such a boring lecture. If he hadn’t, then maybe I wouldn’t have done something drastic for the entertainment of it all. Although I knew there wasn’t much I could do. The professor had my card, and he was ready to punch it. The last thing I wanted this close to graduation was to be outed, or worse, be stuck behind.
Emmett came out a few months ago, and the frat house stood behind him. A couple others opened up about their sexuality too, but I stayed quiet about that. Spencer, one of the Vander twins, the one I’d been hooking up with, also came out as bisexual, and then he promptly got himself a girlfriend.
“Fine,” I snapped. “But if anyone finds out—”
He held his hands up. “I’d never out you and your cute costume,” he said with a thin smile.
I didn’t know if I believed him.