The Professor (3 page)

“Don’t worry,” he said, as though he could read my mind. “What you’ll be doing is really straight forward.”

I looked back at him, and was surprised how much his gentle look comforted me. His shaggy brown hair had a way of putting me at ease.

“Here, I’ll show you.”

He scooted his chair up next to me. The subtle scent from earlier came on more strongly, and I instantly felt the heat of his body. My head did funny little loops around itself and my thoughts threatened to thicken like a good alcohol buzz.

It was going to be difficult keeping my thought straight while I worked with the Professor, and I suddenly realized that the research might not be the hardest part about the extra credit after all.

* * * * *

The Professor was so close. Too close. He pulled a stack of papers from the piles on the table and leaned in to show me something. His shoulder rubbed against mine - it was as hard as rock and as comforting as a soft pillow. My body craved to be even closer
 
to him - to curl up against his warmth.

But that would have been horribly inappropriate.

I leaned away, subtly; just enough so that I couldn’t feel him against me. The Professor didn’t notice - or he didn’t let on if he did. I tried to calm my racing heart and pay attention to what he was saying.

I was hopeless.

“Ms. Ellis?”

I snapped out of my daze.

“What?” I said reactively. “Sorry.”

“Where are you?” he asked.

“I’m sorry,” I said again. “It’s just all so much.”

He paused for a moment and regarded me.

“Let’s take it slow then,” he said. “Keep it simple.”

I nodded and agreed with him.

He pursed his lips in a tight grin. I had the distinct impression that he wanted to say something more - that he was censoring himself. I found myself wanting to say more, too, but I didn’t dare. How do you tell the man trying to look out for you that you want him to be so much more?

“And it’s just Kayla,” I said. His eyebrows pinched together. “If you call me Ms. Ellis again I’m going to be very upset with you.”

He recoiled, a distraught look darkening his features. “I’m sorry,” he said seriously. “I was just trying to be respectful.”

I flashed him a smile and nudged his shoulder.

“
I’m
just messing with
you
,” I said.

He smiled nervously, still off-put. “Right, of course.”

“So you can dish it, but you can’t take it? Typical guy.”

“It’s not that,” he said. “It’s just… I have a hard time reading you.”

He didn’t know how to read me? What was that supposed to mean? I didn’t think he was doing all that much “reading” in the first place.

“I’m an open book,” I said. “If there’s something you want to know just ask.”

He hesitated for a moment, but smiled and nodded his head.

He nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said.

We sat there for a few more minutes while he re-explained some of the things I would be helping him on. It was all pretty straightforward once I was able to pay attention. The heat lingered between us, still, but I was better able to keep it under control. Eventually he left me alone to get some actual work done - and I found it more difficult to concentrate when he wasn’t near me than when he had been.

What was this mysterious power this man had over me? I barely knew him and still I couldn’t stop thinking about him.

I scolded myself again. What was there to even think about? He was my Professor - just a guy that my tuition paid to educate me - nothing more.

A tiny pang crept inside of me. It was a pang I had felt only once before, but I knew exactly what it meant even though I was trying hard to deny it.

I wanted him to mean something more. Deep down, I didn’t want him to just be my Professor.
 

Don’t be so silly, Kayla. It’s time to grow up and ignore your school-girl fantasies.

I shook my head and tried to focus on work. There were stacks and stacks of papers that weren’t going to review themselves. The first few documents I reviewed might as well have been hieroglyphics, and I struggled to identify the key items that needed recording. Slowly I found a rhythm though, and soon I was cruising through them at full steam. I had made it through a third of the papers when something interesting caught my eye.

“Professor?” I asked after a while. “I have a question about this.”

I grabbed the sheet I had been uselessly looking over and thrust it toward him.

“It’s Ethan,” he said.

“Ethan?” I asked, confused.

He nodded sharply. “If you insist that I call you Kayla, then I insist that you call me Ethan.”

I was surprised by the seriousness in his voice - but it was swept aside as I rolled his name off my tongue for the first time.

“Ethan, then,” I said.

He grinned at me and took the paper. He studied it for a second.

“What’s your question?”

I pushed my chair closer to him and leaned in over his shoulder, pointing at one of the graphs on the paper. That was when I got another whiff of his striking scent. It was intoxicating, and its effect overpowered me.

Heat rushed to my face and I had to catch myself before I fell into him. My head went thick with a haze, and my heart pounded hard in my chest.

When I finally came to my senses I saw that his eyes were locked on me. We were so close, only inches apart. The heat of his breath washed over me - it smelled sweet; minty. His eyes bounced between mine and my lips, and I felt a sudden wave of numbness go through me.

I wanted to collapse into him - to let him whisk me away to some magical far off land. My eyes began sinking closed. I could feel my weight tipping forward, and the warning sirens in my head began going off. I was so close to the edge; so close to falling off.

“I think that’s enough for today,” he whispered in a pained voice. The soothing, minty breath washed over me again.

I shook my head, snapping out of the daze.

“Right,” I whispered back at him.

Our eyes lingered for a bit longer before I was able to break the contact. I pulled myself away. Slowly. It took every ounce of willpower I had. When there was finally enough distance between us I was able to form coherent thoughts again. Panic set in as I realized what had almost happened - I had almost ruined everything.

I pushed the chair away from the Professor - Ethan. Every instinct in my body told me to run from the room as fast as I could. To not stop running until I was in the safety of my home where I could pretend the whole day had been just a dream; or a nightmare.

“I should go,” I said sharply.

He nodded at me weakly, his eyes never straying from mine. He sat there rigid as I grabbed my things and fled toward the door. I cleared the length of the room in only three steps and threw it open. I was about to break into a run when Ethan stopped me.

“Kayla?” he called out.

I froze in place - as though he were some predator that would attack if I moved a muscle. I looked at him over my shoulder, but said nothing. He hadn’t moved a muscle either.

“Same time next week?” he asked.

My mouth tweaked, not wanting to reveal anything, and not knowing what to say. I didn’t trust myself to speak - so I just nodded my head curtly, and slammed the door shut behind me.

* * * * *

What is wrong with you, Kayla?

I chastised myself, and not for the first time since leaving Ethan's office. Why did I let myself get that close to him? Nothing good would come of it - but I couldn’t resist. Boys were trouble, I knew that, but I still let myself get attracted to all the wrong ones.

I sat in my dorm room that evening, doing anything to distract me from what happened that morning. But nothing worked. Images of the Professor - Ethan - flashed through my head. I couldn't get the soft look of his eyes, or his overpowering scent, out of my head. He was intelligent, worldly, exotic. He was everything a girl could want in a man.

And that was the problem.

I had a short list of serious boyfriends for comparison, but Ethan blew each of them out of the water. Not many guys could handle my drive - my ambition. It was what got me through the awkward years in high school and what saw me through to success in college. I knew men were intimidated by me, and that made it easy to not pay them any attention.

My mom always told me that when the right guy came along I would know. He would be the guy that I couldn't push aside; the guy I was willing to make sacrifices for. That's when I would know it was right. Anything less wasn't an issue. If I never formed an attachment in the first place, then I couldn't be hurt.

Ethan wasn't intimidated by me, though - was he? So far he had been the guy to buck the norm. He had his own drive, his own ambition, his own reason for waking up in the morning. He paved his own way in life and was already successful. He wasn't like any other man I had met. So what happened if I couldn't ignore him? What happened if I couldn't control myself?

What are you even talking about?

Why were thoughts of Ethan and boyfriends even coming up together? It was a non-issue because it had to be. There was no scenario that led to Ethan and I ever being together - he was my Professor, nothing more.

I flopped onto my bed and stared up at the ceiling. The dorm halls outside were quiet, everyone was spending their Saturday night out on the town, getting in trouble or having fun in some other way. I was probably the only one cooped up inside; trapped with my own anxiety.

My dorm room was tiny, but it was my own. Being a Resident Advisor meant I didn't have to tolerate a roommate. My family didn't come from a lot of money and I knew a long time ago that sacrifices would be made to achieve my goals. In this case, a roof over my head and food to eat came with the price of my freedom four nights a month. It was a small price to pay.

My phone chirped and lit up on the nightstand next to me. The small screen read "Dana".

"Hey," I answered.

"What you up to?" she asked in her cheery voice. Judging by the noise in the background she was out somewhere.

"Sitting here, bored out of my mind."

"Come out, me and a few girls are at Chilis and we're going down to Fourth Ave after dinner."

I groaned in jealousy. "I can't. I'm on duty tonight. Got to stay here and make sure no one tries smuggle alcohol into the building or burn the place down."

She groaned, too. "I'm sorry, girl. We'll do it next weekend then."

A light of hope crept into me, but was dashed quickly.

"I don't know if I'll be able to," I lamented. "I'm going to be busy the rest of the semester."

"Ya, the end of the semesters are always difficult. Finals are a bitch," she said. There was a long pause. "Hey how'd the meeting go yesterday?"

My heart skipped a beat at the thought of the Professor. Images of that gorgeous smile flashed through my head again.

"It went… alright," I said. The hesitation in my voice was obvious. Dana and I had known each other for so long she could practically read my mind anyway. There was a long pause again, then the background noise lessened considerably; it was just the two of us now.

"Something you want to talk about?" she asked, her voice grave.

"It's nothing," I said. I wanted to tell her more, to tell her what had happened between Ethan and I, but I couldn't. It's not that I cared what she might think about me - she was my best friend and I could tell her anything; but I didn't want to make a big deal out of nothing. "We spent the day going over some of the research I'll be working on."

"You met him today too?" she pressed, her voice sounding overly concerned.

My voice caught up for a moment. She didn't know that I was going to be working with Ethan more than normal - probably more than she had worked with him a year ago.

"He didn't want to give me any extra credit at first. I had to beg him to get the chance," I said.

"I see," she said, but something sounded different. "So you're going to be spending your weekends with him?"

"Working on his research," I clarified. "It's an amazing opportunity, really. He's so smart and I'm already learning a ton from him."

Something told me to cut myself off - to stop talking - or I would be opening a can of worms I wasn't prepared to deal with. It was a gut feeling, nothing I could have verbalized.

"OK. Well, good luck with that, I guess. Let me know if you have time for me."

It was very obvious now that something was wrong. Dana never sounded that distant from me. We were a team; we did everything together.

"Did I say something wrong?" I asked.

"I have to go, I'm being rude," she said curtly, and hung up the phone.

I looked down at my phone, confused. What just happened?

* * * * *

Ethan arrived to the lecture hall later than usual. Usually he arrived early, enjoying the extra time to mentally prepare for the lecture. More often than not he tried to get ahead on some of the massive amounts of reading he was subjected to. His life was all about finding those little moments when he could get more done. Minutes here and there added up over the course of a month. It was how he had accomplished so much at such a young age.

Today was different, however. He had dreaded the impending lecture all morning - he would have to confront Kayla. She would be there like she always was, sitting in the third row off to the left. Why was he so nervous to see her again? It was a rhetorical question - he knew the answer. He just wasn't ready to admit it to himself.

Kayla was an anomaly; she was unlike any other woman in his life. But, more importantly, she was a student. She was off limits - there could be no slip-ups again. He had been down that road once before, and it hadn't ended well.

Ethan stacked a few papers on the tiny podium at the front of the classroom. He forced his thoughts clear before addressing everyone. They were continuing their discussion on the market impact of expected earnings versus actual earnings. To him, it was a wildly riveting discussion, and much of his research was centered on the very topic. His students, however, usually struggled to stay awake through the lectures.