Twelve

Nathan said that asking me to be his guide in Jersey had nothing to do with his attraction to me and everything to do with fate dropping me in his lap when he was writing a screenplay about the occupation of the island. I was a gift, he said more than once.

He’d been drawn to me before he knew where I was from (‘those big green eyes that look at everything the world has to offer you with an edge of terror’), and the synchronicity of it only proved that we were meant to be something to each other.

After the night in the library, buckled from embarrassment, I skipped my Tuesday film criticism class. And then the Thursday tutorial after that. I’d made up some lie to Nikita about not feeling great Monday night, followed by a dentist appointment on the Thursday, but I was going to run out of plausible excuses soon enough. Honestly, I was fully prepared to fail the class and resit something in the summer, after he’d gone, to make up my grade.

But on the Friday, a week to the day after the incident, I was reading the back of a microwave meal – it was the third one I’d picked up so far – at the Waitrose chilled section when I felt a presence come to a stop next to me. I slid the packet back and picked up another.

“Definitely the moussaka or the cottage pie,” the presence, who had a distinct American accent, said.

I stiffened, instantly aware of every part of my body. Turning my head I wasn’t surprised to see him watching me with one of his easy smiles. “Be easier on the tooth.” Silver-grey eyes sparkling.

My stomach dipped as I opened my mouth to attempt some excuse.

“Sir, hi, hello...I,” I stammered like a bloody imbecile.

He rolled his eyes. “Oh, man, not the sir again.” He reached into the fridge compartment for a garlic loaf, and put it into his basket. “I’m actually glad I ran into you because I’ve made a lot – too much – spaghetti Bolognese. If you’d like to join me for a bowl?”

My mouth opened, closed, opened again. “You want me to have dinner with you?”

“I mean, if that’s weird, I could leave the room, and you could eat. After all, the goal is just feeding you. I don’t technically need to be there.”

Unexpectedly, I laughed. There was a nervous fluttering in my stomach, but I was ravenous with it. I wasn’t sure what the fuck I was doing, but I found myself nodding.

“I really like spaghetti Bolognese.”

Nathan had rented a basement flat only a five-minute walk from the university. It used to be a BB, he told me as he led me down the stairs and into a cosy little vestibule where we took off our shoes. He opened the door into a large low-ceilinged living/dining space, a vine green kitchen nestled at one end. The place looked newly renovated, though it had a lived-in feel: papers piled on the dining table, books and a laptop on the coffee table, and a pot of delicious smelling Bolognese steaming gently on the hob.

As he turned on the oven for the bread and boiled the kettle for the pasta, I took a seat at the dining table and listened as he explained how his quarter Italian heritage was to thank for the ragu sauce.

I accepted a glass of wine and set the table with the mats and cutlery he set down next to me, while he plated up the food. It felt bizarrely comfortable. I liked him as my professor, probably because he wasn’t like the other professors. He was half their age for a start, and he didn’t so much teach or lecture as chat about films he liked and why. And as we had dinner, it felt much like it did in class. He made me laugh, he was interested in what I had to say, and it was only after stuffing my face with the best spaghetti Bolognese I’d ever had, and was a little loose from the wine, that he asked why I hadn’t come to class this week.

I groaned, hiding my face in the crook of my arm. “Because of what happened in the library.”

“And what happened in the library, Jude?”

I lifted my head to peer up at him. He was sipping casually from his glass, a wry smile on his mouth. He was extremely good-looking, mature, and successful. And as incredible as it was, he appeared to be flirting with me. But he was also my professor. And it was as though I’d only just remembered that last part, and that I was here, alone, having dinner with him, because suddenly, the easy, jovial atmosphere had sharpened to a very fine and deliberate point.

I said, “Come on. You know you’re...well, hot.”

“Do I?”

I let out a nervous chuckle. “I mean, surely yeah, you do. Half the girls in class are in love with you, a couple of the guys too. And then there’s Bailey at the coffee shop who’s been plotting my death since you bought me a bacon roll and who I had to lie to so I could get him to give me your order.”

“You lied? Not Jude Alcott.” He was grinning now.

“I just said you’d asked me to go there for your usual, that he’d know what it was. I thought there’d be less chance of him messing up the order on purpose.”

“Wow. How very Machiavellian of you.”

I smiled, proud of myself.

“So, that’s a lot of people you claim are in love with me. What about you?”

Without thinking, I almost said, ‘I’m in love with someone else,’ but I thought better of it.

Instead, I said, “Nah, I don’t think any of them are in love with me.”

Nathan laughed and stood, lifting both our bowls and forks. I followed behind him with the side plates.

“I can do the dishes,” I offered. For some reason, this made Nathan look at me with what I thought was fondness before he gave a slight shake of his head.

“I have a dishwasher. Go sit down.”

I sat on the sofa sipping my wine as he finished up in the kitchen. “Do you miss New York?” It was a nice flat, but I imagined his place in Brooklyn to be something he might miss.

“Uh, yeah, I do. I miss my dog. I miss craving Japanese food at 4 a.m. and being able to walk two blocks with him and get it.”

“What’s his name?” The coffee table had a photo of him with his dog. It looked old and large, with a pointed dark nose and lighter around the head and ears.

“Ivan.”

I shot him a look as he came to sit next to me.

“Ivan’s Childhood. Tarkovsky, of course,” I laughed. “Could have guessed that.”

“It’s a good name.”

“Terrible film, though,” I smirked.

“Okay, what’s your favourite film then, wise guy?”

I shrugged, “Don’t have one.”

“Coward.”

I laughed again. “I really don’t. I like films – I like them a lot more since I joined your class, but they don’t move me the way books do. I can never quite suspend my belief enough to lose myself in them completely.”

“The way you do when you’re reading,” said Nathan.

“Exactly.”

“I think that’s a perfectly acceptable point of view.” He nodded and reached across to top up my wine. “Unlike your stance on Tarkovsky, for example.”

I wasn’t aware of how comfortable I was, how much I was enjoying myself with him; I’d somehow spent an entire night without thinking of Cas. And then it was close to midnight, and the wine bottle was long empty. The conversation had reached a natural lull, and though he’d certainly given me looks throughout the night, I wasn’t truly one hundred percent sure of how to read the situation. I was nothing special, whilst he was a smart, talented Oscar–winning professor. I was going to need to have it spelt out for me before I’d make that kind of a fool of myself.

“Shit, I didn’t even realise the time,” I said, standing. “I should get going.”

He didn’t move. He sat with his legs slightly parted, arm resting along the back of the sofa and a look on his face that I’d have to have been blind not to understand. When he widened his legs a little more, eyes never leaving mine, I couldn’t help my eyes dipping to the space between his legs.

My film criticism professor was hard. Really fucking hard.

There were fourteen individual points noted in the policy concerning relationships between students and staff. I knew because last Friday, after the library incident, I’d gone home and looked it up. I knew that under ‘definitions’ that policy included every individual working within the University under a formal contract (such as visiting academics). I also knew that since Caspien, I hadn’t wanted anyone as much as I wanted Nathan Alexander in that moment. It seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up on.

I was an adult, but that didn’t take away from the fact that the burden of responsibility in this sort of thing sat with the staff member, not the student. There was something in the statute about harassment towards staff which Nathan could maybe level at me. But he’d invited me here, to his house. He was hard. There was no way I’d misread this.

Nathan’s voice jolted me out of my thoughts.

“Jude, I don’t want to do anything that makes you uncomfortable.” He sat up, suddenly more serious. He had read my overthinking as something else.

Fervent, I shook my head. “I’m not uncomfortable, I promise. I’m not. I just wanted to be really clear about what this was. If it’s what I think it is, I mean. Honestly, I’m a little shit with this kind of thing.”

“What kind of thing is that?”

I shrugged awkwardly. “Knowing when people are into me, knowing if it’s what I think it is or...something else entirely.” I saw Cas’s face then. I never asked you to care for me, Jude. “I always get it wrong somehow.”

Nathan slid forward so that he was perched on the edge of the sofa.

“Then let me spell it out for you, Jude Alcott. I haven’t stopped thinking about you since the day in the coffee shop. I’ve never wanted to take someone home just to shower, feed, and cuddle them to sleep before.”

I felt my cheeks heat, renewed mortification at the memory.

“That’s what did it? You mean, I sit in your class twice a week and try to impress you with my studiousness and intellect, and me hungover, unwashed, and starving was what got you?”

“Aw, you try to impress me?” He looked charmed. “I don’t look at my students that way in the classroom; there are rules about that kind of thing, you know.” One side of his mouth twitched.

“But outside of the classroom is fine?” I raised an eyebrow.

“We were two consenting adults who met in a supermarket and decided they wanted to have dinner together.”

“You’re still my professor.” I wanted to gag myself.

“Well, in about eight weeks, I’m not going to be your professor anymore, Jude. And this is definitely something we can revisit. I like you, and I’m happy to wait if any of this feels uncomfortable – that’s the last thing I want.”

He was serious, I could tell. He would wait for me. I found it...thrilling. And to my absolute disgust and horror, I got an inkling of what Caspien must have felt like with Blackwell.

Except that Caspien was a child then and I was an adult.

I was an adult and if Nathan wasn’t worried about what might happen should we be found out, then I decided I wasn’t either.

It gave me the final push I needed. I lowered myself to my knees so that I was on the rug between his open legs, and then I kissed him.

His lips were gentle and soft and the scrape of his short facial hair against my cheek as he tilted his head sent a delicious rush of arousal to my dick. Despite the undercurrent of fear about who he was, it already felt far less confusing than being with Finn had. I reached up and dug my fingers into his hair, grabbing at the chestnut brown curly top and pulling his head closer. When he moaned, lust spread over my body, all the way to my fingertips.

Nathan’s mouth tasted of wine and dark cherry, and I sank into the kiss so completely that the memory of another kiss, one that tasted of birthday cake and champagne, was all but forgotten.

We kissed for a long time that night – it was all we did – and I lost myself in it. He was an exceptional kisser. He kissed me as if I was something he’d longed for, something he wanted desperately. Kissing Nathan Alexander is something I miss even now. His mouth was always warm, always welcoming, always soothing away the aches and wants lingering there for someone else.

If I could have chosen a love, one that would have made me a better version of myself instead of worse, then I’d have chosen Nathan. But we don’t get to choose these things. I’d learned that lesson already, and I’d learn it a few more times still.

But that night, hands and tongues and tender smiles unfurled something new and hopeful into my heart.

When our kissing reached some critical point, it was Nathan who pulled back, smiling down at me as he brushed a hand over my cheek. I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to go home to my dorm where I’d pick apart everything about Nathan and set it out so I could compare it with Cas.

I wanted, almost desperately, to sleep next to him so I could wake up and see the sun on his face, so I could kiss him with the warmth of it on his lips. But he never asked me to stay, and I didn’t want to beg, so I kissed him at the door and said goodnight.

As I walked home under the same moon that had listened to my promise to love Cas unconditionally, I was almost convinced I was free from it. From him. From Deveraux, from that heartache that had been living deep inside me for so long.

That delusion didn’t last very long.