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Avery

Maybe it was the fall air, it always smelled of pumpkin spice and campus bonfires. Or perhaps it was the homecoming week celebrations, I wasn’t sure, but something about this time of year, even a decade ago when I was the one attending Glouster University, sucked. Now that I was Professor Avery Stroh at the same university, I had to pretend to enjoy the festivities. I had to act as if I was proud of the returning alumni. This year sucked even more than previous homecoming festivities though, because all I could think about was how I would rather not celebrate the one-hundredth anniversary of the Alpha Alpha Phi fraternity, at all. I would rather forget it altogether.

I sat in the commons of the admissions building, a century-old brick monster with high ceilings and carved wood banisters, handing out goody bags with the usual college swag, a t-shirt, key chain, and personal alarm all with the Glouster crest emblazoned on their surfaces, to students past and present, with a fake smile that said I didn’t have a care in the world. That smile hid the hurricane inside of me, that college senior, torn apart, lied to, hellbent on taking the Alphas down. And I’d tried. I still had a copy of my infamous revenge article framed at home.

Back then, I’d been the girl voted most likely to cut someone, not that I would have. But girls who wore thick lines of black eyeliner to match their fishnet stockings, combat boots, and corset tops, with more tattoos and piercings than appendages to put them on, always tended to get the bad rap, and that was me. Although my clothes, back then, weren’t an expression of who I was, just an expression of what I could afford and make work.

Now I dressed like a teacher: jeans and sweaters, scarves and boots. I stopped dying my long brown hair, and either tied it back or left it straight, and I worked out Tuesday and Friday mornings. I wasn’t scary. I wasn’t beautiful. I was boring, and it worked for me. Until now.

“Hi, Avery.”

Oh God, his voice hadn’t changed. I looked up slowly, taking in every inch of him I could see above the table I sat behind. Because of his height, somewhere in the 6’4’’ – 6’5’’ range, I could see plenty, and it was still divine. Long legs, tapered waist, with rock-hard abs I could see under his tight white shirt. Honey-colored hair and denim blue eyes. Oh God, again. He was still amazing, and my 22-year-old heart banged like a drum inside my 32-year-old chest.

“Keaton.” I tried to say it with a smile, but I probably looked as constipated as my clenched stomach made me feel. I thrust a bag toward him, and he grabbed it before I managed to punch it into his gut. “Here you go. Enjoy your homecoming.”

To my credit, I didn’t sound like I’d eaten gravel or that I’d spent the last decade working as a phone sex operator, which I hadn’t, but sometimes sounded as if I had. And either one was as likely as the other since he still reminded me of all those feelings he’d inspired before. Lust, attraction, love.

My practiced greeting should’ve been it, should’ve been enough. It was for me anyway. I didn’t need him to cover my hand with his for me to remember his touch. I didn’t need him to smile for me to recall the beauty of it and I damned sure didn’t need to breathe in the scent of his cologne for me to want to close my eyes and inhale him. But in that one shaky second, all those things happened.

I jerked away because preserving my sanity and not making a scene in front of the people who controlled everything from my salary to my living quarters made more sense than whatever stupid thing my body and heart would have led me to do if I kept touching him.

He curled his fingers around the bag and smiled at me. Ten years ago, I would’ve swooned. Today, I was stronger and smarter. There would be no swooning, not until I was in the privacy of my own cottage resentfully reliving every millisecond of this meeting, at least.

“You look good.” And he smiled, the bastard.

But I had no desire to reciprocate the thought or tell him something the world already knew. “Thanks, so do you.”

That was what he did to me. He removed all the conscious thought and reasonably intelligent intentions from my brain with one smile.

“Maybe we could get together this week? Catch up on old times.”

Our old times consisted of two glorious weeks that I hadn’t realized were glorious back then, a night on his dad’s yacht, and my broken heart. No way was I getting together to catch up on anything. “Sure.”

I wanted to tape my own mouth shut. “Good. I’ll find you.” He always managed that particular feat back then and I had no doubt he would know exactly where I would be when he wanted to see me.

He flashed another smile, the heartbreaker that made my knees jelly and my heart a jackhammer, then turned and walked toward the door. Shamefully, I watched every move. This was a man who didn’t just walk, he glided like he had a cloud under his feet propelling him forward. It was either a trick of lighting or a figment of my imagination. I never, even now, knew which.

I spent the rest of the afternoon handing out bags and penciling in names before my shift at the table was over. Not that I remembered much of it. I’d been too busy trying and failing not to think of Keaton for that to work.

There was so much to remember, so many things about him that I might’ve forgotten if not for my broken heart. I had managed to shove them to the far recesses of my mind, but since this afternoon, I couldn’t seem to think of anything else and it all came back with shocking clarity.

One Decade Ago

I was an addict, not in the traditional do drugs, love alcohol kind of way. But in the must stare, must drool over Ryder Kennedy kind of way. Ryder wasn’t just extraordinary and amazing; he was the epitome of whatever level existed above extraordinary and amazing. He had the hair, the eyes, the swagger of a man who already knew his place in the world and was out to claim it and anything that stood in his way. Didn’t hurt that he was a football star and leader of the Alpha Alpha Phi fraternity. He also had a reputation for dating Sigmas, the most elite sorority on campus, a sorority that took one look at me freshman year and passed. Hard.

It made more than one girl try her hand at rushing the Sigmas. I was no exception; I didn’t give two shits about being a Sigma except for the fact that eventually, Ryder would work his way around to dating me. Pathetic, and I knew it, but that didn’t stop me from doing my damnedest to fit in with them. But I was the girl at the school only because she’d gotten a hardship scholarship to pad out her financial aid. The girl that bought her cardigans at the thrift store, and who didn’t know how to hold her pinky out when she sipped her tea from their fine china cups. I didn’t have a chance. I gave up and went back to my combat boots and torn fishnets, content to ogle Ryder from afar and hate the Sigmas from my pedestal on the school newspaper.

Today, I was in my Film Studies class, more than happy to ignore My Fair Lady on the projection screen and doodle Mrs. Ryder Kennedy and Mrs. Avery Stroh Kennedy with the requisite hearts and flowers on the corner of the handout sheet that detailed the project due next week.

“Hey, Avery, you have a pen?”

Ugh. Keaton Shaw. Another Alpha. Almost as pretty as Ryder, but not so…Ryder. He wasn’t blonde but had honey-colored locks a little too long and designed to look unkempt. His eyes weren’t green, but a light blue that didn’t glow or dance or sparkle. Okay. I could admit he had a nice body. But he wasn’t Ryder. Even though he did talk to me on occasion.

I handed him a Bic from my purse then went back to my doodles.

“Mr. Shaw?” Our teacher, at the front of the class, smiled in our direction. “Agree or disagree?”