Filed to story: Shhh Professor! Please Don’t Tell! Novel Free
“He’s a billionaire,” Jasmin said.
Annie laughed. “What, not really?” she said.
“No, really,” Jasmin said. “He’s totally an actual billionaire.”
“Then why would he be teaching here?” Cynthia asked. She took a bite of her sandwich. I heard several different crunching sounds. Maybe she’d just created a new musical instrument.
“He’s not teaching for the money, obviously,” said Jasmin. “The article I read said that he wants to spread his knowledge to students. He’s essentially just being a good guy.”
“Well, every article I’ve read heavily implies that billionaires are not good guys,” Annie said. “I bet there’s some other reason.”
“Billionaires are good guys in books,” Cynthia said, looking impish. “Or rather, the kind of bad guy you want. Nice on the streets and nasty in the sheets.”
“Oh, my God, I’m eating,” Annie said.
“He’s probably old,” I said.
“That doesn’t help with the mental image I’m trying to get rid of,” Annie said.
Jasmin laughed. “No, actually, he’s pretty hot,” she said.
“Okay, let me see,” Cynthia said. She pulled out her phone. “Hot billionaire professor at Flynn University,” she said aloud into it.
I covered my face with my hands, laughing. “Oh, my God,” I said.
“Hey, it worked!” she said. She scrolled through the results for a minute. “Oh, okay. Silver fox. He’s not exactly our age, but he’s still got it.”
“Show, please,” Annie said.
Cynthia held out her phone. Jasmin cooed.
I looked at the picture. It was of a man wearing a business suit, shaking the hand of another man whose back was to the camera. He was smiling a gorgeous, friendly smile of pearly-white teeth. He had dark blond hair, long enough to be tucked behind his ears. He had bright, intelligent blue eyes.
“Jackson Steele,” I read out loud. “World-renowned billionaire set to teach classes at Flynn University, his alma mater.”
“An absolute snack,” Cynthia said.
“Still eating,” said Annie.
I leaned in closer toward the picture. He really was beautiful. The picture had hit me right in the gut somehow. My heart felt a little funny, like it had bumped into something and it hurt a little.
“Let’s stalk his class,” Jasmin said eagerly, delighted that we were now just as interested in the subject as she was.
“What?” Cynthia said.
“Just show up in his class,” Jasmin said, “sit there, and watch him teach. I don’t have an afternoon class, all my classes were this morning.”
“Same,” I said, although I was hesitant to commit to the idea. “But we won’t be on the roster.”
“Pish, he’s a businessman, he doesn’t know how to teach a class,” said Cynthia. “He won’t notice.”
I laughed. “I’m pretty sure he does if they hired him to teach one,” I said. “He’s definitely going to take attendance on the first day, isn’t he?” All of our other professors had, although, granted, our history class sizes had been smaller than a business class was likely to be.
“Don’t worry about it,” Jasmin said. “I heard other people say they wanted to do it, too. The lecture hall will be filled with students who aren’t really supposed to be there.”
Cynthia grinned. I could tell she was in. Annie also looked excited. “Let’s do it,” she said.
“You in, Ellie?” Jasmin asked me.
“Sure,” I said. I was so happy to have found a group of friends so quickly that I probably would have jumped in the ocean with them if they’d asked me to. “What have we got to lose?”
We finished our lunch, disposed of our brightly-colored plastic trays and dishes, and stepped back out into the sunlight. It was still warm, but the sky had that vivid September blue hue. I could sense the oncoming of autumn in the air, as if the leaves were giving off a signal I could sense through my skin.
We walked across campus to the business building. It was larger than the others and of a different architectural design. It was grey, made of cement, curved at the edges, and covered in a series of large oval windows.
“Looks like a beehive,” said Cynthia cheerfully. “I’m going to take lots of pictures. I bet you can stand on those windowsills.”
Cynthia was an art major. Jasmin was a social studies major, but was dabbling in all sorts of unnecessary classes that she found interesting. Annie was a history major, like me.
We stepped inside the building. This one also smelled of lemons, but the predominating smells were of leather and new paper. And maybe ink. It smelled a little like the inside of a printer.
We walked upstairs and located the lecture hall that Jackson Steele was due to teach in.
“Oh, my God, I’m tingly,” Jasmin said.
“Why?” I asked. “Because he’s so rich?”
“No, because he’s so hot,” said Cynthia.
“He wouldn’t seem so hot if he wasn’t so rich,” Annie said.
I smiled, but internally I wondered if she was right. I didn’t think she was. He was attractive, certainly, and his wealth added an air of mystery and status to him, but I felt that he was so attractive because of something else.
We took our places at the back of the lecture hall. It was big with two hundred chairs behind circular rows of desks. The desks were placed on tiers, placing us at the back in the highest part of the room. A whiteboard and an empty black table were below. No sign of the famous businessman professor yet. I also was beginning to feel tingly, but I told myself it was just because we were somewhere we weren’t supposed to be.
The air seemed charged with electricity. Every student in the room was on the alert, and whispers were rippling through the space like a hushed, dissonant music. The orchestra tuning before the symphony started.
I pulled out my notebook, feeling restless, and wanting to appear as though I actually belonged there.
Then, at the bottom of the lecture hall, a door opened, and a man stepped inside. I found myself sitting up straighter, as if I needed to get a better look at him, even though nothing was obstructing my view. I knew, instantly, that there was something about him more than his wealth or his face that made him so attractive.