Page 9 of Bachelor

THE FIRST DAY OF THEsemester went smoothly enough, but there was an odd emptiness in my graduate sociology courses with Whitney’s curious and oftentimes skeptical gaze watching my every move. With her as my TA in one of the two undergraduate classes I had on my plate this semester, I ended up with more free time in the evening than I thought. I couldn’t just stay in my office and dwell. I couldn’t fathom wasting my time at my cottage or risking running into Cassandra in any of the faculty lounges on campus, so I decided to try something new, something I’d picked up again while back home in Britain.

I’d always loved weightlifting. Like running, which was damn near impossible right now in snow higher than my knees in some places, working out had become a form of meditation. I’d spent most of my winter break at the local gym—a somewhat grimy metal building on an old farm with a rusted roof, but it had everything I needed to push my myself to my limits and slowly drain myself until I didn’t have the energy to even think of Whitney anymore.

So now I found myself changing into shorts and a ratty old T-shirt in the locker room of a large, immaculate sports center on campus. Gatlington wasn’t known for their sports—Well, I take that back. Lacrosse at Gatlington, and most of the smaller, prestigious universities on the East Coast, was huge. Did Gatlington need an Olympic-sized swimming pool and a weight gym that rivaled any D1 university? No, it really didn’t, but I wasn’t going to complain when it saved me from using the ten-dollar-a-month gym across town where the equipment barely functioned, and the free weights only went up to twenty-five pounds.

I locked up my duffle bag and grabbed my water bottle before walking into the weight room. It was in a lofted area overlooking the pool and the track that surrounded it. A few groups were walking along the track, but the pool was still and empty, glinting like a mirror under bright, fluorescent lighting.

But I was alone in the weight room, which didn’t matter so much to me, but it did mean I could get a real workout in without any female students trying to shoot their shot while I was vulnerable.

There’d been a lot of that already this semester, and it was only the first day.

I heaved a breath and got on the treadmill for the next half hour before moving on to the free weights, taking my sweet time.

Roughly an hour after I arrived, one of my students walked in. Tyler Bakken didn’t see me at first. He was looking down at his phone and adjusting his headphones, dressed to work out in shorts and sweatshirt.

His close-cropped light brown hair was already sweaty. I wondered if he’d been running on the track, but my mind wandered back to that still, empty space it’d been in before when I was lost in my workout and the outside world ceased to exist.

“Hey, Professor,” Tyler said as he passed me to grab some weights and took over the bench a few feet from mine.

“Hey,” I replied, panting as I set my weight down.

“I haven’t seen you here. First time?”

“Usually I just run and do some body weight stuff at home,” I admitted, wiping sweat from my face with my forearm. My head was throbbing from the scent of chlorine drifting up from the pool, which was several stories below us.

“It’s not a bad gym. It’s got everything I need.”

I nodded, giving Tyler a kind smile. I didn’t want to trap him in conversation while he was working out, but he seemed anxious to talk to me, and I’d done everything I’d come here to do already.

“How was your first day of class?”

“Fine,” he grunted, lying back and extending thirty-pound weights over his body, pumping them a few times. “Boring as hell, if I’m being honest. I have you tomorrow, though.”

“You’re one of four in my archeology program, did you know that?”

“Good, less competition to get into a doctorate program next year,” he mused, smirking.

I gave him an amiable smile as he adjusted his headphones back over his ears and started his workout in earnest. I moved on after a few minutes, cooling down near the railing that overlooked the pool and going through a series of stretches.

I felt better than I had all day after seeing Whitney had derailed my morning. Her coldness... I deserved it. I could admit I’d handled the situation poorly last semester. I had numerous regrets about what had transpired between us.

None of those regrets had to do with knowing her, though.

That was the worst part about this. I missed her. I missed talking to her. I missed just being next to her and sitting in silence.

I gritted my teeth as my hamstrings strained against the stretch, and then sat up with my back against the railing and went through a few breathing exercises.

Just when I started to feel calm again, Christian Brockford and three of his buddies walked into the gym.

He saw me immediately and smirked, his jaw tight and flexed. His friends whispered and giggled like schoolgirls as they followed their leader over to the free weights.

I noticed Tyler eyeing them as well. Tyler was an enigma of a student. He was a jock, most definitely. I knew from his transcript that he’d played varsity lacrosse and came to Gatlington on a sports scholarship, which was a rarity here. He still came from old money, a Gatlington legacy.

But he’d left the team, and instead of going to whatever empire his family had built to wear a suit and tie, he’d stayed at Gatlington to pursue a master’s in anthropology, and had his sights set on a doctorate in archeology.

His situation mirrored Whitney’s in several ways. He’d broken the mold, and based on the glares and whispered insults thrown his way by Christian and his friends, he was suddenly an outcast like she was.

"I saw Whitney Dahl today in the commons," one of the friends remarked coldly, laughing under his breath as he continued, “She looks like one of the federal scholarship people now with her fuckin’ corduroy pants and denim jacket.”

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