Her Possessive Professor by Gena Snow

Chapter 4

 

Hailey

 

 

 

 

It’s Wednesday night, and I’m subbing for a full-time employee at Tropic of Cancer. Since Avery and I have different schedules, it’s a rare chance I work with her. I knew her from Alton College since my freshman year, and she graduated over the summer.

Avery wears a tank-top that barely covers her boobs and shorts, showing a bit of her buns. The guys are glued to their stools by the counter, taking every chance they get to steal glances at her gorgeous body.

I don’t understand why she doesn’t become a model instead. She’s an English major like me and is planning to become a school teacher. But she isn’t that enthusiastic about getting a teaching credential, and neither is she in a hurry to go back to school yet.

She works at the bar full-time because she has to pay off her student loans and help her siblings get through college. She’s shouldering all that burden because their single mom neglects them most of the time.

But Avery doesn’t tell anyone the truth. Instead, she tells them, including the customers who are never tired of asking her personal questions, that she’s saving money to travel the world.

“Pumpkin,” a man in an expensive suit says to her. “All you need is to marry me, and I promise you we’ll travel in style.”

I want to roll my eyes at that, but Avery smiles sweetly. “Are you proposing to me?” she says coquettishly and playfully.

“What if I am?”

“Then I’ll have to say that’s the lamest line I’ve heard.”

“Have you heard lots of it?” the guy looks amused.

Avery shrugs. “At least one every night.”

“You haven’t accepted any yet, I hope?”

“No.” she laughs again. “I haven’t heard a good line yet.”

“Well, I guess I’ll have to revise it and try again.”

“You do that, mister!” Avery says with a smile as she rings him up, shoving a twenty-dollar tip into her pocket.

Damn. After witnessing that, I realize wearing sexy clothes isn’t the only reason she makes the most tips at Tropic. If I can only have half of her flirtation skills, I would make a lot more. But it isn’t easy to shrug off the annoyance of the haughty manners of the male customers who think the bartenders are whores they can buy with a few stinking bills.

 

“So, how are your classes?” Avery asked me after the counter clears a bit.

“Not bad, except one of them might be canceled. Jared Price’s Modern Poetry.”

She rolls her eyes. “Trust me, you’d be better off if it got canceled. I wish I had dropped the class instead!”

This is not the first time I hear Avery complains about the class. Avery is a straight-A student but got a C from Jared Price. It ruined her 4.0 GPA and her chance of getting the President’s Scholarship.  “It’s not like I have a choice. But why didn’t you drop it?”

She blushes and stutters. “Well, he was mean, but he knew what he was doing, and I actually learned a lot about modern poetry.”

“Oh! Good to know!” I say. “Is that it?”

She giggles. “No. He’s hot, too. I think it was the reason for most of the girls to stay in his class. We started with twenty and ended with eight. Five girls and three guys.”

“How many of you passed?”

She raised two fingers.

I gasp. “Holy shit.”

She rolls her eyes while nodding. “Exactly.”

“I guess I should hope it’ll be cancelled instead.”

“If you can find another class, yes. But if you have no other choices—” She pauses for a second.  “Then you might try a different strategy.”

“What is it?”

She glances around and lowers her voice, “The other girl who passed the class didn’t go to class so much, but she went to his office a lot. She told us she went there at least once a week and stayed there at least an hour a time.”

“Oh,” I say, frowning because I don’t know what to make of it. “So he likes students to visit him during office hours?”

Avery stares at me with disbelief. “Hello! Do you really not get it?”

I blink. “No way, do you mean? No, it couldn’t be. He couldn’t possibly.”

“Yes. It could. He could.”

My stomach clenches. I refuse to believe the possibility because Jared Price looks professional in class, although he might be grumpy and mean. On the other hand, I can’t deny the possibility because of what he did to me the night at the bar.

Oddly, what’s troubling me most is not disgust but jealousy.

Does he do this a lot?

“Was she, err, special?”

Avery shrugs. “She’s got a porn-rate rack.”

I feel sick. I recall the way Jared gazed at me the first night he saw me, his smoldering eyes leaving trails of heat on my skin. His attention flattered me so much and I thought I was special. But in truth, he is a lustful old man, that’s all. Wait. He isn’t that old, only thirty-five, but the fact he would have a relationship with students makes him dirty. I feel goose-bumps over me. I haven’t told Avery about my brief moment with Jared and I probably never will.

“You’re right,” I say to Avery. “I hope the class will be canceled.” Even if it remained open, I shouldn’t take it.

Our conversation is interrupted when a guy approaches the counter. While I wait for him to order, Avery goes to the restroom.

“I need a whiskey on the rocks,” he says.

“I need to see your ID,” I say. He looks a bit young to be here.

He gives me an eye-roll and slaps his ID on to the counter. I check his birthday. Two months from being twenty-one. Damn.

“I’m sorry but I can’t serve you alcohol,” I say. “But you can order soda or juice.”

He isn’t happy about it. “C’mon, cut me some slack! No one will know.”

I shake my head. “I don’t want to get in trouble.”

“Fuck.” He curses. “Where’s Mario?”

“He isn’t here tonight.”

He narrows his eyes on me for a moment before he turns away, muttering what sounds like bitch under his breath.

 

The crowd thins after ten, and I step out of the restaurant to take my break. After checking and responding to some text messages, I open my email app. Seeing a message from Professor Price, my heart flutters and I open the message right away.

“Great news! Modern Poetry will remain open. Attached is your first reading assignment. Please read the poem by T. S. Eliot as many times as needed. And while you read, keep these questions in mind…”

There is a list of questions. I skim through them and open the pdf file, feeling grateful that the professor doesn’t require us to buy any textbook.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Love song? That’s unexpected. I don’t wait to get to the poem. There are a few lines of Latin which I have no idea of their meaning, and naturally, I skip them and get to the English part.

“Let us go then, you and I,/ When the evening is spread out against the sky.” Mmm. I like it.

“Like a patient etherized upon a table—” Wait, what? I frown and try to imagine the evening like patients losing their senses.

I can’t really make the connection—well, maybe I can. Look, I’m working here at a bar and my evening is for sure filled with people intoxicated by alcohol if not ether. They aren’t lying on the table in a doctor’s office but leaning against a bar counter.

Ok, so far, so good. I think as I glance over a few more lines.

Half-deserted streets, one-night cheap hotels, the room the women come and go. What the hell is going on? Ah. I get it. A guy is taking a woman to a cheap hotel. It’s something sinful.

I keep reading and soon finish the three-page poem. I let out a breath of relief. It isn’t that bad. I recall the horror of deciphering Milton’s Paradise Lost in my last English Lit class. I can handle this, I think. I should stay in Price’s class, regardless of his personal conduct, shouldn’t I?

I’m not able to reach a conclusion. What kind of person is Jared Price, really? At first, he showed up in my life as an irresistible charmer, and then he turned into a grumpy professor, and now, a dirty old man. 

I don’t know how to feel about him anymore. The excitement he roused in me at our first encounter was replaced by irritation after I met him in class. But then, I still admired his honesty and integrity because he wasn’t one of the professors who simply kept students in their classes and passed them to keep their teaching posts. But now, after finding out his dirty secrets from Avery, I feel disappointed and disgusted.

I’m still debating with myself when I see Avery coming out of the building, carrying her handbag.  “Hailey, I’m off. Are you done with your break?”

“Yeah. I’m going back in. Take care!” I say and hug her goodbye.

 

 

I leave the bar at midnight and get home half an hour later. In the shower, my thoughts keep returning to Jared Price and what Avery said about him. A wise thing to do is drop his class and delay my graduation, but I’m reluctant to do it. Besides, I practically begged him not to have the class canceled. Damn. I curse myself for my reckless action. I should’ve kept my mouth shut and head low. He wouldn’t have even found out who I was.

When I towel off, I glance at my body in the mirror. I’m never proud of my figure. I’m too skinny, at least in comparison to Avery, who is at least two cup sizes larger than me. But the way Jared looked at me suggested I wasn’t that bad to him. Or was he simply a rake without preferences? Does it even matter? I close my eyes and recall the intensity of his gaze and the tremor caused by his touch. I place my hand on my breast and imagine he’s stroking me. Oh God. I would do anything to feel his hands on me again. Perhaps I could make a deal with him, like the girl in Avery’s class. I have nothing to lose, do I? Giving my V-card to a hot professor and passing the class. Hitting two birds with one stone.

Holy shit. How could I even think of that? I cringe. There’s something forbidden about it and definitely sinful. No, I won’t do it. I’ll pass the class without any sordid arrangements. As for my fantasy about the professor, it’ll remain a fantasy.

Since I write better during the quiet nights, I sit down at my desk instead of going to bed. It doesn’t take me long to come up with a story, and it involves my encounter with a hot customer at the bar the other night, who turns out to be my professor, of course. Two hours later, I’ve completed a draft with some scenes to be filled later. It’ll require a few revisions before I send it to the editor, but it’s good enough for now.

I go to bed with a sense of accomplishment. I have a feeling that I’ll be extra productive this semester, what with the hot and dirty professor who constantly fuels my imagination. Even if I don’t pass his class, the extra few bucks I make in smut is probably worth it. With that thought in mind, I decide I will not drop the class.

I fall asleep soon, with delicious dreams filled with Jared fucking me in various places, the bar, the classroom, and even in his office that I haven’t even been to. When my alarm clock barks, I snooze it and return to my dreams. Half an hour later, I wake again with a start. Shit. I’m going to be late for my class again.