“Got it. Once again, I want to apologize for my voice. I guess you’ll find out soon enough.”
“I don’t believe that people are tone deaf. It’s not a real thing or scientifically accurate. You just don’t know how to sing yet. Don’t worry about that.” I turned and walked back to behind my desk.
Darren had moved forward as if he were following behind me. He grinned. “Just in case I had to catch you again.”
“Your services were not needed this time.” I tried to sound upbeat and fun, but the memory of his hands on me was… I wasn’t going to be able to do this with him. The feelings that were shooting through me like an adrenaline punch were a raging inferno of hormonal longing and need that I hadn’t ever felt before.
Why him? Why now?
How was I going to get Dean Remington to understand that I was not the right teacher for Darren Petersen?
We said our goodbyes and I watched him walk out of my office. My head cleared, and my body felt back under control.
What the fucking hell?
4
DARREN
Ihadn’t eaten very much. Maybe that’s why I got all lightheaded, and my mouth went as dry as a fucking bone. I had already been nervous enough. I mean, singing! It’s not high on my list of things to do, but the Dean insisted that this should be one of my first classes in the department. But I had not been prepared for mister handsome to be my professor.
He was short, and I liked the way his light blue eyes looked up at me in a way that felt like a warning shot being fired before the war even began. Those eyes were crystal blue – I mean, he has to wear contacts for them to be that… It was unnatural and breathtakingly beautiful. Totally not my type, though. Even if he did have strawberry blond hair and was about as cute as a man could get. Ok- cuter. With that stupid bowtie and all buttoned up in that suit jacket that fit him like a glove – those thick black glasses that almost acted like a mirror – the way he fumbled and seemed to be the clumsiest person alive was endearing in ways I couldn’t wrap my head around.
I spent all night thinking about him as I practiced his breathing technique.
I thought about him when I woke up and walked to breakfast. The thought of him made me smile, and it felt like there was this invisible tether between us. It was strange and wondrous and a little infuriating.
Whenever I was dealing with some weird conundrum that I found fucking ridiculous, there was only one person I spoke to about it. Amber Maloney, my ex-girlfriend.
We only dated for a few months during my freshman year, and I did really like her. It just didn’t work out between us. She was high maintenance – I was too easy going. She was champagne – I was beer. She wanted a straight man, and I wasn’t straight enough. It wasn’t the first time in my life that being Bi had freaked a girl or boy out. I didn’t let it bother me very much. It was what it was, and I had no control over someone else’s thoughts and feelings – only my own. I didn’t apparently have much control over those either, right now.
Professor cutie had been a catalyst for discovering that.
Why him? Why now?
It wasn’t like I went around sticking my dick in anything that moved. Well, not since my freshman year. I had been a man-ho – self admittedly. But it quickly lost its fun and became hollow and left me feeling empty. I dated – every now and then. Mostly, then. Who had time to deal with the emotional bullshit when I was so busy angsting over my life and kicking ass at soccer? Being the team captain came with a lot of responsibility, and I took it seriously. They chose me, and I would never let them down. It just meant I was sexually frustrated. I was twenty-one years old – that was a given.
But something about Professor cutie. Professor Elder. Thomas. I even liked his name. Maybe it really was low blood sugar that made me start feeling weird. Maybe it wasn’t.
Whatever it was, I still needed to get through this last year of soccer and then another two to three years of college before I should even start thinking about that other thing – shouldn’t I?
Or did fate have other ideas?
That was exactly what Amber said as we drank a beer at Ribbits. That’s what we all called it, anyway. It was the closest bar to campus and had the unfortunate name of The Screaming Frog Brewery. They weren’t so great at checking IDs, and I’d been grabbing drinks here for the last couple of years. It didn’t hurt that with my size, the waitress never even questioned me. Being a mountain of muscle had its perks!
“Maybe it’s fate?” Amber looked at me with her big round saucer eyes. “Perhaps you’ve stumbled upon your other half?”
“Come on, I doubt that.” I scoffed and took a sip of the Toadstool IPA I had been nursing for the last thirty minutes as I poured my heart out to her.
“Why not? Just because you don’t want to believe in meeting your mate happening when you’re young doesn’t mean you’re right. In fact, I’ve had two friends of mine meet their perfect match over the summer, and one of them is just a sophomore. It happens.”
“But the chances are slim, Amber. You have to be in the right place at the right time. You’re supposed to feel something more than an upset stomach and light dizziness, which is totally low blood sugar. Look at me. Do you know how much I have to eat to keep this body moving forward?” I laughed loudly and splashed a little of my beer on the table. I grabbed a napkin and wiped it up. “It’s not that I don’t believe. I mean – it’s science. But…”
“Dare? Seriously, listen to yourself? You surround yourself with all of your teammates most of the time. You always have a buffer. It was one of the things that bothered me the most while we were dating. You’re not going to meet your mate when you have a wall of others around you. You have to be alone and open to it. You have to be vulnerable – which you suck at.”
“Wouldn’t you think fate would match me up with someone like me?”
“Opposites attract.”
