Office Hours

by Katrina Jackson

  The point was that Deja had plans and she’d rather be at home feeling bad about herself than listening to her student make a case for a grade they both knew he didn’t deserve, but this was the only day her student – who came to class so infrequently Deja could place his face but not his name – could meet, so here she was.

  They’d been at this conversation for almost half an hour; Deja had been watching the clock very closely. The student kept circling around an issue Deja was certain they’d handled in the first five minutes…but apparently not.

  They were barely two months into the semester and Sheldon – that was his name! – had missed a cumulative two weeks of class and hadn’t turned in the first essay that was due over a month ago. He’d ignored Deja’s emails trying to find out if he was okay and needed extra help and, when he did come to class, he made sure to skip out as soon as lecture was over. Deja was on the verge of suggesting that he drop her class when he’d emailed yesterday, desperate to meet. She’d had been hopeful that the meeting would be productive, in vain apparently.

  Sheldon had shown up with his very late essay in hand and a smug smile on his face that had disappeared when Deja explained that she couldn’t, in all fairness, accept a paper so late without a reasonable explanation for its tardiness, nor would she excuse absences without that and some kind of documentation.

  After five minutes of a story about how hard Sheldon’s other classes were and how he thought Deja’s intro course would be a “cake walk” Deja – insulted but still professional – had asked again for explanations for some, or any, of his absences and the extremely late coursework, to no avail. Instead, Sheldon had launched into a story about a math class he’d failed a year ago and Deja had mentally checked out. She had one eye on the clock on her desk phone and the other on her inbox, waiting for her pre-arranged exit from this conversation and the other reason she was unfortunately on campus this Friday.

  At 11:30 on the dot she sat up straight in her chair and leaned forward, waiting for Sheldon to take a breath. “I’m sorry, but I have another meeting. If you have a reasonable explanation for the missed classes and your late paper from this semester,” Deja stressed the words, “you’re always welcome to come back.”

  “So,” Sheldon let the word dangle for a second or two, his eyes boring into Deja’s. “You aren’t going to accept my paper?”

  Can a person feel their blood pressure rising, because Deja could have sworn she felt her blood pressure shooting through her proverbial roof? Her jaw clenched and she snapped her lips shut to stop from screaming. She was just so tired. Once she’d collected herself, she pulled her mouth into the best smile she could muster and spoke her single word answer slowly and clearly. “No.”

  Sheldon’s brows furrowed in confusion and Deja took a deep, calming breath. She was about to elaborate, even though she knew that no was a single word answer and she’d spent the last half an hour explaining her simple policy, when a knock at her office door interrupted her. She and Shelby turned. Deja swallowed the lump in her throat at the sight of Alejandro standing in her doorway.

  “Damn,” Sheldon muttered under his breath. Deja could absolutely relate.

  Alejandro was leaning against her door frame in a light gray suit tailored to fit his body like a glove. And even better, he had a bright smile on his face and a paper coffee cup in each hand. Usually Deja’s fantasies about Alejandro veered on the side of raunchy, but the domesticity of a man showing up at her office dressed like he’d just stepped out of a fancy watch advertisement with a cup of coffee for her. This was a whole new dimension of her erotic fantasies.

  “Ale-,” Deja cleared her throat and stood, pushing her chair back hard enough to slam into the wall behind her. She cringed and her face warmed. “Dr. Mendoza, what are you doing here?”

  “We have a meeting,” he said, lifting an eyebrow at the same time as he tilted his head toward Sheldon.

  “Yeah. Y-yes, right,” Deja stammered. She turned to Sheldon, motioning him toward the door. “We’re just wrapping up here. Sheldon, I’ll see you in class on Monday?” she asked the question deliberately first to remind him that they had class on Monday and that she expected to see him there.

  Sheldon seemed startled by the question or the way Alejandro’s cologne seemed to be filling Deja’s office with was a delicate, spicy sent that made Deja’s mouth water.

  “Um, yeah, sure,” Sheldon mumbled as he left.

  Deja sighed sadly.

  Alejandro backed into the hallway to make room for her student to leave, but he kept his eyes on Deja. She, in turn, watched Sheldon’s back, stalling for time. She took deep breaths through her nose, trying to slow her rapidly beating heart. It wasn’t working. He was clear across the room and yet Deja could feel his body heat or the heat from the intensity of his gaze; something.

  When Sheldon was gone, Alejandro stepped into her office with deliberately slow steps.

  Deja sucked a deep breath in through her mouth this time and swallowed nervously. It was a mistake. She tasted the bitter smell of coffee mixed with his cologne as he stepped closer and now her mouth was really watering, and her pulse wasn’t the only thing pounding.

  “Are you going to invite me in?” he asked in a low and intimate whisper that reminded her of the last time they’d been in this office together. She felt hot and it wasn’t from her malfunctioning heater.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t come in,” she said in halting words.

  Alejandro stopped and lifted both eyebrows; a small, playful smile on his face. “No?”

  Deja swallowed again. “The last time you were here, things went…haywire,” she whispered.

  “Haywire?” he asked thoughtfully. “That’s not a word I would have used to describe that...,” his voice trailed off and somehow that silence made Deja’s nipples hard. “I thought things went really well until we were interrupted.”

  He took a few more steps into her office and whispered across the space between them. “Invite me in, Deja. I promise to keep my hands to myself.”

  Deja took a deep breath and clutched one hand in the other. Nervous excitement wracked his body, feeling like static-y excitement all over her skin. She nodded slowly.

  Alejandro kicked the door closed with his right foot as he walked inside.

  Deja jumped at the sound of the door closing and her mind conjured the memory of his lips on her. She tried to keep her breathing even as he neared, anxious and a little bit terrified to see what he would do. She was worried that this was a mistake and even more worried that she wanted to make it.

  Alejandro kept his distance – to Deja’s disappointment – and leaned his back against the door. She watched him watching her like they had so many times across the Faculty Senate and student organization meetings, but now that she knew how his fingers and mouth felt on her body, his eyes on her felt like the feeling of his fingers digging into her soft hips.

  “I brought you coffee,” he said in a husky voice. “Latte, extra shot, two sugars.”

  Her eyebrows rose. “How do you know my coffee order?”

  Alejandro’s cheeks turned a bright red and he ducked his head to smile. “I might have asked Toni,” he admitted.

  “Of course, it was Toni,” she rolled her eyes and then smiled shyly at him. “Thank you.”

  He pushed from the door and walked toward her in those slow, deliberate strides. He stopped on the other side of her desk and offered her the coffee cup in his right hand. “You’re more than welcome.”

  She rocked back onto the heels of her boots, feeling even more flustered now that he was so close. She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth and tentatively reached for the coffee cup. The tips of their fingers brushed around the cup and Deja felt brief touch deep in her core. She dropped her eyes as she took a sip of her drink. She could feel his eyes on her as she hummed in happiness.

  Alejandro coughed as he dropped into the chair Sheldon had vacated.

  “What’s wrong?” Deja asked, sitting
down as well

  He smiled and shook his head as he crossed his legs. “Nothing I just…If I’m going to keep my hands to myself, I should keep my mouth shut and stay over here. And you should definitely stay over there.”

  Deja’s mouth fell open, but she had no idea how to reply to that confession besides the tiniest smile on her face that she tried to hide by taking another sip of her coffee.

  “I’m sorry,” he said after a few seconds of heated silence.

  It took a second for Deja to process his words because she was so focused on the way his voice slithered under her clothes and across her skin. She tried to hide her labored breathing with another sip of coffee.

  “Sorry for what?” she eventually asked.

  He took a sip of his own coffee and uncrossed his legs. Deja’s hand tightened around her coffee cup to make sure her eyes didn’t dip to his groin, a feat.

  He bent forward to rest his elbows on his knees. When he looked up at her, his eyes were no longer playful, they were as serious as the set of his mouth before he spoke.

  “I don’t regret what happened on Wednesday,” he said in a quiet voice. “I’ve been waiting for that moment for over a year. But if I could go back and do it again, I wouldn’t have put you in that position. Not in your office.”

  Deja sucked in a shocked breath at his words and then exhaled loudly. Her shoulders slumped and a weight she hadn’t quite realized she was holding on her shoulders lightened.

  She knew that her family thought the life of the professor was cushy, a few classes a week, weekends and summers off. She’d given up on trying to correct their assumptions about her life, because she quite literally didn’t have time. But, being on the tenure track had been hard for Deja in ways she sometimes struggled to even admit to herself. She’d expected the long hours outside of class, and the heavy teaching load. She’d even be prepared by her mentors for, the lack of mentorship, to a certain degree, but she hadn’t expected the uncomfortable ways she'd folded under the weight of all pressures.

  And she couldn’t have imagined three years ago that she’d be so reckless as to let a man she’d been crushing on for over a year get her off in her office. But she had and as she looked at Alejandro across her desk with a look of sexy contrition – because apparently that was a thing – on his face, she understood why. She was lonely and starved for the tiniest crumbs of attention and affection. So lonely that she’d let a man who was realistically a complete stranger finger fuck her where anyone could have heard, risking the job that had become her entire world, whether she liked it or not.

  And the worst part was that she’d do it again – she knew she would – and that made her so sad. It also made Alejandro even more attractive today than he’d been on Wednesday. There was so much riding on Deja succeeding at her job and getting tenure, personally and professionally, and yet when she tentatively looked into his eyes, she could feel the sad pit of loneliness she'd been avoiding since graduate school. It had become all too easy to avoid how she felt with her schedule, because she had almost nothing else going on in her life, but the minute she was presented with brief reprieve from that loneliness – like the opportunity to let Alejandro touch her again – she knew she’d fold, even if it cost her so much more than she could realistically give.

  Her department had a lot to lose if she wasn’t all they’d hoped she’d be when they hired her. She was their first tenure track hire in nearly a decade, part of a campus wide diversity initiative meant to bring in marginalized faculty and it would certainly reflect poorly on the department if she didn’t receive tenure; not as badly as it would reflect on her, but still, not great. That was partially why Deja had so many service commitments; her department needed to make sure that she was seen, a constant reminder that the Sociology department wasn’t full of old white dinosaurs. Not anymore at least.

  Common sense might have led another department to protect Deja, mentor her even. If she stayed, received tenure and excelled, the university could reward them with another tenure track line and their department – small and overtaxed – might rehabilitate their position in the College. But as her mama always said, common sense ain’t common.

  Instead of supporting her, her department didn’t mentor her in ger new position, even though she came directly from graduate school and had no idea how to be a faculty member and had no time to learn while running from class to class to meeting. Her colleagues didn’t consider keeping her workload regular and manageable, they didn’t give any consideration to what it was like for her to be the only woman of color in their unit. And worst of all, more than one of her senior colleagues had reminded her that just because she was new, with a higher teaching load than any of them had had when they were at her level, had more service and was still fledging in her career didn’t mean they would cut her any slack when it came time to vote on her tenure dossier. The honesty was useful and completely demoralizing. It didn’t matter that the last time, they’d voted on a candidate, the university was still recovering from the Y2K scare, all that mattered was that Deja work harder and longer than they did without any recognition for it.

  The overwork allowed Deja to avoid confronting the loneliness and her crush on Alejandro had allowed her to imagine there might be a time when she wouldn’t feel so lonely and her job wouldn’t rule her life. Something about him reminded her that she wasn’t just harried assistant professor, Dr. Evans, she was also Deja: young, single and very much horny.

  But when she looked at him now, looking at her with a face full of contrition, it seemed to open the lid on all the sadness and loneliness she’d been avoiding, because she felt as if he could see it too. Now that they weren’t sitting on opposite ends of the auditorium, he was closer; he’d gotten closer and she had to fight the urge to push him away like she had on Wednesday. But it also felt nice to see him seeing her. She’d assumed that she’d have to explain to Alejandro why Wednesday was such a huge mistake because she’d expected that he would be like her colleagues, not fully understanding the stakes she was up against. But he saw her and the force of her own relief she felt made her want to cry.

  “Thank you,” Deja replied after a too long pause. “Thank you.”

  Alejandro smiled at her, tilting his head to the right, peering at her as if he was trying to understand the weight of those two words. “You’re welcome,” he said simply. As she watched, he scooted forward in his seat. He put his coffee cup on her desk and then splayed his hands out, palms down, in front of her.

  Her eyes flickered down to look at them involuntarily. She shouldn’t have done that, because as soon as she did - as soon as she saw his thick, stubby fingers against the sickly gray color of her metal desk - she remembered what they’d felt like inside her. She remembered how free she’d been in the throes of her orgasm and how strong his arms had felt as he’d held her through the reverberating quakes before they were interrupted. It had been so long since anyone had held her like that or at all.

  “I want you to know,” he said, butting into her trip down erotic memory lane, “that when I’ve dreamt about touching you, it was never here.” He smiled at her, dirty and seductive and playful.

  Deja’s entire body began to warm again.

  He shrugged and corrected himself slightly. “Well sometimes we were here or sneaking around on campus. But those were the PG dreams, I promise,” he laughed. “A little making out, nothing to risky.”

  Deja felt lightheaded. No man should be this charming and smart and dress so well. She was way out of her league. “You’ve been dreaming about me?” she croaked.

  Alejandro’s eyebrows lifted and then furrowed. “Of course, I have. You really didn’t know I was interested in you?”

  Deja shook her head. “I thought you were just being friendly.”

  He stood up and leaned fully across her desk. Those hands moved to either side of Deja’s coffee cup and his mouth was right there at eye height, tempting her.

  Deja wanted to grab his face and pull him
closer, but she couldn’t' do that – not again, so she fisted her hands in her lap instead.

  “I promise you, I’m not that friendly,” he whispered to her.

  Deja felt every word of that sentence across her skin. His voice made her sex clench, her heart pound and her temperature rise and all she could think was that it should be illegal for anyone to make her feel so good with such little effort. She licked her lips and his eyes tracked the movement.

  And there was that little ethical dilemma again. She wanted to lean forward and kiss him. She wanted to taste his coffee order on his tongue and feel his five o’clock shadow against her skin, but if she did that, she could guarantee that in a few short minutes he’d have her sprawled across her desk, naked from the waist down and gleefully letting Alejandro play her like a fiddle. Literally. Again. And this time someone would absolutely hear.

  She sucked in a harsh breath. A groan slipped past her lips as she pushed her chair back from her desk, away from the temptation of his mouth.

  Once again, Alejandro’s eyes softened in understanding. “Don’t worry. I made a promise. I won’t touch you.”

  She huffed a laugh. “I’m more worried about myself right now.”

  He straightened, that sexy smile back on his face. “Good. Have dinner with me tonight?”

  The past few minutes had been a lot for her to process, especially on a day when she usually only tried to think and failed. But as it happened, she didn’t need much energy to think about her answer. In fact, she didn’t need to think at all. She bit back a smile and nodded.

  A look of relief washed over his face, as if he’d really thought there was even a sliver of a chance she’d turn him down. Just the thought of that made her smile widen.