Follow Me

The September sun was on the verge of melting into the distant skyline when I took the last spot in the first row on the lot. Classes were starting up for the fall semester, and I was late to the fucking sign-up gig. My fault. The result was at least half a schedule full of final comm courses that occurred at odd times on odd days. Every other year, I reviewed the schedule early and chose wisely, but this year, I don’t know what happened. What happened was that I ended up with a Tuesday and Thursday night class just two semesters before I’d be walking across the stage to grab my degree. Tuesday and Thursday night? What a bust. I’m usually busy on Tuesday and Thursday nights. Doing Tuesday and Thursday night things. Like drinking oak-barrel whiskey straight from the bottle and edging myself to porn on Reddit. The flavor of the week.

Speaking of the flavor of the week, as I headed to class in the Bradley Building, I approached the crosswalk and noticed this little minx in front of me. Mid-cross, her ankle boot caught on the uneven asphalt, and I ran like hell to get to her in time. I held her by her shoulders, steadying her so she wouldn’t fall. I heard her gasp, her breath somehow high-pitched for as silent as it was. I heard it over the wind, which swept in a sideways breeze parallel with the crosswalk, and now I could smell her floral hair. I closed my eyes and breathed her in, opening them and acting normal just in time for her to drop a binder-clipped stack of papers to the pavement and turn around.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, covering her cheeks in embarrassment. She was flushed. Every blood vessel had come to life in those cheeks, but they weren’t rosy the way you’d generically describe a woman’s flushed cheeks. They were dusted so lightly with bronze, her highlight gleaming in the evening sun. She was conventionally attractive, sure, but what caught my eye was her eyes. They were bright and beautiful; it was almost like you could see through them. Crystalline. Like her cheekbones, too, they were dusted with a light sparkle of something that glinted in the sun, hardly anything at all. I could tell she wore makeup here in the gracious sunlight, but she was a natural beauty, no doubt.

“No need to apologize,” I said, and I couldn’t help but smirk as I got down on one knee in front of her and retrieved the stack of pages. Thank God for late summer. My favorite season of all. Sometime between August and September is when it all goes down: nostalgic air and lazier warm weather that slows and recedes into fall. It was warm. In that dress, I could see how smooth her freshly shaven legs looked in the waning sunshine coming from the opposite end of the lot. “I’ve got it,” I said but barely, shuffling any pages that had escaped from the binder clip and returning them to the stack. I stood up and handed them to her. That was when I noticed her height. Not such a little minx after all, but I guess she was little to me. Those boots had a little bit of a heel but not that much. She was nearly my height. Had to be. Her hair was tucked away in a braid that came down to her chest, not that I should have been looking there in the first place, but I could tell she’d thrown that braid together quickly by the way it was woven, and I suppose that was why I studied it. There was something altogether messy in a perfect way about the unkempt, face-framing wisps of her hair that blew in the breeze.

“Thank you so much,” she said. “Thanks.”

The way she repeated herself, I could tell she was a little shy, maybe slightly awkward.

“It’s no problem,” I said. “Are you going to class?”

“Yes.”

At this juncture, we both realized we were holding up traffic, noticing a small line of cars waiting for us to clear the crosswalk so they could leave campus for the day. She continued walking in the direction of the Bradley Building, and I followed alongside her.

“Can I walk you to class?” I offered. I was trying to be genuine, but really, I just wanted to stay by her side a little longer. This was no selfless, heroic act. If anything, it was selfish.

“Um… I don’t know if that would be appropriate,” she said. I didn’t know what she meant, so I just nodded silently. “Anyway, thanks for helping a girl out,” she added with a little laugh, giving me an awkward thumbs-up with her only free hand.

“Yeah,” I said with a smile.

We parted ways, and I lost sight of where she went. I’d find her again. I’d show up at this exact time every week if I had to. Then again, didn’t I have to show up at this exact time every week for class? Probably, yeah. Dumbass.

Inside Bradley, I took a glance at the schedule on my phone and made note of the room number. I walked down the steps to the basement level, and there it was. When I walked in, I took a seat somewhere in the middle. Everyone knew, probably since the fucking dawn of time, that if you were a Goody Two-Shoes, you sat in the very front of the classroom, and if you were a fuck-up, you sat all the way in the back. I was somewhere between Goody Two-Shoes and fuck-up. I aced all my classes but did so secretly. A secret genius. It was important to have a competitive edge with those asshole smart kids. At the same time, the class clowns got along with me. They respected me because they thought I must be one of them. I was close enough to the back of the room that I’d led them to believe it. There was a delicate balance when it came to where you sat in a lecture hall. Anyway, point being, the middle’s where it’s at.

Some students filed in, some Goody Two-Shoes in the front and some fuck-ups in the back. I didn’t pay attention to any one of them in particular—until I found her.

In she walked, and even in the dim light of the basement-level lecture hall, I could see her bright eyes as if they lit up the whole fucking place. Her braid was still tossed in front of her shoulder, but now she wore a pair of glasses. And what do you know, there was a spot right next to me. I moved my head in a casual nod as if to say, hey, baby, there’s a spot right here. I’m your guy. Right? I even moved my veiny hand over the tabletop next to me in a circular motion, a sit your fine little ass right here kind of thing. She kept walking, though. Right up to the podium.

“Good afternoon,” she said, her eyes scanning the rows of students, “or good evening. We’ll get started in a few minutes.”

Okay, wow. I was having a hard time breathing. I’ll be honest, I had not seen this coming. She looked young, looked to be my age. She was a professor? Correction: my professor? Not cool. Not fucking cool! The seat next to me stayed empty, and I was glad for it. In my little world, she turned up the side steps and came down my row and sat her fine little ass right next to me. In real life, though? Not the case. Not the fucking case! I was known to exaggerate the way things really were sometimes, and I knew that about myself. A flaw I was willing to admit and own up to. I thought maybe I’d imagined her, maybe this was some other woman who just so happened to look like her. I proved that theory wrong when I noticed her unleashing the stack of papers from the binder clip. She walked up to Goody Two-Shoes Number One, down at the bottom left corner of the room, and she handed that girl the stack.

“Take one and pass it,” she said, and then, after a silent little laugh like it was an inside joke, she added, “It’s the syllabus.”

I sighed. This was a major obstruction to my plans. And by my plans, I of course mean my intention to show up at the same time for weeks to come until I ran into her again and convinced her that I’d be worth her time. How was I going to do that now? Be a good fucking student for her? That wouldn’t get her attention. I had to get her attention. But how? This was important. So super important to me. I waited until the papers had made a full round and the stack made it back into her hands. Then, I jotted down my cell in the top right corner of my copy of the syllabus, and I raised my hand—not in a normal way but a sexy way, like a two-finger raise. She looked up and gave me a head-nod like the one I’d given to her when she walked in. Oh, fuck me, this must be a sign.

“What’s up?” she said. Casual. Sexy, even.

“Uh…” Why be nervous in front of her? This is embarrassing. “Half of my syllabus is blank,” I lied, and I narrowed my eyes at her while I folded the page in half. I handed it to the person in front of me, who handed it to the person in front of him, who handed it to the—you get the point. It made its way back to Hot Professor, and she exchanged it for a fresh copy. She left my fake-fucked-up copy lying on her podium, and while my eyes scanned my second perfectly fine copy of the syllabus, she started speaking.

“Okay, I think we’ve got a full house. Hi, everyone. I’m Professor Payson, and you’re in Interpersonal Communication. In an effort to communicate well, since that’s why we’re here, should anyone not be in Interpersonal Communication? Speak now, or forever hold your peace,” she said.

God, she is sexy as hell. The way she controls the room. You think you’re so damn cute, don’t you, Professor Payson? I know you do.

“Before we get started, I know this is an evening class, and I respect that many of you have busy schedules, especially those of you who are really close to graduation, but if you could please refrain from eating in class, I’d really appreciate that,” she continued. So respectful. “We’ll talk about the syllabus in just a minute, but I want to begin by talking about nonverbal communication. What you don’t say—your hand gestures, the way you carry yourself, your facial expressions—says so much about you. Those things can all work together to convey how you’re feeling and what you’re thinking, even if you won’t say anything aloud.”

This sounded interesting—important, even—but I tuned her out completely. I focused on the melody of her voice. The whisper of her chest when she’d pause for a breath. The rhythm of her speech. The cadence of it all. These were all verbal cues, though. I thought I should take a look at her nonverbals. That was what we were talking about, after all, wasn’t it? Her nonverbals. Yeah.

I proceeded to undress her with my eyes.