Page 4 of His Favorite Student
She writes something and underlines it. My teeth grind against each other.
What is it? What did you just underline?
This is nuts. Seriously nuts. I’m a man who has held a human heart in his hands—a literal, beating, human heart. And here I am, losing my mind over a girl with a green pen underlining something in her notebook.
Clenching my stomach, I snap out of it and go back to my lecture. I go over the syllabus, office hours, required texts, and my grading rubric. I can see her out of the corner of my eye writing italldown.
She’s going to be the best student in the class. I can already tell.
But more than that, she’s going to be a problem. A big one.
By the time I start going over the anatomical planes of the body, I’ve developed a coping strategy to deal with her, which is to focus on the guy sitting just behind her. This way I can pretend I’m not completely ignoring her. And it seems to work too, until she raises her hand.
I want to laugh, and I want to explode. Who raises their hand on the first day’s lecture? I’m doing everything I can to keep myself from focusing on her, and she raises her hand?
Shit.
“Yes…?” I say, my voice sounding weaker than it should.
“If these anatomical planes are just theoretical frameworks we use to talk about location, does that mean all of anatomy is basically just a language we invented to describe something that doesn’t have clear divisions?” She pauses. I realize I’m frowning at her and quickly shake it off. “Sorry…is that a dumb question?”
“Of course not,” I reply. “In fact, that’s maybe the best question anyone has asked me in all my years of teaching.”
She blinks those beautiful eyes, and a faint red color sweeps up her cheeks. She looks down at her notebook, and I feel a sense of loss like a punch to the gut. I watch her scribbling. Christ, I’d pay money to know what she’s writing.
“What’s your name?” I ask. Ihaveto know.
“Jessica,” she replies. “Jessie. Everyone calls me Jessie.”
“Jessie.” I nod. “Jessie…?”
“Monroe. Jessie Monroe.”
Her voice is angelic. Like a magical song. All I can do is nod and turn back to my notes.
Somehow, I manage to survive the rest of the lecture without tripping over myself or getting a full-blown erection. I have no idea how. But when I dismiss the class, she lingers in her seat, capping her green pen and sliding her notebook into her bag that has three different keychains on the zipper.
I stand at the podium.Do not watch her leave.
I watch her leave. I can’t help it. And as far as I can tell, she has no idea. No clue that my eyes are sweeping up her body as she moves, analyzing every perfect inch, from the way her hips move to the hint of smooth skin that shows as her T-shirt rises up.
Christ, even her ankles and hair are sexual to me. Like I’m some kind of gallant knight back in medieval times.
This cannot happen.
I left my surgical career, left medicine, everything I had built, and came here to teach. I built a nice quiet life for myself. I do my research, and I donotmake mistakes.
But this girl…she might just be the end of me.
Forty minutes later,I’m doing my best not to think of her as I stand outside the coffee cart by Whitmore Hall. And that’s when I hear them.
Three girls, chatting at a volume loud enough that they’ve either forgotten they’re in public or simply do not care. They’re behind me in line and close enough that I can hear every word. And they’re talking abouther.
I realize it immediately. I don’t know how. I can just feel it in my gut. And when one of them saysJessie, something responds in my chest. My heartbeat picks up, and despite wanting to turn, I face forward.
“I say we check in with her,” the first girl says. She sounds like she’s accustomed to being in charge. “You know—ask her if she’s opened it yet. If she read the instructions.”
“They come with instructions?” a second voice asks, laughing.
