Chapter Four
CHAPTER FOUR
I DON’T CARE
PAST
“ H ow’s yiayia ?” I ask my little sister, keeping my phone pressed to my ear so I don’t miss her response as I make my way through a group of people crowding the campus main office.
I didn’t think this summer semester would be busy because it never really is, but it seems like more students desire to live and breathe the New York City life all year round. I just want to hurry up and graduate so I don’t have to keep worrying about the dwindling amount of money in my savings account.
“I haven’t talked to her,” Denise answers, and I have to bite down the urge to call her out for being an asshole.
“She isn’t getting any older,” I offer instead.
“Or any wiser, apparently,” she mutters, knowing that if I were next to her, I’d pop her one good time.
“Don’t be a fucking asshole.” A few people glance at me and I pull my phone away from my ear. “ What? ” I ask them, my eyes wide and my patience already thin. Having to deal with drunk Miley the night before as she puked into the early morning was not my idea of a good time .
When they turn away, I press my phone back against my ear in time to hear my sister’s response.
“Takes one to know one.”
“You do realize I’m not too far from Boston to come knock some sense into you, right?” I threaten, spotting Miley’s flirtatious grin from across the street. How she had the energy to flirt, let alone be standing upright, is beyond me. But her nineteen to my twenty-one felt like eons sometimes.
I took my time and saved up before I came here. I didn’t date and didn’t fuck around, deciding neither were worth losing focus over. Just before I graduated, I finally gave my virginity to a guy who’d been pursuing me pretty heavily for years. While it lacked fireworks, he was sweet and we did it a few more times before I left and never looked back.
Here, the dating pool is more like a kiddie pool. Overcrowded and full of piss. I’ve gained a little more sexual experience, but nothing to brag about.
“Promises, promises,” she tells me before letting me know she has to get ready for work.
“Call me tomorrow, okay?” I try to remind her, but she’s already hung up the phone. I hitch my bag over my shoulder as I look both ways, crossing the street to check on Miley before my second class of the day. The guy she was talking to is nowhere to be found and she’s scrolling through her phone when I approach her.
“Bitch, how are you alive?” I give her a once-over and she smiles, her lips together and her eyes squinting up at me. Her makeup is flawless, not a dark circle in sight, not a blemish to be seen.
“Oh, to be young again,” is all she says, and I roll my eyes.
“Keep it up and you’ll be buying your own liquor from now on,” I warn her.
“Have you heard about the new professor yet?” Miley asks, ignoring my weak threat, flipping her hair over one shoulder as she looks around .
She’s impressive, her raw energy making me admire her in a way I never had the chance to admire anyone else before. Not when I didn’t have many women to look up to in my life.
“No,” I answer, as I notice even more students start to fill the quad area. “What does he teach?”
“He’s a big shot director, so something with movies I’d assume,” she tells me, waving her hand as if that detail isn’t important. “But he did that last Tristan Kane movie.”
I recognize the name. He’s up there with Brad Pitt and Colin Farrell. Sexy and serious roles.
So some famous director is teaching a class here for the summer semester. No wonder the campus is such a shit show.
“What’s his name?” I ask, but some guy is entering our bubble, a big grin on his face, his eyes zeroed in on my friend. “I’ll see you after class.”
My words fall on deaf ears as I step away, realizing I don’t have much time before my next class, halfway across campus.
“Shit,” I mutter as I adjust my messenger bag over my shoulder and speed walk through the crowd of other students. As I approach the building my class is in, I notice the mass of bodies crowding the doorway and groan.
“Excuse me,” I offer a few times as I push my way through. Inside the building is no better and I stop being polite and start shoving people out of my way. Somehow, I make it inside the room everyone is crowding, the door shutting behind me with a loud bang.
Everyone looks up at me and I press my lips together as I make my way down the steps of the lecture hall, toward an empty seat.
The problem is, the room is packed. And as I scan each row, walking down the aisle of seats, a male voice in front calls out, “If you just walked in, you’re in the wrong class.”
“Excuse me?” I spit out, hitching my bag closer to my body, hating that everyone is now looking at me. I can’t see him from behind one of the students who just stood to grab the backpack they’d left on the floor next to their seat.
“I have the exact number of seats for my roster here,” the voice calls out again, holding up a clipboard and I finally catch a glimpse. But with his second sentence, I’d already placed that damn accent of his.
Holy shit.
It’s the movie man. The scruff of beard, the thick dark waves of hair that hang just the slightest bit over his forehead. Even the irritated tick of his jaw only highlights how sharp his features are.
His face doesn’t fill with the recognition that I thought it would, that I’m almost certain mine does. So I clear my throat and pretend right along with him.
“My schedule says otherwise,” I tell him, determined to not look like a fucking idiot. “Care to take a look?”
He waves the hand holding the clipboard, as if he deigns to do anything to remedy the situation. I’m still standing, looking around as he calls out names. And when he gets to mine, I press my lips together before clearing my throat again.
“Here,” I answer, wondering what the hell I’m supposed to do.
“And do you intend on standing there for the entirety of class?” he asks, an edge of irritation in his tone that angers me in juxtaposition to the way his accent that curls around his pronunciation excites me. What the fuck is his problem?
“Would you like me to sit on the floor instead?” I challenge, lifting a brow. I glance around the room once more to see if I maybe missed an open seat and he leans back against his desk as he regards me, crossing his arms.
“You may do whatever you’d like…” he glances back down at the clipboard, “Sabrina Milas.”
Beautiful motherfucker.
And I’m dismissed as he continues on his list .
No one stands for me, no one even bothers to look my way as they watch him with rapt attention.
Am I in the fucking Twilight Zone?
I pull out my schedule, ignoring the people who look at me as I rifle through my bag.
History of Film, Beginnings to 1959
Professor Pugliesi
It was a last-minute decision, adding this elective to my course load. But I needed to get my classes done in order to graduate early and not have to return in the fall. And classic movies are kind of my thing.
Apparently, they’re Professor Pain in the Ass’s thing too.
“My name is Abraham Pugliesi. You may call me Professor. Most of you will butcher my beautiful surname, so don’t bother using it.” He straightens from his position on the desk. “If you’re here to learn about anything post-1959, you’re going to be thoroughly disappointed.”
I try not to react to his accent, to the baritone thrum of his voice as it echoes through the room, to the way his charcoal vest hugs his chest, and the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt gives an air of casualness that stops the moment I look at his face.
He’d warned me that he was an asshole and now I’m going to find out for myself.
“Due to an alarming amount of participation, in the coming weeks, I will be dropping most of you from my course.” He turns his back to the room as he reaches for chalk. Who the fuck uses chalk anymore? “I do not like my time wasted. So, if you’re here to mention a manuscript you wrote or an idea you have for a movie, you may leave. ”
He starts writing and I cringe at the sound of the chalk as it scratches at the board.
I’m trying to connect the man I met last night with the one standing at the front of the room, but with one look at what he wrote as he steps back, I realize we aren’t in fucking Kansas anymore.
He reads it out as he points.
“I. Don’t. Care.” The chalk is cast from his hold at the last word, and I start to connect the dots as I watch it scatter into pieces on the floor. This guy is the famous director?
What the fuck?!
“If you’re late…” He pauses to glare at me. “I don’t care. If you miss class, I don’t care. If your dog died…” He gestures out toward the class and some of them mumble the rest of the sentence for him.
I lean against the wall just as someone stands, grabbing his things and storming out of the room. I’m sitting in his vacated seat when Professor Pugliesi speaks again.
“Damn it. I think we lost the next Spielberg.”
Some students laugh and I look around, baffled.
We’re all on the fucking chopping block. By the end of the semester, he’ll be teaching an empty classroom.
And this man keeps looking at me like he wishes I would disappear.
Is he going to pretend not to know me for the entirety of this semester?
Or at least stop acting like I fucked up his day, walking through the door?
I’d asked him what his name was last night. And now it was going to haunt me for the rest of my last college semester.