Forbidden First Times: A Contemporary Romance Collection

by Sofia T Summers

  I raised an eyebrow at her. “Prepping for tomorrow,” I told her. “And you?”

  Gina wrinkled her nose. “I was supposed to have dinner with Patrick,” she said. “But he canceled. Again. I think he’s getting bored with me.”

  I didn’t reply. In all of the years I’d known Gina, she’d gone through a series of tumultuous relationships with men and women. We’d always been friends, but sometimes I’d had the oddest feeling that she was trying to push the boundary with me, inch by inch, until we’d wind up in a clandestine encounter in some office somewhere, or even a school stairwell. Dating another faculty member wasn’t against the rules, but I was so leery of involving my personal life with my work life that it wasn’t something that I would ever consider.

  “That’s too bad,” I said smoothly. “Well, it is January, after all. New year, new man?”

  Gina groaned. “You’re awful,” she said teasingly, pressing her arms together and showing just the vaguest hint of cleavage under her silk shirt. “We should get dinner. I’m starving, and I’m sure as hell not going to the dining hall tonight.”

  It prickled me, the way she kept being so suggestive. I’d told her before that I wasn’t interested, but all that had gotten me was a wounded look. Oh, Will, she’d said, sounding hurt. You know I have someone in my life. I just want a friend. And we’re friends, aren’t we?

  We were friends. At one of the conferences we’d attended, on the importance of Victorian woman authors to the modern canon, Gina had gotten so drunk in the hotel bar that I’d had to carry her up to her room. I’d thought it had just been another excuse to put the moves on me, but she’d wound up crying all night and telling me that I was the only person in the world who understood her. It had shown me that she wasn’t nearly as tough as she projected.

  Now, I just tried to remember that night and think of how she always liked to make sure that she was on top of the situation, be it her students or her fellow professors.

  “I’ve got to get home,” I said. “My buddy got tickets to a whiskey tasting. Thirty-year Talisker, if you can believe that.”

  Gina glanced up. “That’s Scotch,” she said.

  “Right,” I replied. I took her silence as my cue to stand up, where I made a show of shuffling a bunch of papers on my desk together into one large pile.

  Gina – somewhat reluctantly – got to her feet and nodded her head at me.

  “Oh, well,” she said, managing not to sound terribly disappointed. “I’ve got an early day tomorrow, I should call it a night, too.”

  I waited approximately five minutes after she’d left my office before checking to make sure that the faculty office was clear and empty and that Gina was gone. I felt almost like a coward, but the last thing I wanted was for her to approach me again – even with the whiskey tasting excuse, I had a feeling she’d still try to con me into spending time with her outside of an academic setting.

  I shouldn’t have been living my life in fear, but I had seen too many lawsuits and allegations to even think of doing otherwise.

  It was already dark in the parking lot even though it was only five-thirty, and by the time I got home it was practically black outside. I pulled into the driveway of the house I’d just purchased, parked, and went inside with my bag. After making myself a drink and settled down into my armchair. I reached into my bag for my laptop but instead came out with the handful of papers I’d grabbed in an effort to convince Gina that I was really and truly leaving.

  They were all term papers from almost two years before, a solid three semesters ago. I laughed under my breath – I’d grabbed the wrong pile of papers, just like the idiot that I sometimes was.

  Still, there was one at the top that caught my eye. Death and Rebirth in T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland by Eden Cooper.

  Eden Cooper.

  That was a name I knew I’d never be able to forget, and not just because of how ridiculously sexy – and biblical – it was. Eden had been in a few of my classes in the past, and coincidentally, she was in my senior seminar, the one that I was so looking forward to teaching this year.

  Eden was a bright girl – obviously intelligent and more dedicated than a lot of her peers – and yet, she was so shy. I remembered her because although she’d always been engaged and present in class, with few absences, she’d seemed almost painfully awkward. Whenever she’d contributed something to the discussion, her cheeks had flamed pink and she’d bitten and sucked on her plump lower lip. It was more than just her mind that had me remembering her – it was her ripe, round body that was more of a woman’s than a student’s.

  I sipped my drink and found myself wondering just what curvy little Eden Cooper was planning on doing after graduation. Her senior year was coming to a close – was she aiming for graduate school?

  Or did she just want to be a corporate drone and have a nine-to-five that would enable her to party, just like other early twenty-somethings that I taught?

  I knew I shouldn’t care. She was a student, after all. Students came and went – after a while, I found myself forgetting about even the most brilliant ones.

  But Eden had such potential, that I found myself hoping she’d somehow follow in my own footsteps, into the ivory tower of academia.

  And somehow, manage to get over that crushing shyness of hers and become a real, confident woman.

  3

  Eden – Thursday

  When class with Professor Marks let out that morning, I had to rush into the bathroom and splash cold water on my face. The Liberal Arts building was an old one, and the steam heat gushing from the radiators only made me feel hot and dry as I looked at myself in the mirror. I was practically panting.

  Like an idiot schoolgirl, I thought to myself. Like a dog in heat, like someone who can’t control herself!

  That day in class, I had been stunned. Professor Marks had singled me out, called me out and made a reference to a paper that I’d written almost two years ago, to tell the class how good it was, to tell the rest of the class that I clearly understood Modernism after no one failed to catch a similar allusion in The Waves.

  I hadn’t been able to stop blushing – it had been both embarrassing and exhilarating at the same time. The other kids in class had looked at me like I’d had two heads, but cool Professor Marks had merely praised me and my writing, then moved on. The sentences he’d read out loud had made me cringe – thank god, my writing had hopefully improved since I’d been a sophomore.

  But what really stood out was that he’d remembered me at all. For all of the effort and time I’d put into making myself stand out in his classes, I was sure that I hadn’t come across as memorable, or even as smart.

  Obviously, Professor Marks thought differently.

  The bell rang in the hall and I groaned, realizing that I’d be late to my basic technology class. I was even tempted to skip, which wasn’t like me at all. The class was mostly made up of freshman and the occasional sophomore – I was clearly the only senior, and the professor had already began treating me like I was some kind of unofficial TA, which made me blush and the other students roll their eyes like, why’s she so special? She should’ve just taken this class years ago, like the rest of us are doing.

  I didn’t skip, though. I dutifully went and took notes on everything the professor said, even though my mind was on Professor Marks the entire time. I had been right about his seminar: the number of students had dwindled down to seven, and he’d even had us arrange our chairs in a circle so it would be like a real graduate class.

  God, if I couldn’t stop thinking about him, I was really going to be in trouble when it came time for my other class exams.

  After my basic technology class, I went to the bookstore and put on my smock. Karen was rushing around, trying to help a girl find the last copy of The Iliad for her Ancient Studies class, and I took my place behind the counter to help clueless students find their books.

  An hour passed quickly and Karen sent me down to the stock room to load up
on copies of Shakespeare anthologies. The books were heavy and I walked back slowly with a stack of them in my arms, trying not to trip. Just as I was making my way back to the counter, I tripped over an extension cord and nearly fell flat on my face. A pair of hands caught me and I flushed as I stumbled and tripped and crashed straight into my best friend.

  “Oh my god, Eden!” Petra gasped. She helped me pick up the fallen anthologies, laughing under her breath. “You poor thing, these are really heavy!”

  “Tell me about it,” I groaned. “I’ll be so happy when the add and drop period is over, at least then I won’t have to lug these things around.”

  Petra nodded sympathetically. With her help, the stack of books was much lighter and we arranged them in a display in front of the counter. Thankfully, the bookstore was nearly empty – all of the kids had filtered out to the dining hall or the on-campus café, and Petra handed me an energy bar.

  “Figured you could use this,” she said.

  “Thanks,” I told her. “I appreciate it.”

  In the days since the semester had started, I felt like I hadn’t had a chance to talk to my best friend since our talk on Tuesday morning. Now that she was here, I was so tempted to tell her about Professor Marks, but deep down I had a feeling that was a bad idea.

  “So,” Petra said. “I was thinking, let’s get lunch together. I have an hour before my next class. You in?”

  I nodded, then turned in my smock behind the counter. Petra and I walked slowly outside – the weather was cold and dry, but the sun was out and everything looked brilliant and icy and beautiful.

  “How’s it going?”

  I shrugged. “Okay,” I lied. “I really hate that core tech class. I should have just gotten it over with years ago.”

  Petra giggled. “I did it when we were freshmen, remember? Mine was all about nanotechnology. Like, what even happened to that? I haven’t heard the word in years.”

  I stifled a laugh. “Right?”

  “What’s yours about?”

  I waved my hand vaguely in the air – for all the notes I’d taken, I still had no idea what the adjunct professor was trying to convey. Not to mention, my thoughts were usually so distracted by Professor Marks in that class that I didn’t pay normally as much attention as I should.

  Petra blinked at me. “Seriously? You’re like, one of the most conscientious people I know,” she said flatly. “You don’t even know what your seminar is about?”

  “Me and science,” I said, waving my hands in the air and fumbling my words on purpose. “It’s like asking me to sit down and do calc for an hour – I just can’t do it.”

  To my relief, Petra laughed. “Yeah,” she said. “Fair.”

  We walked in silence for a moment, past a group of giggling students who were trying to make the most of the leftover snow on the ground. One of them pitched a dirty snowball at the others and the whole group exploded in laughter and shrieks. It made me remember back when I had been a freshman and it had seemed like I’d had so much time to spend fooling around on campus, so much time to get to know my new friends.

  Now, they almost seemed like children to me despite the fact that there was only a four year gap in our ages.

  “You thinking what I’m thinking?” I asked.

  Petra cocked her head to the side and paused. “What?”

  I bit my lip – I was a bit reluctant to get into the same conversation that we’d had a couple of days ago. And I couldn’t ignore the feeling that some very real distance was building between us, something that I’d never imagined would take place. My chest was filled with a sad ache.

  Just the day before yesterday, I’d been so eager to grow up. And now, what?

  “I had the weirdest class today,” I said suddenly.

  “Your tech thing again?”

  I shook my head. “No. Professor Marks. The senior English seminar.”

  This got Petra’s attention, and she raised an eyebrow, suddenly looking far more interested than she had before.

  “What happened?”

  I blushed.

  “Oh, god, Eden,” Petra groaned. “You can’t do this!”

  “Do what?” I asked as innocently as I could. “What?”

  “Come on,” Petra said. “Give me a little snippet like that and then act coy. What did he do?”

  “I ...” I trailed off. The moment between Professor Marks and I had seemed so intimate, so cozy, that I’d cherished it. But now, I was starting to wonder if I’d imagined the whole thing.

  “Eden,” Petra said sternly. We started walking again and I shoved my hands into the pockets of my coat.

  “I think he hit on me,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

  “What?” Petra stopped again, dead in her tracks. “What on earth would make you think that?”

  I sighed. “He singled me out,” I said. “I wrote some paper for him, like a couple of years ago, right? And he like, brought it up in class. Said that I made some great points that even seniors wouldn’t think of.”

  Petra pressed her lips together.

  “What?”

  “Eden, he’s a professor,” she said. “That’s what they do.”

  “It felt like more,” I insisted, feeling more childlike by the second and already wishing that I hadn’t told her.

  “He’s not the type to hit on students,” she continued. “Just because he’s super-hot doesn’t mean he’s like, available, you know? He’s pretty cold to everyone.”

  “Yeah, but not to me. I mean, he wasn’t then.”

  “Eden,” Petra said, and I was starting to tire of hearing my name in that tone.

  “What?” I asked wearily.

  “You have to stop thinking this way,” she said. “It’s the beginning of the semester, and you’re going to make an ass out of yourself if you keep doing this.”

  I blinked. I knew that I shouldn’t feel hurt, but her words stung.

  “I mean, I don’t think I did,” I said slowly.

  “Or worse, you’ll wind up getting hurt,” Petra said. She looked me in the eye and put both her hands on my shoulders. “And frankly, I don’t want to see that happen to you. You’re my best friend, kid.”

  I knew she meant it – that was exactly how I felt about her, too.

  “I know,” I said.

  “So,” she said, looking into the sunlight and shielding her eyes with one hand. “Lunch?”

  I nodded. “Lunch,” I said, trying to match her tone. “Sounds like a plan.”

  As we walked on, I wasn’t sure how to feel. I had always been good at reading people – or so I thought. And I had been so positive, so very sure, that Professor Marks and I had had a moment together, something magic and amazing that he’d never shared with another student before.

  But maybe I was being a dumb kid – what Petra had been suggesting, albeit far more tactfully.

  Maybe I wasn’t all that different from those freshmen playing in the snow, after all.

  4

  Will – Friday

  I shouldn’t have been so fucking stupid – I singled out a student, a very attractive student nonetheless. In the moment, I didn’t feel that I was doing anything wrong.

  But I guess that’s how it starts. I guess that’s how all professors justify that kind of behavior to themselves, how they start to allow dumb schoolgirl crushes on them to get out of hand.

  Or maybe I was just being paranoid. Still, I felt like a prize asshole. The look on Eden’s face when I’d mentioned her in class had been enough to make me cringe, right then and there, and make me wish that I’d never said a fucking word.

  It had been terribly out of character for me, after all. Eden was a smart girl, and she knew it. Why I had insisted on gilding the lily and calling her out like that?

  Fuck, I was dumb. I was falling into the very trap that I had hoped to avoid for so long. Before I’d started at Oakbrook, I’d done what every professor who hopes to make tenure does – traveled around the country and taught
adjunct positions for shitty pay at shitty colleges. Sometimes, the pay had even been so low that I’d had to take a second job as a freelance editor or the like just to keep a roof over my head.

  It hadn’t always been glamorous. When I’d been in undergrad – and even grad school – I’d imagined my PhD would come with a library full of old books, a house full of antiques and dim lighting, all of the prestige and honor that came with the honor of being called “Doctor Marks”.

  So, if I was being truly honest, this wasn’t the first time I’d been that stupid. Academia was a far harder road than I’d initially thought, and it was only my deep love for it that kept me moving on.

  And now that I’d finally gotten what I’d always wanted, what I’d worked so fucking hard to get, I was at risk of blowing it up because of Eden fucking Cooper.

  Goddamnit.

  What a mess.

  Oakbrook College was a traditional school, and on Fridays the last classes ended at two. I’d thought that was ridiculous when I’d first started but now I almost liked it. I only had one seminar on Fridays, a mid-level class for students who were learning towards majoring in English but weren’t officially declared, and it was a nice, low-key seminar. When it was over, my students shuffled out of the classroom and I went to my office where I sat behind my desk and started glancing over my schedule for the next week.

  There was a soft knock on my door and I looked up to see none other than Eden herself standing there. She was wearing a jersey dress that clung to her obscene curves and I could see her nipples were stiff from the outdoor cold despite the very obvious presence of a heavy bra.

  Immediately, my cock began to stiffen in my pants and I clenched my hands into fists beneath the desk. I didn’t know what it was about her curves that drove me so wild, but it was such a natural, such an animalistic reaction that I couldn’t even begin to question it.