“Looks good,” he remarked, smiling. “You have plans this weekend? A date?”
“No. Dinner at my parents’ tonight and I think Matt and I are going to the gym and then lunch afterward on Sunday.”
The same as always.
“What about you?” I asked.
“Jodie and the kids want to go to the zoo, so we’re going to the zoo,” he said, smiling helplessly. “I do miss being a bachelor sometimes, having all that time to myself.”
I shrugged. I knew how much Brian loved his wife and their twin girls and most likely didn’t mean it. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” I told him. “Being on your own.”
He nodded. “We’ll do something soon. Just you and me, OK?”
“Sure.” I smiled, even though I knew that it probably wouldn’t happen.
Brian had a family, and he spent his nights at home with them. It was as it should be. I wasn’t jealous of my friend, but I did wish for my own version of his life. I wanted a woman to spend my nights and weekends with, someone who cared about me and who called me on the phone. Someone I could care for and share my life with.
I didn’t want to be alone anymore.
Perhaps I should take a chance and finally let Matt set me up on a blind date. The university faculty seemed lacking when it came to eligible women around my age, and I didn’t have the first clue where else I’d meet a potential girlfriend since I didn’t like bars and clubs very much. Plus, I didn’t think the right woman for me frequented those kinds of places. I needed someone nice and—perhaps in Matt’s estimation—boring, but she wouldn’t feel that way to me, since I was apparently boring myself.
Lost in thought, I nearly forgot my nervousness, but it returned tenfold when Brian got up and announced that it was time for his afternoon class. As I walked to my own class, my hands felt clammy and my heart pounded so fiercely that I worried others around me would notice. I needed to get back in control. I was Professor Worthington here, not the bumbling novice I’d been in Ms. Wilde’s bedroom. This was my domain, where I was respected and didn’t need any guidance. I just needed to hang on to that thought and the class would go by as usual. It was, after all, imperative that none of the other students got even the slightest inkling that I now knew her intimately.
When I made it to the classroom, there were just a few people in the back and no sign of Ms. Wilde. I started taking out my notes and the book that we were discussing today: On the Road by Jack Kerouac.
Heh heh, Kerou-whacking.
More students came in and my eyes were practically glued to the door, waiting for her arrival. Just as I was beginning to think she wasn’t coming, the door opened and she breezed into the room, looking completely different from the last time I’d seen her, fresh-faced and wearing workout clothes. Today, she had on a red short-sleeved T-shirt with a skull logo; a pair of black, ripped jeans that looked like they’d been painted onto her long, slim legs; and truly hideous sneakers. The hair on the sides of her head had been scooped up on top where it was fastened with pins to look like a Mohawk while the rest fell down her back.
That can’t possibly be comfortable. And oh, God, the smudgy makeup is back.
She had even put on black nail polish and some dangly, tacky-looking earrings. Frankly, she looked like a mess. I wondered why she would choose to style herself like this, especially now that I knew how pretty she was underneath it all. A guy in the back wolf-whistled as she walked to her seat.
He likes her appearance?
I held back a chuckle when she unceremoniously presented him with her middle finger. It didn’t seem to offend him in the slightest. He merely grinned and turned his attention to the person next to him, as if this were completely acceptable social behavior. I didn’t understand young people at all. I dared to look at Ms. Wilde, who gave me a smile when our eyes met and then proceeded to unpack her bag as though nothing out of the ordinary had ever passed between us.
Thankfully, this normal behavior continued when class began. Unfortunately, this meant that Ms. Wilde was still as argumentative as ever and behaved as audaciously as she always had in my classroom.
“The entire novel is demeaning to women,” Ms. Wilde interrupted a male classmate.
“I think that’s a bit of an overstatement,” I said.
Her eyes flared. “It is not!” she insisted. “One of the characters describes the perfect woman as being demure and quiet. Is that the kind of woman that you want, Stephen?”
No. Wait, what?
“What I want really isn’t relevant for this discussion, Ms. Wilde. I think you need to see the bigger picture here,” I said. “That may have been what men thought at that time, but—”