I look to the ceiling and exhale. “Is that seriously all you took from what I just said?” This conversation has to end. We’re going off the rails.
“I heard everything, but you said our kiss was incredible. I’m inclined to agree. Je veux encore t'embrasser.” His eyes are twinkling. TWINKLING, dammit!
I rub my forehead, trying to smooth out the stress wrinkles embedding themselves into my skin. “I have to go.”
I stand and am about to turn when he stops me. “Alis, wait, please. I won’t apologize because I do want to kiss you again, but if you don’t want this, I will let it be.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m not budging on the weekly meetings, but those meetings will be strictly professor/grader. Thirty minutes, tops. I won’t pursue you romantically unless you ask me to.”
Do I believe him? I don’t know. I’d like to think he’ll respect my boundaries, but his flirtatious demeanor during this meeting suggests otherwise.
“I think I can work that into my schedule. I’ll talk with your secretary and find a good day and time each week.”
He nods. “Sounds perfect. I’ll email you the syllabi and some notes about each class. May I walk you out?”
“Thanks, but I can find my way back to Dr. Matthews. I’ll keep an eye out for your email.”
I walk to his office door and he follows, but he stops at the threshold.One point to Dexter for respecting boundaries.
I stop at his secretary’s desk to grab her card and let her know I’ll be emailing her to set up weekly meetings with Dr. Belanger. She smiles and bids me farewell.
I don’t look back at Dexter. Looking back will only make him think I’m lying about the boundaries I’ve set.
He can’t think that I want him. ForgetthinkingI want him — I straight up CANNOT want him. A professor/student romantic relationship is a line I won’t cross, even if he doesn’t see the problem. I know what happens when people blur the lines, and it’s not worth the fallout.
Once I’ve retrieved my items from Dr. Matthews and bid her farewell, I head back to my car and sit in the parking lot. My thoughts are spinning, taking me back to the darkest time of my life, and I can’t dig my way out of this mental sinkhole.
The drama surrounding my snap decision to drop out of grad school still haunts me to this day. I don’t dwell on what happened, but those wounds are deep and I still feel the scars of betrayal and loss. You’d think after nine years I’d be over it.
I didn’t expect the memories to resurface so forcefully with this fresh start, but life has a way of dishing out a gut punch when everything seems fine and dandy. Why can’t anything be simple? All I want is to finish my degree, maybe continue on with my PhD, and teach. Is that too much to ask?
After what happened with Dr. Ryan I wasn’t on campus to fight my way through the gossip, but social media painted a pretty clear picture of my tarnished reputation among the student body. The messages I received are still burned into my memory.
“Oh my gosh you whore how could you sleep with a married man?!”
“OMG OMG OMG you and Dr. Ryan?! You lucky bitch!”
“So you won’t give me a second date but you’ll suck off a professor? That’s fucking sick.”
“Please tell me you have dick pics.”
“Where the hell are you? You get caught fucking a prof and then you disappear? Coward.”
“Now we know how you landed the TA spot. You must deepthroat like a porn star to beat out students who actually deserved the job.”
God bless the creator of social media. Who knew the Internet would give people the courage to say what they really feel? Never mind that their words destroy others.
Part of me wishes I had been on campus to defend myself and my character, but everything in my life fell apart in a matter of days and I didn’t have the energy to fight off an insecure woman, a spineless man, and a student body full of idiots who believe everything they hear, no matter how absurd. Regardless of how hard I worked and how quickly it was destroyed, none of it mattered after that day.
For all I know I became a legend at Grant University. Dr. Ryan is charismatic and inspires devotion from his students. I have no idea what the man looks like now —please, please be balding— but a decade ago in his early forties he oozed geek chic. Who knew anyone could consider argyle attractive? I think the coeds were more attracted to his charisma than his looks — not that he was ugly or anything, but he wasn’t Adonis by a long shot.
“Dr. Ryan — more like Dr. Ride Him!”I wish I was joking. No creativity points awarded to the sorority bimbos. This one girl, Michelle, used to stare at his butt and make comments under her breath about biting it. I don’t think she realized I could hear her talking to herself about seducing our professor, and I never let on that her “secret” crush was actually public knowledge.
Skye always got a kick out of my weekly Michelle reports. “What part of Dr. Ryan did Michelle have for lunch today?” she’d ask. Now that I think about it, Michelle must have had one hell of an oral fixation. She always fantasized about biting, licking, sucking, nibbling —Gross.
Did I think Dr. Ryan was attractive? Sure. However, I was not a twenty-one-year-old girl with daddy issues, nor did I have an older man fetish. I was so consumed with my studies and goals that I didn’t have time to date, much less lust after my faculty supervisor.
