“So, what rumors have you heard about me?” he asked, leaning back in the booth.
“Do you really want to know?”
“I’m sure I’ve heard most of them. But let’s lay them on the table, and I’ll tell you if they’re true or not.”
“Okay. Well, for starters I heard you were a stickler for punctuality. I guess I don’t really need to ask if that one’s true.”
“I guess not.” He smiled. “Anything else?”
“You fired your last TA because she wouldn’t grade hard enough.”
He nodded. “That’s true, too. Although you’re missing part of the story. She wasn’t grading her boyfriend hard enough. Unless she was grading the things he wanted to do to her…because those were pretty well thought out. I’d know since that’s what I found he was writing on his tests. No actual music answers, yet he was getting all As.”
“Oh.”
“Anything else?”
I have no idea why, but I decided to embellish the last rumor to satisfy my own curiosity. “You’re married and you almost got fired for sleeping with your students.”
The look on his face told me I’d hit a sore spot. Caine’s jaw clenched, and his full lips thinned as they drew into a line. “Not married and stopped sleeping with my students after the first year.”
I crinkled my nose. “So you used to sleep with your students?”
“I was young and stupid. The first year I taught, I spent almost all of my time on campus. It was the only place I met people.”
“Ever hear of match?”
“Of course, wiseass. But people are rarely what they seem online.”
I scoffed. “Tell me about it.”
Caine raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like you know from experience.”
“Just last night in fact.”
“And…”
“And he only had one thing on his mind.”
“Sex?”
I nodded. “Men can be such assholes. No offense.”
That damn lip twitched again. “No offense taken. Unless of course you’re calling me an asshole—clearly it wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Do you spend weeks talking to a woman and telling her you’re looking for a relationship and then show up on the first date wanting nothing but sex?”
Caine’s gaze shifted between my eyes. “I’m not looking for a relationship. But I’m upfront about that to try and avoid any expectations. Although I can tell you that even putting it out there from the get go—women don’t always hear what I’m telling them. They hear what they want to hear.” He paused. “Guess you could say women can be assholes, too. No offense.”
I laughed. “None taken.”
His eyes roamed my face. “Can I offer you some advice?”
“Sure.”
“You’re beautiful. Any man who tells you he doesn’t have thoughts of having sex with you running through his brain the moment he meets you is full of shit. But a man who can’t tell that isn’t what you’re looking for isn’t paying attention. Chances are that translates into a lack of attention in the sack anyway, and he isn’t worth your time.”
He was absolutely right, and there would be time to analyze his theory later, but in that moment, I was wondering one thing…is he thinking about having sex with me right now?
Rachel
Oral perception.
Okay, so maybe the class was Aural Perception. Whatever. My mind was definitely all over the place as I sat in the back, watching Professor West teach about how different people—philosophers, composers, medical professionals, teenagers—conceptualize the act of listening. I remembered taking the course in my first year of undergrad school. I wasn’t sure if I had matured and could appreciate a lecture like this more at twenty-five than at barely twenty-one. At least now the particular professor lecturing was able to hold my rapt attention.
While I was busy listening, the beanie-wearing guy next to me was drawing nudes. He’d sketched a page of faceless bodies that were actually pretty amazing, even if they were sort of lewd and graphic. He shrugged when he caught me looking, smiled and whispered, “Gotta do something while this full-of-himself jerk drones on.”
Caine wasn’t a professor who sat at his desk to lecture. He wandered around the room and interacted with the students. “Listening can be broken down into categories: informative, appreciative, critical, relationship, perceptive, discriminative. The method and timing of delivery can affect what we hear. Tell me, where do you listen to music, how is it delivered, and who was the last musician you listened to?”
A bunch of hands flew up. A woman in the front answered, “On the train, delivered from my iPhone, and Adele.”
A male student responded, “I work at Madison Square Garden, so I get a lot of live music delivered at work. Last jam was Maroon 5 warming up.”
The lecture hall had two sets of stairs, one on either side of the wide middle row of seats. I was sitting at the top, in an aisle seat next to the left staircase. Caine walked up a few steps at a time, taking responses from different students as he went.
A few rows ahead of me, a guy with a long beard said, “In the truck. I work for UPS and listen through an aux cord. Last night was an old Slayer album.”
A woman on the opposite side of the stairs said, “At work. It’s piped in at the doctor’s office where I work as a receptionist. And it’s the same instrumental music over and over.”
“Seems like most people are getting their music delivered while traveling or at work. Anyone listen while doing anything else?” Caine walked up a few more stairs and stopped two below where I was seated. It gave me the perfect excuse to look at him, without overtly appearing to check him out. He spoke to another nearby student as I ogled.
Today he wore a dark suit vest buttoned over a white, textured dress shirt, sans tie. I wasn’t exactly a fashionista, but I knew expensive clothing when I saw it, and Caine shelled out more for his dress shirts than I did for most of my complete outfits. He had a rich elegance about him, even though he’d paired the shirt and vest with a pair of jeans and black chucks. His skin was naturally sun-kissed, so I was reasonably certain he was European in descent—perhaps Greek or Italian. I couldn’t quite place which, but whatever it was, it produced one hell of a chiseled man. His nose was straight and masculine, and from a profile view was as damn close to perfect as I’d ever seen. From the side, his dark lashes were magnificent. Any woman would pay a small fortune for the lushness that framed those chocolate-colored eyes. His jaw line was peppered with fresh stubble, and I found myself wondering what that might feel like against my skin. I was lost in that thought when I realized he was now looking right at me. He squinted, and I saw a hint of amusement in his eyes, even though he didn’t smile.