PROFESSOR MARCUS

The thing about Wednesdays was that they always started with the kind of energy that made you feel like the week was already losing.

Double lectures back to back, a hallway that smelled like someone had spilled an entire coffee cart somewhere near the science block, and approximately three hundred students all moving in different directions with the collective urgency of people who were already late for something. I navigated through it the way I always did. My earphones in one ear, iced coffee in hand, letting the crowd part around me rather than pushing through it.

Zara was beside me matching my pace, talking about something her cousin who visited had done two nights before that had apparently involved a borrowed straightener and a near disaster, and I was listening with about sixty percent of my attention because the other forty was occupied with the fact that I had spent my morning thinking about Reid Callum. He was just there, in my head which was already more than I was comfortable with.

"Are you even listening to me?" Zara said.

"Straightener, cousin, almost catastrophe," I said. "I'm listening."

She gave me a look but let it go. We turned the corner toward the east corridor and I pulled my earphone out because the hallway noise had shifted.

The lecture hall for our second class was already half full by the time we got there and we slid into the seats in the middle row, not too close to the front because that sent a message I wasn't interested in sending and not too far back because Zara actually cared about seeing the board.

Our friend Casey was already there, turned sideways in her seat with the energy of someone sitting on information they were absolutely desperate to share. Casey always had information. It was her primary personality trait and honestly it was useful most of the time.

"You heard?" she said before we had even properly sat down.

"Heard what?" Zara said.

Casey leaned in. "The old lecturer. Professor Haines."

I set my coffee down. "What about him?"

"Gone." Casey's eyes were wide. "As in, removed. As in, apparently it finally came out that he had been trading grades for… " she dropped her voice slightly even though the noise in the hall made it completely unnecessary, "... for sex from female students and for at least two semesters."

Zara's mouth dropped open. "Are you serious?"

"Dead serious. My roommate knows someone in the administration office. Apparently there were multiple complaints and they finally had enough to act on it." She sat back with the satisfied expression of someone who had successfully delivered breaking news. "They've already brought in a replacement. Starting today apparently."

I said nothing.

I kept my face completely neutral, reached for my coffee and took a slow sip and looked at the front of the lecture hall like it was the most interesting thing in the room.

Because the thing was.

The thing was…

I knew about Professor Haines and his arrangements. I knew about them specifically because I had been part of one. Second semester, a course I was failing for reasons that had more to do with attendance than ability, and Haines with his quiet offers and his carefully worded suggestions and the way he made it sound like a transaction between two adults rather than what it actually was.

"Apparently the new one is young," Casey was saying, still in full broadcast mode. "Like actually young. Someone saw him in the admin corridor this morning and said…"

The hall shifted.

It was that thing that happens in a room when someone walks into it and the air rearranges itself slightly without anyone being able to explain why.

I looked up.

He walked in carrying nothing but a folder and the kind of composure that looked completely natural. He was younger than any lecturer I had seen in this department. Late twenties maybe, early thirties at a stretch and he was, objectively and without any particular feeling attached to it, extremely good looking. Every girl in the front three rows visibly reassembled herself.

Casey grabbed Zara's arm without looking away from the front.

"That," she whispered, "is our new lecturer."

He set his folder on the desk, looked out at the hall with a calm that suggested three hundred staring students was not particularly new information to him, and introduced himself in a voice that was so not unhurried. I was not paying attention to his name.

I was paying attention to the fact that this course, this specific course, was the one where my grade situation was, to put it gently, not ideal. Haines had been a solution to that problem and that solution had just been permanently removed.

Which meant I needed a new solution.

By the time the lecture ended I had already made a decision. I waited for Zara and Casey to get ahead of me in the crowd, told them I'd forgotten something and would catch up, and doubled back toward the corridor that led to the staff offices.

His door was the second one on the left, name card not yet replaced on the holder outside it. I knocked twice and went in without waiting for an answer.

He was standing at the desk going through papers and he looked up when I came in without particular surprise.

"Miss..?"

"Hayes." I let the door close behind me and crossed the room with the kind of walk I had perfected over three years of knowing exactly what I was doing and exactly how to do it. "Brielle Hayes. I just wanted to introduce myself properly and talk about the course. I've been having a bit of a difficult semester and I was hoping we could find a way to…"

"Sit down please, Miss Hayes."

The instruction was quiet and completely without warmth and something about the delivery made me pause for just half a second before I recovered.

I sat and he sat too.

He looked at me for a moment. Then he said, "Whatever arrangement you had with my predecessor does not exist in this office. I want to make that clear before this conversation goes any further. I've had about three students come to my office before you requesting a way to sort out their grades.”

I opened my mouth.

"I also want to make clear," he continued, still in that same even tone, "that I am familiar with how these situations tend to go and I am not interested. Whatever you came in here to offer, the answer is no." He looked back down at his papers. "If theres nothing else, you can leave."

I stayed exactly where I was.

He glanced up.

I smiled at him slowly. “But, i haven't offered anything yet."I said with a pretty seductive look, leaning backward so I could push my boobs out. 

"Miss Hayes."

"I'm just saying …"

"Please, the door," he said, "is behind you."

I stood. Smoothed my skirt, picked up my bag from the chair with complete composure and walked back to the door without hurrying.

But as I stepped out into the corridor and pulled the door shut behind me, I was already thinking.

He thought that was over but it wasn't.

I needed that grade and I had never in three years met a situation I couldn't eventually turn in my favor. He was disciplined and guarded and completely unmoved and that was fine.

Everyone had a crack somewhere and I just needed to find his.