Teach Me (3 page)

“Well
you guys definitely win ballsiest move of the night,”
he says in an American accent, his eyes drifting to the broken wooden
stall beside us. “What
have
you done to the confessional?”
With a shock I recognize him. It’s
the guy Mary Kate went up to the roof with, the one from my exchange
group.

No
one else behind him looks familiar, but I haven’t
exactly memorized the whole campus yet.

What
have I done?

“I’ve
got to go,” I call
over my shoulder without turning around. I can’t
let him see my face, and I don’t
want to see his. If I do, if I look at him . . . This
will all get way too real, way too fast.

“Wait,”
he says, but I’m
already flinging myself out of the booth, letting my now-very-mussed
hair hide my burning face as best it can. The group who found us
laugh and cheer as I race past, but I don’t
stop for high fives. I make a beeline through the karaoke-filled
living room, straight into the hallway. My coat swings on a hook
there—I yank it
free, throw it around my shoulders, and text Mary Kate from the
hallway.

I’m
going home. Sorry I can’t
stay.

I
know it’s a dick
move, skipping out without a goodbye. But this is MK’s
party. These are her friends. She’ll
be fine.

I’m
the one who needs the chaperone.

#

“You
don’t even know his
name
?”
MK exclaims as we meander toward our first class, the one I really
ought to be conscious for. Twentieth-Century English Poetry, the
subject I specifically came here to study, with the professor I
idolize. Now, I’m
going to look like a total wreck on day one. Great first impression.

The
tall, crenelated medieval buildings of our campus look somewhat less
inspiring at the ass-crack of dawn.

Okay,
so it’s 8:00 a.m.,
but that feels impossibly early after I stayed up all night in the
dorm room replaying the party in an endless loop of embarrassment.

Embarrassment,
and some—what did he
call them? Impure thoughts.

“I
already regret admitting anything,”
I mutter between sips of my espresso. Coffee here kind of sucks, but
I’ve got to admit,
their espresso is the shit. Or at least, it makes me feel marginally
less like shit, which after a night like the last one, is a minor
miracle.

“Oh,
please. Nick already told me how he found you. Like I’d
let you get away without answering at least some basic questions. How
hot was he, scale of one to fuck-me-stupid?”

A
group of girls crossing the green in the opposite direction, their
patent leather shoes clacking on the cobblestones, glance our way.
Were they at the party last night? Did someone tell them about me?

My
cheeks flush.

“I
told you, I didn’t
see his face.”

The
girls pass us without a second glance. I’m
getting paranoid.

“
At
all
?”
Hearing her posh accent in such a shocked tone wins a slight grin
from me. “Wow,
Harper, I know you always tell me you’re
trouble, but that’s
a new high.”

“Oh
shut up. You’d have
been tempted too if you heard his voice.”

“The
accent? I thought you were immune to such charms by this point.
You’ve only been
over here visiting me half a dozen times.”

“I’ve
never heard an accent like his.”
I catch myself, and clear my throat. Almost drifted into dreamy for a
second there. I definitely
do
not
have a crush on
the sort of guy who would go down on me at a costume party in a
closet. “It was fun,
that’s all,”
I say out loud.

MK
points at a door that looks more like a hobbit hole than a classroom
entrance. It’s so
short she has to duck as she enters, though for little 5’5”
me it’s nothing. We
step through the arched stone entrance and into a room paneled in
dark wood. A dais surrounded by chalkboards stands at the head of the
room. Stadium desks rise around it, each one equipped with an
uncomfortable-looking chair.

We
slide into seats in the second row, high enough so that we’re
looking down a few feet at the professor as he sets up.

MK
elbows me and leans over to whisper in my ear. “Should
I warn you to behave yourself again?”
she asks with a grin in teacher’s
direction.

Jack
Kingston, leading expert in twentieth-century poets and a star
professor of Merton College,
is
pretty damn hot, I must admit. Dark eyes that match his choppy,
neck-length, jet black hair, and the kind of angled, severely
masculine face you’d
expect to see on billboards, not in front of a classroom. His nose is
a little long, but it works on his face, gives him that distinguished
academic air.

“I
might be reckless, but I’m
not
that
stupid,” I hiss back
at MK. Dating professors is where I draw the line. Even back home
with Derrick, I made sure he was only a TA before I let anything
happen.

Only
a TA. Are you listening to yourself?
I heave a sigh and sink lower in my desk chair. It’s
going to be a long day.

While
the rest of the students file into their seats, I flip open my
notebook and jot down the notes already scrawled across the board.
Because even more than escaping from my litany of exes, even more
than spending a semester with MK exploring a whole new country, this
class, this professor, is the reason I’m
here in Oxford.

Back
home, I’ve already
declared my focus on T. S.
Eliot, who not so coincidentally attended this very college.
Professor Kingston is a leading scholar on his work, the author of
the paper that inspired me to start studying Eliot in the first
place.

I
need to forget the hookup, forget everything except this class.

We’re
starting with Seamus Heaney. We’d
been assigned ten of his poems to read before class, and an essay on
those same poems due in a couple of days. I have to admit, though, I
only skimmed the last one, “The
Gravel Walks.”
Someone
insisted on dragging me out to a party instead. I cast Mary Kate a
sideways glance. She’s
busy batting her eyelashes at Professor Dreamboat.

Finally,
the clock on the wall hits 8:30 and Dreamboat breaks the hum and
chatter of the room with a clap of his hands. “Let’s
get down to business, shall we?”

My
eyes snap forward, lock onto him the moment he speaks.

No.

He
claps his hands and turns that stately, chiseled profile on us. “I
recognize most of you from eighteenth century—glad
you all decided my class was worth a second go-round. For those of
you who don’t know
me, my name is Jack Kingston; you can call me Jack, Professor JK,
Prof, I really don’t
care what, as long as you do the readings and participate.”

No
way. No goddamn way.

“As
you know—hopefully—we
are starting with Seamus Heaney, one of the great Irish poets of our
time. Heaney won the Nobel Prize in 1995, and penned, in my opinion,
some of the greatest literature not just of the twentieth century,
but the English canon on the whole. You’ll
have read ten of his best in preparation for today’s
class—in fact, one
of the lines from one of those poems is the epitaph on his
gravestone. Can anyone guess which line that was?”

His
eyes meet mine, and for a moment he frowns, faintly, as though
confused. Probably because I’m
gaping at him in abject horror.

“How
about you, Miss . . . ?”
He lifts an eyebrow, clearly waiting for me to tell him my name.

I
can’t force any
sound through my throat. It’s
permanently closed. My brain has checked out. I manage to shut my
mouth, open it again, then clamp my lips tight and shake my head.

Beside
me, MK lifts an eyebrow, clearly wondering if I’m
suffering a mental breakdown.

Professor
Jack Kingston waits another moment, blinks a few times, and then
calls on a boy across the room, waving his hand frantically in the
air. “Yes, Henry?”

I
already know what Henry’s
going to say, even before he opens his mouth. I remember where I’ve
heard that line of poetry now, too late to save myself. Far too late.

“ ‘Walk
on air against your better judgment,’
sir,” Henry
recites.

“Very
good,” replies
our famous
professor, the man I came here hoping to study with.

The
guy I hooked up with last night.

I
close my eyes and I’m
in the confessional booth again, my hands digging into her soft,
supple skin, pulling her against me, her salty sweet taste filling my
mouth. I want to keep going, flip her over and bury myself to the
hilt in that tight, wet little pussy, go at her until we’re
both gasping, and—

I
force my eyes open and stare at my empty classroom.
Focus,
Jack.
Jump off that
train of thought before it gets me into trouble.

Besides,
my mystery American is already long gone. She said she was up from
London; no doubt she’s
headed back there even now, miles away, completely out of my reach.

It’s
better that way.

I
shove myself onto my feet and pull out a piece of chalk, jotting down
some preliminary thoughts on the boards. We’re
starting with Heaney, because I already assigned them the readings. I
would rather skip ahead to the big announcement, the sheaf of papers
the Merton librarian found stuck between a pair of the dullest botany
texts in the entire college, which likely explains why no one found
them before now.

We’re
still in the process of analyzing them, but they look like they might
be early workings from T. S.
Eliot himself, an alum of Merton, which he attended during the First
World War.

I’ve
petitioned the dean of the college to organize a graduate seminar
around them, so I can recruit my lead doctoral candidates to help
analyze the texts. We’ll
likely need an undergraduate aid as well, someone to play research
lackey. But that will look great on a CV, if nothing else. Any number
of my usual students would kill for the position.

Depending
how well this class does with Heaney, I might even recruit from here,
Henry or Jenny, maybe. They’re
all here for twentieth-century poets, so there are doubtless a few
Eliot aficionados among them. We’ll
see how they tackle Heaney’s
themes and go from there.

A
door creaks open somewhere in the back of the room. I turn, ready to
greet the first wave of new students, on our first day back to class.

The
smile freezes on my lips.

Hannah
stands in the doorway, leaning one shoulder against the frame, a wide
smile playing on her lips. “I
hear you went to Drew and Mindy’s
party last night.”

She
knows,
my gut screams
at me. I tamp that thought down. Ridiculous. How could she possibly?

Anyway,
it’s none of her
bloody business. “I
did,” I reply,
purposefully grabbing a sheaf of papers to shuffle together so I
don’t have to watch
her studying me.

I
can still sense her, though. Analyzing. Judging. Same Hannah as
always.

“Did
you dress as a vicar or a tart?”
Her tone is playful, but I hear ice under it.

I
heave a sigh and lift my eyes to hers. “Hannah,
please. My first class starts in five minutes. Can we do this some
other time?”

Her
eyes flash, though whether it’s
with anger or triumph, I can no longer tell. Seems like it’s
always one or the other these days. Anger at me, for not being
enough. Triumph every time she puts me in my place, yet again reminds
me that I’m the scum
of the earth, that even my own mother sides with her. “So
sorry to inconvenience you. Let me know when you have time to pencil
me into your little black book. Maybe you can jot me down for a slot
between your next series of drunken parties.”
She slams the door behind her, so hard the windowpanes, which are
probably older than me, rattle in their frames.

Great.
One of those third years in the living room singing karaoke must have
recognized me, told Mindy, who told her. Mindy is also Team Hannah,
as she reminds me every time the subject of my dating life, or lack
thereof, comes up.

I
fall into my chair with a groan, all excitement at the thought of the
Eliot seminar and my announcement gone. When Hannah emailed me to say
she’d be back from
sabbatical this semester, no hard feelings, and she hoped we could
get dinner and catch up as friends, I thought that this year would be
different. That she would finally accept that I am not the guy to
give her what she wants—the
ring on her finger, the little country house with a white picket
fence, babies, the whole package. That’s
just not me.

Unfortunately,
even after her year abroad “finding
herself” in South
Africa, she still seems convinced that we’re
Meant To Be. Hannah, and practically everyone in my friend circle.

My
thoughts on the matter don’t
seem to be a concern.

The
doors open again, and I jump, but it’s
just students this time. I bury myself in reading for as long as I
possibly can, rereading “The
Gravel Walks” just
to soothe my nerves. Okay, and maybe because it reminds me that,
whatever the fallout, I’m
glad I did take that chance last night.
Walk
on air against your better judgment.
Take chances, live in the real world, but explore the fantasy realm
as well.

I
might not be the marriage and babies kind of guy, but that doesn’t
mean I need to live my whole life like a saint.

Or
a vicar. Ha ha.

Finally,
the last of the students seems to have arrived, so I start the
lecture. For the most part it goes well; Jenny and Keith and Henry
have all returned for more of my banter, which makes me happy. I
enjoy having engaged students, pupils who really want to participate.
The ones who have as much passion for this subject as I do make all
the bullshit I deal with worthwhile. If I could just teach those
students, all day every day, my life would be complete.