Chapter 3 Ava
Leitch officially hated me. I knew it, the class knew it, and he made no effort to hide it. I wanted to die as he stood on his small podium and read my work to the entire class, derision heavy in his tone as he read word for word . . . slowly.
“The wind cracked against the window as the rain fell heavily from the sky . . .” He paused, and in true complete asshole style, he looked at me over his glasses that were perched on the end of his nose. “Ms. Bryant, remind me again what you propose to do with your undergraduate degree in English.”
“Editor, for a publishing house,” I told him as I felt my body slide lower in my seat. I could feel every pair of eyes on me as the professor zeroed in on me.
“Book editor?” he asked with such skepticism. I heard a few answering titters in the class. At my feeble nod, he seemed to positively radiate with glee. “Tell me, Ms. Bryant, as a potential editor, does the opening line of this . . . story that you have produced make you quiver with excitement?”
“My role as editor is not to be excited by a book but to know whether it would be a good fit for my publishing house, if it would sell.” Fuck you, asshole, you don’t scare me.
“Wrong,” Leitch spat as he spun on his heel and marched to his whiteboard.
In the day and age of laptops and online classes, Leitch was old school and liked whiteboards, paper submissions, and red pens.
He especially loved red pens. “As an editor, you are the reader. If that book does not grip you, why would it grip others? How can you market and promote a book that you do not believe in?” He held up my submission with his fingertips.
“If this does not excite you,” he shook the paper lightly, causing more snickering in the class, “tell me, why would you think it would therefore excite me?”
My mouth opened to snap at him when the doors to the lecture room were swung open, the looser one on the right flying back wildly and bouncing off the wall. The guy stood there, looking at the wall and the door, and then at Leitch.
Ash Santo. The third God of the football triad.
He smiled widely at Leitch, completely oblivious that the look he was receiving from the professor made us mortals run and cower in fear.
“Am I late?” Ash asked casually as he closed the door behind him. “Like a little bit late or so late I shouldn’t have bothered?” It was quite clear he didn’t care what the answer was as he made his way into the lecture hall. He was so tall and broad that I doubted even Leitch would challenge him.
“You shouldn’t have bothered,” Leitch drawled. “Who are you, and why are you,” he glanced at his watch, “fifteen minutes late for this class?”
“Ash Santo. Practice ran late; therefore, lunch ran late, hence . . . I’m late.”
I looked between the two of them. Ash was solid-looking.
He had to be; he was the team’s tight end.
Leitch was average height, potbellied, with old man stubble and gray hair.
Ash, with his light brown hair, clean-shaven jaw, stunning good looks, and his arms bare, showing his biceps, stood out for all the wrong reasons for Professor Leitch.
Quite simply, Ash did not look like he belonged in this class.
“I told administration to stop sending me jocks,” Leitch muttered loudly as he motioned for Ash to come further into the class.
“Pretty tough to do in a varsity college with sixteen sports represented,” Ash retorted with a snort as his eyes ran over the class, making me suddenly very conscious of the empty seat beside me.
“Anyway, I opted for this class, I’m not looking for easy credit.
” Ash walked past Leitch, whose face was turning purple.
“I was told you were good, was I misinformed?”
Ash ignored the swell of laughter as he made his way to my end of the row. He dumped his bag on the floor at my feet as he somehow crammed his massive frame into the seat beside me.
I watched the professor open his mouth and then close it again.
I almost felt sorry for him. Here he was being upstaged by a football player who didn’t appear to know Leitch’s fearsome reputation.
What could he say, his class wasn’t easy credit?
By doing so, he would be acknowledging Ash’s intelligence for opting for this class.
If he said it was easy credit, easy for jocks, then he was saying the class was easy.
This class was anything but easy, and I knew this as I had already had a year of Leitch in the introductory class in freshman year.
“Don’t be late again” was all the professor had as a comeback.
Ash shrugged, and again I felt myself staring at him out of the corner of my eye in awe as he sat there unfazed. That he was being so nonchalant to the meanest man I had ever met made me almost admire him.
I think Ash Santo just became my hero.
“Yo, blondie,” Ash whispered when Leitch turned and decided to demoralize another victim and their writing. “Got a pen?”
Glancing at him, I met his wide, dark blue eyes, and my throat closed up. With horror, I recognized the whispered voice. Ash was the other person in Jett’s bedroom on Saturday morning.
He had seen me naked.
Throwing up.
Naked.
My butt facing them as I threw up.
Naked.
“Wow, I’m not used to being propositioned so early,” Ash told me with a wink. “A pen will do for now, if you can?”
What? Oh my God, I had totally blurted out the word naked to him. I was going to die. This was the worst afternoon of my life. Wordlessly, I handed him my pen. He looked at it and then at me and my now-empty hand.
“What will you use?” he asked curiously.
Shaking my head so my hair surrounded my face, I shrugged slightly.
“Okay, thanks.” I heard him give a low whistle as he sat back in his chair, the creaking noise telling me the chair was also regretting him sitting beside me. “Weird girl,” he muttered.
I was weird, but not because of him. Not really.
The rest of the lecture, I had no idea what Leitch said.
The only good thing was that he ignored me, and I think I had Ash to thank for that.
The professor had only looked at me once when I had rustled in my bag for a substitute pen.
With an apologetic look, I pretended I dropped it, and with a resigned, long-suffering sigh, the professor resumed his lesson.
As I hurriedly packed my bag, Ash held my pen out to me, inviting me to take it back, but all I could focus on was the chewed pen lid. I shook my head in refusal. He could keep his saliva, thank you very much.
“You look familiar.”
My stomach dropped like a stone. “You can keep the pen.”
“Have we met?” he asked me as he unfolded from the chair. It was a sight to see, and I wasn’t a hypocrite — it was enjoyable seeing those muscles flex up close.
“Hmm, no?” Scooping up my bag, I smiled briefly and then hastened across the lecture room floor.
“Ms. Bryant, a word.”
No! Turning slowly, I trudged back to Leitch’s desk. “Sir?”
He made me stand there until every student was out of the class, and considering I had been almost sprinting across the floor to avoid Ash, I waited a while.
The Saints tight end grinned at me as he passed, casually strolling out the door as casually as he had strolled in. I envied him so much right now.
“Ms. Bryant,” Leitch began.
“Do you know it’s Ms. because, in the 1950s, if you were unsure of a woman’s marital status and age, you called them Ms. because Miss was deemed to be for a girl or young woman? It was almost the equivalent of mister.”
The professor raised his eyebrows at me as I snapped my mouth shut. Me and my useless knowledge.
“Fascinating,” he said drolly. “You will not be surprised to know that I have never once considered your marital status.”
“No,” I mumbled as I looked at my feet in embarrassment. “Sorry.”
“I want to talk to you about that paper you submitted. The assignment deadline is not for another week, yet you submitted early. Did you think it wise?”
“Well, I did at the time,” I said weakly as I looked over his shoulder at the whiteboard, trying to avoid his heavy scrutiny.
“Hmm.”
“You want it rewritten?” I guessed. I had tried to get ahead on assignments so I could spend some free time designing posters and flyers for my friend Wade’s band.
“I want it burned and forgotten.”
Feeling my eyes widen, I stared at him in astonishment. “You didn’t even read it,” I protested.
“I don’t need to read it to know it’s fanciful garbage.”
“This class is creative writing,” I said to him as I tried to keep my temper. “Your job is to teach fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. I gave you fiction.”
“You gave me washed-up, run-of-the-mill dross,” Leitch said as he crossed his arms, resting his back against his desk as he considered me.
“Do the work in the time assigned, do not rush it, and actually try to keep to the assignment, and next time? Well . . . you may be better. You will thank me for this once you realize that I am doing you a favor.” His hand made a shooing motion. “Go, you are dismissed.”
Biting my tongue, I turned and marched out of his lecture hall. It took every inch of my willpower not to slam the door shut on my way out.
Angrily, I made my way to my next class, History of Writing. In freshman year, I had found it to be stale, but the promise of dissecting Shakespeare’s plays had me eagerly enrolling in this course for this semester and next.
Because Leitch was an overbearing prick, I was now late and had most probably lost my seat in the middle row.
As I slipped into the auditorium, I saw Professor Matson had already launched into Romeo and Juliet.
The lights were dimmed as she used the overhead projector, and, thankful for the cover of darkness, I quietly made my way to the back seats.
Stealthily, I spotted an empty seat in the second-to-last row, and with more grace than I knew I had, I lowered myself into the chair, dropping my bag at my feet.