Jaywalking

by Rachel Ember

  Had they? Emile could barely recall their conversation.

  “Perhaps it is best to simply… give one another space. For now.” He looked up, the glare from the window turning the lenses of his glasses reflective so that Emile couldn’t see his eyes. The effect was disconcerting.

  While Emile couldn’t recall the details of what had been said yesterday, this new line was very different from the one that Ben had been repeating since Emile had caught him with someone else. The reversal was confusing, but Emile was hardly going to discourage him. He nodded silently, and Ben bent his head again, picking up a final shard of glass before standing again.

  “You’ll need a vacuum to get the rest,” he said, emptying his handkerchief into the steel wastebasket. The shower of glass against the metal bottom grated on Emile’s ears. Ben refolded his handkerchief carefully, tucked it away, and walked toward the door. But he paused and looked back before he opened it.

  “Your student has a crush on you,” he said seriously. “I’m sure it’s not the first time you’ve been in that position, but still—be careful.”

  Emile couldn’t contain an incredulous snort. “This, coming from you?”

  “I recognize the irony,” Ben said, and sighed. “But as we both know, you’re not like me, are you?”

  Emile had nothing to say to that.

  With a parting nod, Ben let himself out into the hallway.

  Eleven

  Jay

  October

  “Hey, Miller!”

  Jay was running along the boundary line in the practice field, completing the set of sprints that were part of the familiar drill, and he was more or less on autopilot. The sound of his teammate shouting his last name barely cut through the fog of distraction that had gotten denser and denser in the two days since he’d seen Emile.

  Every time Jay pressed the tiny cut on his fingertip against his palm until it throbbed dully, he felt the humiliation of being dismissed from Emile’s office all over again. The man who had come in and interrupted them must have been another professor at Walland. He’d been good-looking, and sharply dressed. Almost like an older, much-less-hot version of Emile, and there’d also been something about the energy in the air between them that had made Jay wonder…

  “Miller!”

  Jay finally turned his head, just in time to avoid tripping over the ball that one of the midfielders—Dale—had just kicked into his path. After a clumsy half-step, he managed to punt it back to Dale, who stopped the ball with his left foot and then put a his hand on his hip, glaring at Jay. “What the fuck, dude?”

  “Language, Benton!” growled the coach. But he gave Jay a reproving look, as well. “Get your head in the game, Miller, or you’re going to get yourself hurt.”

  Jay nodded, his cheeks hot, and pushed himself through the drill, driving his body so hard that his head lacked the spare room for the memory of Emile’s face, pale and ill with shock, as it had looked when Jay had told him that he hadn’t managed to drop Lit 100, after all.

  He could still hardly believe how things had turned out. It all rushed back to him now as practice ended and he jogged slowly toward the locker room along with his teammates. After spending the night at Emile’s, he’d gone back to his dorm with the feeling that he was walking on clouds, unfazed even when he’d found Eric hastily shoving what looked like a katana into a box under his bed.

  Then, he’d logged onto his laptop to check the status of an assignment he’d turned in electronically, seen the email from his advisor, and felt his entire mood reverse from high to low within the first few lines of her message. Jay had gone straight to his advisor’s office. He’d been raised by two staunch atheists and never developed anything that could be called faith of his own, but found himself praying that the email was just some kind of misunderstanding.

  Apparently, whatever god he’d hitherto ignored in his life hadn’t been impressed by his pleas, though. His advisor had seemed a little puzzled by how upset he was, and then told him in no uncertain terms that he’d missed the deadline to drop a class for a student athlete, and he would either have to finish Lit 100, or fail it. Ceasing his attendance and taking the fail obviously wasn’t a solution, though Jay had entertained it for a wild moment. For one thing, a requirement of his scholarship and eligibility to play was that he get passing grades. For another, his mother would kill him long before the athletic department got around to rescinding his status.

  After filing into the locker room and shedding his gear, Jay showered quickly so that he could beat Charlie, the team’s prettiest pretty boy, to the single outlet in the corner and blow-dry his hair.

  “Hot date, Miller?” Charlie asked, leaning toward one of the small mirrors and turning his head to wink at Jay, apparently already over the injustice of having to let his dark brown waves air dry. “Who’s the lucky dude?”

  “I don’t have a date at 10 a.m.,” Jay muttered, but he couldn’t help wondering what Charlie would say if he answered, My English professor, but he doesn’t seem to consider himself all that lucky.

  The sneaking thought that Emile not only didn’t consider himself lucky for having met Jay, but likely regretted everything they’d shared, filled Jay’s mouth with a bitter taste.

  “I can respect a dude who just likes to look his best,” Charlie said with a serious nod, running his thumb over his thick, perfectly manicured eyebrows and then adjusting his popped collar. “See you later, man.”

  When his hair was shiny and dry, and he couldn’t procrastinate another minute without risking being late to class, Jay started his walk across campus for Lit 100. Somehow, Jay had never gotten Emile’s number, which meant that this was his first opportunity to see or talk to Emile without stalking him on social media—which Jay had tried without success—or showing up at his office, which had been a disaster he wasn’t going to repeat.

  Jay happened to reach the steps into the building at the same moment as Bria, who was coming from the opposite direction. She made eye contact and raised an eyebrow at him in greeting, which was her equivalent of a smile and a hug.

  “So, about this midterm,” she said as they started up the stairs. Of course, Jay thought with bemusement, she was only being so friendly because she was about to ask for help. “I have my meeting with Professor Mendes next week, and I need you to help me come up with a paper topic he’ll like before then.”

  “How would I know what he’ll like?” Jay muttered.

  Bria’s eyes narrowed on him. “Because you two are obviously kindred spirits. His eyes get all wide whenever you actually talk, and he nods really hard at you like you two are the only ones in the room with a brain.” She cocked her head. “What’s up with your attitude?”

  Jay swallowed. A part of him thought he could tell Bria the truth, now that there was actually something to tell. She was one of the people closest to him—and he’d never known her to have much of a moral compass, so he couldn’t imagine she would be offended by the notion of Jay being with someone who was older, or even a teacher. And it was Bria who had heard his confession about Laramie’s Bar without judgment. Maybe, if he was honest with her, she’d actually help him figure out what to do.

  But Jay also knew that Emile wouldn’t want Bria to know about them, so he swallowed back the confession. Anyway, there wasn’t time. They were already at the classroom door, and Natalie and her friend were pushing it open ahead of Jay and Bria. Jay was caught off-guard by the sight of Emile inside, his hip resting against the desk in one of the postures that was common in what Jay had come to think of as his ‘teaching mode.’ Emile was speaking to Levi—a guy with slouchy shoulders and jeans that were too big for him, though he had nice eyes and cute freckles. There was nothing untoward about their conversation, and yet the idea that someone else was freely talking to Emile when Jay didn’t know how to speak to him himself, and had been agonizing over their separation for days… he wanted to punch the kid.

  Alarmed by the impulse, he stared at the floor while h
e followed Bria to the far side of the room and slid into his usual seat.

  “After I figured out you were blowing off class on Tuesday, I took some notes for you.” She dropped a spiral notebook on top of his desk, making him jump and sit back in surprise.

  Jay narrowed his eyes at the messy handwriting that filled the top half of the page, but once he deciphered the words, he found that her notes were surprisingly coherent. “Thanks. Reading this, I might have thought you actually thought the lecture was interesting.”

  Bria snorted. “Oh, yes. The significance of similes. Fascinating.”

  Jay shook his head, running his finger down the margin of the page where it was a little crumpled, absently smoothing it. He’d have to tell his mother that he’d actually witnessed Bria making an effort. He’d once overheard her quietly lecturing Bria at their kitchen table, when they hadn’t realized Jay was there. His mom had thought Bria was determined to sabotage herself academically, and that Bria’s insistence that school doesn’t matter and degrees are meaningless was just a smoke screen for her fear of success.

  He didn’t think Bria’s own mother had ever had a problem with her mediocre performance in her classes. All he’d ever heard her chide Bria for was her refusal to wear the clothes, the smiles, and the boyfriends on her arm that would make her the most popular girl in school. You’re so beautiful, sweetie, Jay had heard her say more than once. Why do you insist on wasting it?

  Jay would never dare bring up Bria’s mother, or Bria’s relationship with his mother, directly. But at the flurry of memories he couldn’t help smiling at her warmly, an expression she returned with a suspicious frown.

  “What?” she demanded.

  “Nothing,” Jay said, then turned his head sharply toward Emile at the sound of his laugh. Emile was laughing at something that Levi had said. The laugh was polite, but when Jay saw the sincere amusement in Emile’s expression, mild as it might have been, Jay’s wrist jerked and his pen slid out of his hand.

  Bria bent to pick it up before he could, and their eyes met when he twisted around in his desk to take it back.

  “Maybe I should take notes for you today, too,” she said, her eyes sharp and her dark eyebrows pulling together.

  Jay swallowed, but he could think of nothing to say that wouldn’t just incriminate him further, so he swung back around to sit straight in his desk and lean over his notebook, pen poised—determined not to look up again unless it was absolutely necessary.

  “All right, everyone, it’s that time again,” Emile said.

  Jay’s vow to stare only at his notebook was quickly broken. He looked up without thinking, though of course Emile had been addressing the whole class and wasn’t even looking at Jay. As usual, he was perfectly composed, complete with a pleasant smile. Almost unrecognizable as the sweaty, begging man whom Jay had—

  “How did you all find today’s reading?” Emile folded his arms and leaned against the desk behind him so that he could cross his legs at the ankle. Jay looked back down at his notes and gritted his teeth.

  By the end of class, Jay felt so desperate to escape the room and find a place where he could take a deep breath that he all but leapt out of his chair. He might have been tempted to linger there and try to talk to Emile, but he couldn’t figure out how to do that without confirming whatever Bria had started to suspect.

  “You don’t have a class after this, right?” Bria asked as they came down the steps outside. She gripped his forearm and steered him off-course at the bottom of the stairs. “Come to the student union and tell me what to write this paper about.”

  “I do have a class,” Jay started to protest, but then he sighed. “But not for twenty minutes.”

  “Well, that should be plenty of time.” She towed him the rest of the way to the union and sat him at a table in the middle of the empty dining area that would be swarming with people by lunchtime. “I’m going to go get a bottle of water. You want something?”

  Jay shook his head, pulling out his phone as she walked away.

  How had he managed to kiss and fuck a man he couldn’t stop thinking about, but not get his phone number? He tried a browser search and then checked the various social media sites for Emile’s name. The only place he found Emile at all was on his Walland faculty page. There was a photo of him looking sexy and adorable in a mustard-colored vest… with an office phone number and email listed beside it.

  Calling his office was better than showing up there, Jay reasoned, so he tried calling the number. When he reached voicemail, he didn’t leave a message.

  Then, he wrote an email, choosing his words carefully.

  Dear Professor Mendes, I’d like to make an appointment to talk about my midterm paper topic. What is your earliest availability? Thank you, Jay Miller

  He hit ‘Send’ before he could talk himself out of it.

  “What are you doing?” Bria asked, overly casual as she peered over his shoulder at the screen of his phone.

  Jay jerked away from her and flipped his phone over on the table. “Nothing.”

  But fifteen minutes later when he left Bria to get to his next class, he checked his phone again and found a new email in his student account inbox.

  Mr. Miller, I am available at four-thirty this afternoon. I recognize it’s short notice, but you’ll find me in my office at that time if it is convenient for you. Regards, Emile Mendes

  Jay’s heart flipped over in his chest. Maybe Emile was missing Jay as much as Jay was missing him, and that’s why he’d given a time for today. Or maybe he wasn’t missing Jay at all, but he just wanted to get their official break-up over with—assuming… well, was it a break-up? Was there anything between them so formal as to require that word? Maybe he just wanted to keep Jay from showing up at his office uninvited again, like a lost puppy.

  Jay didn’t want to be early and have to haunt the hallway again, so he timed his arrival at Cross Hall precisely, knocking on Emile’s office door at four-thirty, exactly.

  He stood close to the door, expecting to hear Emile call to him to come in, but instead the door opened in front of him. He stepped back as Emile appeared, their eyes meeting at once.

  “You’re right on time,” Emile said in a low voice. His slight smile made Jay relax incrementally. Emile didn’t look like he was about to break up with Jay. Maybe they were going to have a better conversation than the one Jay had been imagining on a miserable loop.

  “Well,” Jay said with as much levity as he could muster, “I did spend about ten minutes circling the building so I wouldn’t be early.”

  Emile laughed softly as he closed the door. Jay’s hands itched with the urge to grab hold of him, so he shoved them in his pockets for good measure and went over to the desk. His eyes landed on the place on the desk where there’d been a blue mason jar full of pens, until Jay had clumsily destroyed it. Now, there was a conspicuous empty spot. He peered down at the rug.

  “Guess you cleaned up my mess, huh?” Jay looked up just in time to see Emile lift his hand from the door handle and flip the lock.

  The room was small; they were still only steps away from one another, but Jay froze, too anxious about misstepping to obey the instinct that told him to grab Emile by the lapels of his jacket and kiss him breathless.

  “It’s all right,” Emile said with a faint smile.

  “You must think I’m kind of clumsy,” Jay went on.

  Emile’s faint smile turned rueful. “‘Clumsy’ is not the word that comes to mind when I think of you.”

  “Knocking over jars, dropping leashes,” Jay said, counting off the examples on his fingers with a self-deprecating smile of his own.

  Recognition flashed in Emile’s eyes; he hadn’t forgotten Jay dropping Godot’s leash the week before when they’d run into one another at his house, apparently. He laughed. “I suppose you’d better not make a habit of that, given your profession.”

  “Yeah, and it was my first day on the job. I didn’t get off to a great start.”


  “I don’t know. Godot obviously likes you. You must be doing something right.”

  “Does he?” Jay was oddly pleased by the idea. “Well, he probably likes everyone. He’s such a good dog.”

  “He’s more picky than you think. How did you wind up working with Blake?”

  The casual back and forth was a surprise, but a welcome one; Jay felt his nerves melt away a little as he answered. “A mutual friend. Bria, actually. You know, from class?”

  Emile nodded.

  Jay wrinkled his nose. “My parents were really hung up on me having a job, so she helped me find something that doesn’t take up much time. Mostly, I just needed to get them off my back.”

  A tiny bit of tension seemed to build between Emile’s eyebrows. “Oh?”

  “Yeah,” Jay said distractedly, trying to figure out why Emile was less comfortable now than he’d been a moment before. “They want me to learn to be responsible with money, or whatever.” He shrugged dismissively. “Is something wrong?”

  Emile shook his head once, but then hesitated, and shrugged. “It’s just that—is it so bad, for them to want you to have a part-time job?”

  “I guess not,” Jay said slowly. “But I do have plenty to do without it. Practice, studying, thinking about you.” He flashed a smile at the last item on the list, but although Emile smiled back, it was fleeting.

  “I guess it’s hard for me to relate,” Emile said, and then paused to rake his teeth over his lower lip. “I worked all through high school and college, and then taught in grad school, but out of necessity. Sometimes two or three jobs, just to make everything work.”

  Jay felt an unfamiliar tugging in his stomach that made him deeply uncomfortable. “That’s… yeah, I can see why what I said would make me sound like a total jerk. Sorry.” He shook his head, the shamed sensation aggravated by the fact that he’d been on edge all day. “God, I’m messing this up, aren’t I?” It felt like he’d clumsily broken something else in the room, but this time it was something nonphysical and more critical than a jar of pens.