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The normal first-day things I couldn’t wait to finish up so we could dive into the good stuff and I could challenge young minds that were as passionate about accounting as I was.
Somehow, I made it through the rest of my classes, thankful as hell that Sean didn’t show up for any of the others I taught.
I headed to my office once finished and slumped in my chair, head tipped back. Never had a first day wrecked me in such a way. Usually, I rode a high from the beginning of a school year, but exhaustion pulled on my muscles and mind. My temples throbbed, and my eye sockets ached. Pinching the bridge of my nose, I closed my eyelids, plunging myself into darkness even though bright afternoon light flooded the room through the window overlooking the campus green.
Same as throughout the day, the instant I no longer had something to focus on, my memory kicked in, replaying Sean hurrying into class. Even more so, when he’d walked out. Why had I noticed how his jeans fit? That he obviously spent time in the gym doing squats?
What the hell is wrong with me?
My shared office door opened without a knock, and I cracked an eyelid to find my friend and fellow professor Hanson Martin shuffling in. Unlike me, he wore a tie, but he’d already ripped it loose to leave it hanging around his neck. Similar tiredness hugged his eyes, and his full head of gray hair looked like he’d been running his fingers through it.
“Long day?” I muttered.
“You could say that,” he grumbled. “I’m getting too old for the level of stupidity from today’s youngsters.”
I snorted a laugh, thankful to have something other than Sean to think about, and pushed up to sit right in my chair as Hanson sank into his. We had shared the office for the previous five years, and even though he neared retirement age and we didn’t have much in common outside teaching, we’d become good friends, often complaining about what we were too old for.
“What happened to respect?” he asked. “Common courtesy? I swear, kids don’t understand that you reap what you sow.”
I nodded in agreement.
“If this was the seventies, I would have taken a switch to some of those little bastards and set them straight since their parents obviously failed them.”
Snickering, I rubbed my hand over my face again, thinking about a certain little blond with sparkling blue eyes and sly smirks who had more sass than anyone I’d ever met. The boy needed his ass reddened?—
My groin tightened at the image of doing the honors, and I stopped breathing.
What. The. Fuck.
I glanced down, baffled by my dick that hadn’t shown a hint of life in…I couldn’t remember how long. Sure, I sometimes woke with morning wood a quick jerk took care of, but never…not since Katie had anything even remotely sexual stirred inside me.
First of all, I didn’t do violence behind closed doors or in public for that matter. Some might consider me a Dom with how I’d experienced fulfillment when Katie had sweetly submitted at my feet, but the other aspects of the BDSM lifestyle hadn’t been our thing.
Second, I was straight. I’d never crossed that line in deed let alone my mind. I’d never been turned on by a masculine body, had never looked at another guy and wondered what it would be like to touch, kiss, or make love to him.
So why did Sean stir strange…weirdness up inside me? Swallowing hard, I shoved the image of him from my mind.
“Dinner tonight?” I asked Hanson, assuming we would go out together like we did every first day of school to celebrate the start of a new semester.
“Albert suggested O’Malley’s if that’s okay with you,” he replied about his husband, who had left the work force two years earlier.
“Sounds good to me. How’s he enjoying the retirement from teaching?” I asked, needing to fill my mind with thoughts that didn’t include a very confusing young man I had no business even thinking about let alone being confused over.
“He’s pushing for me to join him early in old man bliss.”
I smiled even though my chest ached for what Hanson and Albert shared and looked forward to. What I’d lost…love and companionship through my later years. “And what would you do with your time if you did?”
“Twiddle my thumbs.” Hanson laughed, shaking his head. “Just kidding. Nothing about life with Albert is boring. He would force me to skydive or…try spelunking I believe he calls it? We would probably hike the Appalachian Trail again. Go deep sea diving even though I can’t swim. He would make me watch him climb a rock face since these old hands wouldn’t allow me to do the same—thank God.” Hanson waved his gnarled fingers at me. “One good positive about arthritis! Your partner can’t force you to attempt some of the scary things he’s stubbornly set on doing!”
We both chuckled, but my smile faded long before his did as I stared at the wood grain of my desk, my mind returning to Sean.
“How are you doing, Matteo?” Hanson asked after a bit, his eyes full of concern.
I considered my friend’s quiet question. We’d had a lot of in-depth conversations over the years. He and Albert had been there for me when Katie had passed. They’d stuck beside me through my grief long after my parents and sister had gone home to South Carolina, and Katie’s family turned their back on me. There wasn’t much Hanson didn’t know about my life—or lack thereof the previous three years since I’d lost the sweetest partner a man could ask for.
“Have you ever…” I filled my lungs and slowly let it leak out, my focus on my tidy desk where nothing lay out of place. If only my brain could be so organized. “You knew you were gay at an early age.” I repeated what he’d told me long ago, but he nodded as though I’d asked a question. “Have you ever found a woman attractive? Been…strangely moved by the opposite sex when you never were before?”
“No.” He didn’t hesitate to answer, his chair squeaking as he shifted. “But I can appreciate beauty for what it is—sexual orientation not being an issue.”
