However, the thought of spending two days a week with Cody next semester—when I wouldn’t have him in any of my classes—was tempting. Very tempting.
We agreed to meet at Brewed Emporium, a small coffee house near the marina, and took separate vehicles. Going out in public with him was already pushing it. No need to have him in my car, too. Mainly because I wasn’t sure what I’d do once alone with him in a tight space.
My behavior around Cody was out of character for me.
I barely knew how to talk to people most days, let alone flirt. And yet, something had come over me in my office. I had stepped toward him, fighting the urge to caress his flushed cheeks, and had spoken calmly and without the awkwardness I seemed to give to everyone else.
He made me want things I hadn’t wanted in a long while.
Arriving at the coffee house, I parked and got out of the car. The October air was crisp with only a hint of summer still clinging on, and I breathed it in. I didn’t have a favorite season. They all had pros and cons. But there was something special about autumn. A certain peace came with it.
Or maybe I only thought that because it’d been Leon’s favorite time of year.
I shook my head, chiding myself for thinking of him again, and went inside. A barista was grinding coffee beans behind the counter, and instrumental music played overhead. I surveyed the room before choosing a small table near the window.
Cody had left campus when I had, but he was nowhere in sight. Another minute passed. Then three. I tapped a finger on the table as it hit the five minute mark. Ten minutes.
Just as I began to suspect he was standing me up, a rusty blue truck pulled into the parking lot. I heard it before I saw it. It screeched to a halt, the high-pitched breaks making me—and other patrons in the room—cringe, and then the loud engine shut off.
Cody got out of the truck and slammed the heavy door before stopping and pulling out his wallet. He rifled through it with a frown before putting it in his back pocket and jogging toward the entrance.
Did he have financial issues? It wasn’t my business, but the thought crossed my mind anyway.
As he entered the coffee house, I stood to get his attention, and he rushed over.
“Sorry for taking forever,” he said with a wide, apologetic smile. A strand of his hair fell across his brow, and the urge to brush it aside was strong. “Blue wouldn’t start.”
“Blue?”
“My truck. He’s an old clunker, but I’m attached to him, ya know?” Cody slipped his hands in his pockets and peered up at me. “Order anything you want. It’s on me.”
“That won’t be necessary.” If my assumption was correct, I wouldn’t be able to stomach him paying for me. Not when I had more money than I knew what to do with. “My treat this time.”
“This time, huh?” His smile spread. “Is that your way of saying there will be more coffee dates in the future?”
I stared at him in silence for a moment, unsure what to make of his question, before walking to the counter. I thought I heard him chuckle behind me, and I shot him a look over my shoulder to verify my suspicion. His cheeks were pink, as they always seemed to be when he was in my presence, and his dimple was on full display.
“Afternoon,” the girl at the counter greeted. “Can I interest you in one of our specialty fall drinks today? Just got the new pumpkin spice latté in.”
“No thank you.” I studied the menu, reading over the various flavors and feeling a little overwhelmed by them all. “I’ll have the house blend, please. For you, Mr. Miller?”
“Um.” Cody chewed his bottom lip as he stepped closer and looked at the options. “I’ll try the pumpkin spice, I think.”
The girl rang up our order, and I paid.
“Thanks, Dr. Vale,” he said, sounding a little off. When I met his stare, he looked off, too. Ashamed, even. “You didn’t have to.”
“It was my pleasure.”
Cody swallowed and broke eye contact.
I wanted to reach out and take the embarrassment from him, to let him know there was no shame in accepting a gift. Something told me there was more to his behavior than feeling guilty over a cheap coffee, though.
“Here you go.” The barista placed two cups on the counter. “One house blend and one pumpkin spice.”
We took our drinks back to the table and sat down. Outside, the approaching dark clouds blocked out a ray of sunlight. A chance of scattered storms had been in the forecast for tonight. Nothing severe. Just rain.
Rain.
Rain hitting the window. A strike of lightning in the angry, dark sky.
A pale hand holding mine before falling away. Blue eyes open but not seeing. Not anymore.
“Dr. Vale?”
I focused on Cody. “Yes? I apologize. It’s been a very long week.”
“It’s only Tuesday.”
“It is, isn’t it?” I sipped the hot coffee, finding the taste a little bitter but satisfying. “Seems like it should at least be Thursday by now.”
“You don’t sleep much, do you?” Cody took a drink of his latté. “Sometimes in class you seem like you’re one blink away from falling asleep. Sleep deprivation clouds the mind, you know. Makes you distracted.”
“Quite the observation, Mr. Miller.” I wondered if everyone noticed or if he was the only one so keen in his perception of me.
“Cody,” he said, flashing a smile. “Mr. Miller sounds too weird when we’re not in class.”
“All right. Cody.” Saying his name aloud made my stomach flutter.
This is dangerous. I should leave right now.
“So, about this TA position.” He ran the tip of his finger along the rim of his cup. “Do you really think I’m qualified? I mean, I bombed your first exam. Not sure I’m the ideal candidate to help you with your work.”
“I’m still undecided on whether I will open the position. For now, it’s only a possibility. But I believe you have potential, yes.”
Potential for much more than just helping me in my lab work.
“Well, in case you do decide to open it, what do you want to know about me?” he asked, seeming more at ease than he’d been moments ago. “Fair warning, Doctor, once you get me talking, I have a tendency not to shut up. Tristen has to shove food in my mouth sometimes to get me to shut my trap.”
“Tristen?”
“My roommate. Also, my best friend. He’s a Marine Option midshipman, too. We met freshman year.”
“What do you plan to do with your degree after graduation?” As good a question as any to start with.
Cody fidgeted in his chair, which was nothing new. He very rarely sat still. “Won’t be able to do much with it for a while, unless I can make use of it once I’m commissioned into the Corps.”
“What do you mean?
“I go to Quantico next summer for more training.”
“And after that?”
“Wherever they send me,” he said. “I’ll have an eight year commitment. Five years as active duty, and the rest on reserve.”
His words weighed heavily on me. He’d be leaving in less than a year. Even more of a reason to keep my feelings in check.
“May I ask what interested you in the military?”
“Pretty sure my passion goes way back to when I was really little.” Cody grinned and got a faraway look in his eyes. “My gramps was in the Corps and told me all kinds of stories growing up. Guess it started then. I used to crawl around the backyard with one of those popcorn bowls on my head and carry a stick around, pretending I was on a mission.”
The image his words conjured was endearing. I could picture it perfectly.
“Did you ever do anything like that?”
“No.” I shook my head. “My childhood was spent…in other ways.” Like taking care of my pain-pill-addicted mother after my father left us. I barely remembered a time when I didn’t have to be an adult. “As an only child whose parents were…not always present…I took care of myself.”
�
�Wow.” Sympathy surfaced in his eyes.
“Don’t be sad for me, Mr. Mil—Cody. Without my upbringing, I wouldn’t be the man I am today.”
Cody drank more of his latté, and I did the same with my coffee. The wheels were turning in his head. Thinking of his past? Or perhaps he was trying to picture mine.
“That’s a really good way to describe it,” he finally said, looking at me. “The past helped make us who we are. And even if there are things we wish we could change, we wouldn’t be the same people if we actually got the chance to change them.”
Just when I thought I had Cody figured out, he said something so profound that I had no choice but to re-evaluate my view of him.
“My thoughts exactly.”
It made me ask myself, though, what kind of man would I be had I never met Leon? If I had never met him at work…if I had never looked into his eyes and felt a strong pull to be closer to him. Everything that happened after it, all the pain, would’ve vanished.
One choice had been the catalyst that set off a chemical reaction—that reaction being a series of events that had turned my world on its axis. Good, bad, incredible, and then devastating.
“I recognize that look,” Cody said, his voice soft. Just like his expression. “You’ve lost someone, too, haven’t you?”
He was too perceptive for his own good.
“It doesn’t matter.” I pushed my glasses back and looked out the window. The cement began to darken in places as the rain started, initially a light drizzle before it fell faster. “Even if it did matter, it’s not a suitable topic for us to discuss.”
“Because it’s personal?”
“Precisely.”
“And you’re my professor and I’m your student, so we can’t talk about anything too deep?” he asked, drawing my attention back to his face. He might’ve been twenty-one, but he seemed much older right then, as though life had aged him beyond his years. “Because if that’s the case, I gotta admit I’d be disappointed.”
Lost someone, too, he had said.
“Who did you lose?” I asked, despite my earlier statement about it not being proper.
“My dad.” Cody dropped his gaze and moved his cup in a small circle on the tabletop, leaving behind a wet ring. “Lung cancer. It happened quick, too. We found out in November and by spring, he was gone.”
Responding to other people’s grief was such a challenge for me. The appropriate response would be ‘I’m sorry for your loss’ or something similar, but the words lodged in my throat. ‘Sorry’ wouldn’t bring his father back any more than it would bring back Leon.
“What about your mother?” I asked.
“Never knew her.” He stared at his cup as if it held all the answers he was searching for. “When I was two, she had a brain aneurism. Dad said she passed peacefully in her sleep. I like to believe that’s true.”
So young and he’d already endured so much loss. Even if he had been too young to remember his mother, her loss affected him just the same. Her absence was painful. I had never known my father, but his absence had hurt me just as much.
“Yikes.” A nervous laugh escaped him as he ran a hand over the top of his hair. “This conversation took a nosedive quick, huh? I asked you for coffee so we could get to know each other, not bring up depressing shit. Sorry.”
“Perhaps we can meet at a bar next time, then,” I said without thinking. “Tell our woes over a glass of scotch.”
“Scotch is too fancy for my blood.” He grinned. “But a beer would do just fine.”
I was glad to see him smiling again, even if I didn’t understand my feelings. When Cody smiled, it was like my world shifted. He really did have his own energy field, and anyone fortunate enough to get close to him was the better for it.
***
I tutored Cody every Tuesday and Thursday for an hour each session. The new schedule allowed me to see him five days a week instead of the usual three.
As wrong as it might’ve been, I was enjoying the time spent with him. He was quickly becoming the part of my day I looked forward to most.
After two weeks, I suspected he no longer needed the extra help, but he kept showing up during my office hours…and I kept letting him. He stuck around after tutoring, and we’d talk a little.
Well, he’d talk—a lot—and I listened, occasionally adding my own thoughts.
After the sessions, we went out for coffee. He was the one who asked, and I agreed, not having the strength to fight it anymore. I kept a professional demeanor around him, but it was nice to go out with someone and talk. The night with Vance and the group of people I hadn’t talked to since didn’t count.
I had isolated myself from everyone for so long that the change with Cody was interesting, and dare I say, exciting.
Cody’s views on the world….well, they reminded me of Leon.
“Imagine what we could do with nanotechnology,” Cody said, sitting across from me at what had become our usual table at Brewed Emporium. “Go further than powering houses and cars with solar energy. The environment would benefit from it, yeah, and the damage mankind has done could be reversed. But go even further than that.”
“How far?” I asked, feeling as though I was having déjà vu. I’d had many conversations with Leon that were nearly identical.
“Well, developing machines that aid not only in more efficient computers, but in medicine, too. Faster and more accurate surgeries, maybe even be able to heal genetic conditions once seen as incurable. Nanobots could go inside the body and repair injuries from cell to cell.”
“Nanobots?”
“They’re, like, super tiny robots that work at a microscopic level,” Cody explained. “They’re mostly a concept right now, but with more research they could change the world.”
“I know what they are, Mr. Miller,” I said, smiling. “I was just surprised that you did.”
A beautiful shade of pink touched his cheeks again. “Cody outside the classroom, remember?”
“My apologies.” I sipped my coffee. “So, what are your ideas about nanobots, Cody?”
Saying his name never failed to kick my heartbeat up a notch.
“In theory,” he said, leaning forward and putting his elbows on the table. The excitement in his eyes made my heart jolt, along with another part of me. “Nanobots could be, like, little warriors in the body. They could fight off cancerous cells. Maybe even be high-tech scanners that could detect a disease super early, so we could catch it before it gets worse. Picture the technology we could create, you know? I hope I’m alive to see it one day.”
I sat across the table from him, both in awe and in shock.
“Can you imagine what we could do, Sebastian?” Leon placed his hand over mine. “They say nanobots could crack the secret to immortality one day. Imagine a world where some diseases are no longer a death sentence.”
A weight pressed down on my chest at the memory.
“Am I blabbing?” Cody sat up straighter. “Damn, I’m blabbing, huh?”
“Far from it, actually. You remind me of an old friend. He shared your enthusiasm for nanotechnology, nanobots specifically.”
“Really?” He grabbed his blueberry muffin and took a huge bite out of it, crumbs falling from his lips as he chewed. “Is that how you got into nanotechnology? I read your articles on it. Mostly solar power and energy saving proposals. Good stuff. What does your friend do these days?”
I didn’t want to discuss Leon. Thinking about him was one thing, but talking about him, as if he truly was a part of my past, was another.
“I should get going,” I said. Time flew by with Cody. Hours felt like minutes. Everything outside of our table at the coffee shop didn’t exist. Then, reality came crashing back. “I have work I need to catch up on.”
“Maybe get some sleep while you’re at it, Doctor.” He winked. “Thanks for having coffee with me. Is it weird that I look forward to it after our tutoring now?”
“Not weird at all.”
I
should tell him it couldn’t happen again. We were becoming too friendly. The line I worked hard not to cross inched closer every day.
Returning home, I flipped on the living room light and moved through the house. On the way to my study, though, I stopped near my piano. I touched the lid, feeling the smooth texture beneath my fingertips.
I hadn’t played it in so long. Perhaps I’d forgotten how. My fingers might remember the correct keys, but the song was no longer in my heart.
I continued to my study, welcoming the quiet space but also hating it. I used to prefer being alone. But after being around Cody, I found I enjoyed his carefree laughter and interesting views a little bit more.
Chapter 12
Cody
“You and that professor have been spending a lot of time together lately,” Tristen said as we walked to O’Brien Hall.
“So? It’s just for school stuff.”
“You sure that’s all it is? Didn’t you go out with him a few times outside of school?”
“What are you getting at?” I stopped on the sidewalk and faced him. It was Monday morning, so I was already a little cranky from having to be awake so early for PT, and he wasn’t helping. “Why the third degree?”
Tristen put his hands on his hips. “Do I look like an idiot, Cody? I know something’s going on with you guys. You’ve been a lot happier the past few weeks, and you didn’t even bitch about me eating your leftover pizza yesterday, which you always get pissed at me for doing. I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s kinda shitty to keep it from your best friend.”
“I’m not keeping anything from you. He’s tutoring me and we sometimes go out for coffee afterward. That’s it. Can you fucking stop now?”
We continued walking. The October morning was chilly, and I regretted not wearing a sweatshirt. Crazy to think we were already halfway through the month. My birthday was in November, as was the five-year anniversary of my dad getting sick. Since he died, I didn’t really celebrate my birthday anymore. Too depressing.
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