So he’d rather pay me than deal with the headache. Especially after last year when his attempt to fix something on his own went sideways and nearly a thousand invoices vanished from the database.
“You should have an email…right about now,” I tell him quietly.
“Perfecto, gracias, Amelita! You saved my life. You know my poor heart can’t take these jobs anymore, but what can one do? Life is expensive,mija,” he says, laughing, and once again I roll my eyes at the dramatics, which I’ll admit work on me every single time.
“Anytime,” I say, hanging up and glancing at the corner of my screen to find I have exactly one minute to get to class. I couldn’t make it even if I flew.
I shove my laptop into my bag and spin around…straight into someone’s chest. My glasses go slightly crooked from the impact,but I’d recognize that combination of fresh laundry and mint anywhere.
For Euclid’s sake, I helped someone not even sixty seconds ago. Where’s my good karma?
“Miss Sanchez. I see that rolling your eyes in the hallway takes priority over arriving on time to my class,” says Silas Vaughn, looking at me like he has X-ray vision and can see straight through to my gray matter.
I straighten my glasses and tug my pink sweater back into place.
“It was an emergency,” I mutter.
“I’m sure you single-handedly stopped an alien invasion from that windowsill.”
I almost roll my eyes again but catch myself at the last second (thanks Almighty Gauss), because he clearly doesn’t understand that a stressedseñorGustav is worse than any alien invasion.
The one time the man called me with an emergency and I didn’t pick up for twelve minutes because I was in the shower, he was already on his third heart pill by the time I called back.
How someone that brilliant can be that much of a worrier is genuinely beyond me.
Rich coming from you, Amalia.
“I don’t teach vectors in the hallway, Miss Sanchez,” he says at last, taking two steps back to let me pass.
No, that course would be called “How to Be More Insufferable Than the Three Perpendiculars Theorem.”
By the grace of Gauss, my thoughts stay exactly where they are.
I feel his footsteps behind me, so I force my legs to widen the gap. When the lecture hall comes into view, I exhale with relief and practically sprint through the door. I drop into the front row, spread out every marker I own, and sit up straight, eyes on the heading written on the board.
A moment later, two guys walk in laughing, like class hasn’t technically been in session for the past ten minutes. One is tall, close to six foot four, with dark curly hair. The other has a close-cropped cut and an outfit whose brand I could read from the moon.
The relaxed way they stroll in earns them a sharp look from Professor Vaughn.
I’m fairly convinced the sign above his classroom door should read:
Enjoys watching people suffer. Please be visibly distressed upon entry.
“Next time you’re late, don’t bother coming in at all. Punctuality is a virtue I like to cultivate.”
Muffled apologies ripple through the room, but I find myself staring at Professor Vaughn in quiet disbelief because he was late to his own class, yet apparently the rules apply selectively.
And because the Almighty Gauss has clearly clocked out and there’s no one left to stop my mouth, I hear myself whisper, “A virtue that apparently doesn’t apply to professors.”
The second the words leave my lips, I want to slam my face into the desk because his eyes cut straight to me.
Of course he heard every word.
A slow, subtle smile pulls at the corner of his mouth, and I swallow hard as I watch him take two deliberate steps in my direction. He shifts his gaze across the back rows, and instantly every whisper in the room dies.
Is it weird that I can already tell he’s planning something guaranteed to fry my brain?
“You. The tall one who walked in late. Come down to the front, next to Miss Sanchez,” he says, and I feel the panic climb straight up into my chest.
