Already stopped, I turn around and face him. With thedoor partially open, sunlight spills through, warming my sweaty, cooling skin. “What’s up?”
“Lauren’s a nice woman.”
Lauren—I don’t even know— “oh.” He’s still thinking about the student asking me out in front of him in the office the other day. He thinks I think it’s awkward, and he’s right, but for the wrong reasons. “Yeah, Lauren’s sharp. She’s great.” I edge nearer to my escape, where fresh air and sunlight (and air not charged with Noah Ryan’s presence) waits for me outside.
His eyes turn to amber in the sun, and when he looks at my foot holding the door open, I sheepishly tug it back. The door closes, the sunlight and my escape disappear and his eyes return to smoky whiskey. “She is great,” he says, confirming what I’ve just stated and I realize why.
I shake my head, and give my favorite pair of running shoes a glance. He doesn’t usually press this way, and for some reason, nerves curl at the back of my throat, making words sticky and uncomfortable. I meet his eyes. “I’m not interested in Lauren. Had you not been standing there, my answer would have been the same.” I nod, with finality, hoping that he understands the subtext of my body language, of the way I’m inching toward the door again. “I’m not interested.”
He nibbles his bottom lip as he too focuses on my running shoes for a moment. I pull the door open and Noah stops me, yet again. “Can I—” he uses those two words to stall me, and with my foot between the door and the jam again, I sigh and give him my focus one more time.
“Can I just say, if you are attracted to her, the rule about professors and students is really… you know. Not for people like you. You and Lauren could?—”
“I’m not attracted to her,” I say definitively, to end this conversation but also, to answer the attraction question with finality, allowing no room for error. “I have no interest in Lauren.”
My heart is racing, and the longer his honeyed eyes stay on mine, the worse it gets. “And if I did,” I continue, because the faint smug curl at the corners of his lips irritates me. “I wouldn’t pursue it because the rule is foreveryone, even me.”
I’m walking away, the fresh air finally licking at my sweaty, anxious skin when I realize Noah is behind me. “You know,” he starts, and I’ve had just about enough of his pressing, so I stop, and he nearly collides with my back, stopping himself with the tips of his fingers into my traps.
Despite being outdoors, I still can hardly breathe. Stepping back, I face Noah and adjust my glasses, waiting for him to finish the thought that was so important that he followed me outside to share it.
His smile is slow, and it softens the rigidity in my neck and shoulders, though I don’t show it. “I was just gonna say. I give you a bad time about being a rule follower but… I respect it.”
“Hey, Professor Mercer. Hey Professor Ryan,” a female student greets, leaving the gym not more than ten paces behind us. Noah greets her as she brushes past, a pinktowel draped over her shoulder, outfitted in a tiny workout set that doesn’t leave much for the imagination. I barely look her way as I say, “hey, have a nice weekend.”
Noah watches me, still wearing that irritating, intoxicating smirk. “Did you see the petition in the library?”
I shrug. “Yeah.” When I first saw the petition for new copiers, I wanted to ask Noah if he’d seen. After all, we’ve been complaining about the copiers for years. But as colleagues, things have to come up conversationally. Organically. It just hasn’t yet. “Did you put that up?”
He lifts one shoulder. “I didn’t. But I didn’t take it down.”
Two students burst between us on rollerblades, laughing, music playing from one of their devices. In the distance, someone locks their vehicle and verifies the alarm is on. Noah’s hair lifts in the breeze, but he remains focused on me.
“Maybe it’ll yield some results this time.”
He bobs his head, a little mindlessly. “Where are you going now?”
I nudge my glasses up the bridge of my nose. “My house. Gonna shower, eat, and grade some papers before coming back for my evening lecture.”
He continues bobbing his head. “Alright, well, I’ll see you in the annex.” He holds out a closed fist, and I bump his. He started that the first time I walked into the office to discover I’d be sharing it with the young, handsome professor on my panel.
While Noah saunters off, a student pops up from ablanket on the lawn to beg for a moment of his attention, I head to my place, and lose myself in a memory.
The evening before my first lecture. I’d waited until six o’clock in the evening before making the trek to the English department annex to find my office. The anxiety that clung to every fiber of me upon imagining myself walking in during school hours was just too much, so I opted to set my things up when the halls were relatively empty.
The lights were low and the orange sunlight that poured through the windows onto the old tile casted a soft glow in the hall. I stopped, banker's box on my hip, and just… took it in. I considered a cell phone photo but thought better of it when a flurry of students erupted from an office door, scattering into the hall with books and traces of laughter on their lips.
When I came to the last door on the left, I realized that the students had come out of my office, the exact one assigned to me from the department chair via email. At first I’d gotten concerned that they’d done something, some sort of new professor hazing thing, but when I opened the door and saw two desks inside with Noah Ryan sitting at the other, I realized I was wrong.
I longed to find a hazing mess of upturned papers and books posed backward on the shelves. I longed to have the reason those students were in my office be anything other than what I was discovering the truth to be. That I share an office with Professor Noah Ryan, and that my attempt to fly under the radar before my first day wasbested by the same man who voted for me to have this very job.
He nodded, and the sun shifted in the sky at that exact moment, tucking itself behind a swathe of gauzy clouds, stealing its umber glow, leaving Noah’s profile half-shaded. He reached out, tugging the little gold chain on his desk lamp, and within a moment, he was illuminated again, but it was too late.
I’d already seen him in the partial dark, jaw sharp, eyes bright, strong shoulders pushed back with sexy confidence that comes with a man who never has to try, who simply charms effortlessly. Heat flared in my belly, and spread through my chest, igniting in sharp peaks behind my ribs.
Professional jealousy.That’s all I let myself believe it was. He’s so loved in the department, taking students in office long after hours have ended, sharing his space with the new professor, volunteering for panels—he gives me a run for my money where success and aplomb are concerned, and my body reacted to him as such.
That’s all it was.
