Teach Me (10 page)

Better
to cut Harper off now. I’ll
never be able to give a woman the full package. Never be able to do
what my parents, my sister, Mindy, Drew, what everyone wants me to,
and just settle for some polite, gentle, orderly relationship. I’m
just not capable of it. I’ve
accepted that, made my peace with it. But I need to keep reminding
myself: the people around me have not.

I
reach the large central room, the one with the bar in it, and sidle
up to order a neat whisky (Scotch, Laphroaig 10 year, which tastes
like inhaling a forest fire, just the way I like it). If nothing
else, this will fix my head on straight again. Or at least, help me
forget all this shit for long enough to relax for the duration of the
game.

That’s
when my eyes snag on her.

Goddamn
it
. It’s
like the universe
wants
to punish me. It just keeps throwing her in my path headlong,
heedless of the consequences.

Harper
hasn’t seen me yet.
Her head’s thrown
back as she laughs, full and throaty (though I notice with a rush of
amusement that she’s
wearing a turtleneck to hide the bites I left behind).

Watching
her head fall back, the way her hair sways against the small of her
back, and imagining her arcing her neck that way as I drove into her,
it makes me hard again in an instant. Goddamn, it’s
like I’m fucking
fifteen.

Speaking
of fifteen-year-olds, she’s
with a group of undergrads now, I notice. People her own age,
students like her. The way it should be.

She
belongs with them, and I belong alone.

Then
one of the kids with her, some punk-ass idiot with his hair slicked
full of grease and a faux leather jacket on like he’s
starring in a production of
Grease
,
slides his arm around her shoulders.

My
whole body tightens. I want to throw him off of her. I want to grab
her and take her right here in the middle of the pub, everyone
watching, so they’ll
all know she’s
mine
.

Which,
of course, is exactly the opposite of what I’ve
just convinced myself is the right thing to do. As hard as it is, I
force myself to turn away from her, trying to block her out of my
mind.

The
bartender passes my drink over the counter, and even though it’s
the kind of Scotch you really ought to savor, and shame on anyone who
doesn’t, I toss the
drink back in two swift swallows, and slide it across the counter,
tapping a finger on the wood to order a second.

The
bartender’s eyebrows
rise, but he refills my glass all the same.

Deep
breaths, Jack
. Calm
the fuck down. Why has this girl got you tied up in knots? You barely
know her. Yes, she was a good lay—okay,
a great one. Beyond that, though?

I
clench the glass in my fist and start to wind my way through the
crowd toward our secluded side room. Before I can exit the main room,
though, Drew intercepts me and drags me back toward the bar.

“I
need a break from the girl talk,”
he says, running a hand through his hair as he orders a pint of
Stella. “Don’t
get me wrong, I love Mindy’s
friends, but wow, they sure do enjoy discussing the haircuts their
favorite singers got last week.”

I
force a grin, trying to act normal. “Thanks,
mate.”

Drew
shoots me a look of total confusion. “For
what?”

“Reminding
me why I fly solo.”
I slap him on the back, which nearly makes him choke on his pint. He
glowers at me over the rim. I continue to smirk as I swallow a
mouthful of my drink. It burns my throat on the way down, which is
exactly what I enjoy about it. Scotch is the kind of drink that
reminds you what it feels like to be alive.

Painfully
good.

“Better
watch out. Between all the ladies gunning for you, I don’t
know if you can keep up the solo act for long.”

My
eyes roll so far up they’re
in danger of getting lost in the back of my head. “Not
you too.”

“Hey,
I’m not taking
sides. I’m only
saying, can you loan me some of whatever pheromones you’ve
been spraying on lately?”

“It’s
called being attractive; you should try it some time. Maybe if you
cut down on the Stella and up on the gym time . . . ”
This quickly devolves into a few
minutes of good-natured insulting one another.

Halfway
through this, we order another round. But I’m
interrupted in the middle of a heavy-handed insinuation that Mindy
has Drew padlocked around her ring finger when his attention drifts
to behind me, and his eyebrows rise.

“Don’t
look now,” he says
in an undertone, “But
I think your Eau de Jack’s
Lusty Lady Parfum has ensnared another innocent bystander.”

I
turn, fully expecting to see Sara or one of her girlfriends behind
me, probably to offer me a crappy mixed drink like last time.
Instead, I find Harper standing at my elbow, eyes on me, though
judging by the way they’re
narrowed, I’m
guessing she might have overheard the tail end of Drew’s
pronouncement.

“Ms.
Reed,” I say curtly,
before she can speak, emphasizing the two words to try and give her
the hint. Not the time or the place to talk, if that’s
what she’s trying to
do.

“Professor.”
Her voice is even, giving nothing away. Is she upset? Annoyed at me?
Just trying to get a drink? I start to sidestep, in case she’s
only trying to get to the bar behind us, but she steps with me,
tracking my movement. Her gaze narrows, and her hands come to rest on
her hips. The same place I dug my fingers into earlier.

This
time, her voice hardens, sharper than diamond. “I
just wanted to let you know I might be a little late on that
assignment you foisted on me.”

Ah.
Well, I can hardly blame her for being mad. Especially, now that I
think about it, since I’m
in a bar right after leaving her with a single day to complete an
assignment that would take most students at her level at least two
weeks to puzzle out.

Mad
is good, in fact. She needs to be mad. That way we won’t
risk any kind of repeat of this morning’s . . . activities.
“That’s
all right,” I say.
“If you’re
finding it too challenging, I can reassign you something a little
more your speed.”

“Oh,
don’t worry, I can
handle
it. I just plan to make sure it’s
done correctly, and not left in a haphazard mess because someone
didn’t want to spend
the time it deserves.”

The
Grease
wannabe from earlier slides up behind Harper to rest one hand at her
hip as well, his fingers curling around hers in a gesture that’s
far too familiar. “Everything
all right here?” he
says, staring me down.

I
stare right back, and it takes every ounce of self-control I have not
to punch this kid right here. “Perfectly
fine, not that it’s
any of your business.”

“Jack?”
Drew shoots me a
what
the fuck?
look, the
hand holding his beer drifting toward the counter like he can sense
my fight urge rising, and he wants to be ready to either back me up
or hold me off, whichever the scene calls for.

I
ignore everyone but Harper. “Ms.
Reed, thank you for the notice. Drew, have a good one.”
I toss a twenty-pound note onto the bar, never mind that it’s
almost double than the cost of my last drink, and storm out of the
bar.

Patrick’s
arm is still wrapped around me, his fingers toying with mine, trying
to slip between them and grab onto any part of me I’ll
let him hold. It feels nice enough, to have his warm body pressed up
against my side, and his soft, vaguely beer-scented breath brushing
my neck.

But
he’s not the one I
want.

The
one I want just stormed out of this bar like the place is on fire. Oh
right,
after
acting like a total jerkwad. Again.

I
lean over the bar to grin up at the bartender. “Can
I get another JD and coke?”

“Whoa,
easy there.” Patrick
squeezes my hand. “You
already had two. That a good idea?”

“I’m
fine,” I reply
imperiously, shrugging his arm off of me with more confidence than I
actually feel. He’s
probably right; I should wait a little before the next one. But right
now, with the way my day has been going, and now running into Jack
again on top of everything, I’m
just ready to shut off my brain as fast as possible.

“Okay,
okay. You heard the lady,”
he calls to the bartender, unnecessarily, since the bartender’s
already pouring my drink. “One
for me too.”

I
toss it back faster than I probably should, and meander back to our
table with Patrick in tow. Mary Kate and Nick have been exchanging
shots of Fireball chased by cider backs, so they hardly seem to
notice our return—or
that we had left in the first place.

“So
what’s with
Professor Butthurt?”
Patrick inquires as we slide into our seats across from one another.
“Sounds like you
sure got his pants in a twist.”

I
bark out a laugh.
If
only you knew
. “Oh,
he’s just mad that I
called him out for being totally unrealistic. I mean, he gave me this
assignment today, right?”
I tug open my bag to expose the folder, which, now that I’m
looking at it in the bright light of the pub, seems a lot thicker
than it did when we were studying it in his office this morning.
Blinded by infatuation, I didn’t
notice exactly how extensive this project would be, I guess. “And
he asks me to finish it by
tonight
.
While he’s out
here . . . ”
I wave a hand in the bar’s
general direction.

Okay,
so maybe I’m at the
bar too. But something about it still feels unfair—that
he blew me off the way he did this morning, only to go out carousing
himself.

“Professors
these days.” Patrick
huffs in sympathy. “It’s
like they expect us to just be their servants, while they get fat on
their tenure payments. I mean, can you even read all that in a single
day?”

He
reaches for the folder, but I snap it shut, some instinct of
self-preservation telling me not to reveal too much. Jack hasn’t
told the whole class about Eliot yet. He must want to keep it under
wraps while we’re
working—probably
because he’s not
sure the poems actually belong to him yet.

I’m
sure they do, though. You only have to read through them all, listen
to the cadence of the words, the depth and texture of each poem, the
kind of writing you could dive into, swim through for days and still
find something new on every reread.

“I
did read it,” I
reply as I run a hand through my hair. “I
just didn’t have
time to analyze the part I’m
supposed to. Not properly, anyway. I need to spend a lot of time with
this one. More than just a day.”
I groan and sink in my seat before snatching up my drink for another
long draft.

“Screw
him. Forget about the project.”
Patrick gestures in the direction of the folder, his drink sloshing
dangerously close to its rim above the file. I grab it before it can
be subjected to a cider bath. “Just
have fun. It’s start
of the term, you don’t
need extra credit yet.”
He tips his glass in a salute, and I drink with him.

Forgetting
about the project for the time being is easy. But forgetting about
Jack? Not going to be this simple.

A
whole glass of bourbon and coke later, followed by a round of beer
that Patrick bought while I was in the restroom, and I’m
still no closer to driving the image of him out of my mind. It
doesn’t help that
Patrick is clearly a few sheets to the wind and has started taking
every chance he gets to pat my hand on the tabletop, or brush his
foot not-so-casually along my calf.

Maybe
it’s all the alcohol
I’ve had, or maybe
it’s my usual
penchant for making the wrong decision at the wrong time. But my eye
lands on a small square beside our table: Professor Jack Kingston’s
business card. Complete with home address. The address where he
demanded I drop off this assignment before the night is through.

Suddenly,
I know exactly what I want to do: Give that ass a piece of my mind.

I
grab my bag, stuffing a few stray papers that have escaped into it as
well. Finally, I snatch up the business card and study the street
address. Only a couple blocks from here—I
recognize it from the night I hobbled around town looking for Mary
Kate’s Tarts and
Vicars fancy dress party.

The
night that started this whole mess.

I
stick the card into my pocket and throw on my coat.

“Hey,
hey, where you going? I was just getting another round!”
Patrick reaches for my hand again in an attempt to pull me toward the
bar instead.

“Sorry,
at my limit. Besides, I’ve
got class in the morning.”
I tap on MK’s
shoulder, give her a wave to let her know I’m
headed out.

“Text
me to say you got back safe?”
she shouts over the din of the bar room.

I
flash her a thumbs up and nod at Nick and Patrick. Patrick, alas, is
at the point of drunken stupor where he won’t
be dissuaded that easily. He trails me toward the door as I go,
leaning over to protest in my ear every step of the way.

“I
don’t have to get
another round, ya know. I would sacrifice that for your sake, love.”
He presses a hand to his chest. “I’m
a true gentleman like that. You need an escort home? Or maybe to my
home?”

I
can’t help laughing,
though I do shove him aside. “
Such
a gentleman, clearly. Thanks, but no thanks.”

“Rain
check then. Tomorrow night?”
He winks.

I
roll my eyes. “Good
night
,
Patrick.”

“You
wound me, Harper. But I maintain hope!”

“Good
luck with that,” I
call over my shoulder as I elbow my way out of the pub. The cool
night air hits me like a breath of fresh oxygen. It should knock some
sense into me, but instead it emboldens me.