Still, after sliding my banker’s box onto my desk, he got to his feet and we shook hands. It was a palm to palm display of acceptance and camaraderie, and that’s all. But when I took my hand out of his and turned back to my desk, I found myself indexing the strength with which he gripped my hand and the intense set of his eyes on mine.
“I’m glad you came in tonight. I was hoping to see you again, you know, before your first day,” he’d said as I unpacked my framed degree from my box.
“Oh yeah?” I offered nonchalantly as I silently calibrated to the fact that I’d be tucked into this shoebox office with him every day until one of us gets a new job or dies. More likely the latter, too, because once you’re tenured, death is the only goodbye.
He waited for me to stop messing around with my stuff, and when I turned to face him, I found his eyes soft, head tilted, body comfortable. He’d been sitting there just watching me and for whatever reason, no part of it felt condescending or like he was sizing me up. It almost felt like he was…I don’t know.
“I apologize that you don’t have your own space. When the department head realized that we were short an office, I volunteered to split mine.” He motioned to the office with his eyes, looking around, and I followed him, peering at the floor to ceiling shelves built behind both of our desks, the cherry wood molding, the windows facing the quad and the way the oak tree leaves scratched at the fogged glass. “Mulroney would never have shared, even though the old bastard has the biggest office by far.”
Our eyes met again in the comfortable conversation, and I faced him as I pulled more things from my box. “He’s the most tenured, I assume?” I placed a photo on the desk of me and Kat, and looked back to find Noah’s eyes lingering on Kat’s wide smile. He nodded, then cut his gaze back to mine. “Yeah, he is. Even though it would make sense for him to split his office, he’ll play the tenure card any chance he gets.”
I laughed a little at that, because I knew a man like that at the community college I worked at.
“I spared you, in a way.” He sat up, and started righting things on his desk, stashing papers away, putting pens back in his drawer. “Had they forced Mulroney to split his office, you’d have probably died within a week.”
I paused unloading a photo of myself with my dad and Kat, and cut him a curious glance. He smiled. “Boredom. No one ever visits Mulroney. Hell, I don’t even know if he puts office hours on his syllabus.”
I placed the photo next to the other, then placed the lid on my box before facing Noah, who was now on his feet, bag slung over his shoulder. He outstretched a hand. “Glad to have you, Cade.”
I shook his hand, and hoped my neck wasn’t flared with red from the way his soft, large hand was making my chest tight. “Glad to not be dead.”
He smiled, and then he left, and I sat there in my office not wondering about the first day of my new job, or what the students would be like, but rather, thinking then the very same thing I’m thinking now.
It’s annoying how much I like being around him.
CHAPTER
FOUR
NOAH
He’s goingto think I’m a creep. I know this. Before I pressed him about Lauren outside the gym, I knew I was pushing it. But my attraction knows no bounds, and the more time I am subject to him being asked out by students whom he all rejects, the more starved I become.
I’m relentlessly hungry for scraps of Cade Mercer, to discover the version of him hiding beneath sweater vests and rule-following. Thereisanother Cade in there. I feel it when he sometimes lets himself look at me for too long, when I catch his soft eyes resting on my profile, the way he startles like he doesn’t want anyone to see what he’s really thinking, or know how he’s really feeling.
There’s something about knowing that Cade is home, naked under a hot spray of water, cloaked in steam and bubbles, that makes it exceptionally hard to give a fuckabout Dr. Pratt’s email. But I have student meetings all afternoon, and I’m here, which means I need to be present.
I won’t lie. I am more focused and get more done when Cade isn’t in the office, sharing his hours with me. When you remove glance stealing, intently listening to someone’s exhales, and taking secret inhales of your office mate from the schedule, wouldn’t you know, you’ve suddenly got plenty of time to grade papers and take office hours.
Clicking into the email, the subject bolded, reading PEER ASSESSMENTS, my chair creaks as I rest my weight against it. I sift a hand through my hair as I read the department head’s email about our newest task.
Our faculty and staff have begun taking part in peer reviews, designed to help department heads and staff managers have a better understanding of the workplace flow. These reviews will also play a small role in evaluating promotions, as well as developing future semester schedules and class choices.
This is the university’s way of getting rid of someone, or something, without having to be hands-on. There’s no way Dr. Pratt doesn’t know every inch, in and out, of this department. He has invite-only parties at his house for the English department bi-monthly, and sits in on our lectures a handful of times per academic year. This isn’t driven by Pratt, and as much as I don’t want to do it, I won’t make it hard on him.
I glance at Cade’s empty desk, at the stack of papers tucked neatly in the left hand corner, aligned with military precision. My eyes veer to his singular blue pen, also aligned neatly with his papers.
I take another quick glance at the old clock sandwiched into the corner of the office. Cade will be here in a matter of minutes, because his evening lecture starts in an hour. He likes to get to the office early and go over his notes, check his email, then head to the lecture hall to wipe down the desk and podium, and set up his stuff, which is a reusable canteen of water and a blue pen. Not the same blue pen on his desk. He’s got two.
Neurotic. I called him that the first week of observing him, not that I was even trying. In fact, when Cade first came to the university, I tried my best not to observe him, not to pay him a moment’s more attention than was necessary, not to get lost in the sexy way he nudges his glasses up the bridge of his nose with one knuckle when he’s deep in thought.
He was everything I wasn’t looking for. Attractive, smart, determined, and completely fucking closed off. I’ve never known anyone just like Cade, but I’ve known plenty of people who can’t figure out their own needs and because of that, punish the rest of us. I put Cade in that category immediately, and over time I realized that I was wrong. And over time, I no longer viewed him as neurotic but instead, devout and disciplined, putting his work and professional goals above all else. Choosing that over everything else.
That drive to stay focused is a complete turn-on, and I wasn’t really lacking in thereasons to be attracted to Cade departmentbefore I was made wholly aware of his drive. I mean, I’m into his turtleneck sweaters and pressed chinos,his sweater vests and cuffed jeans, all of it. Down to the way his hair is perfectly styled each day, to the way he cleans his glasses as an emotional crutch, to the soft dusting of cologne he leaves behind him when he walks out.
I was into it when he interviewed, and I’ve only been sinking deeper since. Especially since getting to know him. And I know him pretty well, within reason, within what he’ll allow me or anyone else to know.
But I want to know him better, and that’s why another glance at the grandfather clock is making me nervous. Because he will be here. Like clockwork. And I should go.
