Filed to story: Shhh Professor! Please Don’t Tell! Novel Free
Professor
Steele walk away from the Conversation Club table. His usual stride seemed to be weighted down with a new heaviness. He moved more slowly.
I felt bad about how I’d treated him. I’d been scared and upset. Scared that all of the students who had walked up to watch us talk were thinking we were a couple of some kind. Scared that the rumors I’d been worried about were circulating through the business school had made their way across the entire campus. I was upset that even after I’d become sure he just wasn’t a good guy, the sight of him was starting to make my heart pound again.
It was as if there had been a wall of ice that was now melting, and my numbness was fading away. I couldn’t deny how he made my whole body light up whenever he was near me. I felt as if he sent electric currents through me. The sight of his strong body the muscles noticeable even through his suit jacket. The sharp intelligence of his eyes. The warmth of his smile. The gentle sound of his deep voice.
The crowd has dispersed. I glanced at my watch. I was due to stop my shift in another twenty minutes. I was the last person signed up for the day. Maybe I would just stop early. I’d just earned us the most publicity we’d had all semester. I was tired and wanted to go back to my dorm room and drink a cup of tea. While curled up under two or three blankets.
I looked at Professor Steele’ retreating body again. He was small now, a tiny figure in the distance, but I could see still the heaviness of his stride. I swallowed. I didn’t want to hurt him.
I just wished he didn’t have so much power to hurt me.
I waited another ten minutes. No one stopped by my table. The campus was becoming quieter as fewer students were travelling from class to class and more were getting ready to park themselves in their dorm rooms or the library for a long night of homework.
I packed up the card table and carried it into the basement of the science building, where our club had a designated closet. As I was exiting the building, I saw Annie walking across the sidewalk in front of me.
“Hey!” I called.
She turned, and grinned when she saw me. Then she took a closer look at me, and her smile faded. “You okay, Ellie?” she asked.
I pursed my lips. “I…” I said. I didn’t want to tell her everything. I suspected that she already knew, but I didn’t want to say it out loud.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she said, coming over to me. She wrapped her arms around me in a hug. “Was it the ghost of your love for Professor Steele?”
My jaw dropped.
“Annie,” I protested.
She smirked. “You know I’m blunt,” she said. “And that reaction answered my question.”
We walked around campus for a while. Fallen leaves covered the ground. A crisp, chilly wind was blowing in from the ocean. It smelled wild: of autumn and the of the sea. A dark, velvety, rich smell. Spicy. I closed my eyes and inhaled, wishing I was somewhere else. Wishing I was on a boat somewhere, traveling far away. Somewhere where I didn’t feel like I couldn’t really be who I wanted to be, or do what I really wanted to do.
“A penny for your thoughts,” Annie said, kicking up one of the leaves lying in our path.
“I think we should check the archives again tonight,” I said, quick to change the subject. We’d been so busy that we had only looked in them together twice before. We’d become distracted by the movies we’d watch or our own conversations. We’d found one reference to a Logan Green he’d been on the football team but nothing that told us anything about where we might be able to find him now.
“That sounds great,” Annie said. “But that’s not what you were thinking. Come on, Ellie. Be honest with me.”
I let out a long sigh.
“You’re in love with Professor Steele, right?” she said.
I bit my lip.
“Okay, so yes,” Annie said. “What’s the big deal? Lots of students have gotten involved with their professors before.”
I turned and gave her a look. “Yeah, but they shouldn’t have,” I said. “Lots of people have committed murder, too.”
“Okay, not comparable,” she said.
“You know what I mean,” I said. “Just because a lot of people have done something, that doesn’t make it okay to do.”
“Yeah, but he seems like a really nice guy,” Annie said, “and he seems like he’s into you, too.”
My walking slowed. “He does?” I asked, my voice quieter.
“Absolutely,” she said. “You remember the way he stared at you like a lost puppy outside the bar and then said that poor woman was his cousin.” Annie laughed at the memory, as if it was just something funny. Something that didn’t really matter.
Maybe I was taking it all too seriously.
“But that’s the thing, Annie,” I said, my words spilling out quickly. “I’d already run into him once before that night. He’d gotten dinner with a different woman earlier. Some really gorgeous woman. She looked like a model.”
“So you’re just jealous of this other woman?” Annie protested. “Ellie, come on.”
“No,” I said. “I mean, he’s seeing more than one person at once. That’s…that’s gross. And then he lied to us about that woman? He wasn’t thinking about how she would feel. Like he was just using her.”
Annie was quiet for a few minutes, her lips pressed together. “I see why you thought that,” she said. “And sure, it was a really dumb thing to do. Calling her his cousin when she obviously wasn’t. But dude, men are dumb like that all the time. There’s no escaping it. It doesn’t mean he’s a jerk; it just means he was too focused on something else to be thinking clearly. That something was obviously you.”
I exhaled. “Yeah, but what about the woman he got dinner with?”
“Girl, that might have been his cousin,” she said, “or his sister. Who the heck knows. He’s innocent until proven guilty, isn’t he?”
I swallowed. “I guess you’re right,” I said.
“Ellie,” she said, “give the man a chance.”
“He’s my professor,” I said.
“So go to his office and ask him for information,” she said. “His door is open to people like you.”
I rubbed my forehead with my fingers. “I don’t think I can do that,” I said.
“Coward,” Annie said cheerfully.
I made a face.
“You can always look him up online,” she said. “That may just answer all your questions.”
“Okay,” I said. “Now let’s stop talking about it. What movie should we watch while we comb the archives?”