14. Orion
14
ORION
T he crisp late September chill is finally setting in, which helps significantly when I’m crammed onto a bus with twenty students and Sofia. They’re loud, rowdy, and much more difficult to wrangle than I previously thought.
Thank God for Sofia. She has no problem clapping her hands to silence them and telling them what to do. No nonsense, even though she does it with a smile. How much practice has she had at this?
It’s certainly not what I signed up for. I teach at a university because I don’t want to deal with groups of children. My niece and nephew are awesome, but I wouldn’t want to be surrounded by the little monsters on a day to day basis.
Like now. I forget how eighteen-year-olds are still teenagers .
It makes the ride into New York City taxing.
Most of them are a normal level of loud and obnoxious, but Leann… God, I wish that girl had stayed home. Her giggle has become a noise from my nightmares. Literally.
I sit beside Sofia, a natural shield as my seatmate, my co-captain of this excursion, and rub my temples.
Her soft laugh is sweet, and I wish it could drown out every other noise.
“I’ve got an extra set of earplugs if you need them.”
I wipe a hand down my face. “How about trading me seats so she stops brushing my arm every time she comes to check on our progress?”
Sofia is biting back a smile that pulls one of my own at the corner of my mouth. “She’s probably only coming because of you. She doesn’t seem quite so interested in what the club is actually trying to do.”
I groan and press back into my seat harder. “Don’t tell me that.”
“The truth is what the truth is. She doesn’t seem to get that what she wants is against school policy and can get her in just as much trouble as it would get you into.” Her tone is light but admonishing. If only she knew how untrue that statement is. It doesn’t coincide with my experience.
“Not necessarily. It becomes a he-said, she-said situation far too easily. I’d be the one to bear the weight of it.” And I can’t tell her that I already have.
“That’s why you should put an end to it.”
Frustrated, I’m practically growling when I say, “And how am I supposed to do that? Call her out on her crush? Show everyone that my opinion of myself is so high that I presume to think she’s trying to be inappropriate with me?”
“She is being inappropriate with you. Just because you’re her professor does not give her carte blanche to touch you. You still have autonomy over yourself. Tell her, nicely, to please not touch you. It makes you uncomfortable. That way, it’s about you and what you need instead of about what she’s doing wrong.”
I turn to her, and it amazes me how she can be so soft and sweet but also strong and independent. There’s more to her than she’s let me see so far. And fuck, I’m trying to keep it cool, but I’m so attracted to her. Every little glimpse and sliver she gives me sends me further out of control.
“You make it sound so easy.”
Her head shakes. “No. I never said it was easy, but there are… easier ways to deal with it than others. Like not dealing with it. That’s only going to blow up in your face.”
“Too much to wish for it to simply go away if I ignore it long enough?”
Her eyes close, but she smiles. “Definitely.”
I turn back in my seat, too aware of the mirror reflecting our seats back at us. But it lets me watch her, how her head tilts back and elongates her pale neck, accentuates the muscles of her throat when she swallows.
Tipping back and forth from sweet to dirty thoughts of her has my own head spinning. I adjust in my seat when a hand comes down on my forearm and Leann’s face appears far too close to mine.
I jump and pull my arm from under her hand. “Leann. What are you doing up here again?”
“Just wondering if we’re going to stop for a bathroom break any time soon?” She’s not making any of the uncomfortable moves I’m used to seeing with that kind of request.
“There’s a bathroom in the back of the bus.”
Her face twists with disgust. “Ew. A rest stop, then? To stretch our legs?”
“We’ll be at our hotel in the next few hours. If we keep making stops to stretch, we’ll waste too much time,” Sofia chimes from the seat beside me, saving me—again—from Leann’s incessant need to rope me into a conversation or ask something of me.
Leann narrows her eyes at Sofia over my head, but I don’t feel Sofia stir even the slightest bit.
“Well, that’s rude. I’m paying for this trip. My comfort should be accommodated.”
“We all paid to be here. We’re not making special stops for you. If it’s bad enough, you’ll use the bathroom on board.”
It’s hard to keep my laughter inside at the blandness in Sofia's voice.
Leann scoffs and stomps back down the aisle to her seat, complaining loudly about how she doesn’t deserve to be treated this way.
Sofia sighs, but I finally let the soft laughter escape. “Thank you for that.”
“Yeah. Sure. She already presumes I’m a bitch. No skin off my nose.”
“Will you be my personal buffer for the next twelve weeks?”
“Not a fucking chance.”
We both laugh at this, and I finally relax a little, back to staring at her in the mirror. At one point, she opens her eyes and pegs me with a look in the mirror like I’ve been caught.
I’m not trying to hide, so I only grin at her.
She rolls her eyes and settles back again. Slowly, our hands end up beside each other, back to back. How easy it would be to hold her hand like this. Too bad we’re in full view of the rest of the bus thanks to that damn mirror.
And if we’re not, I still can’t take that chance.
When our pinkies brush, electricity shoots up my arm. I toe that line, testing the limits as my pinkie hooks her for a moment and releases it.
The small touches become a slow game as we sporadically chit chat about the city and times we’ve visited before. Apparently, she spent a lot of time here as a child with her mother, getting to sit in with large swathes of creative adults. No wonder she’s so creative and in charge. Sounds like it runs in the family.
My trips were fewer. I’d come for a film festival or two. Auditioned for a few parts when I thought I’d be an actor. I’m really not so good at lying, but I found my knack for set design and planning elements for post-production.
That’s what initially sent me running headlong into an internship I in no way deserved.
Learning that her mom is an internationally famous poet surprises me when I actually know her name—Paloma Pérez—or Paloma Newman when she married Sofia’s father. I can see bits of her mother in her.
The last leg of the trip is both easier and harder than the initial bit. Leann has stopped her assaults on my person and my personal space, the people have calmed down into their own distractions, and I keep playing with the back of Sofia’s fingers.
Tension zaps through us, fizzling only a little when we finally pull up to the front of the hotel.
That’s only because herding everyone inside is an ordeal. And Leann is the most obstinate, grudgingly stomping after Ryan when he grabs her bag and rolls it after him. If things have gotten so bad that the other members can see through Leann’s games, it is more than time for me to put a stop to her behavior.
By the end of this trip, I’ll do so. Because I will not survive like this. Maybe I can tell her I’m married. Wear a fake ring. Explain that it’s not her when it most certainly is.
Why do women think men will fall for this shit?
Sofia is once again in charge and saving me from this mess. She’s got the room keys, is assigning them to pairs of students, and is shooing them into the waiting elevators to go and get settled. They’re free to go roam and do whatever once they’ve dropped off their luggage. But the bus leaves at 7:30 sharp the next morning to go into the studio.
Once everyone has started their journey up, Sofia turns to me, her cheeks pink and her eyes a little wild.
“What?” My heart hammers like something’s gone seriously wrong. Is she alright?
But then, Sofia holds up one remaining set of key cards, and I realize why she looks like a deer about to be hit by a car. There’s only one room left.
I hold my hand up and go back to the clerk. “I think someone’s miscounted. We need one more room.”
The clerk doesn’t look the least bit flustered as he holds up a finger and starts tapping away at his computer. After a minute, the slight shift in the man’s stance broadcasts the bad news before he delivers it.
“It looks like you booked eleven rooms for your visit, and the rest are already full. We can bring in an extra cot to accommodate additional guests in the meantime?—”
I hold my hand up to stop him and remind myself to breathe. “No. That’s fine. Thank you.”
When I return to Sofia, she looks me over and knows before I even have to say anything. We shuffle into the elevator together. “How many rooms?”
“Just the one.”