Authors: Lauren Gilley
The look in her eyes was devastating. “You’re such an idiot,” she said softly. “Is that what this is about? More of your bad blood bullshit?”
His hands curled into fists on his thighs.
“I have three brothers,” she snapped. “Have you met them all? They all have the same DNA and isn’t it remarkable how
exactly alike
they are?”
“No, Tam,” she pressed on when he didn’t answer, “I don’t have a decision to make, but clearly you do. I’m having a baby. And you can either get on board with that, or not.”
7
“
M
s. Grayson?”
So preoccupied with sliding her books into her school bag as she walked up the aisle between desks, it took Ellie a moment to realize that her World Lit professor was trying to catch her attention.
She stepped aside as students bustled past her and adjusted the strap of her bag on her shoulder. “Yes?” she asked as Professor Lawrence perched on the edge of his desk in front of her.
He was one of her favorites; soft-spoken, bespectacled and a lover of old herringbone jackets with elbow patches, he was the embodiment of every cinematic bookworm and seemed to be the best kind of teacher, one who cared.
He cleaned his black-rimmed glasses as the rest of the students filed out, presumably to stall, then gave her a small, soft smile when he replaced them. “Your essay was the highest grade in the class,” he said of their first writing assignment. It was only Wednesday of the second week of class and they’d had a piece about their preconceived notions of myth due on Monday. He’d handed the papers back at the start of class and when she’d seen her ninety-nine, she’d assumed there had been a one hundred somewhere else in the room. “I was impressed you did so much research” - his smile tweaked - “considering you didn’t have to include any at all.”
An embarrassed but pleased warmth crept up her neck. “Sorry, I got a bit carried away.”
“Oh, don’t apologize. I think you actually might have solved a problem for me. Have you heard about the writing center?”
She had. All her freshman packets had featured the school’s answer to campus English tutoring: students of every major could access writing assistance for free.
“Yes,” she said carefully, not so pleased anymore. “I don’t need to go, do I?”
“No,” he chuckled. “I actually wanted to talk to you about volunteering up there, if you have the time. We’ve been very short-handed. Do you have a minute?”
Ellie dreamed, more than anything, of walking into a bookstore and passing her hand across the cover of a book with her name on it. And because she was always searching for those stepping stones that would take her to that dream, whatever their form, she told Professor Lawrence that, yes, she did have a minute, and went upstairs with him to the English building office so she could talk with him and two other professors about giving a little of her time to the writing center. She smiled, gracious and polite, right up until she hit the front steps of the building and then she swore under her breath as she checked the time on her cell phone. Today was the mile-and-a-half time test in her HPS class, and she was forty minutes late.
“Oh no,” she groaned as she neared the heart of campus and saw students in sweats walking and jogging around the circular sidewalk that looped the green. As she drew closer, faces became more distinct. Paige whirled both arms around like a windmill when she spotted her.
“Where the hell have you been?!”
“English stuff,” she said as she hurried across the sidewalk and onto the grass. She’d long ago stopped flooding her friend with “all the boring details,” and Paige rolled her eyes, but nodded.
Coach Walker was not hard to spot. The ultra trim, uber fit guy with the stopwatch in hand would have been a dead giveaway regardless, but Ellie’s gaze was pulled to his messy hair and the easy, graceful stance that reminded her of a gazelle. He had his free hand propped loosely on his hip and was watching the field of students with disinterest. “Six minutes!” he called as she approached him from behind.
Ellie hoped last Friday was a point in her favor. “Coach Walker?”
When he turned to face her, she thought his big, blue-green eyes sparked with recognition and curiosity before a flat professionalism closed them down. They traveled up and down her white Bermuda shorts and peasant top. “You’re gonna run a six minute mile and a half in that? Good luck.”
His sense of humor was most likely the thing that had driven away his date the other night. “Well, as fun as that sounds,” she said with a painted-on smile, “I wanted to know if there’s any way I can make up today’s walk somehow.”
He glanced away from her, eyes following the students who walked and jogged past them. “That would be considered preferential treatment.”
Ellie didn’t have her sister’s blonde hair to whip around or second-skin mini dress to hike up. When she wanted to persuade someone, words were her only tool. “Oh, well, not really. Not if you think about it,” she said with a false, cheery brightness. “All of my other professors offer makeups for tests and quizzes. And this is just a test, isn’t it? I read the syllabus front to back and nowhere in it did you mention that you would not allow makeups, so by excluding the statement, you - ”
“Christ.” He held up a hand and her teeth clicked together. “If I say ‘yes’, can I skip the rest of your essay on it?”
Coach Walker was not smiling, but he wasn’t frowning either. His bland expression was so carefully pinned in place she had no idea what was going on in his head, but his eyes…Maybe it was the sun beginning its trek toward the horizon, or her imagination, but she thought she saw a glimmer of something encouraging in them.
“It’s a pretty good essay, though,” she said before she could stop herself, and then she was sure he was working not to smile.
“Meet me here, dressed out, at ten till five. If you’re late - ”
“I won’t be.”
**
You’re a dumbass
, Jordan scolded himself as he clicked off the lights in “his” office and headed for the stairs, stopwatch in hand, backpack sliding off one shoulder. His student, Ellie – and he hated that he recalled her name without a moment’s hesitation – hadn’t been wrong: he didn’t have an official policy on making up physical tests. But he had a feeling that had any other student asked him to stay late and time his mileage, he would have had no trouble telling him he was shit out of luck. But an eighteen-year-old freshman with a great rack asks him, and he just can’t agree to it fast enough.
Dumbass.
By the time he made his way down the staircase and out through one of the ten or so sets of double doors in the front of the convocation center, he’d convinced himself that she wouldn’t show. But when he hit the sidewalk that bordered the campus green, his eyes scanned the area and latched onto a brunette figure in track shorts and a white tank top leaned back against a concrete bench. Her eyes were fixed on the Frisbee game taking place on the green, a bored expression on her lovely face, and she was built like God had looked inside his head and used the fantasies he found there to construct Jordan’s ideal physical specimen of a woman.
She turned toward him when he set his bag on the bench beside her, dark chocolate hair fanning around her shoulders. “Dressed out at ten till five,” she said with a small, pleased smile that made her gray eyes dance.
“I see that,” he said dryly. Yes, he was definitely seeing
all
of it, tits to toes.
“So how does this work?”
“Well, generally, you would use
both
feet.”
She had one of those smiles that stole across her face, the kind that caught people off guard. She rolled her eyes as she stood and smoothed the hemline of her shorts. “That part, believe it or not, I figured out on my own. I meant: what do you want me to do?”
That question sent his mind on a little field trip.
Lots of things, sweetheart
.
God, when had he turned into such a jaded fucking letch?
The sidewalk ran a loop around the green. “I fudged the distance since one lap isn’t an exact anything. I’ll time you on ten laps and if you finish in the allowed time, you pass.” He resisted the urge to grin. “But I thought you’d know that what with highlighting my syllabus and all.”
She took the ribbing with a shrug. “Ten laps?”
“Yeah.”
He didn’t expect her to start off at a jog, but he clicked the start on the stopwatch and got as comfortable on the bench as possible. When she was halfway around the green, Jordan realized his staring had reached a whole new level of personal creepiness. When she reached the three-quarter point, she slowed to a walk. And by the time she passed in front of him, he’d decided something.
It had been a long time since he’d found anything truly interesting about a female. This one was hot
and
interesting. Even if she was too young, his student no less, and she probably thought he was a weird-ass, he wasn’t hurting anybody by…talking to her.
Yeah. Talking. Because that was all he wanted to do. Just talk.
Jordan stood and fell into step beside her as she started her second lap, and Ellie glanced at him with an odd mixture of curiosities he couldn’t label.
“I thought I’d keep you company.”
“Oh, you don’t have to.”
“Do you want me to sit back down?”
Jordan watched her and thought she blushed, her cheeks pinking. “No…I just, didn’t want you to feel obligated or anything.”
He’d taken his usual run that morning and then worked out with his wannabe trio of track stars before his first class. “I could use the exercise,” he said with a shrug, and watched her cover a laugh with her hand. “What?”
“Yeah,
you
need the exercise.”
There was nothing like a backward compliment. Jordan kept his face neutral. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Her smile told him she knew he was playing dumb on purpose. “Please.” She was most definitely blushing. “You have zero percent body fat.” Her face looked like it was racing toward magenta, her grin trembling with embarrassment as she faced forward.
Jordan grinned as he watched her try to beat back her flush, and he should have taken a cue from her. Then he might not have walked right into a student loaded down with yellow bags from the school bookstore.
They collided with a sound like big horn sheep ramming their heads together and Jordan felt the breath get knocked out of him in a rush. Books and bags fell to the concrete and Jordan lost his stopwatch. The student was a hulking Lurch of a guy who threw a mile long shadow across the sidewalk, and for one perilous moment that could have turned mortifying, Jordan thought he was going to do an ass-plant as he struggled to regain his balance.
“Are you okay?” Ellie asked once she’d helped gather the student’s belongings and they’d seen him on his way.
Jordan glanced over and saw the laughter bubbling behind her eyes. Her mouth twitched. “Major ego contusions, but yeah.”
A laugh burst out of her and it was the throaty, happy punch of sound of a woman, and not the nervous twittering of a little girl. It made him feel better, on multiple fronts.
“Shit.” He massaged his shoulder. “That was like running into a goddamn wall.”
Ellie had been overtaken by a case of the giggles, a hand pressed to her side. “Your face!” she gasped. “You should have seen your face when he hit you!”
“That funny, huh?” he asked, but chuckled.
“It was like - ” She pressed her palm to her cheek and rolled her eyes back in her head.
“That bad?”
“Maybe worse.”
Jordan laughed, and then realized it had been a matter of years since a girl besides his little sister had pried one out of him.
“Okay,” Ellie said as she took a deep breath and the chuckles died away. “You getting injured isn’t going to add time onto my walk, is it?”