Brighter Shades of Light

by Jaclyn Osborn

  The hot water on my shoulders and upper back was to die for. I was sore from my training, but it was a good sore. My body had grown a lot over the past three years, and I was damn proud of it. The Navy Reserve Officer Training Corps—or NROTC—was paying for my college education in exchange for an eight-year commitment to serve in the military after I got my degree.

  A fair trade, in my opinion. I had wanted to be a Marine ever since I was a kid.

  Last summer, I attended a six-week-long drill at Marine Corps’ Mountain Warfare School. Those six weeks had been brutal and exhausting. The other midshipmen and I had learned survival techniques and undergone high altitude conditioning. I was assigned a Petty Officer who’d been both a motivator and an ass kicker as I became familiarized with performing duties.

  This summer, though, I had gone to Officer Candidate School, also known as “bulldog.” I just got back. The other Marine Option midshipmen and I had gone through a grueling six-week OCS course where we’d been put to the test. We had been screened and evaluated, seeing who had what it took to be a Marine Corps Officer. The attrition rate was usually low. Not every midshipman passed.

  One guy had dropped out of the training a month in, not able to take the physical aspect of it, but also the mental toll. If you couldn’t take it, it was best to drop out early. No matter how brutal the training, it was still just training. The real thing would be something else entirely.

  Out of the shower, I threw on some clothes and ran my hands through my short, brown hair before leaving the dorm and hopping in my truck. I was starving. The college dining hall wouldn’t open until the next day, and I hadn’t bought groceries to cook anything.

  Fast food it is, then.

  Radio cranked to my favorite rock station, windows rolled down, and a warm summer breeze on my face, I was in my happy place as I drove through town. The fact my old truck even started added to that happiness. Summers weren’t ever too miserable in Emerald Falls. The temperature normally stayed between eighty and ninety degrees, but the humidity was low, so even when it was hot, at least it wasn’t suffocating…most of the time.

  I passed the local diner that was always packed, continued farther down the road to the historic district, and soon, the smell of freshly-cut grass filled the cab of my truck as people mowed their lawns. It was the perfect day for it, too—not too hot, and it wasn’t raining.

  It felt great to be back.

  What I liked about being in NROTC was I got a taste of the military life while also having a somewhat normal college experience. I got to attend classes with a mix of military and non-military students at a normal university, go out to bars or clubs on the weekend, and even join a fraternity if I wanted to. Which I didn’t. Fuck, I could even join the anime club or some shit if the urge struck me.

  My phone rang, screaming out the chorus to Stuck in Your Head by I Prevail, and I grabbed it.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, punk,” Tristen said. “Where are you? I heard you leave.”

  He was my best friend, roommate, and fellow midshipman. I first met him the summer before my freshmen year of college at the initial training for the program, and we’d instantly hit it off. During the orientation, we didn’t leave each other’s sides. Now, about to start our senior year, we were still pretty much inseparable.

  “About to get some food and a coffee from Starbucks,” I answered, turning into the café drive-thru. “Want anything?”

  “A blueberry muffin and a mocha Frappuccino?” he asked, yawning.

  “You fucking stalker. That’s what I was going to order.”

  “Well…great minds and all that.” He yawned again. “Damn, I partied too hard last night. I can’t get out of bed.”

  “If you’re not out of bed by the time I get back to the dorm, I’m throwing your cold-ass frap all over you and eating your muffin.”

  “Eating my muffin? Wow, Cody, that sounds like my kind of morning.”

  “Shut the hell up,” I said with a snort.

  I hung up on him and ordered two mocha Frappuccinos, two blueberry muffins, and a bacon and egg croissant. With my strict physical regimen, I rarely ate junk food, but there were days when I said fuck it.

  As I waited for them to make my order, I scrolled through my phone.

  Joe had put his number into my contacts, and I chuckled when I realized his name was actually Jim. Oops. I promptly deleted his contact information. Nothing against the guy, but he was obviously either closeted or in a relationship, and I didn’t have time for shit like that. The whole ‘call, don’t text’ thing set off major red flags.

  He was a lousy lay, too.

  The sex had been out of rhythm and we’d bumped heads a lot, when he wasn’t just lying there and making me do all the work. He could give one hell of a blowjob, though. That was for damn sure. It was almost tempting enough to keep his info, but no amount of good head was worth that kind of drama.

  When I got back to the dorm, carrying our coffees with both hands and the bag of food tucked between my arm and chest, Tristen opened the door for me.

  “Thanks, man.” He dug in the bag for his muffin and then plopped down on the couch. His eyes still had a sleepy look to them as he jabbed a straw into the middle of the cup. It would take until probably half of his Frappuccino was gone for him to be a functional adult.

  I sat beside him, both of us drinking our coffees and eating. Eventually, I turned on the TV and channel surfed, but nothing was on, so I went to Netflix and clicked on the anime we’d started watching a few days ago called Sirius the Jaeger. We weren’t allowed to watch it without each other, but I suspected he had broken that rule.

  “I thought we were only on episode six,” I said, narrowing my eyes at the screen.

  “Nope.” He kept a straight face. “We were on episode nine.”

  I clicked it and then shook my head when the recap showed things I hadn’t seen yet. “You bastard.”

  Tristen laughed. “You love me.”

  His short blond hair was buzzed on the sides and a bit longer on top, giving him a military look, but nothing could hide his baby face. Maybe it was the expression in his blue eyes—a little innocent and packed full of compassion. I’d never met someone who had a bigger heart than him.

  “Yeah, that’s what you think.”

  “Hey.” Tristen leaned closer and peered into the bag. “Can I have some of your croissant?”

  Before waiting for my answer, he grabbed it and took a bite. I shoved him aside, and he snorted a laugh, nearly choking on egg and bacon.

  “How did your date go last night?” he asked after the laughs subsided. He had commandeered my damn croissant by that point, and I hadn’t drunk enough coffee to have the energy to fight him on it.

  “Eh.” I shrugged and took a drink. “It was okay, but I doubt I’ll see him again. And it wasn’t a date. Just a hookup.”

  “Whatever it’s called, I’m glad you had fun.”

  “Did you meet anyone at the bar?” I asked. “Before I left, I saw a bunch of guys hanging all over you.”

  “Eh.” He mirrored my earlier action and tone. “Nothing worth mentioning.”

  Code for I don’t wanna talk about it.

  I wasn’t going to push him on it, either. He respected my boundaries when I didn’t feel like talking, and I respected his. A mutual understanding to shut the fuck up when necessary.

  After two episodes, I got up, threw away our trash, and went to my room. Several of the professors for that semester had emailed the course syllabus, all basically saying the same thing in their messages.

  “Please print this syllabus, go over it, and come prepared for the first day of class.”

  I was a mechanical engineering major and in my senior year, so my classes for the fall were mostly related to my degree, with a few general electives. All my pre-requisite classes and gen-eds like English and algebra had already been taken. I was enrolled in a few lab classes where I’d do some hands-on learning with mechanic materials
, as well as a few courses explaining the science behind it.

  All in all, I was looking forward to it.

  As I was saving the documents, another email came in. My heart picked up pace. Dr. Sebastian Vale. I still couldn’t believe I had managed to get into his class.

  I had signed up for my classes super early last semester, just so I could snag a spot in his highly-sought-after lecture. There were other professors that taught chemistry and thermodynamics, but Dr. Vale was the best of the best.

  He was renowned for his work, not because he’d been a nuclear chemist before becoming a professor, but because of his research on nanotechnology and utilizing solar energy. He had also helped develop radioactive treatments and medical imaging software. I mean, the guy had basically done it all.

  I had no clue what he even looked like, but I wanted to have his babies.

  I clicked to read the email.

  Good afternoon class,

  I hope you all enjoyed your summer vacation. Attached is the syllabus for this semester, and it’d be much appreciated if you looked it over before tomorrow’s class. You will be allowed to ask questions about the course material and what I expect of you for the first fifteen minutes, so please have your questions ready to keep things moving smoothly.

  I look forward to having you all in my class.

  -Dr. Sebastian Vale

  Tristen didn’t have a printer and neither did I, so I clicked out of my email, made sure I had my wallet and keys, and went into the living room.

  “Where you going?” Tristen asked, sprawled out on the couch. He was fully dressed, as if he planned to go somewhere but had only made it as far as the living room before surrendering to laziness again.

  “Library. I need to print shit for class. Be back later.”

  ***

  The library was more crowded than I expected. Usually, there weren’t that many students until the semester began, but it seemed as though everyone was getting a jump start. Row after row of computers were occupied by people, some typing papers and others browsing their social media pages.

  Okay, so some were slacking instead of working. Made sense.

  The other side of the library was filled with books and study areas, away from the clacking of fingers on keyboards.

  Seeing a girl stand up from one of the computers, I jogged over and snatched the empty spot before someone else could. I logged into my email and tried to print the syllabi for my classes, but I kept getting some stupid error code.

  What the actual fuck?

  The front desk was down the short hallway, past the computers and restrooms, and I whistled as I made my way toward it.

  “Can I help you?” the guy at the desk asked. He was a student worker around my age.

  “Yeah. The printer won’t print. It keeps giving me some kind of weird error.”

  “Ugh. It’s been doing that all day,” he responded, running a hand through his red hair. “What do you need to print? School related or personal?”

  “School related. Mandatory syllabi for my classes.”

  “Ah.” He searched around his pristine desk and grabbed a business card. After writing some letters and numbers on the back of it, he handed it over. “You can use the professors’ lounge up the stairs to print, just until we can get that one fixed. Here’s the password to get in.”

  Wow. They had a fancy-schmancy password protected lounge, huh?

  “Is this, like…safe?” I asked, motioning to the card. “You giving out the password to random students and stuff?”

  “Why, are you going to break in and steal the coffee machine or something?” Desk-Guy asked, rolling his eyes. “Most professors don’t even use it. They keep to their offices. It’s mainly there for appearances. Just print what you need to and get out of there. Okay?”

  “Sure.”

  I turned and walked toward the staircase. The library had been renovated a year ago, so there were modern touches amongst the older parts of it. Windows lit the place up, the majority of them floor to ceiling so they appeared like one glass wall. The first platform on the stairs had a set of plushy reading chairs, and I passed them and made my way up the second flight of steps.

  Footsteps echoing down the corridor and quiet murmuring could be heard, but not much else. I looked at the numbers above the doors until I found the professors’ lounge. After typing in the six-digit code, the light on the keypad blinked green, and I grabbed the handle. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected to see when I opened the door. Maybe fancy chairs and espresso machines. Some professors damn near acted like royalty; might as well treat them as such.

  What I didn’t expect, though, was a kind of drab interior with tables, a few windows, and an old coffee machine that looked like it was on its last breath. I didn’t look too closely, though. Permission or not, I kind of felt like a kid who was somewhere they shouldn’t be.

  “Let’s get this over with,” I said to myself and walked over to the computer, logging into my email.

  All five of my courses required us to print the syllabus—some of which were seven or eight pages long. After scheduling them all, I walked over to the machine, watching it prepare the paper and begin to print.

  I loved seeing how it all worked.

  Something about the sound of the machine as it printed appealed to me, and I started adding other sound effects to go with it, eventually tapping my hands on the table and creating a beat.

  “Can you not do that, please?”

  I jumped at the voice and flipped around.

  A man sat at the table in the corner of the room, his back against the wall, and was eyeing me over a stack of papers. With tousled blond hair that touched the middle of his ears, light-green eyes that peered at me through black-framed glasses, and a narrowed brow, he was both mysterious and fucking hot. But not an obvious kind of hot; more subtle and reserved, as if he didn’t understand his own appeal.

  “Sorry,” I said, once I was able to find my voice. My cheeks heated as I recalled my one-man beatboxing show. “Didn’t see you over there. I thought I was alone.”

  The man nodded and went back to reading. Two textbooks were laid out on the table, and he skimmed the chapter from one before doing the same to the second and flipping the page. Multi-tasking to the extreme.

  A smarter person would’ve taken that as a sign to shut the fuck up and go about my own business. Instead, I stepped closer to him.

  “I’m a student here.”

  He looked up at me. “I see that.”

  Yeah, I’d stated the obvious, hadn’t I?

  “The printer in the main part of the library is broken, so they said I could come up here.”

  The man returned his attention to his papers. “Mhm.”

  Oh my god, just shut up, Cody.

  The printer continued to whir behind me, adding noise to the otherwise quiet room. So quiet. I’d never been good at keeping my mouth closed. It was a discipline the NROTC officers had had to drill into me from day one.

  “So, you’re a teacher?” I asked.

  He pushed his glasses up his nose and glanced up at me again. The power of his eyes made me a little wobbly on my feet.

  “Correct.”

  “I’m Cody Miller, a midshipman in the NROTC program.” I stepped forward and reached to shake his hand. It was only the polite thing to do when meeting someone.

  At first, I didn’t know if he’d accept it by the way he studied me, but he finally took my hand in his.

  “Dr. Sebastian Vale,” he said, giving my hand a firm shake before letting go.

  The air left my lungs and I nearly shit and fell back in it.

  No fucking way was this real. From what I’d heard, Dr. Vale wasn’t fond of having his picture taken, so there had never been a photo of him in the articles I read. Sure, I probably could’ve found a picture of him if I had looked hard enough, but it hadn’t mattered enough to me.

  Looks like I should’ve tried, though, to avoid this exact moment of making an ass out o
f myself.

  Realizing I was gaping at him like a fish out of water, I shook my head and cleared my throat. “It’s an honor to meet you, Dr. Vale. I’ve been a fan of your work for a while. I’m actually going to be in your class this semester, and I can’t wait.”

  “Ah, yes,” he said, nodding. “Cody Miller. I remember your name from the roll book. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to my work.”

  His icy demeanor managed to find its way over to me, too. The guy was standoffish and definitely not a Chatty Cathy. Kind of disappointing, really.

  “Of course.” My cheeks got hot again. I grabbed the papers from the tray and tapped them on the top of the printer to line up the edges. Then, I turned back around to him. “Um, it was nice meeting you, Sebastian.”

  Holy fucking shit, I did not just call him by his first name.

  “Dr. Vale, if you please.” Green eyes met my stunned gaze. He hadn’t said it in a rude way, more matter of fact. Formal. “It’s inappropriate to be on such familiar terms when we’ve only just met.”

  “Yeah. True. Sorry.” Kill me now. “Enjoy the rest of your day, Dr. Vale.”

  As fast as I could, I left the professors’ lounge and strode down the hall toward the staircase.

  I couldn’t shake away the coldness in my veins from meeting the good ol’ doctor’s icy stare. First impressions mattered a lot, and my first impression of Dr. Vale spoke wonders. He seemed like a pompous asshole who thought himself above everyone else. His reputation on campus must’ve given him a big head. A reputation that was well-earned, but that didn’t mean he was allowed to look down on people.

  The run-in with him didn’t change the fact I was still eager to be in his class, though. Bigheaded or not, it was an honor to learn from him.

  “Get everything you need?” Desk-Guy asked once I was back downstairs.

  “Yep.”

  Everything I needed, plus much more. Like embarrassment and a case of the what-the-fucks.

  When I returned to the dorm, Tristen was gone. He sent me a text saying he was going to the gym and to meet him over there.