by S. L. Finlay
That morning when I was getting ready for class, the two parts of me battled with one another: the part that knew I should stay away, that knew he was a pompous prick fought hard with the part that didn't care what kind of prick he was – or what kind of prick he had – but just wanted it in my mouth.
How do you get ready for class when this is what's on your mind? When this is the internal battle you're going through? You dress slutty, that's how you get ready. Even if it was wrong, it was hot. It was made even hotter because it was wrong.
So there I was, arrived early to class (for the first time ever) and wearing clothes too small for the cool Irish weather. My short skirt was teamed with a low-cut top. I was all black except for my pearly white smile. I was sure it wasn't my smile he would notice today. I was going to make a point of that.
When David came by to open up the room early for class, his eyes sat on me for a moment too long, "Oh, hi." He said before turning back to opening the door. "Good to see you." I wasn't sure, but I had thought for a moment that I had seen a cheeky smile across David's lips. It had been so quick though that I might have imagined it.
As I was the only one there, I could have a chat with David without anyone else seeing it and either of us potentially getting into any hot water over a little flirting. I knew if I flirted, he would flirt back. He was into me, I kept telling myself.
I turned on the charm (something I had been improving upon since I arrived in Ireland with all of its charming people) and flirted like hell with my professor. He got it. There was no need for subtlety until one of the other students walked in the door.
With other students there I would just need to be more subtle with my flirting, but I could still flirt like crazy.
I took my seat in the front and pulled out my notebook. I was conscious of every move I was making in case he should look over at me. I pulled out my notebook delicately (not the swearing self I normally was as I tried to rip it from my over-stuffed bag unsuccessfully) then placed it on the table and tossed my hair back out of my face before looking up at my sexy professor.
When I did look up he was talking to another female student who had just walked in the door about an essay she had just written. He was interested in that conversation because it was work stuff and giving her all the answers she needed, but his body was facing me the whole time. I smiled to myself when I noticed it.
My eyes were on him, giving him a slow look-over when they went back up to his face and I noticed the other student had seen me checking him out. She looked disappointed and a little pissed before finishing her conversation with him and sitting down.
I don't understand girls like that. This wasn't the girl I had seen him with at the pub, and judging by their body language she was just another student. So why get upset that we're both checking out the same professor? She doesn't own him.
I shook the thought of silly girl problems from my head as I wrote the date in my notebook and distracted myself with tidying up my bag before looking back up for the start of our lecture once the room was filled.
"Today we'll be talking more about the hero's journey." David told the class who were all in their seats by now, "We have covered most of it already, and you're all familiar with the hero's journey even if you don't think you are."
The whole room nodded. Even I, the law major, was familiar with the hero's journey before I took this class. Hero's journeys are in almost every book, after all.
So I knew this stuff (mostly) and I could jot the odd note down while perving on my sexy professor. This wasn't too bad actually.
Throughout the class I sat there, I think appearing like I was in rapt attention and actually just checking out the sexy professor. I am sure he knew exactly what I was doing. Hell, I am sure most of the female students in the room (which was actually most of the room) were doing exactly the same thing.
But, I had something none of these girls had. I was an exchange student with an exotic accent who genuinely hadn't seen her own potential whereas most of these girls were creative writing majors who had seen their own creative potential. In fact, they hadn't just seen it but they had perhaps over-estimated it.
Purple prose was abundant in this room.
As an exchange student though, it wasn't my concern what the prose of other students was like. I mostly wanted my professor after all. I assured myself too that I could have him.
When the class ended, everyone got up for their next class but I didn't move. I knew I had my Irish History class up next and knew even though the Irish History professor liked me, I didn't want to be late.
But still I waited.
Evidently most people had other places to be too. Everyone except for that one girl who was there earlier chatting to David, that one girl who had given me a dirty look when she had caught me checking him out as if he was hers.
He wasn't hers, he was his own person. Soon to be my person.
I was slow and deliberate then. I checked my phone. I had five minutes before I had to be at the next class. I put some of my things away slowly. I smiled to myself.
By the time I had only two minutes left before I had to be somewhere, David, who had been very polite to the girl but was now obviously over it was making his leave. He had somewhere else to be so he thanked her and left.
I was left standing there in the wake of jealous girl who wouldn't let me near him and feeling furious. It would be another week before I would get to flirt with the professor I had such a huge crush on, all because of some silly girl who wouldn't let others have a turn.
I felt my jaw clench as I approached the door. I was walking past the other girl when she grabbed me by the arm.
I looked at her then, as I couldn't not look at someone who had me by the arm.
"What do you think you're doing?" She asked me. Now I was closer I could hear her accent more clearly: she was from Dublin. The 'posh' part of Dublin, in the south where people have mansions (by Irish standards) and send their children to private schools where they wear blazers and ties to school every day.
I let out a deep sigh, "I am going to class." I didn't want to argue with her, the professor, although hell sexy was just a man after all. Men were not worth arguing about. Hell, I shouldn't even see her as competition. She wasn't. Not only was he not interested in her, where he was obviously interested in me, but she was another woman. Women shouldn't see one another as competition, Sammy had said once. We're all in it together. All people are in it together.
As silly as it sounds, I didn't think she was going to take all of this as seriously – or as personally – as she did. But then, I guess I didn't know her so I can't say that I had any idea what was going on inside her head.
"No you're not." The girl spat, "You were checking out my man!"
"Your man?" I asked, bewildered. David wasn't anybody's. Or, maybe he was that girl I saw him at the pubs, but he certainly wasn't this woman's. Not by a very long shot.
"Yeah. My man." She said, her eyes still filled with fire, "You stay the fuck away from him!" She spat at me before turning to leave.
I watched her leave, feeling the whole altercation was pretty dumb, but also feeling a little rattled. She was serious, and she was fierce.
After a few moments – and a few deep breaths – I made my way to my Irish History class. Of course I was late, of course the professor said nothing about it and merely let me take my seat in class without a fuss.
I sat down beside my friend and wrote her a note – a long one – about what had just happened and how bad I felt about it after she mouthed 'where were you?'
Sammy was pretty shocked by what I had written, but couldn't say anything as we were in class. She merely wrote, 'that bitch!' On the paper and waited until we got out of class.
"Who was it?" She asked me as we left the room less than an hour later.
I took a few steps down the corridor with her, ensuring we were out of earshot of other students who might know the girl and told Sammy, "I am not sure. Just som
Sammy made a face, "After no-one owns that man!" She cried. A small smile crossed my face at the inappropriate use of the world 'after' in a sentence. It was an Irish thing, and I never knew why they put the word 'after' in sentences in odd places, but everyone here did it.
"Yeah, I know." I told her, "The thing was too, I wasn't treating it all that seriously. I was flirting with him, all the other girls were flirting with him, it was just a bit of fun. You know?"
Sammy was nodding her head, "Yeah, I know."
"I didn't mean to upset anyone. I mean, I don't think he's even into this girl. It's just another student with a crush on him. It would happen to him all the time. She's just some silly girl whose feelings he's trying not to hurt." I told her.
Sammy shook her head at me, "You don't know that."
"What do you mean?" I asked, a little too quickly and a little too defensively.
Sammy took a moment to answer. She cleared her throat a bit before she told me, "Well, we don't know anything about the girl, and about him. He could have had a thing with her."
"You're not inspiring me with a lot of confidence here." I told Sammy in a monotone.
We had reached a courtyard now and were finding places to sit outside and enjoy some fresh air (because there was never any sunshine here for us to enjoy after all). Sammy seemed to be taking the opportunity to not speak quite seriously. She didn't really want to have this conversation I could tell.
I sighed after we had been sitting for a little while, made frustrated by her avoidance.
"What?" She asked, "Oh, okay. Well, I don't know. I don't know much about David. But really, you don't think that guy has a lot of affairs with students?"
I nodded slightly. "Yeah, he might." I agreed.
"So, you don't think he could have had one with her and he's just trying to shrug her off now?" Sammy asked.
I nodded again, "Maybe. But, even if he did, why would it have to be my problem?" My voice was more defensive than I should have been.
My mind wondered then, too. If he was having affairs with students regularly, and this was his method of getting rid of them when he was done with them to just ignore them, this could be what I was in store for in the future.
I sighed deeply and let Sammy change the subject. She got talking about other things and I simply sat there, in my own mind. Maybe it was a good idea to not get too involved with this guy. I could enjoy the flirtation, and maybe a little affair with a professor (every girl had to have one) but at the end of the day, it wasn't for me to get too involved.
He was my professor, and I was his student. I was also going to near the end of my semester here in Ireland too and once I did it would mean I would have to leave anyway.
An affair, a short-term fling with a professor. That's all I wanted. That's all that I could have. Maybe it would work out nicely anyway I told myself.
CHAPTER FOUR
Hot professors' aside, Ireland was a beautiful country. The island of Saints and Scholars had plenty to offer to a wandering American visitor.
On my weekends I would wander Ireland either with local friends like Sammy (in which case wandering mostly consisted of looking at things quickly before going to the pub) or I would go with other international friends.
Both were totally different experiences. The locals would see things they had seen before and liked whereas the other foreigners and I would visit things that were tourist 'must-do's' that my local friends had done ten thousand times and weren't interested in seeing one more time with me.
So far with my international friends I had seen the cliffs of Mohr, blarney castle, Cork, Dublin, a smattering of castles and even been inside a ringfort – a pagan worshipping site said to be protected by fairies.
There were plenty of pagan sites around Ireland, and the fairies that were supposed to be in residence was what stopped people from taking them down if they were on their land. That made me smile a little bit, that grown people, adults - land owners and business owners - wouldn't take this thing down because of mythical beings that lived there. Ireland was a funny place.
We had planned a trip to the Ring of Kerry when our one friend with a car was called away. I had been so looking forward to seeing them after reading plenty of stories about others' trips there and seeing plenty of photos and now I couldn't. I think it's easy to imagine that I was pretty damned devastated.
The four of us would-be passengers all got together and complained to one another. Of course everyone who had been going was excited and now to find out we couldn't was upsetting.
"Are there any other ways for us to go this weekend?" One of the girls asked idly.
Together we remembered all of our friends who had cars and might be able to help. Sitting together, we texted those friends and got negative responses one by one.
"Why don't we go on a tour or something?" Another girl offered.
I didn't want to go on a tour as I imagined them - like everything else in Ireland - to be super expensive. I sat there quietly though as the other girls looked them up. They would cost a little bit of money but we also got a guide and a few inclusions, like lunch that we would have to pay for ourselves otherwise.
"Six of one, half a dozen of the other." I told my group of non-native English speakers and was met with blank stares, "It means that we can either pay for everything ourselves and pay the same or we can pay a company and they pay for stuff for us instead."
There were nods around the room.
It looked like we were going to see the Ring of Kerry, but as tourists on a tour bus. I could do that.
Everything else I had done around here had been in friends cars, and although you had fun, I imagined that I had been missing things by not seeing anything as a regular tourist.
When I had been a tourist visiting places back in the states, guides would tell you things about the site you were visiting, sometimes you would even get stories. I liked stories. But right now, I wasn't getting anything of the sort.
My local friends had been to places they liked ten thousand times and either didn't know the local stories or didn't care about them (the second being the most likely), and my international friends hadn't been to any of these places themselves. My international friends were as wide-eyed about everything as I was.
Going on a tour would be a different experience. Although it had been one we had all been avoiding (only in part because of the money) it could be one that we all got something out of.
So there we were, booking our places on a tour bus and arranging how we would get to the spot where the tour left (we would have an overnight stay in Killarney Thursday night, a town I had never been to before heading back to Galway late that night). This was going to be a little adventure. I was excited to be experiencing it with my friends!
CHAPTER FIVE
The trip to Killarney had taken us longer than we thought. With four girls in a bus together with nothing but beautiful scenery out the window and snacks (Tato potato chips were my favourite Irish snack and I had a bunch of packets), the long trip was punctuated by giggling and storytelling.
After a while, one of the girls, a French exchange student, pulled out a deck of cards and a bottle of vodka.
"Drinking game?" She asked in her soft accent.
I motioned toward the window and she made a face, then I motioned again but she didn't catch my meaning.
"It's daytime." I told her by way of explanation as to why we shouldn't drink.
She wrinkled her nose, "Is it?" She asked.
I giggled and nodded.
"If you say so." She said with a face of disbelief that said 'that is not sunshine' at the Irish clouds. Then she began shuffling the deck.
I shrugged and started playing anyway. Of course I lost a bunch of times and by the time our bus pulled up at Killarney bus station, I was so drunk I could hardly think straight.
When we got off the bus, I almost forgot my backpack then I started walking in one direction, then the girls tapped me on the shoulder and told me to walk in the other direction. I laughed and followed.
There was only so much of this drunkenness the girls could put up with apparently as when we arrived at the hostel, the deposited me in the common room and went out to find some more food to cook dinner.
Sitting alone in the common room a young guy approached me. "Could I sit here with you?" He asked in a soft English accent.
I nodded as I really had no reason not to, then looked out a nearby window and hiccoughed. The room was small and pokey with over-sized furniture that left it feeling intimate and cosy. As a result, the guy was sitting on a couch very close to me, so I guessed that was why he asked me if it was okay to sit down, despite this being a common area.
"What are you reading there?" I asked, motioning towards a magazine in the guy's hands.
He looked at the cover then as if he had no idea what he had been reading all along, "Oh, it's an industry magazine. I'm a chef." He told me, barely making eye contact as he spoke.
I had noticed that since coming here that the locals don't make as much eye contact as we do at home in the states. I was used to it by now, but sometimes it did still give me reason to pause.
"Oh cool." I said, then without meaning the words to come from my mouth I asked dumbly, "You like it?"
The chef thought for a moment before nodding. "It's alright actually."
"Just alright?" I teased, enjoying myself now.
"Well," He began, "It's the thing I always wanted to do. It can be hard sometimes, but it's not the worst. I like it though, for a job. It makes me happy to make good food and see people smile when they taste it."
His words seemed really genuine and really warm. I envied him and until the words came out of my mouth I didn't know where that envy came from.
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