Page 11 of You've Got a Place Here, Too
“Celine,” he hisses, glancing sharply at the open door and barely giving me time to enjoy the first time he’s used my Christian name. “Don’t say that. You do not have…That’s not what this is.”
“I’m twenty-one, not twelve. Old enough to know what I feel. I’m an adult.”
“Then act like it.” His brows snap together and his full lips thin. “It was irresponsible to broadcast that shit in front of everyone. What were you thinking?”
“That Monday is our last class.” I bite my lip and blink at tears, feeling like the child I claimed not to be. “That I’m going to New York and you’re going…wherever you’re going once thesemester is over. And that this was my only chance to tell you how I feel.”
“But you didn’t tell me how you feel. You read a poem about soldiers and white flags. You didn’t tell me anything.”
“Then how do you know it all?” Ragged breaths heave my chest. “If I said nothing, then how did you know?”
He shakes his head. “I didn’t mean—”
“Tell me the truth.” I step closer, until my head almost touches his chin. Tipping my head back to stare up at him, I lose myself for a stolen moment; the class, the campus, the world fall away, and our roles and inhibitions follow. He’s not the teacher and I’m not the student.
He’s just him. I’m just her.
The tight space barely separating our bodies boils with heat and tension. He doesn’t step back and I want to tip up on my toes and kiss him. His pupils are a dark flare, blown wide in the blaze of his eyes. He has such a beautiful mouth, and I can’t drag my gaze away when he licks his lips, a gesture one could mistake for nervousness.
“Stop that.” He drops his head and it brings our lips even closer. It tangles our breaths. “Stop looking at me that way, Ms. Wallace.”
“Oh, we’re back to Ms. Wallace, are we? And how exactly am I looking at you,Zekiah?” I barrel on, not waiting for him to respond. “Like I’ve been wondering how you taste? How our first kiss would be? How you would feel in—”
His big hand claps over my mouth, and for just a second, I lean into it. He’s touching me. Not the way I imagined in my fevered dreams—with sensual strokes and worshipful kisses andlet me take my time with thiscaresses—but we are skin to skin for the first time, and I will take this enforced silence just to have thistouch. In the elongated seconds, his labored breaths are the only sound in the classroom.
“You are my student,” he says on a frustrated huff of breath. “And we cannot…we can’t do any of that.”
I lean my lips into the press of his hand, relishing the warmth of his palm for a few seconds before I jerk my face away. “I’m your student for another week. After that we could—”
“I’m engaged, Celine.” He drops his forehead to meet mine for the briefest of seconds before lifting his head again, his face stripped of vulnerability, of all expression. “I’m engaged.”
The protests queued up on my tongue to convince him wither and die. I blink at him, reeling at this heart-wrecking information. My thoughts have run off the road and into a ditch. I’m stuck.
“She’s in L.A.,” he says, stepping back, but nothing could put more space between us than his words just did.
“She teaches?” I ask, my tone hollow and dull. Eyes fixed on Chuck D and Flavor Flav sketched on his T-shirt.
“She’s an actress.” He grimaces. “An aspiring actress.”
I bet she’s gorgeous and charismatic and perfect. “Congratulations,” I manage to say through jaws that feel sewn shut. “I wish you all the best.”
Soaked in humiliation, I turn, stumbling back and toward the door. I feel like the little girl who got caught playing dress-up. He’s engaged? And all this time, this whole semester, like a lovesick teenager I allowed some fantasy to overtake my life. I concocted his reciprocity when this grown-ass man has been engaged.
“Celine,” he calls. “Wait.”
But I don’t wait. I keep going, my vision blurred with tears of shame.
How could I have gotten it so wrong? It wasn’t just mixedsignals. On some cellular level, I felt we were connected. Like every time we were in a room together, a live wire stretched between us. It felt solid and real, not like infatuation. I thought he’d felt something, too. And if I could be so certain and so very wrong about him, what else am I getting wrong?
Over the weekend, I can barely focus and only hope the things I’ve learned this semester will save me—will be there when I reach for them during the exam. I don’t know how I’ll face him, but I have no choice. I need this grade to maintain my GPA and graduate with honors. I won’t compromise four years of hard work for a crush who didn’t even know I existed. At least not the way I’d thought he did.
When I walk into Hayes Monday morning, I’ve marshaled all my defenses. I’ve talked myself out of the humiliation enough to hold my head high as I approach the classroom. My eyes are trained on my seat and I refuse to even look toward the front of the room. As little eye contact as possible. I brace my body for the deep rumble of that voice that has nevernotmade me shiver.
“Good morning, class,” a woman says from up front.
My head snaps up. One of the English department’s associate professors stands where Dr. Lowe should be.
“Where is he?” I blurt, my face burning as the other students turn their scrutiny on me. “I mean…Dr. Lowe…is he okay?”
