Page 20 of Falling for the Quarterback

He snickers and grabs the T-shirt he threw on my couch last night, pulling it over his head, and slips into his shoes. “Well, let me walk you.”

“No, it’s fine,” I blurt out quickly, probably too quickly. “I need time to think…alone…about my research paper.”

I don’t even say goodbye, I just start running the minute I’m off my front porch, hoping he won’t follow me but secretly wishing he would.

Gah. What is wrong with me? I’m giving myself mental whiplash over these feelings I have for Joel. I cannot in good conscience see him outside of class and then, once the semester is over, we won’t ever need to speak again.

My mind flashes back to the way his tongue swirled around my nipples last night and I groan to myself. Who am I kidding? This man is my kryptonite. How in the hell am I going to be able to stay away from him?

My phone is in hand and my earbuds in, so I call the one person who can talk some sanity into me.

“Poppy?” I say as she answers.

“Are you dead?” she asks.

“I’m literally calling you, so no,” I grumble. Sometimes Poppy’s sarcasm can reach levels that almost annoy me. Only sometimes. Like now, when I’m madder than a hatter at myself for falling back into bed with my student.

Oh, Sweet Jesus. I am such a stupid twat.

“Why are you a twat?” Her voice interjects over my self-flagellation. “I’d call you more of a wench.”

Shit, I said that out loud.

“Piss off,” I say. Her cackling laughter burns a hole in my ear. I stop and bend over at the waist, placing one hand on my hip, and take a fortifying gulp of air. “I need you to talk some sense into me and tell me to act like an adult.”

She’s quiet for a beat. “You didn’t call Oliver in a moment of loneliness, did you?”

“No, absolutely not!”

“Okay, well, it can’t be worse than that,” she says matter-of-factly. “So, what is it? Who’d you sleep with? And was it good?”

“Oh. My. God… so good,” I respond pitifully.

She laughs and I roll my eyes. As much as Poppy wants me to have fun, she also knows how much this job means to me.

“I slept with Joel again.”

Dead silence.

This time the pause is more than a beat. I hear her suck in a breath.

“I’m sorry…what did you say? I think I just heard that you slept with your student again?”

After the first day of classes, I’d called Poppy and told her about the whole sordid ordeal. How I called him into my office afterward and laid down the law and how he willfully ignored it.

“I met with Hubert last night at a local pub and Joel showed up and then one thing led to another and suddenly I was kissing him and I brought him home,” I finish in one long breath.

“Let me see if I got this straight. You fucked a rando on a ski trip last spring. Then, that rando turns out to be one of your grad students, who you’ve expressly forbidden yourself to interact with outside of class, and then you fucked him again last night?” she recounts incredulously. “Is that correct, Professor Butler?”

I mentally flip my best friend off but grant her the acknowledgment. “Yes, you are correct. It was a complete mistake,” I reply as I stop in front of a bench and plop down on it. I lower my head into my free hand and twirl the lanyard with my campus ID and key ring around my thumb. “I regret I made a horrible and irresponsible decision and it will never happen again.”

Even as I say the words, I wonder how I’ll manage to keep this promise to myself and to Poppy when I’m face-to-face with him every week inside my classroom for the remainder of the semester?

“That’s so hot,” she answers, choosing to ignore my need for counseling advice. “And also really fucked up. I’m so proud of you, Lots!”

I heave a sigh of exasperation. “Damn you, Pop. Don’t be proud. Be disgusted. This is a complete clusterfuck made of my own bad decision-making and I’m not sure how to reverse the effects.” I run my hand through my hair, a mess of a reddish crow’s nest that I’ll need to wash before my next meeting.

“So, just tell him you’ll fail him,” she suggests breezily, as if that’s the ethical answer to this unethical problem. “He’s probably a moron, anyway, being that he played American football.”

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