Page 29 of Drown Like Heaven
She knew I would.
I entered the gas station, the smell of stale coffee greeting me, along with something vaguely artificial that I’d never really been able to put my finger on. Eric was crouched in an aisle restocking over-the-counter medicines. Allergy pills, pain relief, Dramamine.
“Mornin’, butterfly.”
“Morning, Eric.”
It felt like I had a big sign plastered to my forehead, flashing lights and arrows pointing.I JUST HAD A SEX DREAM ABOUT MY PROFESSOR!Though Eric didn’t seem to notice it.
“Working on next week’s schedule, is there anything I need to know about?”
“Shit.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “I have lab on Tuesday and Thursday. I forgot to mention it.”
“It’s so funny to me how you always worry about this stuff.” He chuckled, standing up and brushing his hands off on the front of his jeans. “No matter how many times I tell you I don’t care about shuffling stuff around for you, you always get worked up about it.”
I rolled my eyes, face warm. “I’m sorry for trying to be a gold-star employee.”
“You are a gold-star employee,” he reassured me. “Now, I don’t play favorites, but if I did…” Eric winked.
A real smile spread across my face, simple joy ballooning in my chest.
“It’d be me?”
He mimicked zipping his lips shut, then throwing away the key.
I already knew the answer to that, though. Eric was genuinely one of my favorite people. He’d seen me on some of my worst days—never judging, just treating me with respect and kindness. He’d probably let me tell him about my sex dream, if I wanted. I could picture him now: nodding along, never making me feel awkward, giving me space to rant.
Not that I wouldevertell him about it.
It was just nice to know he would still be normal to me if I did.
Eric disappeared into the back and I punched in to the time clock, then started wiping down the counters, throwing away paper straw wrappers, and stealing a small cherry slushy to keep behind the counter.
The morning passed slowly, without many customers—except the group of high school boys who had come barreling in through the door and knocked over an entire rack of postcards. They seemed surprisingly apologetic. I figured they were skipping school, and didn’t really give them a hard time about it.
They also called mema’am.
It was kinda funny. Less funny when I had to spend twenty minutes cleaning and sorting the postcards again, but at least it gave me something to do.
Thoughts of the dream kept swirling in my head any time we had a lull, and I found myself constantly distracted. How was I supposed to go to lab next week when my brain wouldn’t stopconjuring up detailed images of my nocturnal imaginings?God. Why couldn’t it have been a dream about literally anyone else?
I groaned.
I was hot for teacher.Whatever.
Tonight I’d have to spend some time reading the polymers lab procedure and working on our group’s experiment summary—which was less of asummary, and more of aplan; it was intended to show we understood what we were about to do in the lab—so I could hopefully get my head out of the gutter and actually perform a successful first experiment without drooling over Dr. Killshaw the entire time.
Chapter 10
Dakota
Forest green vinyl creaked under my thighs, my pen tapping on the table while I waited for my coffee. I was back at the diner I’d gone to with Mason…for some reason. I couldn’t stop thinking about him, and I needed to do something about it, rather than let my brain be perpetually consumed by this unfurling obsession.
The same waitress from before—Sofia—brought me my cheap mug of coffee, dropping some little plastic cups of creamer on the table along with it.
“Can I get you anything else?” she questioned. “More creamer? Sugar? Food?”
“No thank you,” I answered. “Just the coffee is good.” I gave her a small smile as she nodded, friendly and cute, then left with her ponytail swinging.
