Tied to Him

by Tia Siren

  I blew out a long breath and let my eyes go around the room. All the football players were there. The room was so thick with sweat and testosterone that you could cut it with a knife. I’d never been inside the boys’ locker room, but I imagined this was how it smelled.

  Before I could choose a cock to ride (sorry, couldn’t resist), my phone buzzed. I swiped open the screen and felt my breath catch in my throat.

  “Hollander just posted our grades,” I said, holding up the phone as if it were a Christmas gift I was almost too nervous to unwrap.

  Rachel rolled her eyes and sighed. “Fine. Check your fucking grade so we can get on with getting you laid.”

  We both giggled at her accidental rhyme, but when I refreshed the app to see the grade Hollander had given me, the smile melted from my face.

  CHAPTER FOUR: Chase

  Ayers, Melvin … F ...

  Bradly, Sharon … F ...

  Crenshaw, Andrew … F ...

  Dalton, Michelle … F …

  I paused to light another cigarette and filled my lungs with smoke. I blew the smoke out of the side of my mouth and smiled at the computer screen.

  These little fuckers. They’ll shit in their pants when they see these grades, the entitled little bastards. I couldn’t help but smile as I entered in the next grade.

  Diaz, Rachel … F …

  Let’s see how happy you are when you see this grade, Miss Diaz. I seriously doubt you’ll spread your legs wide open for me in class again. Sad, but oh fucking well…

  I shot back another hit of whiskey and licked my lips. I was having a ball. I was also drunk. Shit, I was beyond drunk. I’d reached drunk two hours ago.

  I was shitfaced…blind-running drunk, as my old alcoholic father would say. Life is easier, boy, when you’re blind-running drunk.

  I didn’t understand what he meant back then, those times when I’d find him lying in a pool of his own puke on the kitchen floor. I understand it now. He was right. Life was easier when you were blind-running drunk.

  I squinted through the smoke at the screen.

  Preston, Miles … F …

  Ross, Audrey … F …

  As I hit the F key and watched the letter appear next to Audrey Ross’s name, I almost felt bad for her. She always seemed so serious in class, so worried about her grade. Unlike most of the little shits who wasted my time for two hours every week, Audrey Ross at least seemed to care. Oh well. Sorry. Moving on.

  Smith, Wesley … F …

  Thomas, Erin … F …

  CHAPTER FIVE: Audrey

  “What the fuck?” I stared at my phone with my mouth hanging open. I refreshed the screen again. The grade didn’t change.

  Rachel pulled her tongue out of Duke’s ear long enough to glance at me. When she saw me staring at my phone with a look of horror on my face, she reached across the table and squeezed my arm gain. My arm was getting red from all the reassuring squeezes.

  “Audrey, what’s wrong?” she asked.

  “He gave me an F,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. I held up the phone so she could see the screen. Midterm grade: F.

  “What the fuck?” Rachel said, more annoyed than surprised. “That motherfucker. Hang on.” She found her phone amid the bottles and shot glasses on the table and launched the app. I saw her eyes widen as the screen updated.

  “That motherfucker!”

  “What is it, babe?” Duke asked.

  I had never seen such a look on Rachel’s face before. It was a look of absolute surprise and disbelief. She held out her phone so I could see her grade.

  “How could that motherfucker give me an F?” she said, turning the phone around so she could glare at the screen. She tapped the refresh tab several times. The grade did not change.

  “I know I didn’t get a fucking F,” she said. “There ain’t no fucking way.”

  “Maybe it’s a glitch,” Duke said with a shrug. He picked up his beer glass and drained it dry. I would be shocked if Duke ever checked his grades. He certainly didn’t seem to worry about them.

  Duke was on a full athletic scholarship. He was captain of the football team. He was headed for the NFL. I’d wager that he didn’t attend half his classes and never cracked a book, yet somehow held a 3.0 GPA.

  My crime wasn’t that I wasn’t smart enough. My crime was that I was not a three-hundred-pound lineman who ate quarterbacks for breakfast.

  “I’m going home,” I said, struggling to keep the tears that were welling in my eyes from running down my cheeks.

  Rachel reached for me. “Don’t go, girl,” she said as I gathered up my purse. “It’s got to be a mistake. Hang around. Let’s get you laid. We’ll worry about grades on Monday.”

  “Yeah,” Duke said with a drunken grin. “Let’s get you laid.”

  He said the words as if he was the one who would be doing me the favor of popping my cherry. No way, Duke. Keep that big thing the fuck away from me.

  “No,” I said, backing away from the table. “I have to get home and check the grades on my laptop. Maybe it’s just some crazy glitch that’s happening on the phone app.”

  “Audrey, we’ll sort it out Monday,” Rachel said, her eyes pleading for me to stay. “Please don’t go.”

  Rachel was amazing. She got an F, too, but she was more concerned about me than her own GPA.

  Maybe she was right. Maybe it was a glitch in the system.

  Or maybe Hollander entered the grades incorrectly.

  Or maybe his fucking F key got stuck.

  Whatever the reason, I knew I couldn’t stay at the bar and just pretend it hadn’t happened.

  I wanted to ride someone’s cock, as Rachel had so eloquently put it, but it wasn’t going to happen tonight. I turned before she could say anything more to convince me to stay and ran all the way back to my apartment with the letter F bouncing around in my head like a bad Sesame Street cartoon.

  CHAPTER SIX: Audrey

  As expected, the grade was the same on my laptop as it was on my phone. Hollander had given me an F on the midterm exam, which would make my GPA drop like a hot rock.

  The only hope I had to hold on to was that it was a mistake and things would be fixed on Monday. I sat on my bed and stared at the computer screen until my eyes hurt. I was about to log off and go to sleep when my phone pinged with a text from Rachel.

  The text read: That douchebag Hollander gave everyone in the class an F. Get on FaceSpace. People are going fucking nuts!

  I logged onto FaceSpace and clicked onto the Trent State group page. I typed in the group password and waiting for the page to load.

  The group was supposed to be a way for professors and students to communicate with one another. As you would expect, it had basically turned into a platform for students to bitch and post stuff totally unrelated to school.

  The top post was started by a boy in Hollander’s class named Melvin Ayers. I vaguely knew Melvin. He always sat at the back of the room with a hoodie over his head.

  He had posted: Dickwad Hollander gave me an F on the midterm. What the fuck????

  The first reply was from Beth Hooper. Me 2. WTF????

  There were seven more replies from people in the class, all who had been given Fs.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. It had to be a glitch in the system. Or everyone in the class really failed, even Rachel. I seriously doubted that was the case, but stranger things had happened.

  The screen kept refreshing each time someone added a comment. Now there were a dozen replies and responses on the thread. Most of them were from students who had been given Fs, but then everyone seemed to pile on and the tone went from confusion to anger to pure nastiness.

  Former students were adding comments. Students who had never even taken Hollander’s class but had heard of his tough reputation. It turned ugly quickly, as things often did when you had dozens of drunk people online late at night.

  My hands had almost stopped shaking when I saw a reply in the thread that had my name tagged. I re
ad the words with my mouth hanging open.

  The post was from Duke. It read: Hollander couldn’t teach a virgin how to come! Right Audrey Ross? LOL HA HA HA!!

  I read the words again. What the fuck? I grabbed my phone and sent Rachel a text.

  DID YOU SEE WHAT DUKE POSTED????

  As I sat holding my breath, waiting for a reply, my computer pinged to let me know that someone had added another comment with my name.

  This post was from one of Duke’s football buddies that I didn’t even know. It read: Maybe old man Hollander can give Audrey Ross private lessons. Maybe his old dick could pop that sweet cherry since she thinks she’s too good for us!

  Then another football player piled on. Hollander’s a dick. Maybe if Audrey spreads her legs for him he’ll lighten the fuck up on the rest of us!

  Oh my god, I couldn’t believe this was happening.

  Another post: A virgin at Trent State? No fucking way! Where is she? Who is Audrey Ross?

  Then another: Oh please Audrey fuck Hollander into giving us all A’s!

  And another: Hollander couldn’t get a hard-on at a whore house on freebie night!”

  And another: I heard Hollander’s wife left him because he was such an asshole. Go cheer him up Audrey Ross! Give that old drunk some pussy!!!!

  More students started piling on.

  I couldn’t keep up with the thread, it was changing so quickly.

  My computer dinged each time my name was tagged in a post.

  The dinging was becoming incessant. I turned off the volume but could not stop reading the posts. It was like watching a horrific train wreck happen right before my eyes. And I was tied to the tracks.

  Suddenly, the fact that Hollander gave everyone an F didn’t matter anymore.

  What mattered was that I was a virgin.

  And now the whole world knew it.

  CHAPTER SEVEN: Chase

  I was passed out on the couch when my phone buzzed. I forced my eyes to open. I had to look around for the phone and finally found it on the floor next to the coffee table.

  I squinted at the screen. It was Ron Poole, a fellow professor at Trent and probably the only friend I had left in the world.

  I tried to swallow, but my mouth was as dry as a bone. My breath reeked of cigarettes and whiskey and vomit. I sat up and looked down at myself. At some point during the night I had puked all down the front of my shirt.

  I swiped the screen and grunted a hello, which came out as a croak.

  Ron’s panicked voice filled my ear. “Chase? Chase, are you there?”

  “Yes, I’m here. Hang on,” I said, pushing myself off the couch to head to the bathroom. I peeled off my filthy T-shirt and jeans and kicked them away from me. I plopped down naked on the toilet and took a good long piss that I was sure Ron could hear.

  “Chase? Goddammit, man, answer the phone.”

  “I’m here,” I said, rubbing my eyes. I blew out a long breath that filled the air with the stench of another night of my life wasted, given over to the booze. “What’s up?”

  “Have you seen the Trent group thread on FaceSpace this morning?”

  I frowned. It made my head throb. “No, Ron. I don’t read shit on FaceSpace,” I said. “Isn’t it enough that we have to put up with these little bastards in person?”

  “Did you really give your entire English Lit. class an F?” Ron asked. Even his voice coming through the little speaker in my phone made my head hurt. My insides started churning. I blew out a loud fart into the toilet and grunted into the phone.

  “Jesus, man,” Ron said. “Look, you need to get your shit together or you’re gonna be fired.”

  “I know,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “I’ve got to get my shit together.” The problem was, I had spent so many years spreading my shit thin, I wasn’t sure that I could ever get it all together again.

  “There’s a thread on FaceSpace that you’re tagged in. You need to fix this before Nancy Dorfmann sees it and goes ballistic.”

  “Fix what?” I asked.

  “Get on FaceSpace now,” he said again. “While you’re sober.”

  Ron clicked off the call and I set my phone on the sink. I sat on the toilet and finished what I’d started, and then I went to search for my computer.

  * * *

  “Shit.”

  It was the only word I could think of to say as I read the long FaceSpace thread that began with me giving everyone an F and then turned into a discussion of Audrey Ross’s virginity.

  Wow. A virgin at Trent State. That was almost like a Big Foot sighting. I read through all the posts, all two hundred of them, not overly surprised by what I’d read.

  That was the problem with these social media platforms. What started out as a legitimate topic of discussion quickly turned into a nasty mob spewing anger and filth and trying to see who could be the most outrageous.

  I didn’t give a shit what they wrote about me, but Audrey Ross must have been reeling after reading all this.

  She was a virgin.

  My brain kept coming back to that point.

  It couldn’t be helped. I was, after all, a full-blooded American male with a pulse. And despite the speculation about my manhood on FaceSpace, my equipment still worked just fine.

  She was a virgin.

  I clicked on Audrey’s name in one of the threads and it took me to her profile page.

  Audrey Ross, age twenty-two, hometown Orlando, business major, relationship status single. Well, that could explain the virginity part.

  She was a pretty girl, with long dark hair and blue eyes. I clicked on her photos. Lots of pictures with friends. I didn’t see a boyfriend in any of the pictures. She smiled a lot, especially when she was with her family. I recognized Rachel the pussy flasher in several pictures.

  What an odd pairing: Rachel the brilliant slut and Audrey the pretty girl who had to try hard to get a B.

  She was not smiling this morning, I thought.

  My eyes went to the message button on her profile page. I didn’t know why—maybe it was because I was sober or maybe it was because I knew I was about to lose tenure anyway—but I clicked on the message button and began to type.

  CHASE: Are you OK?

  The cursor blinked for a moment as it waited for her to reply. I glanced at the clock. It was just after nine a.m. on a Saturday. She was probably still asleep. I was about to close the laptop and go take a much-needed shower when the computer dinged with her reply.

  AUDREY: Is this really Prof. Hollander?

  CHASE: Yes.

  AUDREY: Prove it.

  CHASE: How?

  AUDREY: Tell me why you gave me an F?

  I pondered my reply. There was only one answer.

  CHASE: I was drunk. I gave everyone an F. I’m sorry.

  AUDREY: You must have been really drunk.

  CHASE: I was.

  AUDREY: Is that something you do often? Get so drunk you do stupid things to hurt innocent people?

  I didn’t have to ponder that answer. I’d gotten drunk and done stupid things to innocent people my entire life.

  CHASE: Yes.

  AUDREY: I still don’t believe it’s you.

  I lit a cigarette and searched my memory for something that would prove I was the asshole who had given her the F.

  CHASE: You told me once that you had ADD. I told you to work harder.

  The cursor blinked for a moment.

  AUDREY: YOU’RE SUCH AN ASSHOLE!

  CHASE: You’ll get no argument from me.

  AUDREY: Why would you give me an F????

  CHASE: Like I said, I was drunk. And I’m sorry.

  AUDREY: Asshole.

  CHASE: Are you really a virgin?

  The cursor blinked for nearly a minute. I smoked the cigarette and thought about slamming the laptop shut and getting the fuck out of town. I was probably going to be fired on Monday, and now I was sexually harassing a student. Boy, Chase, could you sink any lower? My hand was resting on the top of the screen, a
bout to close it down, when her response came through.

  AUDREY: Yes, I’m a virgin. Why would you ask me that?

  CHASE: Just curious. I was a virgin once. A long time ago.

  The cursor blinked for a moment.

  AUDREY: Is that something you can help me with?

  CHASE: Yes.

  AUDREY: Will you teach me everything?

  My jaw literally dropped as I read the words. I rested my fingers on the keys for a moment without typing. What the hell… How do you respond to something like that? I typed in my response and hit enter before I could change my mind.

  CHASE: I’m going to teach you how to come and I’m going to make sure you get an A.

  AUDREY: I promise to be a good student.

  CHASE: Would you like to come over now?

  There was no hesitation this time.

  The cursor barely had time to blink.

  AUDREY: Text me your address. I’ll be there within the hour.

  CHAPTER EIGHT: Audrey

  Don’t ask me what I was thinking.

  I didn’t stop to think.

  I was too tired to think.

  I’d tossed and turned all night worrying about that stupid FaceSpace post and how everyone thought it was hilarious that I was still a virgin.

  I didn’t wake up this morning worrying about getting an F. I woke up worried about what else had been posted while I was asleep.

  Before I could look at the posts that had been added overnight, Professor Hollander messaged me. He apologized for giving me an F and then asked if it was true: Was I really a virgin? What the heck kind of a thing was that to ask one of your students whom you barely knew?

  So, what was I thinking?

  Not a fucking thing.

  I just read the words on the screen and decided to act. When Professor Hollander asked if it was true, if I was a virgin, I didn’t blink and I didn’t think. I just typed the words and calmly waited for him to respond.

  Yes, I’m a virgin. Is that something you can help me with?

  Yes. Would you like to come over now?

  Yes, yes, I would. Fuck all those people who were laughing and making fun of me on FaceSpace. I might be a virgin now, but with any luck, I wouldn’t be a virgin long.

  I closed the laptop and sat on my bed for a moment. What the heck had I just done? Had I really just told Professor Hollander that I would come to his place within the hour so he could take my virginity?