Liam scrubbed his hand over his face and grabbed his bag just as Noah entered the room.
“You alright, man?” Noah asked. “You look like you want to punch someone.”
“I’m fine,” he grumbled. Even he was unconvinced. “You seem to be in a better mood lately.”
Noah grinned. “Nothing a few poli-sci adjuncts couldn’t cure.”
Liam forced a laugh. “Have a good class.”
It wasn’t Noah’s fault that he was the one to make Liam and Min realize they couldn’t be together. That would have happened on the first day of classes anyway. Probably best that it happened before they’d slept together, before he’d woken her in the morning with his tongue on her clit. But, despite Noah being Liam’s best friend – his only friend, if he was honest – the fact that he was the one to snap them back to reality was making it hard for Liam to feel especially friendly towards him lately.
Just before Liam ducked out of the room, Noah called to him, his back to the door as he focused on writing out a line from Stavinsky on the whiteboard. “You’re coming tonight, right?” he asked.
Liam had intended to skip the dean’s faculty cocktail party in favor of some German beer and a Salman Rushdie novel, something existential and epic to make his problems feel small.
“You’re coming,” Noah repeated. This time it wasn’t a question. “You need to meet more people. You can’t live like a hermit. And I miss my favorite wingman.”
“Your onlywingman,” Liam corrected.
“I hear there are some new assistant professors in the linguistics department,” Noah said with a suggestive bob of his eyebrows.
“I don’t know…” Liam hedged.
Noah stared him down. “You’re coming. Uncle Stu will expect it.”
Liam sighed. He was cornered. “I didn’t realize this job came with mandatory mingling.”
Noah dropped the dry erase marker on the ledge of the whiteboard and turned to face his friend. “Look, Uncle Stu likes you.” Liam gave his friend a skeptical raise of the eyebrows. He wasn’t sure Stuart Van Aller liked anyone. “Or if he doesn’t like you exactly, he knows my mom will uninvite him from every holiday dinner if he’s not nice to you. And he’s not self-destructive enough to risk missing out on mom’s latkes.”
Liam smiled. That sounded more like it. Shira was fiercely protective of Liam ever since his dad died.
“Either way, he doesn’t dole out fast-tracked tenure for just anybody, and he will expect you to live up to your end of the bargain. That includes playing the part of the perfect professor at these things.”
“I’ll be there,” Liam sighed, slinging his bag over his shoulder.
“Don’t sound so excited,” Noah said with a roll of his eyes, turning back to his Stravinsky. “The booze might be bottom shelf, but the linguistics professors are top notch.”
He clapped his friend on the shoulder and left before Noah could talk him into anything else. He had no desire to go to the party, but if Noah said his uncle expected him there, then he would go. And Noah was right. Liam did need to convince more faculty to support the expanded opera department he was hired to build.
It would all be so much easier if he wasn’t spending so much energy making sure no one picked up on his obsession with his student.
∞∞∞
By seven o’clock Liam was determined to put Min out of his mind, at least for the rest of the night (not that he hadn’t made that promise to himself every night for the last three weeks). He would go to the dean’s cocktail party. He would schmooze the blue-hairs. He would be the consummate wingman and make sure Noah found a pretty linguist to go home with.
Hell, he might find a pretty adjunct for himself. Maybe she’d even like opera. And literature. Maybe she’d have a voice that wrapped him in velvet. And big eyes he could see in his sleep and a freckle on the bridge of her nose… right, he was not thinking about Min.
Campus was already pitch black – the first indication that fall was approaching. The walking paths of the campus were well lit, and the buildings were all uplit as if they were on some kind of movie set, but there were huge stretches of darkness as Liam made his way from his car parked behind the music building to the alumni hall where the dean was playing host that evening.
That’s when he saw her.
Min sat on one of the low stone walls lining the quad beneath a lamppost, the conical beam framing her perfectly and emphasizing her high cheekbones, the elegant slope of her nose. Her eyes were glued to a book, a pen held loosely in her hand, occasionally jotting notes in the margins of the worn paperback.
He should avoid her, turn the other way, and approach the alumni hall from the other side. Pretend he didn’t see her sitting there looking so gorgeous he couldn’t breathe. Pretend he didn’t want to skip this God forsaken faculty mixer and sit out under the stars with her. But her very presence called to him, like a silent siren song he couldn’t ignore.
“Ms. Taylor,” he said as he approached.
She startled, maybe because she didn’t see him or maybe because his voice came out hoarser than he intended. That tantalizing blush crept over her cheeks again.
