I closed my eyes. I wanted to respond with ‘Go screw yourself’, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of that much emotion. Nor was I going to let myself turn into one of the rumors I’d heard about Professor West before I even met him.
Plastering on my best imitation smile, I turned to face him, offering a fantastic view of my pearly whites. “Of course, Professor.”
I was adamant about showing him I was fine. But what I saw when I looked up erased my fake smile. Caine looked awful. His bright eyes were bloodshot, his naturally warm-colored skin looked cold, and his appearance was disheveled—not the intentionally stylish kind. No, Caine looked like he’d either been on a bender that ended a few hours ago, or he was sick as a dog and dragged his unhealthy ass out of bed for the first time in days to show up to class.
Even though I was pissed at him, I hoped it was the latter.
Caine nodded and his eyes moved to the student next to me. I caught the slight tick in his jaw as he glared at Mr. Ludwig a few heartbeats longer than normal. My emotions were clearly all over the place, because it pissed me off that he felt he had the right to give anyone a hard time for flirting with me. I owed him nothing.
For the next ninety minutes, I avoided looking at Caine, preferring to pretend to take notes while my mind wandered. When class was finally over, I waited in my seat until the last of the students were piling out and then walked down to the front of the room. I stood ten feet away from Caine, feeling terribly awkward. He was packing up his bag.
“I thought it might be best if we talked in my office.”
“I’m fine here.”
Caine looked up at me. “I’d like privacy.”
“I’d like a lot of things, but I don’t seem to get them all, now do I?”
He nodded. “Fine. Can we at least sit?” He held out his hand to direct me to the front row. Begrudgingly, I went.
I was acting like an insolent teenager, but I refused to look at him. He waited, assuming I would eventually stop playing with my phone and give him my full attention. But he assumed wrong. After a few minutes, he took the hint and began to speak anyway.
“I got an email from the dean about your request to change your thesis advisor.”
“And?”
“That’s not necessary. You’re almost done, and if you don’t want to spend time with me, we can handle most of it over email.”
I finally looked up at him. “I don’t want your opinions on my work. And I don’t want to rehearse my thesis defense with you. I don’t want to defend anything to you.”
Caine reached out to touch my arm. “Rachel.”
I pulled back. “Don’t touch me.”
He held both hands up. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
I scoffed. “It’s a little late for that, isn’t it?”
He took a deep breath and blew out a loud stream of air. “Let me start over. We’re able to be professional to each other during class, so why create all the extra work for yourself by requesting a new thesis advisor? Most professors will want to put their own touches on your work, and you’ll wind up with rewrites for months.”
“I guess you prefer to put your touch on my work in a different way.”
From his tone, I could tell Caine was losing his patience. Which is exactly what I wanted. I wanted to piss him off...wanted to get a rise out of him in some way. Our ending had been too anticlimactic. It made me feel like I’d never been worth his energy. And that just sucked.
“I’m trying to be professional, Rachel.”
My spine straightened. “So am I, Professor. If it was my choice, I wouldn’t be your TA or have you as my thesis advisor. I could request a new thesis advisor without raising suspicion since we hadn’t worked together that long and you weren’t my original advisor. But I couldn’t come up with a reason to be removed as your TA without raising suspicion. I thought telling them we were fucking before and now we’re not might not be the most professional way to handle things.”
Caine raked his fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry for hurting you, Rachel. I don’t know how to fix things and make us go back to friends.”
“We were never friends, Caine. And as far as fixing things, it takes two to make any relationship work. We can’t fix anything, because only one of us knows what was broken.” My voice softened. “I still don’t understand what was broken.”
The crack in my voice on the last few words brought Caine’s eyes to mine. I wanted to stare him down, shoot angry daggers at him, but when I looked deep into his eyes, all I saw was hurt.
In a moment of weakness, I allowed my heart to show. “What happened, Caine? Why did you cut me off? We were fine one day and then the next…”
Instead of looking away like he’d been doing lately, Caine allowed me in for the briefest of moments. Our gaze locked, and I saw inside of him—the man I’d met was still in there, down deep. I’d started to think I’d imagined who he was since it had all disappeared so quickly.
“You’re an amazing woman, Rachel. You deserve better.”
One minute I was vulnerable and soft, and the next I was impervious and hard. I stood abruptly, losing my equilibrium and almost losing my footing before I steadied myself. “You don’t get to tell me what I deserve. I get to choose what I want.”
Caine stood and grabbed my elbow as I went to turn. The loud clank of the heavy classroom door opening echoed through the empty lecture hall. Voices followed behind it as students began to filter in for the next class. I waited, curious to see how important keeping me in place would be to him.
It hurt all over again when he just let go.
“Think about it, Rachel. Don’t cause yourself extra work just because you’re mad at me.”
Even though the students were at the top of the hall, I leaned in to make sure no one could hear. I might have also done it for effect.
“Go fuck yourself, Professor,” I whispered in his ear.
“Talk to me.” Charlie leaned his elbows on the bar. He was done for the day, but still hanging around. I’d suspected he was waiting until the last afternoon stragglers called it a day.
The dryer cycle of our dishwasher had stopped working a year ago. Charlie had no intention of fixing it. Oddly, that worked for me—especially today, since I found the motion of wiping down glasses soothing. I pulled a dripping soda glass from the crate I was working on and shoved the dishtowel inside.