AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Notme. Geez. It’s something a customer said tonight. Something about a nursing student who hooked up with some doctor while doing her rotations. I’m not that dumb.” I hope.
“Good,” Gabriel says. “It better not be you. You’ll get mega-expelled for that.”
“I don’t think mega-expelling is a thing.”
“It is if someone hooks up with a professor. Or a doctor, I guess. But to answer your question: No, I never heard anything like that. It would be beyond stupid for everyone involved.”
Beyond stupid. Yeah, he’s right about that. It would be mega beyond stupid for me to hook up with a guy I have to see twice a week for the rest of the semester, a guy who’s terrified of simply having stayed in my spare bedroom once. That isn’t stopping me fromthinkingabout it, but I can at least acknowledge that it would be a huge mistake.
Maybe Gabriel’s right. Maybe I do need to get out more. Maybe I’m latching onto Diego not because he’s gorgeous and intelligent and deeply interested in the same things I’m deeply interested in, but simply because he’sthereand going to class is pretty much the only thing I do besides working at the café.
“Anyway, just promise me you’ll try to go out and have some fun this year,” Gabriel says. “And not with any professors or doctors or whatever.”
I roll my eyes. “I will do my very best. Mia is already threatening to make me go have fun.”
“Mia?”
“The manager helping me at the café. She said basically the same things you have, so I’m sure she’ll drag me out one of these days.”
“Good, I’m glad someone there is a positive influence. I would come up there and drag you out myself, but you’re still twenty and Mom would kill me if you got caught with a fake ID or something.”
“No fake IDs, I promise,” I say. “And no freaking out Mom. I’m going to be fine, Gabriel. And I’ll have fun. Eventually.”
Gabriel sighs, but he lets me get off the phone without further protest about my depressingly dull lifestyle. Is it really my fault if I genuinely want to spend my time at school studying? Isn’t that what I’m here for?
I can think of one person who would agree with me, and he’s the exact person I shouldn’t be thinking about. Not now. Not ever.
Chapter Six
Diego
I HAVE SURVIVED a whole week. I’ve seen Avery twice, but the second time I was prepared for them to stroll into the classroom. They didn’t have anything to say after class, and I think I got through it without seeming like a nervous wreck or a creep.
Either way, this has been the most ridiculous week or so of my life. I moved out of my comfortable Midwest small town, broke down in a city that’s actually a town, and experienced a whole mess of confusing emotions when the person who helped me out of the situation turned out to be a student. I would laugh at myself for the absurdity of it all, but the self-loathing cuts too deep for mirth. The first queer person I meet outside of my isolated neck of the woods, and I’m fixated on them like some kind of kidwith their first crush.
I shake my head at myself in an attempt to dislodge that disastrous thought. How can I sit here thinking about Avery as a “crush” as though that’s not wildly inappropriate? They’re just … interesting. There is so much about them that is new to me, and I don’t just mean the non-binary thing. I understand that there are people out there who feel less settled in their gender than me, but it’s always been sort of theoretical, something that’s part of my area of study rather than my real life. But it goes so far beyond that. Avery has an energy and intensity I didn’t encounter too much where I grew up. It’s like they’re living life at twice the speed I am — and for some reason I want to try to catch up.
I physically pinch myself, trying to get out of my head. A stack of essays sits before me on my desk in the liberal arts department. They gave me my own office here so I could keep some office hours and do things like grade papers and prepare lessons. It’s a lot nicer than trying to do this in my tiny new apartment, and I’ve ended up spending a lot of time here in the past week. It’s also a good place for me to get my own classwork done, because yeah, I still have to focus on my own studies on top of all of this.
It adds up to a massive heap of work. I don’t have time to worry about Avery and whatever I’m feeling or not feeling about them. It’s probably just a consequence of stress and meeting them before I met anyone else here, anyway.
Determined, I set my mind to the essays before me. I asked the Queer and Trans History students to write a short, simple essay. It’s not supposed to be extensive, just something to give me a benchmark of where they’re at. This is a skill they’ll need to hone over the semester, so it helps both me and them to see what they can do before we get into the weeds.
Everyone’s essays are fine, if clumsy, I find as I work my way through them. The students submitted the assignment electronically, but I printed them out so I could leave comments along the margins, pointers to guide them next time. It’s all what I expect — wordiness, unnecessarily long quotes, all the hallmarks of undergrads trying to hit a word count.
Then I get to an essay that freezes me in my tracks. My pen hangs over the paper, but I don’t actually make any notes. I get all the way to the end of the short assignment without a single comment. It’s not because the essay is perfect. It’s because it’s so far beyond every other one in this stack. There’s a depth of thought and research here, a care that no one else bothered with for a short introductory assignment, a passion that pours off the page.
The name at the top of the essay is, of course, Avery Aaron.
My heart is beating faster than any essay warrants. Avery’s work is brilliant, even in a brief test assignment. Ican already imagine what they’ll do with the research project at the end of the semester, and I’d be lying if I claimed it wasn’t thrilling to me. This is my field. This is what I uprooted my whole life for. And Avery not only gets it — they love it. Perhaps as much as I do. Yes, their face is beautiful. But this.Thisis real beauty. This is a hook digging into my chest and pulling me toward them more forcefully than any physical feature ever could.
I’m a mad fool, but I make only one comment on Avery’s essay:See me after class.
STUDENTS FILE OUT of the classroom. Except for Avery.
They approach the lectern from which I delivered the day’s lesson, their essay clutched in their hands. Excitement and nerves flicker on their face.
“Um, you wanted to see me?” they say.
