Aaron
“Professor Cole, should I close the door?” A voice drifted to me over the loud hum of noisy grad student settling into seats, an irritating bang sounding each time someone sat themselves in the cheap folding lecture hall chairs.
“Not yet,” I ground out. “Not everyone is here.”
She isn’t here.
The rabble could sit themselves down and drone on inanely to their hearts’ content until Amy Mackintosh got to class. Only then would we begin.
I shifted behind the lectern, arranging my notes. It was a class I could have taught in my sleep. I didn’t need the notes, but it helped create the illusion that I was a normal, functioning professor. It helped to hide the truth.
My eyes fell to the doorway, up above the sunken pit where the professor stood, and I saw her outlined in shadow against the bright fluorescents of the hall.
She hurried, but didn’t rush. My girl never rushed, even when she was late. Oh, how I longed to teach her how rude it was to keep people waiting. I longed to do a lot to her.
She attempted to slip into the back row.
“Late comers will sit front and centre,” I said lowly into the small mic that was clipped onto my collar. My voice quieted the crowd, as they twisted in their seats to see who had been singled out for reprimanding.
Amy sat still a moment, and then rose. She walked down the steps of the aisle, lower and lower, descending to my level before stopping. Her eyes blazed at me, green and wicked. She tossed her dark, auburn hair over a shoulder and sat right in the centre seat, directly in my eyeline. It was empty, of course. No one ever ventured that near. I had quite the reputation around campus. The ogre business teacher that no one wanted to come too close to. The one with the dead man’s stare.
Except Amy.
Amy wasn’t scared of the dragon professor, whose bite was worse than his bark.
I held her challenging gaze for a blistering moment, before nodding to the kid at the back who was lingering near the doors to shut them.
I couldn’t afford to look too long at the object of my desire. My obsession. It would make the truth too obvious, and I wasn’t ready for that yet. The class wasn’t difficult, and I launched into the subject with boredom. I could teach it in my sleep, and 8 am on a Monday was hardly my preferred class time, and yet, I never considered changing classes.
The truth was that I was only here for one reason, and one reason alone, and her name was Amy Mackintosh and she was mine, pure and simple. She just didn’t know it yet.
But soon she would.
“Sit down, let’s get started.”