Page 18 of Prosecco with My Professor
I lean in, anger coursing through me. My voice comes out rough. “Is someone bo?—”
The door behind me slams open, and a dog barks aggressively. Reflexively, Emma’s eyes widen and her hands tighten. Almost in slow motion, while I’m staring right at it, the mist of pepper spray hits my face.
8
Emma
“Ah!”Santo screams.
“Che cosa sta succedendo qui?” Eva shouts.
Oliver, as usual, barks his head off.
“Oh my god, oh my god. Santo, I am so sorry,” I cry.
He’s bent over, hands on his eyes, hissing between his teeth.
“What were you thinking?” he shouts.
“You followed me!” I shout back.
“I live here!”
“You live here?”
“Yes. Che due coglioni! Porca miseria!” A lot of other words follow, all of which are, I’m pretty sure, curse words. Eva is shushing her dog.
“It’s fine,” I tell her. “We’re fine, everything’s fine.”
She eyes me but drags her yappy dog up the stairs.
Despite spending most of the day thinking about Santo while simultaneously trying to avoid him, when I heard my name being called on the street, my mind had immediately gone to the man this morning at the coffee shop instead of Santo.
Santo stands quickly and turns away from me. He’s shaking his hands off as if they’re wet from a public bathroom that doesn’t have paper towels, and his eyes, which are squinting, and the surrounding area are all red too. And wet. Again, like he splashed his face in a public bathroom without checking the paper towels first.
I stand in the corner like a child in trouble. My nerves were so on edge today, between the coffee shop guy and then worrying all day that I would run into Santo,plusthe first day of school nerves. I nearly left entirely, but Sara, Tessa, and Jade calmed me down. I was in such a panic we actually video chatted in the middle of the day while I hid in an empty computer lab. Of course, though, Jade’s solution when she found out he was one of my professors was to ask him for a do-over.
A DO-OVER!
This man knows what I taste like. This was already a DEFCON-1 emergencybeforeI pepper-sprayed him. There is no asking for do-overs, even if Santo—damn it, Professor What’s-his-name—is just as gorgeous in daylight as I remembered.
He pinches the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes and taking deep breaths.
“I can take you up to my apartment,” I offer. “I think I have milk. We can wash your face wi?—”
“I’m going to my apartment,” he cuts me off. “Just...”
There doesn’t seem to be an end to that sentence. After a moment, he drops his hand and squints at the staircase before shuffling forward and hitting the first step with the toe of his loafer. He grips the handrail. He can’t see, and this is all my fault.
“Okay, San—Professor. Here.” I grab his bicep with both hands and step closer to him. “I’ll get you to your apartment.”
His grip on the rail tightens, but he doesn’t argue. I help him up the stairs, all the while, his muscles are flexing under my hand. I try to ignore it, but it’s hard. Maybe Jade has been right all along, and I really do need to have sex with someone because this situation should not be sexy at all.
“Which apartment is yours?” I ask. He’s on the same floor as mine, on the other side of Eva and Oliver, who huffs at the base of the door as we walk past. Santo fumbles his keys, and I help him find the right one and enter his apartment.
His place, unlike mine, is a newly renovated one. It’s more modern, with bright blue accent walls and a white kitchen, which I lead Santo to.
I leave him with two hands on the counter and open his fridge, hoping to find some milk, but there’s none. That’s what they say to drink when you eat something too hot, at least back in Austin, so maybe it would help to flush out someone’s eyes? I’ve dealt with the consequences of unintended jalapeno—or worse—consumption one too many times, which is what happens when you have kids, and your favorite restaurant is a Tex-Mex joint in South Congress.
