Teach Me(22)

“Where are you going?” she asks, sitting up, her arms wrapped around her body to hold her shirt closed. “I thought we were going to work on it together.” The hurt in her voice cuts me, deep. But I can’t show that. I can’t have her thinking this was anything more than a one-time deal.

It’s better this way. Hurting her now will spare her later.

“Yes, well, clearly that’s not working. And I have a class to teach, so.” I pause in the doorway. “Get yourself together.” I slam the door behind me, so hard the tiny frosted glass panel at the top rattles.

Only once I’m in the hallway, empty now between classes, do I let myself take a deep breath, my eyes shut, my chest searing.

What have I done?





Harper




What have I done?

He’s an asshole. A complete and total asshole.

An asshole who made me come harder than anyone I’ve ever slept with. Derrick could hardly manage to make me finish once every two or three times we hooked up, and Matt, my sophomore year roommate (oops), left me to finish myself off every time.

Jack is even better at getting me to the finish line than I am.

I can still feel the echo of him every time I shift in my seat—that sweet, deep ache that reminds me of every thrust he gave me.

I groan out loud—in frustration this time—and let my forehead drop hard onto the stack of papers he left me with. I’ve been holed up in my dorm room all night digging through these, along with the reference pages from Canterbury Tales that we think the first part of this poem might allude to.

Things I don’t recommend: Trying to decipher medieval English writing while simultaneously working on forgetting the hottest fuck of your life.

My head aches. I can still see his expression when we first finished, when I rolled over on the desk and he smoothed down my skirt, pure pleasure in his eyes, that normally stern face of his relaxed and open for once—still handsome, but so much more vulnerable in that moment. I could tell, right then. He wanted me. He took me. He liked it as much as I did.

But he’s my professor. This is possibly the worst wrong guy I’ve ever fucked. Even worse than the time I slept with my high school best friend’s brother, and she walked in on us in the middle of it.

Harper, you are the worst. I raise my head an inch just to thump it back down harder this time.

Plus, as if hooking up with your professor isn’t bad enough, he acted like a total jerk at the end, freaking out and leaving me alone and half undressed in his office, stuck with nothing but his paperwork. Luckily it’s cool outside this time of year, so I wrapped myself up in my coat before I had to trudge back across campus, dodging classmates at every step. I cleaned myself up in the dorm showers, and donned a turtleneck to hide the worst of the bruises he left.

But cleaning up my outsides has done nothing to fix the turmoil inside. When we were together it seemed so obvious that he felt this same pull between us, this inevitable, irresistible urge.

Now? I’m just painfully aware of how I’ve made the same mistake I always do. Yes, I’m twenty-one, not exactly some doe-eyed youthful babe he’ll corrupt. But hell, professors can get fired for this kind of thing, right? And I could probably get kicked out of the study abroad program.

A crash in the hallway interrupts my not-very-successful study session. A glance at the clock on the computer screen reveals that I’ve been at this for almost ten hours. It’s 7:00 p.m. now, well past dinnertime. My stomach growls in agreement. The only thing I’ve eaten all day was the banana I had before I hurried across campus to meet Professor Jerkwad.

The crashing sounds get closer to my door. Bleary-eyed from staring at text all day, I open my door and peer out.

“Harpy!” A drunken Nick rockets past in shorts, cleats, and a blinding yellow soccer jersey, which I’ve learned to call a football jersey lest I be subjected to long lectures by my Brit classmates. “It’s almost time for the game! Oxford United versus Portsmouth!”

“Are they good?” I ask MK, who’s trailing him down our dorm hall in a much more sedate outfit. Just jeans and a T-shirt in the same colors as the jersey, an indulgent grin on her face as she watches Nick jump so high that the whole floor shakes on his landing, which explains the source of the sounds I heard.

“Not nearly as good as he’s making them out to be,” she replies. “Though I’ve gotta admit, I love you Americans’ enthusiasm. Come on, Harps, we’re all going down the Bird and Baby to watch the match.”

“Oh, I wish I could, but . . . ” The stack of papers, still untouched on my desk, call to me. Harper, they say, you promised Professor Jerkwad you would analyze us by the end of the night. “I’ve got work,” I tell her.