“Knight, it was really nice to know you,” she said sarcastically. “I wish you all the best during your time at Las Positas. I hope you choke on that disgusting frozen pizza.”
McKinley stormed to the door, opened it, and left without looking back. I stood there immobile, while every fiber of me tingled with remorse, disappointment in myself, and anger for so thoroughly fucking up what could have been a good thing.
My mind flashed all the way back to the very first night I laid eyes on her. She was an absolute beauty, her curls long and radiant, her sparkling eyes, tender and innocent. Her smile, warm and true, lighting up my spirit whenever she laughed. She was smart, honest, generous, and amazing. And I’d just let her walk right out the door.
I turned around in a fury and kicked the wall a lot harder than I meant to, relishing the pain I instantly felt in my toes. I had singlehandedly obliterated what could have been the best thing to ever happen to me. The urge to run after her was strong, but I couldn’t do that. I had to remember why I did it.
I had to remember that her future was more important than my feelings.
Nineteen
McKinley
I could barely see through the tears that engulfed my eyes as I stalked from Knight’s house to my car. The whole world turned into a quivering liquid mess of shapeless objects. It wasn’t long before I was bawling, causing everything in front of me to flicker like bad video footage.
I reached into my pocket to get out my keys and lurched forward to my car, poised to take me as far away from this dumb place as possible. The interior of my little care was dark and cold, mimicking how its owner felt. I just sat there, replaying what just happened, troubled about how quickly things took a turn for the worse. I went all the way back to when I was getting ready earlier tonight; I was feeling good and expected to feel even better once I got to Knight’s.
I never thought in a million years that he would betray me like that. He was so cavalier about it too. His callousness about the whole thing irked me to no end. How could he be so emotional and the suddenly so detached? I couldn’t believe how stupid I was to believe that there was something real between us. I should have known that it was too good to be true.
The more I sat here, the more miserable I became. I needed to get out of there before I lost the wherewithal to drive myself home. It was painfully quiet in my car, like there was a void surrounding me, so I turned the key in the ignition to puncture the bubble of lonely silence. It revved to life, and I turned on my high beams, which pierced the darkness of the evening. I glanced at the clock on my center console: 7:52. It only took less than an hour for Knight and me to crumble, after the amazing time we spent together.
That baffled me.
I shifted into drive and peeled away from the curb, leaving Knight’s house in the dust. My hands strangled the steering wheel. Naturally, my foot applied more pressure on the gas since I was upset, so I had to snap myself into safe driving mode and ease up a little. I was not going to let a no-good man like Knight be the reason for me getting into an accident. He was not going to be the death of me. I wouldn’t allow it.
The whole way, I was thinking about Evie and the conversation that we had not even half an hour before I left for Knight’s. To think that I had been neglecting my best friend for a guy who I never meant anything to infuriated me. Regardless of how long it had been since we had spoken, she still said that she was happy for me because I was happy, and that almost sparked another torrential onslaught of tears. Now what would I tell her?
Hey Evie, you know that guy who you said was taking up all my time? The one who I was secretly starting to fall in love with? Well, turns out he was a complete waste and never really cared about me in the first place. But sorry for leaving you hanging. By the way… he’s also my professor and I may have risked my entire career for him even though he’s a complete asshole.
Just thinking about how, even for a short time, I had let him dominate my life, devastated me all over again. The tears began to bubble up and what had finally cleared into decent vision was turning back into a watery mess. I only wished that I could rewind back to the night we met and make the decision to never go to Frankie’s at all. Then Knight would have just been some first-year professor, and I could have finished my time at Las Positas without a broken heart.
What have I done?
Twenty
Knight
I sat in my office, miserable and dejected, as I tried to decide what to do about Casaundra now that I’d ended it with McKinley. It had already been a month and with only two options set in front of me and neither of them terribly appealing, I knew what I had to do; I opened my laptop and started looking for jobs at other universities in the area. The last thing I felt like doing was moving again, starting all over again, but it was obvious I had no choice. I couldn’t ruin what little career I had managed to scrape together since getting my PhD, and I wasn’t about to tank McKinley’s future to save mine. So, my only option was to start all over again, as horrible as it felt.
I had no idea how long I had been staring at my computer, bookmarking job postings, when there was a knock on my door. I was afraid to look up, convinced it was Casaundra. I knew she’d be arriving any minute with an ultimatum. But when I looked up, it wasn’t Casaundra; it was Atticus Longfellow, one of the other professors in my department.
“Hey, man! You look awful. Did your cat just die?”
I scowled at him. “I don’t have a cat. Can I help you Atticus? I’m kind of in the middle of something.”
Atticus sat down without being invited which annoyed me even more. “I’m guessing you haven’t heard the latest gossip from the main office or you wouldn’t look so bummed out.”
It was obvious that Atticus wasn’t going away until I let him tell me whatever he came to tell me, whether I wanted to hear it or not.
“No, Atticus. I don’t really pay attention to the rumors around here. If I did, I would never get anything else done.”
“Well,” he snickered, “you’re going to enjoy this one. It seems, a professor has been sleeping with a student.”
I jumped so high off of my chair, I almost knocked a full cup of coffee off of my desk. “What? How would… I mean… That’s crazy. Is it true or…”
“Oh, it’s true. And she was fired this morning.”
My jaw dropped, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. “She?”
“Yup, your favorite co-worker, Casaundra Evanston. Apparently, she has been banging some Junior in the math department since last year. They had a fight and the kid went to the dean and told him everything with proof. But get this! When the dean confronted her, she tried to shift the blame to you! That’s a laugh, right? She told the dean you had been sleeping with a student too, like he would believe that while he was there confronting her with concrete evidence. Anyway, she got sacked and was leaving when I came over here.
I felt like I was going to throw up. This can’t be happening, I thought as I gulped down a huge sip of coffee to try and hide my terror. It ended up making me feel worse when it hit my stomach.
“And they fired her? Like that?”
Atticus stood up with a shrug and walked toward the door. “Seems like it. Maybe that will clear up some funding for a tenure position again. Oh, well. Hope your day picks up, buddy.”
Then he left, leaving me to figure out whether I had been lucky, or this was just setting me up for more disaster. It felt like at any minute, Casaundra was going to bring my world crashing down on me, especially because hers had just done the same. I wasn’t sure what my next move would be…
But I needed to figure it out soon.
Twenty-One
McKinley
Getting together with the girls again was just what I needed to unwind after a long, strenuous week of school. It was a way overdue outing, but the gang was finally back together, picking up where we last left off like no time had passed. While I saw Addison every day in the apartment, it was good to have all
the ladies together at the same time. The truth was, however, that something did happen since we last got together. A guy who I thought cared about me ripped my heart out, threw it to the ground, and destroyed it.
The remedy for this was a much-needed trip to Viper, an eccentric nightclub in midtown that we used to frequent a lot when I was still too young to drink. It was one of those underground establishments, practically hidden in an alley, and it was really only geared towards Las Positas University students. Occasionally, a few random people from the town would show up, but it was rare.
Tonight, all I wanted to do was drink with my friends, but I could tell by the looks on their faces, I’d already taken it a little far.
“Okay McKinley, I think it’s time to lay off the shots for a little,” Evie said, pulling my sixth glass away from my mouth.
“What? I can throw back ten of these and be totally fine,” I said, snatching it back.
“I don’t want to be your designated driver,” Evie retorted, yanking the glass back toward her again and slamming it on the table.
“Fine,” I said, looking back at an interesting couple on the dancefloor who were now twerking to a house song.
“So, what’s been going on with everybody?” Holden asked the table.
I turned back to my friends. “Well, let me fill you in on the drama that’s been my life. So, you guys remember that night we went to Frankie’s and I bailed out on going to the club because I said I wasn’t feeling well?”
“How could we forget? You acted like a weirdo,” Evie said with a laugh.
“Well, that was a lie.”
Holden rolled her eyes. “No kidding, dummy. How stupid do you think we are?”
“Alright! Jeez! But remember that hot guy that was at the bar? Like literally, right after you guys left, I stayed behind and approached him. We ended up spending some time together, and one thing led to another, and we… had sex.”
“Shut up!” Dacia exclaimed, her mouth agape.
“Yeah. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg…” I proceeded to regale them with the whole sordid affair, everything that happened with Knight from beginning to the horrible end. By the time I finished, their jaws were practically on the floor.
“And when he dropped me, it just came completely out of left field,” I went on. “He didn’t try to cushion the blow or anything. And I was just so taken aback by how he said it. Just super blasé. Then, he basically tells me that I never meant anything to him and that it was one big farce.”
“Oh my god! What a douchebag!” Addison said, crossing her arms and clutching them angrily. It was as if the rage inside me transferred across the table and into her.
“That’s really low,” Dacia said, shaking her head and staring down at the table with widened eyes.
“It sucks,” I said, wiping away a stray tear from my cheek. “But even though he stomped on my feelings in such a cruel way… I still care about the jerk. I couldn’t turn it off.”
“Of course, you can’t,” Evie said understandingly. “But based on what you’re telling us about how insensitive he was to you… I don’t think it’s worth it.”
“Yeah, honey, it’s not,” Addison said confidently. “Don’t even for a second think that there may be hope on the horizon. A guy like that? You don’t need him. Period. Why didn’t you tell me about this clown?”
“I guess I didn’t want to jinx anything,” I said, which was a ludicrous excuse.
“McKinley, this guy led you on, big time,” Holden said, Dacia nodding in agreement. “He’s not worth your time, your consideration, your anything. I can tell that a part of you still wants him. I think you should just cut your losses.”
I let out a long, heavy sigh, fraught with gloom. As much as it killed me to admit, there was no way around it.
“I guess you guys are right,” I said sadly. “But class. Oh god, what am I going to do about class?”
One thing everyone could agree on: no one had idea what I should do for the rest of the semester. I was screwed.
As I thought about it for the rest of the weekend, I decided to take the girls’ advice as best I could: don’t worry about Knight and just focus on my schoolwork. With romance on the backburner, I had ample time to devote to my studies now. My objective this year was to excel academically anyway and not get caught up in boy drama.
Today was a Tuesday, though, and that meant I had to see him again, first thing in the morning. I honestly didn’t know what I’d feel once I saw him; it had been a while since our last class because of a break and then I skipped our first back because I couldn’t deal with looking at him yet. Would it be the burning hatred of a thousand suns, or a bleak black hole of depression?
I walked into the classroom the next day, and there he was, writing review points for the midterm exam on the whiteboard. The verdict was: I felt absolutely nothing. Numbness. I couldn’t tell if it was a total absence of feeling, or it was an amalgamation of everything at once, so intense that my brain just registered it as no emotion at all.
Instead of sitting in the second row like usual, I moved to the back of the room. I didn’t want to sit as close to him. The farther I was from him, the better. If I could distance myself physically, then perhaps it’d be easier emotionally. So far, it wasn’t working like I thought. While watching him write, I could see his toned biceps flexing against the checkered fabric of his dress shirt, and it made me squirm with temptation. Why couldn’t I just cut off these feelings entirely?
I let out a huge huff of air as I tried to maintain my self-control. But it was extremely hard. I imagined us together in bed, him kissing me on my neck and whispering in my ear. Why did it have to end up like this? We could have been so perfect.
But everything the girls said the other night started echoing in my head, reinforcing my resolve to steer clear of Knight. Then, an overwhelming impulse to make things right suddenly took over, and those echoes quieted to nothing. I looked at the clock and it was 8:20. I still had ten minutes before class started to just talk to him, to at least get to a place where we could manage the semester.
I gathered my nerves and walked towards the front of the classroom, his back still facing me as he finished up the last of the notes. “Hey,” I said timidly. He didn’t respond. Maybe he didn’t hear me. “Professor?” I addressed him respectfully, but loudly this time. “I just had a question about the midterm?” Still no response, not even a hint of acknowledgement. Now, the rage returned anew. I leaned forward on the desk, and with a whisper only he could hear, I growled,
“Fuck you, Knight.”
Then I turned on my heel without looking back, grabbed my bag, and left the room, letting the door slam satisfyingly behind me.
The registrar wasn’t crowded at all in the afternoon, so it was the perfect time to go in and switch things around on my schedule. I really hoped that Ms. Lanier would be able to put me in another chemistry class. With Knight ignoring me, I could tell that toughing out the rest of the semester wasn’t an option.
The thin, fifty-something, bespectacled woman pounded away at the keys on her computer as she searched for another section to squeeze me into. She would type something in, then stop and squint, type again, click, then frown even harder. She repeated this pattern several times and it confirmed to me that she was having difficulty finding anything for me. More than likely, I was going to be stuck with Knight.
Ms. Lanier removed her glasses from her face and inserted one of its arms into her mouth ponderingly. “Miss Clarke, it looks like all the other sections are full, I’m afraid.” She tucked her wiry golden-brown hair behind her ear, and typed something again, just to verify if what she was saying was accurate. I heard a disappointing ping come from her monitor, an error message I assumed. “Yup,” she said regretfully. “A lot of these sections are actually over capacity or conflict with other classes that you have,” she explained. “And we can’t just take you out of your current professor’s class and not put you anywhere else because
you need General Chemistry to graduate.”
“Yeah, I know,” I replied, disheartened.
Ms. Lanier looked back at her screen and clicked around some more. “However, I’m looking at your academic profile, and I see that you have a lot of credits. Over two-hundred, actually. You have enough to graduate a semester early if you took on one more class this semester.”
My heart slowly began to beat normally again. “Really?”
“All those electives you took during your freshman and sophomore years came in handy,” she said, looking at me with approval. “If you take another elective, you can be out of here this December.”
I gasped elatedly. “Oh my God, that’s awesome. I didn’t know that! What can I take?”
“Well, let me see,” she said, putting her chunky brownish frames back on and punching at the keys again. “Astronomy has an opening, and there’s Psychology of the Creative Mind… there’s…”
“Astronomy. I’ll take that,” I said without delay, smiling.
From that point forward, I forgot all about Knight, and completely immersed myself in my schoolwork. I would put up with whatever I had to if I meant I could leave early. I had found a way out of this mess, and I would be damned if I wasn’t going to take it.
Twenty-Two
Knight
My consciousness felt a bit fuzzy, and for a second, I couldn’t tell exactly what was going on. Then, it registered that I was in bed with McKinley. My first sense was of the steady rhythm of the bed rocking beneath me. There was a warmth along my right side, a drumming in my ear. I stiffened as I recognized what was happening and realized the warmth came from McKinley’s body as she lay against me, her head against my chest. She opened her eyes for a glimpse of me, and I looked straight into the brightest eyes I’d ever seen in my life. They were as clear as the daytime sky and I could see my reflection in them perfectly.
Forbidden Lessons Page 8