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But it was his words as much as his touch that’d stuck with me after our night in Geneva.
“There’s nothing wrong with you. Being happy is fucking hard.”
He gave me a more thoughtful answer than I’d expected. I wondered if he had his own demons, if he had spoken from experience and sensed I was someone who might understand.
“We made it,” Six exclaims, as we come to a stop in front of the still open classroom door. She bends at the waist and puts her hands on her knees as she catches her breath. “Putain, I’m out of shape.”
“That ass doesn’t look out of shape.”
She straightens and turns to face Felix — a fellow fourth year who’s on the football team — as he walks up to class. He blanches when he recognizes her and takes a step back.
“Oh fuck.Fuck. I didn’t realize it was y–”
He’s violently yanked back by his collar and shoved through the doorway into the classroom.
His flying body reveals Phoenix. There’s a thunderous expression on his face as he steps into the space previously occupied by Felix and pins his dark stare on Six. She looks away and down at the floor, refusing to hold his gaze.
He stares wordlessly at her for a couple more seconds before walking into the classroom. The moment he turns and walks away, all the oxygen comes flying back into the hallway.
I groan. “Great, so he’s in this class?”
“I told you, it’s a cursed week,” she answers with a resigned lift of her shoulders as she too walks through the doors.
I follow her and we head towards a row that’s halfway up the lecture hall stairs. Six walks down the row first and I follow as she stops in front of two seats.
My bag catches on the back of a chair and gets tugged off my shoulder, spilling its contents everywhere. The annoyance I feel is similar to when my hair tie snaps as I’m trying to brush my hair into a ponytail.
“The new professor is cutting it close,” Six says, looking at the time on her phone as I drop to my knees next to her and start gathering my things.
“He’s probably some dusty septuagenarian they’ve shaken out of comfortable retirement and placed in a shack at the other end of campus, give him a break.”
The previous IB professor had gotten a “once in a lifetime fishing opportunity” in Belize and had abruptly retired at the end of last year. Given the average age of professors at RCA tended to be comfortably over fifty, all we could hope for this professor was that he be slightly more sprightly.
“Oh, putain.”
“Sorry, was that offensive? I’m sure he’ll be–”
“No, Ner,” she breathes and I look up, surprised at the unrecognizable tone of her voice. She’s standing, looking almost disbelievingly down at the front of the room.
I’m still crouched, picking up the contents of my bag. The front panel of the desk hides the rest of the lecture hall from my view.
“What?”
“He’s…he’s not a septuagenarian.” She seems at a loss for words.
“Really?” I ask, semi interestedly. I reach out and grab the yellow highlighter that’s rolled between her legs.
“Nuh uh. Nera, he’shot.” She crouches down until she’s eye level with me, whispering excitedly at me as she helps me pick up my pens. “He’s gorgeous.Toogorgeous. There’s absolutely no way they can put him in a classroom this full of teenage hormones. The girls are going to fight to get his attention, the boys are going to hate him for being hotter than they are. Well, almost all of them,” she mutters, ruminatively. Her eyes dart to me and she blushes tomato red, clearing her throat and adding, “Ahem, it’s going to be pandemonium.”
I snort, grabbing my last notebook and shoving it into my bag as I stand up.
“There’s no way he’s that ho–,”
The words die in my throat when my eyes fall on the figure bent over the desk, writing something on a piece of paper.
He’s fully clothed but I flash back to seeing that very same back naked and leaned over the bedside table as he scribbled his number on a hotel notepad.
He hasn’t looked up and still, I know him.
