Chapter 8
EIGHT
Dexter
I stand at my office door and watch Alis leave, rubbing my chin in confusion at her reaction to me today.
It’s not like I wasn’t caught off guard when she was introduced as my new grader, but I was at least happy to see her again.
Alis is beautiful and intelligent, and now I learn she speaks my mother tongue — I can just imagine the sounds she’d make as I whisper how much I want her.
I can almost feel the goosebumps spreading across her skin as I nibble on her earlobe — Je veux lécher chaque centimètre de ton corps nu — trail my tongue down her neck — T'es la plus belle femme que j'aie jamais vue — brush her hair off her shoulders and nip at her collarbone as I push her sweater off the side of her shoulder — Je rêve de te toucher depuis notre première rencontre. ..
“Dr. Belanger?” Deborah’s voice shakes me out of my fantasy. Fuck. Please God don’t let her see how tight my trousers are right now.
I cough. “Yes, Deborah. Do you need something?” She cocks her head to the side as if I should know what she wants from me.
“No, sir, I just wanted to make sure you’re alright. You’ve been standing in your doorway staring at nothing for nearly five minutes.”
“I’m fine, thanks. I have a few things to finish up. When Dr. Euler arrives, can you send him in?”
She nods, and I turn and shut my office door, letting out a deep breath and shaking my head to clear out thoughts of Alis.
What is it about this woman? She says she doesn’t want me — wait, did she actually say that?
I get the feeling she wants me just as badly as I want her, but she doesn’t WANT to want me.
But, why? Aside from her professor/student argument, which frankly is not a big deal given we are both in our thirties and I am not her professor, why is she so adamant about pushing me away?
I get that she just moved here, but I’m not asking her to marry me.
I just want to get to know the woman. She’s stunning and we have great rapport, our banter is sexy as hell, and if I’m guessing correctly, her professional aspirations closely line up with mine.
If nothing else, we could casually get to know each other over the next few months and see where it goes from there.
I run my hands through my hair, push my back off from the door, and head back to my desk.
I have a shit ton of work to finish before Leo — yes, his parents named him after that Euhler and yes, he’s a math professor — meets me for lunch, and there’s no way I’ll get it all done with Alis invading my every thought.
Pushing thoughts of Alis aside, I sit and get to work rifling through the stacks of summer essays that litter my desk. I know my office is a cluttered mess, but I truly do have my own system. Just because others don’t understand it doesn’t mean that I’m a slob.
I’m halfway through grading the fourth essay when Leo knocks twice and walks into my office.
“Bro, you ready?” Despite his genius namesake and predictable career in mathematics, Leo is the most laid back of the friends I’ve made since moving back to the States.
I’m surprised he hasn’t been reprimanded for skirting the faculty dress code, but he looks professional enough when he adds a sport coat over his V-neck shirts.
“Yeah, just a sec. I’m finishing up this paper.”
Leo nods and walks in, settling into one of the visitor chairs in front of my desk and setting his ankle across his knee. “Thank God I don’t read essays for a living. My head would explode.”
I laugh. “Yeah, well, I thank God that I don’t teach polynomials to freshmen. That would drive me fucking insane.”
“You’re just pissed that you’d fail my class and get your ass kicked by my freshmen.”
“Sorry, Mathlete. But I did, in fact, pass algebra with flying colors.”
I flip to the last page of the essay, scribble some concluding notes and give the student a B-minus.
“That’s that. Let’s go.” I stand and grab the blazer off my chair, and Leo and I head out.
“You okay, man?” Leo stops inhaling his lunch to inquire about my less-than-chatty demeanor.
“Yeah, why? Is there something on my face?” I grab my napkin, wiping around my mouth to find the rogue sauce. He shakes his head.
“No, but you look confused. Or maybe, constipated?”
“Shut up, idiot. I’m fine. I’m just thinking.” I dip a fry in barbecue sauce and take a bite.
It’s an unspoken rule among men that we don’t pry, but Leo has never been able to read a room so, of course, he pushes.
“About?” he waves the back of his hand in my general direction, signaling me to go on.
If I say “it’s nothing” he will continue to pry, and I’m a shit liar. So, I decide to let Leo help me sort through my attraction to my grader. “Remember last weekend when you and John dragged me to that club so you could meet up with those Tinder chicks you wanted to hook up with?”
Leo looks at the ceiling. “Fuck, Shelly… Sherry? Shelly. Yeah. She was so fucking hot. Didn’t you bow out early that night?”
“Yeah, that was the plan.” I start to rub my forehead. “But as I was heading out I met someone.”
“Yeah?” A grin takes over his face. “About damn time, man.”
I shake my head, laughing. “She gave me her number and then gave me the brush off when I sent her a text a few days later.”
Leo’s lifting a fry to his mouth as I tell him about Alis’s brushoff, and he freezes, fry in hand, dumbstruck by this revelation.
He shoves his fry into his mouth, cocks his head to the side, and scrunches his eyebrows together in confusion.
After swallowing his fry Leo asks, “Aren’t women usually waiting by their phones for the dude to text them for another date? ”
“I guess. But not this one. She wasted no time responding and shutting things down before I could really entertain seeing her again.”
“That’s just brutal,” Leo snorts. “Looks like your man bun lost its luster. Needs more fairy dust or whatever magic it gives off to make women drop their panties for you.”
“Seriously, man. You’re a child, I swear.”
He laughs. “You know it’s true, though! Every time we go out half the women in the bar spend the night eye fucking you from their stools. They dig your lumbersexual look.”
“Lumbersexual? What the hell is that?”
“You know, like a sexy lumberjack. But you’re too pretty to be a lumberjack so nevermind.”
“Too pretty? Are you high? What is wrong with you? I’m Canadian! I’m rugged!” I’m not even convincing myself at this point.
Leo’s cackling is getting louder, drawing attention from the people around us. “No, bro. I just meant that you don’t have that rugged, outdoorsy look going for you. But still, women are always coming onto you and petting your hair, rubbing their tits all over your arm trying to get your attention.”
He’s right. Women do tend to flock toward me at bars and most of them try to touch my hair. It’s kinda weird. Do they think it’s hot to pet a man in public? I’m not a dog.
I brush off his words. “Whatever. She was different. We talked.” I keep eating, thinking back to the smile etched on her face as we talked at the bar.
“Please, hold back,” Leo goads. “Your overflowing details are too much.”
I roll my eyes. “We talked. She’s witty, and gorgeous. She knows Tolstoy and Dumas.”
“Whoa now. Slow down.” Leo holds up his hands in mock surprise. “She’s read classic authors? How rare!”
“Shut up, dumbass. I mean she KNOWS them, knows them. She can quote their works. It was hot as hell.”
“Damn. No wonder you actually contacted this one. She’s into your nerdy literature shit.”
“Don’t be daft; you have a doctorate. You may act like an unintelligent manchild, but you know if some gorgeous woman at a bar started talking your ear off about tangents and cotangents you’d drool all over yourself.”
He considers this for a moment. “Yeah. That’d be fucking hot. I bet that chick would actually understand my pickup lines.”
“Like I said.”
“So, why don’t you just reach out to her again?” Leo asks. “Maybe she’s changed her mind?”
I scoff and shake my head. “She certainly hadn’t changed her mind when I saw her earlier today.”
Leo starts coughing and choking on his soda. “Back the fuck up. What? You saw her today? Why didn’t you say that already?”
“I hadn’t gotten to that part of my story yet.”
He waves his hand at me again. “Go on.”
“I saw her today. In my office. Dr. Matthews introduced her as my new grader.”
Leo stops mid-chew, eyes practically bulging out of his head.
“Yeah. At first I didn’t know what to think. She was introduced by a different name, making me think she lied the other night. Then I mentally chastised myself for hitting on some young twenty-something. Turns out she didn’t lie about her name, she usually goes by a nickname, and she’s thirty.”
“Thirty? And she’s your grader?”
“Yeah. Apparently she started grad school, quit, and now she’s moved here to finish.”
“At thirty.” Leo looks skeptical. “Don’t thirty-somethings typically do online school or some shit? She picked up and moved to a different location for school? That’s odd.”
“I had the same reaction. She looked at me like I was being a dick, but I was just caught off guard. Anyway, I brought up taking her out and she shut me down, fast.” I shrug.
“Something about crossing the professor/student boundary. I mean, I know typically that stuff is frowned upon by the administration, but isn’t that just for profs trying to hook up with the undergrads?
Like the young twenty-somethings looking for extra credit or something? ”
Leo shakes his head and laughs. “Or something. I don’t think there’s any official policy about it, but you should check.
And I’m with you — the rules are different when you’re the same age.
It’s not like this is some powerplay or whatever.
You’re thirty-six, not fifty. And she’s thirty, not twenty-one. ”
“Yeah. She also gave me the generic ‘now isn’t a good time for me’ speech. Since she just moved to the area says she doesn’t want to get involved with anyone.”