Page 24 of Prosecco with My Professor
Err, well. He does kind of look like Patrick Swayze. Damn it, now I’m thinking about Santo lifting me up in a dance lift, which is laughable because I am no Jennifer Grey, and it’s more likely thatIcould lifthimup.
“Thank god,” Santo says, breaking my summer camp fantasies. “I’ve been looking for her all over. I am sorry, she never used to escape at our old place.”
“It’s fine,” I say as Santo lifts his cat from my arms. She hisses at him, which makes me jump back, though Santo doesn’t twitch.
He rolls his eyes. “Sometimes I think I am her least favorite person in the world. Where was she?”
“On my window ledge.”
“Hm. Troublemaker,” he says. He turns and does a gentle little tossing move, and Zola ends up on her feet on the floor, where she shakes herself, annoyed with the whole situation. “Thank you, again. I’ve been looking all over for her, and now I will be late.”
“To work?” I joke. It’s a bad joke, and Santo looks down at himself.
“No, to play football.”
Okay, time to get back to my place before I make even more of an idiot of myself. “Well, um…good luck!” I turn and power walk back to my door. Behind me, I hear Santo following, locking his door, and jogging, passing my door just as I close it, giving me one last glimpse at a different side of the man.
I sag against my door. Is this what it’s going to be like all year long? If I’m not thinking about how he went down on me, I’ll be having weird little fantasies in my head.
Maybe I should move.
11
Santo
The first morningof the first term goes as expected—a flurry of unfamiliar faces, like the past two weeks, but this time, there’s a comfort in knowing that we’ll be seeing these same people every day for the next five weeks.
The students are full of questions, and by the lunch break, I’m exhausted. I’m locking my office door when someone calls my name. Down the hall, Vincente approaches.
“Good morning?” he asks.
“Fine,” I say with a shrug, and we walk down the hall together. “Want to grab lunch?” I offer.
“Yes. We need to talk.”
That doesn’t sound ominous at all.
There’s a bar down the street from the university that we frequent. It’s a former cellar, popular with tourists and partiers later in the evening, but today it’s still early, so we have our pick of tables. We order wine and sit down under the arched brick ceiling.
Vincente gets right to the point. “You’ll never guess who’s in my Managerial Economics lecture.”
I school my face blank and sip my wine, a robust house red.
Vincente’s eyebrows raise. “You already know,” he accuses.
Damn it. I must be losing my touch. I used to negotiate employee contracts and mergers without so much as a flinch, but somehow, I’ve given myself away to Vincente?
My father would be so disappointed.
“You’re using that same face as when I told you the police arrested my son.” He leans in, resting his forearms on the table next to his forgotten glass of wine. “So, you know the woman you took home from the bar a couple of weeks ago is in our program?”
“Yes,” I admit. “I saw her the first day.”
“And you didn’t tell me?” Hurt flashes in a quick frown across his face.
“What is there to tell?” I ask, spreading my hands wide. “It was a coincidence, and nothing will come of it.”
“Have you talked to her?”
