Compliments (8 page)

“Um, sure.”

He turns back to the road. “Don’t get your hopes up too high for Lamertus. He’s a brilliant mathematician and gifted academic, but he’s a bit old school, thinks academia should still be a boys club.”

“But he seemed happy to be talking to me when I cornered him on the balcony.”

“He’s happy whenever any woman corners him, but it isn’t about the conversation as much as the view,” he says.

“Oh, I see.” I’m not really sure how to react, other than wondering if I should even bother trying if that’s the way things really are.

It’s not until I feel the pressure again on my shoulder that I realize Prof. Harrison’s hand is still resting there.

“Don’t worry, he’s an exception amongst our faculty. We’re not all still living in the Nixon era culturally. I, for example, might love to have someone like you in my group.”

“Are you propositioning me?” I ask before even realizing the double meaning of my statement. Blood floods my cheeks as I stumble to correct myself. “I mean, are you offering me a position?” Unfortunately, the juxtaposition of those two phrases doesn’t help, and I cough out an embarrassed laugh.

Withdrawing his hand, he finally places it back on the wheel. “No, not yet, but I’ve got you on radar. I just haven’t decided yet if I want to make you a target. It has to be the right fit.”

When he gives me a little wink, I can’t help but break out into a full round of giggles, and feel relieved when his laughter echoes mine. Just then, Prof. Harrison pulls up in front of Keyes Tow & Collision, puts the car in park, and follows me out.

“Please, you’ve already done far too much. I can handle this part by myself,” I say, knowing in the back of my mind what I really want to say is,
I’m going to be begging the guy inside to cut me a break on the fee so I don’t have to ration ramen for the next month.

The professor shoos aside my attempt at self-resilience. “I don’t want them taking advantage of you. I’ll make sure they don’t take you for a ride and jack up the fee.”

Shyly, I nod, and we proceed in together.

The customer area is nothing more than a few folding chairs, a small table where sludge that might have been coffee hours ago bubbles in the base of a cracked coffee pot, and a carousel offering greeting cards and air fresheners for twice the cost of the local drug store. At the end of the lobby is a customer service sign; a gridded-frame, sliding window is open. I hear strains of a slack key guitar from scratchy speakers haphazardly secured to the walls. To my surprise, instead of a greasy, pot-bellied, probable ex-con on the other side, there’s a boy who can’t be more than fourteen playing on a handheld game console.

“Where’s your dad, Alonzo?”

Prof. Harrison’s familiarity astounds me, but apparently it’s no surprise to the kid. Without even looking up, he shrugs. “Probably in the can.”

“Well, can you get him? I’d like to help this young lady get her car back as soon as possible.”

Alonzo pauses the game and looks up, turning his full focus on me. He leans in over the desk and wiggles his eyebrows. “I can give her a ride home, if she needs it. I’m in to older women.”

“Your dad. Now.” Prof. Harrison’s glare gives even me the creeps. Luckily, it works. Alonzo jumps up, mumbling something about wadded panties. “Martin’s a good guy. His wife ran out on him last year. Sometimes he brings Alonzo to watch the desk at night if he’s short staffed. Or so he says. Honestly, I think it’s to keep an eye on the kid.”

“How do you know all that?” I ask.

Prof. Harrison’s shoulders twitch. “Manderson isn’t nearly as big as it seems, and I’ve lived here a long time. You get to know some people after a while.”

It’s clear when Martin comes through the door of the lobby and offers out a hand to the professor that the two men have had more than a casual acquaintance. After a few pleasantries, Prof. Harrison takes it on himself to explain the situation, and without me even saying a word or asking for help, he has Martin talked down from $300 to $200. While it’s a big reduction in price, it’s still a huge hunk of change. I’m sure Harrison picks up on the burden of the expense I broadcast through my body language. Before I’m even able to retrieve my wallet from my bag, he’s pulled a few fifties from his and hands them over.

“Oh, no, I can get it,” I insist, pulling out my emergency credit card.

Harrison pushes my hand away while shoving the greenbacks into Martin’s grip. “Miss Lewis, it’s really my fault this happened. The least I can do is pay the fee for you.”

“I thought the least you could do was offer me a ride over here. I think you’re doing more than what’s least.”

He waves off the comment. “Then it’s good karma for me, and can’t we all use a bit of that these days?” Prof. Harrison turns back to the other man. “Want to take that boot off the wheel of her car for us now?”

A few minutes later, when I’m in my car on the way home, my mind wanders. Before, I had no interest in Prof. Harrison’s group, but a person who goes so far out of the way for someone else? I’m quite sure that sort of concern doesn’t end at the door of the math department. Maybe giving his research and group a consideration wouldn’t hurt.

f(x)=10

On Saturday, fall decides to push the last remnants of the summer away. Heavy, cool air sneaks in to my studio through the screen porch, which I discover I’ve left open overnight. I spend the day wrapped up in a thick sweater, sipping tea and listening to jazz. Toward the late afternoon, Hawk texts me. We decide to meet at a coffee house a short walk from my apartment to spend the evening together, studying.

My nose buried in a theory book, I don’t notice him when he walks in. It’s not until he slides his fingers beneath my chin before tilting it up to meet chilled lips that I’m aware he’s here. Hawk kisses me tenderly, some might even say chastely. It’s sincere, not seductive. He waits a moment for me to respond, then slowly draws his lips over mine, pulling languidly away. My eyes open and I find him looking at me, both quizzical and proud. He must be able to tell by the way my gaze softens that I’m melting from the smallest of touches. He moves to traipse his fingertips over my cheek.

“I’ve missed you.”

I smile and lean into the palm of his hand. My warm skin prickles from the chill. “So much in so little time?”

“You’re becoming an addiction for me,” he explains. “And since you’re now a confident Outreach presenter, I have no excuse to keep you late at the office to hang out with me.”

Hawk grabs himself a cup of coffee and we set up at a table in the corner. I get a peek of his laptop screen over his shoulder and see he appears to be working on a report. It reminds me that in addition to being a part-time math teacher and a janitor, he’s also a member of the prestigious Manderson University student body.

“So you’re on academic suspension, then.” I’m not sure what I’m getting at by bringing it up out of nowhere, but I need to know more of the hows and whys.

“The news finally got to you, huh?” He nods without looking up. “On appeal, actually. There’s a hearing in a few weeks. I’m almost done with my program. I just need to come back long enough to present my doctoral defense and have my thesis approved. Once the appeal goes through, I should be done come June.”

My index finger runs over the rim of the coffee mug. “You seem pretty certain it’s just procedural. How long have you been on suspension?”

His keying pauses. “It
is
procedural. Almost as much as it is preposterous. I was totally in the right. I was suspended at the beginning of the summer. The appeals committee only meets at the end of the fall and spring terms. Bad timing on my part, but in retrospect, good in another.”

“Yeah, how’s that?”

A dimple appears as half of his mouth cracks into a smile. “I’ll be around a little longer to spend time with you.”

His blatant flattering nets him a kiss over the table, but I’m also very aware he’s trying to lull me into forgetting the subject. While I should be persistent and come back to the topic from another direction, the way his tongue finds mine pushes rational thought from my head.

The taste of his mocha and my caramel macchiato compliment each other almost seductively. When he kisses me again after sitting silent for a quarter hour, the action is slower, deeper. Even though my fingers still hover over my keyboard, I’m locked into the act. We stop only when someone at a nearby table overly exaggerates clearing his throat. Hawk and I both turn to see a middle-aged man looking concerned but sympathetic, a girl of perhaps ten or eleven sitting wide-eyed beside him.

“Sorry,” I mouth as I push myself back off the edge of my chair. Hawk and I are barely able to suppress our giggles.

“My fault,” he offers. “This is a little public, isn’t it?” he adds only to me. “I just really, really like kissing you.”

Wicked thoughts, well-oiled and agile as Olympians, race through my mind. The suggestion leaps to my lips before I can rein it in. “We could go back to my place.”

One raised eyebrow and an air of concern reflect back at me. “You sure about that?”

“Yeah, though we might want to get the coffee to go, if that’s what you want to drink.” I close my laptop and begin to repack things in my bag. “I haven’t had a chance to get to the grocery store this week, and all I have is apple-cinnamon tea.”

A few minutes later, we walk with our inside hands entwined and our outside hands bearing fresh coffee cups, toward my street. Hawk’s smile is so wide I could drive a city bus through it. I know he’s happy to spend some time with me, but it takes me a few minutes to catch on to what’s causing ecstasy to manifest on his face. We’re walking toward my place ... where we’ll be alone. Because we were making out at a professional level and it wasn’t a shining example of public decency.

Dots of self-doubt begin to bubble in the pit of my stomach. Oh my God, I invited him to my place. I haven’t been with anyone since Matthias Gnomon. Remembering the results of that liaison, I feel my chest tighten. What am I doing? Did I think when I said, “Let’s go back to my place,” I meant that we should sit and talk, do math, bake a pie? No, he thinks we’re going to lay on my bed and concentrate on kissing each other until our coffee is cold and our bodies are hot.

How am I such an idiot? I’m not ready for this.

The way my grip tenses around his and my movements become more rigid must transmit my inner machinations in some way. Stopping, he pulls my hand to his mouth, kissing the back of it. “We’re not going to sleep together, Robin. You don’t have to wind together so tight.”

In a way, I’m comforted that he’s put that out there. In another, I’m somehow insulted at his—nonetheless accurate—assumption.

“You going to give me the ‘we won’t do anything you don’t want to do’ line, too?”

A confused grimace flashes over his face. “Of course not. I mean, yes. We won’t do anything you don’t want to, that’s a given. One, because I respect you, and two, because I’m not a bastard asshat who takes advantage of women. But we’re also not going to do anything that I don’t want to do, and I don’t want to sleep with you tonight. We’re not ready for that.”

He tugs my hand and brings our bodies close, leaning over to whisper in my ear. His hot breath against my chilled flesh makes all of the hairs on my arms go skyward.

“But don’t think for a second that I don’t plan on kissing you hard, fast, and long the second we’re through the door.”

Chills shoot up my spine and it’s possible, though I’d never admit it, that I put a bit more speed to my step.

When we reach my building, we manage to climb the two flights of stairs in record time. I can’t explain what’s happening. I’ve never felt my anticipation rise with each lift of my foot as I am now. I’m uber aware of Hawk’s body echoing my footfalls. We don’t speak, and I don’t look back to him.

I pause at the door to fish my key out of my pocket, and try to file it into the lock. Nerves and anticipation mingle, making it difficult for me to concentrate. Hawk stands behind me. His breath planes across the back of my neck as his index fingers hook around the belt loops of my jeans, tugging and drawing us together.

“Hurry.”

A second later, his mouth is on me. He nuzzles the tender spot of flesh where my neck and shoulders meet. The sensation that spreads through me as the tip of his tongue flicks the bottom of my earlobe overwhelms. I lose both my coordination and my ability to breathe. Somehow I’m able to finally find the keyhole without the aid of my eyes.

I hear the door close behind us, but all I see, all I hear and all I taste, is Hawk. His lips find mine as both of us drop our bags to the side. I almost stumble over mine as I pace backwards, leading us instinctively to the bed. Just in time to save me, his hands brace on my arms, holding me up. Though just a studio, the size of my only room is pretty generous, far bigger than any of the undergraduate dorms I’ve ever lived in. It takes us six steps to reach the edge of my bed, where I surrender to the need to be horizontal and under him. Even though he assured me we wouldn’t be sleeping together, my flesh awakens when he falls atop me and uses every one of those lean, strong arm muscles to pull my body into just the right position.

“What, no tour?” he asks between kisses.

“It’s pretty much a WYSIWYG unit,” I answer, drawing him back to me.

The hard, pulsing kisses we start out with mellow into long, deep, languid affairs where we explore each other’s reactions as well as our own. I admire how he can become so consumed that I don’t think he has the capacity to be anything else at that moment but the man kissing me. His hands stay frustratingly chaste, however, for the longest time. Propped up on his left elbow over me and using his right to either lace his fingers through my hair or pull my head up slightly, my own hands seem awkward and superfluous. Eventually I move my hands around to his back, slowly feeling the languorous movement as he angles above me, to me, above me, to me … The bright and weathered hues inked across his biceps shimmer in my periphery vision, arcing and rolling with the movement of the muscles beneath the skin. When my fingertips brush over the tops of his back pants pockets, boldness seizes me. I plunge my hands into the pockets, but I’m careful not to pull him closer. Already, I can feel how our proximity is affecting him.

Unfortunately, even keeping dead hands still, the sensation of my touching his ass does something. While Hawk’s been over me for some time, he’s done a good job of keeping one leg outside mine, so our middles aren’t really in alignment. That changes when he brings his legs together and uses his hips to coax mine open. The second I feel his erection through the denim dividing us, I know we’re both getting to a place where control is sticking out its tongue at us and blowing raspberries. Though the slight shift of his hips is muted, I feel the grind, and I’ve never been good at keeping secret one of my body’s few blessings. I’ve climaxed from not much more than this before, and not wanting things to get too uncomfortable for both of us, I find myself using my grip on his backside to suggestively pull his hips away from mine. My fear that he’ll think I’m not enjoying what he’s doing to me evaporates when he moves back to look at me.

“Yeah, we should probably
not
,” he says.

I nod. “Not yet.”

Hawk’s face lights up. “I like the sound of that yet.”

Eventually, biology puts an end to our activities. Having downed so much tea and coffee, I excuse myself to use the bathroom. When I reemerge a few minutes later, I find Hawk out on the screened porch. Two white wicker chairs take up most of the space. He’s seated in the one on the left, the rocking chair. It waxes and wanes at his command. With a tap on the arm of the other chair, I take a seat next to him.

“You’re a Morgan Prize winner,” he says out of nowhere.

My eyes look back into my studio, and to the wall over my desk where the framed certificate hangs. “Oh, yeah. I am.”

“Pretty impressive. I’m surprised you’re worried at all about getting an advisor with something like that on your resume. The faculty are all probably falling over each other to work with you.”

“One prestigious award does not a prized advisee make,” I joke. Pulling my legs up, I hug them to my chest. “I won it as a junior after working my ass off, but the grades I got during the last year of my undergrad weren’t … quite so impressive. If I hadn’t totally aced the GREs, there’s no way I ever would have been able to get into Manderson. I was lucky.”

“Don’t say that.”

I look at him askew. “Say what?”

“Don’t write off anything you’ve achieved to something as flimsy as luck.” Sincerity defines his demeanor. “You putting in hard work and effort, and a kick ass GRE performance, isn’t luck. You should own that and be proud.”

My smile beams and I bask in the glow of his power talk. A moment later, I hear his tone soften.

“I know how hard it must have been for you to finish. I have to admit, ever since you told me what happened at Colorado, and seeing how well you’re doing now, I find your perseverance inspirational.”

“You do?” I ask. “Thanks. That means a lot.”

As if he didn’t hear me, he continues, “Granted, what happened with me is a little different, but … Never mind.”

I turn my body toward his and put my feet back on the floor. “Hawk, you know you can tell me, right? Whatever it is, I promise I’ll keep it private.”

“It’s not you, it’s me. I don’t really want to get into it,” he says. A flash of hurt thunders across his face, then is no more than a distant echo. “Nonetheless, I can understand how hard it can be to hold your head high when you’ve done something that can seem wrong to those who weren’t there. How standing up for what you believe in can lead you to do things you’d swear you’d never do.”

As though he’s stood up and bolted from my presence, Hawk’s eyes are a light year away. I don’t know what he’s remembered in the last minute, but suddenly I feel like I’m alone on the porch, sitting with only a ghost. I clear my throat and try to change the subject.

“I never told you how the dinner at Woo’s went.”

The ploy works, and Hawk’s eyes shift back to mine, bright and eager. “Yeah, I guess I sort of made it impossible for you to tell me much of anything, didn’t I? So, then? Did you manage to get a word in edgewise with Lamertus?”

“One word? I’ll let you know I got in a full sentence, dangling participle and all!” I brag. Although, given some of the looks he was giving me toward the end of the evening, not all of them were well received. “I also got to talk to Ferris, and Alexi Breznikov said he had heard about me, though he didn’t say from where.”

“Hmm, must be all those ‘for a good time, call Robin’ messages I keep washing off the stall walls in the men’s bathrooms. Ow! What? I was only kidding.”

He rubs his arm where I slapped him, but the twinkle in his eye is infectious, and I find myself laughing and asking why he keeps destroying all of my hard work.

“Ah, so it was self-advertising.” He scratches his chin and pretends to muse. “Boy, you really are a go-getter, aren’t you?”

As my laugh tapers off, I return to the subject. “I think it went well. I didn’t get a chance to talk with too many others. There was a lot of competition. I have to admit, the Asian students are a little more persistent in their
look at me, look at me
approach than I am. Just Ferris, Lamertus, Harrison …”