Chapter 10
The next week flies by,and I barely see Santo. That doesn’t mean he isn’t in my thoughts—there’s always a twinge of disappointment when I shut my apartment door behind me every day without having seen him—but it’s a busy week, and that’s probably for the best. I already thought Santo was sexy, but when he came by my apartment to apologize wearing glasses it took him to a whole other level. And that is not what I need to be thinking about.
This first week of school was boot camp, a week where we got oriented about our classes, the campus and the structure of the upcoming year.
The second week is a Growth and Technologies week, which sounded a bit like putting the cart before the horse to me, but it ended up being something I could really relate to. It was about pivoting and taking advantage of technologies, and despite being one of the oldest students, I felt like I had a leg up.
My three grown children keep me fairly up to date on what the cool kids are doing. Parker and I had worked together to create the TikTok channel and online store for Second Chances Boutique. I knew about pivoting, at least the mentality of it.
One thing I missed, though, was the daily phone call with my friends over lunch. It wasn’t that uncommon for one of us to skip—like if Jade or Tessa had a lunch meeting or something—but making the call between classes was challenging.
I miss my friends deeply, though. I am not sure if it is because I am so obviously American or much older than everyone else, but the students are cliquey so far. Our classes are in English, but most people speak English as a second language. My language app is teaching me basic Italian, but I haven’t picked it up in a few days, and while it would help me run my errands, it wouldn’t help me make friends in class.
So, when I sit down on Saturday, two weeks into my MBA program, I have a lot to catch my friends up on. But they are way more interested in talking about my neighbor-slash-professor than anything else.
“Is he actually going to be teaching you anything?” Tessa asks.
“Yes,” I answer. I’ve been so busy talking that my sandwich—tomato, mozzarella, and arugula on a baguette, the ingredients of which I bought from a few shops down the road—is getting mushy. “The first term I have him for Business Analytics.”
“That’s the next five weeks, right?”
“Yeah.” I nod. “I don’t have the schedule yet for the second term.” Screw it. I take a giant bite of my sandwich, the fresh mozzarella über rich and creamy and the tomatoes bright and fresh. Ugnm…so good.
“Are you excited to have him as a professor?” Jade prods with an eyebrow raise. Having lived with her for a month before moving here, I’m not surprised she’d ask. We had a blast in Madrid together, spending late nights out with her co-workers or just the two of us, eating wonderful food and taking in the city. Without that month of watching and admiring Jade, who’s fun and carefree and confident, I definitely wouldn’t have talked to Santo at the bar.
I chew and swallow, covering my mouth even though it’s a video chat, and we’ve all seen far worse than ungraceful chewing—heck, a couple months ago we walked in on Tessa masturbating. It was embarrassing in the moment, but became a funny story. Fortunately, Tessa is confident enough to laugh it off. I would have died of embarrassment and wouldn’t have been able to look anyone in the eye for a while.
“I don’t know,” I hedge. “He’s so good-looking that I think it will be distracting.”
“Yeah, but also wish fulfillment.” That dreamy voice is Sara’s. The other three of us give her a look and a moment of silence. “What? Did no one else have a hot-for-teacher phase?”
“I did,” Tessa chimes in. She’s in her apartment in Portugal, which came furnished with bland, neutral decor. At least mine is shabby-chic. “One of the math teachers at my high school was fresh out of his degree, so he was young and very hot. Obviously, I never did anything, but I still get a flutter when I think about his tight butt in jeans. He’d erase the chalkboard, and then I’d pretend I’d forgotten to write the equation down, and so he’d have to write it on the board again.”
Jade cackles. She’s at home in the apartment we shared in Madrid, and as she leans over in laughter, I can see the corkboard behind her with pictures of her all over the world, including photos of the four of us in Paris and Rome.
Next up on our trips together is visiting Sara in Baden-Baden, and that’s a perfect segue to change the topic from my hot professor.
The call ends and I close my laptop and jump two feet in the air when I see a black shape in the window. Logically, I know I’m two stories up, but the void is so dark and odd that it takes a minute for my brain to go from portal-to-another-dimension to a-furry-body.
And then said furry body blinks at me.
Oh, it’s Zola, sitting on the small ledge of my window again.
“What are you doing here, Miss Zola?”
She raows at me, big golden eyes watching as I stand and approach her. My tall windows open to let fresh air in—the apartment doesn’t have air conditioning and I understand that in the summer it’s uncomfortable. Since Zola knows me, she might come in if I open the window.
Knows me. Ha. I guess if you consider ignoring a proffered hand knowing in cat-speak.
Amazingly, I get the window open without Zola hissing and running away from me. How she fits on this ledge, I’m not really sure. The part of her that was pressed up against the window oozes into my apartment.
Zola ignores me.
I put my hands on my hips. “Does your daddy know you come out here?”
She does not answer.
Should I try to pick her up and take her back home? What if she scratches me? Should I put on oven mitts? I don’t actually have any oven mitts.
Maybe I should get Santo first.
As if sensing my intentions to tattle on her, Zola’s head swivels toward me, and she blinks those big, yellow eyes of hers.
“Well, what did you expect?” I ask her. “I’m on Santo’s side on this. Big cities are dangerous for cats.”
She blinks again.
I put my hands together and rub them. “Here goes nothing,” I mutter. I reach out a hand and touch her head, stroking the very top. Her ear twitches.
I don’t know why I’m so scared of this cat. She does look at me with disdain at worst, aloofness at best. “Good girl, Zola.”
I add a second hand and get them around what I think is her shoulders, between her head and the giant poof ball of her body. I do a sort of scoop-and-lift motion, and the next thing I know, I have a cat in my hands. Zola doesn’t react at all, her front legs straight out in the air and her lower ones dangling, just like the way I saw Santo pick her up the other week.
“Well, that was rather anticlimactic,” I tell her. “You’re making me feel pretty silly for talking to a cat so much.” I maneuver my hands and—much less gracefully than Santo did—get her curled up in my arms and against my chest.
Out the doorway and down the hall I go. When Santo answers the door and sees me with his cat, he blinks.
I blink too. Santo is wearing a soccer uniform, tall socks, and short shorts putting his knees on display, and the bright red against his olive skin is lovely.
“I carried your cat,” I say and then flush. Who am I, Baby Houseman? This isn’t the Catskills, and Santo is no Johnny Castle.
Err, well. He does kind of look like Patrick Swayze. Damn it, now I’m thinking about Santo lifting me up in a dance lift, which is laughable because I am no Jennifer Grey, and it’s more likely that I could lift him up.
“Thank god,” Santo says, breaking my summer camp fantasies. “I’ve been looking for her all over. I am sorry, she never used to escape at our old place.”
“It’s fine,” I say as Santo lifts his cat from my arms. She hisses at him, which makes me jump back, though Santo doesn’t twitch.
He rolls his eyes. “Sometimes I think I am her least favorite person in the world. Where was she?”
“On my window ledge.”
“Hm. Troublemaker,” he says. He turns and does a gentle little tossing move, and Zola ends up on her feet on the floor, where she shakes herself, annoyed with the whole situation. “Thank you, again. I’ve been looking all over for her, and now I will be late.”
“To work?” I joke. It’s a bad joke, and Santo looks down at himself.
“No, to play football.”
Okay, time to get back to my place before I make even more of an idiot of myself. “Well, um…good luck!” I turn and power walk back to my door. Behind me, I hear Santo following, locking his door, and jogging, passing my door just as I close it, giving me one last glimpse at a different side of the man.
I sag against my door. Is this what it’s going to be like all year long? If I’m not thinking about how he went down on me, I’ll be having weird little fantasies in my head.
Maybe I should move.