My jaw dropped. “Un-freaking-believeable,” I hissed.
Ashley giggled again. “I wish he’d take my phone. I’d tell him to put his number in the contacts while he’s at it.”
I scowled at her but she didn’t notice. She only had eyes for Ash.
At the front of the room, Ashton folded his arms across his chest, his biceps trying to bust through his sleeves. His cheeks were tinged with pink, clearly upset. What was with him lately? “As you revisit the text, pay close attention to the shifts in perspective and the blurring of past and present. How does this narrative approach reflect the broader modernist preoccupation with subjective experience?”
Great. Now I was phone-less and forced to listen to this cerebral chloroform.
Ashley had her phone out. I don’t know if she was hoping he’d take it or what—but when she tapped the record button on the TikTok app, my curiosity was piqued. I leaned in closer. She turned the screen so I could see as she zoomed in on Ashton’s eyes. She bit her bottom lip. After fifteen seconds she pressed stop and then wrote a caption that said:POV:You're trying to focus on the lecture, but the professor's bedroom eyes are like two sky-blue black holes sucking in your GPA.
She stared at Ashton and her twitterpated expression reminded me of the way teenaged me used to stare at my poster of Zac Efron every night. I had the sudden urge to tear the phone from her hands the way Ash had just done to me.
Weird. What did I care if she ogled Ash?
She whispered right next to my ear. “The one I posted of him last week got fifty-two thousand views.”
My head jerked back in surprise. Fifty-two thousand views?
“Thirty-eight thousand, the one before that.”
As she typed in some hashtags, I looked at the name of the account. PeerReviewedHottie. What the? I scanned the grid of posts. Holy crap. She’d made an entire account dedicated to videos of Ashton. I squinted, zooming in. Tens of thousands of women were following an account starring Ashton? I glared at the side of Ashley’s head. But as she sent his “Bedroom Eyes” off into TikTokland, I retracted my claws. She was probably trying to distract her way through this class, the same as me.
I glanced back at Ashton who was putting everyone into a lecture coma with his fancy words and deep, soothing voice. I slumped down in my chair, pretending to take notes for the rest of class.
As soon as he dismissed us, Ashton walked over wearing an annoyed expression. Ashley’s breath hitched when he stopped in front of me. “I want to see you in my office in five minutes.”
“Lucky,” Ashley tittered.
If Ashton heard, he gave nothing away. He was too busy scowling at me.
I bit back a growl of irritation. “Is that so?” I stood and held my hand out for my phone. “Maybe you forgot, but thisis college. Not high school. You can’t be taking people’s phones away, Ashton.”
Ashley gasped.
His jaw tightened. “Professor. Dupree.” He reached into his pocket and pulled the phone out.
I ripped it from his grasp.
His brow cocked in a warning. “Five minutes.” I could almost see the steam rolling off his head. It was uncharacteristic. We always gave each other a hard time, but not in class and definitely not with an audience of other students.
“Fine,” I agreed, but only because I’d been trying to get an appointment with him for weeks anyway. I was tired of being left on read. Of him not responding to anything—from questions about writing to hilarious memes. Exiting class so fast I couldn’t catch him. It was like he forgot he was my thesis advisor.
As he strode away, a muscle tried to burst out of the shoulder of his shirt. He either needed to size up or stop going to the gym so much.
“I can’t believe you called him by his first name.” Ashley gaped. “Or that you talked to him like that.”
“He’s not God, Ashley.” I was feeling an inordinate amount of irritation toward my classmate, I don’t know why. “He’s just a man. A boring man at that.” Her face scrunched up like she’d never heard something so concerning. Or like maybe she thought something was wrong with my mental state.
I picked up my messenger bag. “His singing voice could shatter glass, and when he dances, it looks like there’s been an earthquake and he can’t get steady.” I might’ve been overdoing it a little. He hardly ever sang and when he did, it was so quiet you could hardly hear. And his dancing was…okay. But Ashton needed to come down in her eyes a notch. Or fifteen.
Her mouth fell open so wide I could see her tonsils.
Iwaved my hand, hoping she’d remove the dumbfounded expression from her face. “He’s my best friend’s uncle.” And one ofmybest friends, or so I’d thought before he started ghosting me a few weeks ago. “I’ve known him forever.”
I regretted it as soon as I said it. Letting people know that Ashton and I were friends—former friends?—could be problematic. But I was almost done with the program, and I was definitely done with everyone fawning over him.
I heaved my bag over my shoulder and strode out of the room before a string of questions flew out of her mouth.
