Teach Me Read online

  Her eyes flash, though whether it’s with anger or triumph, I can no longer tell. Seems like it’s always one or the other these days. Anger at me, for not being enough. Triumph every time she puts me in my place, yet again reminds me that I’m the scum of the earth, that even my own mother sides with her. “So sorry to inconvenience you. Let me know when you have time to pencil me into your little black book. Maybe you can jot me down for a slot between your next series of drunken parties.” She slams the door behind her, so hard the windowpanes, which are probably older than me, rattle in their frames.

  Great. One of those third years in the living room singing karaoke must have recognized me, told Mindy, who told her. Mindy is also Team Hannah, as she reminds me every time the subject of my dating life, or lack thereof, comes up.

  I fall into my chair with a groan, all excitement at the thought of the Eliot seminar and my announcement gone. When Hannah emailed me to say she’d be back from sabbatical this semester, no hard feelings, and she hoped we could get dinner and catch up as friends, I thought that this year would be different. That she would finally accept that I am not the guy to give her what she wants—the ring on her finger, the little country house with a white picket fence, babies, the whole package. That’s just not me.

  Unfortunately, even after her year abroad “finding herself” in South Africa, she still seems convinced that we’re Meant To Be. Hannah, and practically everyone in my friend circle.

  My thoughts on the matter don’t seem to be a concern.

  The doors open again, and I jump, but it’s just students this time. I bury myself in reading for as long as I possibly can, rereading “The Gravel Walks” just to soothe my nerves. Okay, and maybe because it reminds me that, whatever the fallout, I’m glad I did take that chance last night. Walk on air against your better judgment. Take chances, live in the real world, but explore the fantasy realm as well.

  I might not be the marriage and babies kind of guy, but that doesn’t mean I need to live my whole life like a saint.

  Or a vicar. Ha ha.

  Finally, the last of the students seems to have arrived, so I start the lecture. For the most part it goes well; Jenny and Keith and Henry have all returned for more of my banter, which makes me happy. I enjoy having engaged students, pupils who really want to participate. The ones who have as much passion for this subject as I do make all the bullshit I deal with worthwhile. If I could just teach those students, all day every day, my life would be complete.

  There is one girl, though, who worries me. I recognize her friend, Mary Kate, from my eighteenth century lecture. This girl seems new, though, and from the way she spent the entire class gaping at me, practically sweating bullets in her seat, I wonder if she’s in over her head. Maybe she signed up for this class as an elective, or maybe she has it confused with the Introduction to Modern Poetry course that Drew teaches an hour earlier.

  I make a mental note to ask her if she’s alright after class, but the second the end of hour bell rings, she bolts from her seat and flees the room, as if the chair she’d been sitting in was on fire. Mary Kate shoots me an apologetic smile and hurries after her.

  Hopefully she’ll figure it out and change her schedule.

  In the meantime, I have more pressing matters to attend to. Namely, in less than one hour, a meeting with the dean to discuss that Eliot seminar.

  #

  “The schedule is set, Kingston.” Dean Pierson peers up at me through his ridiculously tiny spectacles, perched like a teardrop on the tip of his nose. It’s a wonder he can see anything at all. He certainly can’t see the direction out of his own arsehole.

  “Screw the bloody curriculum, Daniel. Can’t you understand what this means?” I gesticulate widely to make the point, and nearly knock a bust of Adonis or some similarly ridiculous Greek figure from the dean’s favorite bookshelf. His office is packed to the brim with odds and ends like that—a cheap sextant dangling from the corner of a 6x10” reproduction map of the ancient world, capped by a Yeats quote that looks like it was carved from wood at a local yard sale.

  Tacky, from wall to wall. That’s all I can think every time I’m in here. Now I need to make this lover of all things cheap see the opportunity in a diamond in the rough. “Never before seen work. From Eliot himself.”

  The dean mutters something that sounds suspiciously like Americans. I wish he’d spit that a little louder. Maybe the exchange students passing by outside the wide open office door would have a thing or two to say about his opinions.

  But I ignore the low blow.

  “Come on, Daniel. You know as well as I do what kind of merit it would bring the college. Not to mention funding.” That makes the old bastard pause for a moment. He might not like disruption, change, or American poets, but he loves his grant money. “There’s at least three founders I know just off the top of my head who would dig up their parents’ graves and sell the bones for a chance to fund a discovery like this.”

  “If you’re right,” he points out. “If they’re not just some pretty scribbles by an unknown unnamed first year who happened to be in attendance here at the same time as your man. This college was chock-full to bursting with American would-be poet laureates in that era, you’ll recall. How can you be sure the papers don’t belong to one of them? And it’s awfully handy you just happened to stumble across these now, with your consideration for tenure fast approaching.”

  My fists clench and unclench at my sides. That’s bloody rich. Dean Perjurer Pierson, accusing me of faking something. Granted, there were no convictions during the five forgery scandals in which our lovely dean here has been embroiled during his long and storied career, but five times, really? You do the math. One of those at least must be legit.

  Maybe that’s why he’s so cautious about letting me run with the Eliot story now.

  “Look,” I manage through gritted teeth. “If you won’t let me run a full seminar, at least give me a couple of research assistants. They don’t even have to be PhD candidates; I’m not picky. Undergrads if you prefer. I just want a couple more eyes on this project than my own. You know, to be sure I’m not just conveniently hallucinating similarities in tone.” I inject a certain amount of venom into that last statement.

  He stares me down, and I can practically hear the tiny cogs in his brain cranking. He wants to turn me down for the hell of it now. Say no just to watch me yell and shout.

  But he won’t. Pierson might be a rat, but he’s a smart rat. How else would he keep his post through all the knee-deep shit he’s waded into?

  “Fine. One undergraduate. No more.”

  Now I clench my fists for a different reason—to keep from punching the air in celebration. Okay, so it’s not the full seminar I hoped for. But a dedicated research aid and I can tackle this headlong, no problem. I’ll select based on research experience and writing ability. I can use my eighteenth century class as a pool, see how they do on the Heaney assignment.

  My mind is racing so fast with preparations that it takes me a moment to notice Pierson has already slammed his office door shut in my face, stranding me in the middle of the quiet, mid-morning college hallway, a few steps from the registrar’s office.

  I turn on my heel, ready to storm back to my office and start putting a list of potentials together, when I nearly trip headlong over a student.

  I blink a few times at the girl blocking my path down the hallway. She’s almost a head shorter than me, her huge blue eyes locked on mine beneath a cloud of runaway auburn waves. Something about the purse of her lips makes my mind immediately run to places I’m not proud of. My eyes want to drift along her curves, drink in the way her low-cut shirt exposes her collarbones and the hint of cleavage beneath, not enough to be revealing, just enough to make me know there’s a lot she could reveal to the right guy. I lock my eyes onto her face instead, but that doesn’t help quell the beast.

  Fuck, she’s gorgeous.

  She’s also staring at me, wide-eyed. “Sorry,” she gasps,
her eyes somehow widening even more, and that’s when I recognize her. Mary Kate’s nervous friend from class.

  Stop ogling the students, you cretin. “Not at all,” I say aloud. “My fault. I trust you’re enjoying my class, Miss . . . ?” I wait for her to fill in the blank, but she only gapes at me longer.

  Finally, her mouth snaps shut and her shoulders square. She’s even more attractive this way than when she’s being timid. I bet she could take charge in the bedroom. Christ, Jack, what the hell. I banish that thought to the darker recesses of my clearly overworked mind.

  “I’d like to talk to you,” she says, all in a rush, like this was a difficult admission.

  She’s American, I notice with surprise. Something about the loose gray sweater she’s wearing, paired with jeans and high boots, had suggested local girl to me. I readjust the settings in my head, think about her as a confused exchange student instead. It certainly helps explain her bewilderment in class.

  I really don’t have time for this, but I sigh and point up the corridor toward my own office. “I can give you five minutes.”

  Harper

  Do the right thing, Harper.

  I stand outside the office of the registrar, my heart torn in two. I really, really wanted to take this class. But there’s no way I can sit through his lectures knowing what happened between us. Especially when he obviously doesn’t realize. That much was clear from the way he gave me a blank look in class.

  I don’t know why that bothers me. It’s better like this. I’ll drop the course, find another class to replace it. It’ll set me back a semester at home, because I was supposed to fulfill my poetry requirement here, but better that than getting myself embroiled in yet another mess.

  This one would be the worst yet. Worse than my TA, worse than the time I accidentally slept with my mother’s new boss (who, in my defense, is a lot younger than she is).

  Hey, you survived those, I tell myself. That gives me the courage to push open the door to the registrar.

  That’s when voices catch my attention. Raised voices, coming from another office a few doors down. One voice that I recognize. “Screw the bloody curriculum.”

  I can’t help it. I creep closer to the open door, one eye on the empty hallway around me. Ignore it. Turn around, go into the registrar. Drop the class. My brain fires all kinds of helpful, sensible, non-stalkerish suggestions at me.

  Naturally, I ignore them all.

  If someone comes by, I’ll leave. But the hallway remains empty, and anyway, Professor Kingston’s next words freeze me to the spot. “Never before seen work. From Eliot himself.”

  No. Freaking. Way.

  The words themselves practically make me nerdgasm on the spot. Another student passes by, shooting me a weird look as she walks around me into the registrar’s office. I completely ignore her, and tiptoe closer to the open office. Dean something-or-other is written on the door. I listen to their whole conversation, my heart beating faster with every word Jack says—and not with lust this time.

  Well, with some lust. But mostly of the holy shit, I need to get that research position variety. This could totally make my undergraduate career. I can already see my faculty advisor back home salivating over the thesis I could write on this.

  So when Jack—Professor Kingston, I mentally correct myself—backs into the hallway, I don’t do the smart thing. I don’t run. I stand there, take a deep breath, and let him nearly run straight into me. He’s taller than me, I now notice. A lot taller. Almost a foot—I know I’m short at 5’5”, but wow.

  Emotions flicker across his even-hotter-close-up face—anger, surprise, recognition—and then he seems to settle into mild annoyance, even after I manage to ask to speak to him.

  Five minutes. I can totally explain this and plead my case within five minutes, right?

  He leads me down the hallway into his office, a cramped but surprisingly homey room, the walls lined with huge, dusty old leather-backed tomes, and a massive mahogany desk commanding my attention the moment I step inside. My traitor imagination immediately notes how the desk is perfectly positioned at waist-height, just begging for someone to be bend over it . . .

  My face flushes, and I swallow hard. Stop it. This is exactly the kind of thinking I need to cut the hell out.

  It doesn’t help that he’s standing right next to me, close enough that I can feel the heat from his body. I know that if I meet his intense gaze again, I’ll lose all my nerve. So I focus on the desk instead, and try to ignore it when he squeezes past me, and his arm brushes my shoulder. Fire ignites along my whole side, and my breath catches as I remember the way his arms circled me last night, pulling me against him, so firm, completely in control.

  Meanwhile, he’s refusing to meet my eyes too. Does he remember? Does he recognize me somehow?

  I clear my throat. Doesn’t matter. I need to come clean, and somehow convince him to let me into that seminar.

  “Well?” he asks, and we lock eyes finally. Yep. Intimidating as crap to stare into those deep, dark eyes—almost honey from close up, with the sun shining in them through the window. A lock of his dark hair falls across his forehead, and my fingers itch to run through it again.

  All my carefully planned speeches fly straight out of my head.

  “I have a confession to make,” is all I can think to say.

  Apparently it’s enough. His eyebrows shoot skyward, and from the way the color drains from his face, I’m guessing he’s recognized my voice after all. Or my choice of wording.

  “Dear god.”

  “I wasn’t going to say anything,” I babble, my words practically tripping over themselves in my rush to explain. “I was going to just drop the class, because, I mean, obviously that would be the right thing to do, given the, um, the circumstances, but I accidentally overheard you talking to the dean about the Eliot thing and I’m planning to write my thesis on him next year; I would do anything to help you with those papers, please, I really need this.” By the time I reach the end of that little meltdown, I’m out of breath.

  On the bright side, color returned to his face while I was talking. On the down side, now he’s just straight up scowling at me, his jaw clenched.

  “You told me you were just visiting for the day,” he says, after a pause so long I nearly sweat through my shirt.

  “I know. I didn’t know who you were or I swear I would never have . . . I mean . . . ” His glare makes the words die on my tongue. I clear my throat to force the block out of it. “It will never happen again, professor.”

  “Damn right, it won’t. And if you think I’m going to give you favors because of what happened—”

  “No, of course not, I’m not asking for favors, I—”

  “You just told me you lied to get into my pants last night, and now you’re asking me to let you work on a project that you only know exists because you eavesdropped on a private conversation, and you don’t see the conflict of interest there?”

  I grimace. This all sounded a lot more convincing in my head. “Just consider me. Please. I’ll do anything.” I pause, realizing how that sounds. “No, I mean, not like that, I . . . ”

  He heaves a sigh, and for a second the angry facade drops. I catch a glimpse of the guy I met last night underneath. Overworked, frustrated. Passionate, in desperate need of a release. His eyes catch mine, bore straight into me, and I forget to breathe. He can pin me in place without even touching me. “I’ll consider you in the same way I plan to consider every student in your class. No more, no less. Impress me with the Heaney essay due this week, and then maybe—maybe—we’ll talk about Eliot.”

  Hope and fear war in my chest. Our lecture has about fifty students in it. Most of whom will want this research gig as bad as I do.

  But as bad as I am at managing my love life, I’m stellar at academia. Poetry is what I write, live, breathe. I can do this. I raise my chin and smile at him, our eyes still locked, my face hot from the sensation of his eyes on me.

  “I won
’t let you down,” I say. Right before I turn around and flee the office. Best get out of here before he can think better of this second chance.

  Besides, I’ve got a paper to knock out of the park.

  Jack

  Perfect. Abso-fucking-lutely perfect.

  I take a moment outside the overpriced vegan restaurant Kat insisted on going to to compose myself. As if it wasn’t bad enough that my sister is in town for the weekend and has insisted on dragging me out for a tête-à-tête, or that there’s a missed text from Hannah asking if we can “talk,” now I have Harper Reed to worry about.

  Harper. The name suits her. I can imagine whispering it against her neck, right before I make her gasp mine in reply. No, not gasp. I want to make her come so hard she screams.

  Clearly, composing myself isn’t working. I push out of my car and slam the door hard behind me, like I can trap those thoughts inside its metal walls.

  Couples on dates bustle along High Street, hands clasped, girls in tight dresses and guys in pressed suits. A couple of tourists mingle in between, mostly Americans with white sneakers and oversized cameras.

  I brush through the throngs and into the restaurant, a cramped space that looks like it was decorated by a 1960s love child who suddenly hit the lottery and spent all of their money on all the wrong things. I duck under a gold lamé beaded entrance and search for my sister’s telltale bleach-white pixie cut.

  It takes me less than a second to spot her in a corner booth, balanced on a violent purple settee that clashes with the neon orange jeans and belly-baring crop-top she’s wearing. I wonder if she took her fashion advice tonight from a cheesy 1990s sci-fi movie.

  “Kat,” I greet her once I manage to pick my way across the room.

  She rises in an easy, fluid motion to plant a kiss on my cheek, then folds herself back into the chair with the practiced ease of the yoga teacher she is. “Jack. You’re late.”