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“I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, Daddy, but you need to take a deep breath.” Ruslan waited a few seconds before giving me a good example to follow. “You told me the other day that it would make me feel better.”
Throwing my own words back at me was not the right way to distract me. “Thank you for your help, but I think I have very valid reasons for worrying. You’re going from we shouldn’t watch the chicken lay the egg in the video online because it’s too personal to we’re going to the club party together.”
He might’ve had a point with the chicken.
It didn’t seem right to get a camera all up in her business, but the club was something else entirely. He didn’t want to talk about his personal life with people on campus.
“We’re not chickens.” He actually had the nerve to roll his eyes. “No one is laying eggs.”
That had to be the worst moment for a couple of students who had to be young freshmen to walk around the corner and right past us. As their eyes went wide, one leaned closer to the other. “I told you this campus was fabulous. Just don’t tell your mother or she’ll drag you home.”
We both held our breath as they went down the stairs and hopefully out of hearing distance. “I knew we shouldn’t have had this conversation so close to your office.”
Ruslan’s eyes were the size of chocolate chip cookies and he blinked a few times before laughter exploded out of him. When he could catch his breath, he shook his head and looked down the stairs toward where they seemed to have gone outside. “What was that about? How did eggs translate into something kinky about campus?”
“I’m not even going to ask and I’m certainly not going to randomly guess.” Every year the kinks just got more interesting around the college. “But back to my point, please.”
Ruslan was still fighting off laughter and had to take another deep breath before he could respond. “I think that proves both of our points. Yes, I was embarrassed but I didn’t die, and I’m not even panicking over what the egg-related gossip will be about.”
Yeah, within twenty-four hours someone was going to ask what he was doing with eggs but he didn’t seem overly concerned about it…however, that might’ve been because it was ridiculous.
“It was freshmen with dirty imaginations. They’re a dime a dozen around here.” He couldn’t argue with my logic, so he shrugged it off.
“It’ll be fine.” Standing straighter didn’t make that any more believable. “We’ll get a few snickers and maybe some confused questions but most people won’t even notice.”
He was severely underestimating how nosy everyone was.
“We’re going to be late.” Trying to straighten his shoulders even more, he channeled his frustrated professor side that was absolutely adorable, and incredibly frustrating. “Unless you want to safeword?”
Oh, the challenge in that tone.
He knew I didn’t want to safeword because I wanted to take him to the party.
“I think you need to remember that you can always safeword, even if it’s your own brain that’s pushing you harder than you need to go.” I was not the one who should be safewording.
“You two have lost your minds doing this insane conversation in the stairwell of the weirdest university in the entire fucking world.”
Malcolm.
Ruslan couldn’t seem to decide how to handle the unexpected intruder because I could see him frantically debating if he wanted to pretend nothing had happened or if he was going to hide from it somehow. “I’ve done whole videos from this stairwell because the acoustics are good and no one ever uses these stairs, so I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
A slightly accusatorynothing is happening here…I approved and took the lead from him. “Why are you stalking this building? You work on the other side of campus.”
Shifting to slightly confused, I looked at Ruslan. “Did you have dinner plans with him? You can’t see that sandwich guy too many times in one week or he’s never going to get over you.”
“Told you he likes you.” Malcolm ignored our denials and shifted gears effortlessly. “I was coming to make sure you remembered that we’re supposed to work on that PowerPoint in the morning so you have to function and not get distracted with Dante tomorrow.”
Ruslan puffed up, glaring at Malcolm. “I’ll have you know I was not late to work this morning.”
I was pretty sure that was true, so I wasn’t sure why Malcolm rolled his eyes.
“You were caught running into class at the last minute by two freshmen who made it very clear that you looked like you’d had a good night.”
Oops.
I hadn’t been the one to make him late, so we needed to have a talk about when he got to play in the shower and when he didn’t.
But I wasn’t going to explain that to Malcolm, so I just did my best not to laugh as I grasped for something to say. “Should you be encouraging students to gossip?”
