Tristan slumped further into his seat, struggling to rearrange his limbs in a way that didn’t make him feel like a bundle of hockey equipment shoved into an undersized duffel bag. Between the small chair, the tablet arm, and the narrow aisle—apparently none of which had been designed with people of Tristan’s size in mind—it took a lot more work than he’d anticipated to find a comfortable position. Luckily, the lecture hall was still nearly empty, and the few students who’d trickled inside completely ignored his fidgety attempts to situate himself as they went about preparing for class.
No one spared him more than half a glance, and no one appeared to recognize him either. Atlanta wasn’t much of a hockey town, no matter how much the NHL tried to make it one, and Tristan wasn’t an all-star, besides. He’d never graced the front of a Wheaties box, and he hadn’t once been stopped in the street by a fan in the years he’d been playing defense for the Venom. It seemed even less likely in the off-season, though up to now, he hadn’t been around to test the theory.
For the first time since his signing, Tristan wouldn’t be spending the summer at his family’s farm in Wisconsin. Instead he’d be taking a couple of classes toward completing his unfinished business degree at Georgia State. But after spending three seasons immersed in the world of professional ice hockey, it felt strange to be back in school, like starting over again.
Tristan tried to shake the awkward-new-kid feeling and adjusted the bill of his Milwaukee Brewers cap, pulling it lower over his eyes. If there was one small comfort, it was that sitting at a desk with a book bag at his feet felt familiar to him in the same way all arenas did after a lifetime of playing hockey. The lingering funk of sweaty athletes that no amount of disinfectant ever quite vanquished, the gleam of freshly resurfaced ice, the narrow benches, and green-and-orange water bottles—those things remained unchanged. Just as, regardless of the state or the university, one classroom was much the same as any other.
More students shuffled into the room. To Tristan’s surprise, one of them—a stylishly dressed hipster wearing a cobalt button-down, skinny-fit khakis, thick-framed glasses, and a bright-red cardigan straight out of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood—bypassed several rows of empty seats and paused at the desk next to Tristan’s.
“Mind if I sit here?” he asked, jerking his chin at the desk. “I hate being so spread out in these big lecture halls. I’d rather not have to yell across the aisle to talk to someone.” He laughed lightly. “Besides, I like to have a note buddy in case I miss a class. So, do you mind?”
Tristan shook his head. “Go ahead.”
“Thanks.” Hipster Boy set down his messenger bag and settled primly into his seat. With his pomaded side-part and—hopefully ironic—handlebar mustache, he reminded Tristan of the black-and-white picture of his great-grandfather that sat above the mantel in his parents’ den. And to think, like most of the other students in the classroom, this guy was probably a few years Tristan’s junior.
Hipster Boy turned to Tristan, extending a hand. “I’m Steven. And you are?”
Tristan engulfed fine-boned fingers in his much bigger paw and tried not to squeeze too hard. “Tris.”
“A pleasure,” Steven said before flipping open his messenger bag. He withdrew what looked like a Moleskine leather notebook and uncapped an honest-to-God fountain-tipped pen.
Was this guy for real? If he pulled out a little pot of ink, Tristan was going to lose his shit and start laughing.
Steven didn’t. Thankfully. But as he sat there, spine straight as a ruler, not a hair out of place or wrinkle to be seen, Tristan felt like a scrub in comparison.
Tristan usually didn’t give much thought to fashion. His postworkout outfit consisted of a threadbare Grateful Dead T-shirt and a pair of old gray sweatpants that had seen better days. He wasn’t exactly red-carpet ready. Tristan had chosen the items for comfort, not style, as always when he wasn’t attending an event for which his contract required him to look presentable.
But Steven . . . Tristan would bet he never stepped foot out of the house looking anything less than pristine. Sitting next to him made Tristan feel weirdly self-conscious. He ignored the feeling and people-watched from beneath the brim of his hat until, at precisely ten o’clock, a tall, dark-haired man swept into the lecture hall, slamming the door shut behind him. The girl a couple of rows in front of Tristan startled and dropped her pen.
“Welcome to Sociology 3201: Wealth, Power, and Inequality,” the man said as he set a messenger bag much like Steven’s on the desk at the front of the room. “If you’re not registered for this class, this would be the time to leave.”
No one moved.
“If you bothered to read your syllabus, you’ll know my name is Sebastian Cruz. If you’ve taken any of my classes or spoken to my former students, you’ll also know I expect assignments to be turned in on time and I don’t tolerate excuses. I’m not here to be your friend or mentor. This isn’t Dead Poets Society, so don’t expect me to be your buddy. I’m here to teach, and you’re here to learn. As long as you keep that in mind, we’ll get along fine.”
He glanced around the room, his dark eyes narrowed in his sharp-featured face. He got to Tristan and stopped. “Classroom rule number one: no hats. You’re not at a baseball game. Show some respect.”
Tristan pulled the cap off as heat gathered in his face. He tossed it atop his book bag and combed his fingers through his hair. No doubt it looked a mess after being damp and crushed under his hat for the past hour. “Sorry, sir.”
Professor Cruz ignored him and kept talking. Or rather, ranting. Tristan groaned inwardly. Great. Another hard-ass who ran his classroom like some kind of drill sergeant. Tristan hated the type, but whatever. He’d survived coaches who would make Sebastian Cruz resemble a cuddly little lamb. Tristan couldn’t be intimidated easily, even if, yeah, it embarrassed him to be scolded like a high schooler in front of his peers.
Eh, you win some, you lose some in the professor roulette. If there was one thing hockey had taught Tristan, it was self-discipline. He enjoyed sociology and thought the classes would be beneficial to him as a potential businessman. Tristan could cope with Mr. Don’t-Expect-Me-to-Be-Your-Buddy for seven weeks.
“So power and inequality,” Professor Cruz was saying, “let’s talk about how that relates to blue-blooded Manhattanites and me, growing up as a Puerto Rican welfare kid in the Bronx.”
Well, he didn’t waste any time, did he?
Tristan flipped open his MacBook and started taking notes as Professor Cruz lectured. Warm and fuzzy the guy was not, but he certainly didn’t lack in passion for the subject matter. Soon, Tristan was fascinated. Professor Cruz absolutely came alive as he spoke. True, he suffered from a bad case of Resting Asshole Face, and Tristan wouldn’t go so far as to call him handsome, not exactly. Still, there was something compelling. Professor Cruz—tall and whipcord lean with warm golden-brown skin and wavy raven-black hair—definitely qualified as eye candy.
“In the New York social stratosphere, some of these people are akin to royalty,” Professor Cruz said. “Anyone ever watched Gossip Girl? I’d love to tell you that show was unrealistic in its portrayal of rich, entitled teenagers, but it wasn’t far from what I experienced growing up alongside some of them. Of course, the difference between us was, my mother was the hired help and, as such, we existed in entirely different realities.
“See, when you’re a child of such absolute privilege, you grow up with an entirely skewed worldview. These people have no concept of what it’s like to subsist on food stamps or to struggle from paycheck to paycheck. They’re on the far right of the social spectrum, the very top of a modern-day caste system, and we, the blue-collar workers, are the laboring class. The privilege of wealth is going to be a major theme over the next several weeks. Get used to hearing that word, folks: privilege. You’re going to be sick of it by the time I’m done. And that brings us to your first assignment . . .”
Tristan fought back a smile as Steven muttered something unpleasant under his breath. Should’ve read the syllabus, bud.
Tristan had. He’d already started the homework due before they met again on Thursday. Sure, he would’ve rather been playing hockey still, but in a way, Tristan was almost relieved the Venom’s season had ended in the first round of the playoffs. He didn’t think Professor I-Don’t-Tolerate-Excuses would give him a free pass on an assignment—even for a Stanley Cup Final.
The problem with wealth is that it makes some people have money and some people poor.
Sebastian read the opening line of the assignment he was grading out loud and groaned. “No shit, Sherlock,” he muttered, his voice echoing in the quiet of his apartment. He’d tried grading with some music in the background, but it seemed somehow sacrilegious to mix Pink Floyd and his students’ idiocy. As if it were somehow tainting what was good and pure with drivel.
The assignment wasn’t terribly taxing, especially for students enrolled in an upper-level sociology course, but so far he wasn’t impressed. He hadn’t wanted to teach the summer course, even if the material was near and dear to his heart and definitely something for which he had an academic passion. Summer courses were intensive and time consuming, and the only thing that made it all worth it was that he generally loved the subject matter. Even when it resulted in grading papers with sentences like The problem with wealth is that it makes some people have money and some people poor.
Rubbing his temples, he kept reading through the end of the paper, which had arrived via the course’s PAWS site. He made a few notes about consulting the reading—and by that, I mean, actually do it—and gave it a cursory mark in the C-minus category, which was the norm so far for all the papers he’d read. The worst had been a paper in which the student had opined over the unfairness of not having access to a trust fund before a certain age, since his parents had worked hard for their millions and wasn’t the point of having money to share it with their children?
That paper had nearly driven him to drink, but he’d written Perhaps you might benefit from further reading on the concept of poverty and assigned a barely passing grade. He had a feeling he knew exactly whose paper that was, too—the blond hottie in the gray sweatpants. The boy with the full mouth and the gorgeous body, who’d immediately irritated Sebastian by slouching and wearing a hat. Sebastian remembered with a certain amount of pleasure how the kid’s fair skin had turned noticeably red after Sebastian had corrected him. He looked exactly like the kind of person who’d write a whiny paper about not having access to a trust fund to blow on . . . whatever rich kids spent money on. Sebastian had no idea. Chuck Bass with the Nice Ass did, Sebastian was sure of it.
The final paper he graded was much better, talking about the idea of class and wealth and what it meant to have a sudden and rather jarring transition from one to the other. The paper was well written and referenced the reading, which was enough to earn it a solid B right there. There were a few clunky transitions and some of the student’s thoughts were a bit muddled, but overall it was a fairly erudite examination of the sudden gain or loss of privilege that came with the movement from one social class to another. Sebastian gave the paper a B-plus, made a few suggestions for how the student could improve the presentation of his ideas and, because it really had been the best one in the whole bunch, added You clearly did the reading and thought about the assignment from an interesting angle—well done.
From Sebastian, that was high praise indeed—especially on a first assignment. It at least gave him hope that there would be the potential for some interesting and productive dialogue, which had seemed a dim prospect while grading the other students’ assignments. Chuck Bass might be hot, but Sebastian had a feeling he’d spend most of the class asleep—if he even bothered to show up.
When Sebastian was finished grading, he finally checked his texts and found a few from his friend R.J. Marcus, a professor in the Math Department at Georgia State. He’d been the one to encourage Sebastian to take on the summer class, with the argument that if Sebastian wanted to be tenured before he turned thirty-five—which, of course he did—it would go a long way in improving his chances if he showed he was a team player.
Sebastian didn’t point out that team players were a myth in academia, because R.J. was one of the good ones and was fast becoming a close friend. After exchanging a few texts, he changed clothes and went to meet R.J. at a nearby bar for a drink. After those papers, he needed about seven.
“That bad?” R.J. asked, when Sebastian slid into the booth next to him and proceeded to down half his Scotch in one swig.
Sebastian fixed him with a sharp look, the one that most of his students had a hard time meeting for too long. “One of my students wrote a very sad treatise on the inequality of trust fund distributions based on age. He referred to it as, quote, ageablism. That’s really the word he used.”
R.J. snorted and leaned back in the booth. He shook his head. “Wow. Hey, look, it’s only for seven weeks.” R.J.’s smile flashed against his dark-brown skin. “My first year, I had to teach a math class in which one of my students answered all the proofs with long, involved puns.”
“At least those are funny,” Sebastian groused, fingers tracing the rim of his glass.
“They were bad puns,” said R.J. “And I don’t know. Ageablism is pretty funny. I mean, you’d laugh if you did that kind of thing.”
Sebastian, well aware of his reputation, smiled slightly. “There’s one good thing about the class, though I’m afraid he won’t be around that long.” Sebastian told R.J. about Chuck Bass, he of the gray sweatpants. “I’m almost sure that punk was my trust fund brat, but goddamn.”
“Well, there you go.” R.J. toasted him with his beer. “Does he have one of those awful trust fund names like, uh . . .” R.J. squinted up at the ceiling. “Whatever those are?”
Sebastian snorted. “I’ve been calling him ‘Chuck Bass’ in my head. The kid from Gossip Girl?” R.J.’s look suggested he didn’t know what the hell Sebastian was talking about. Sebastian shrugged. “Like I bother to learn their names, R.J. Come on. They’ll be gone by the time I do, and I won’t see any of them again anyway.”
R.J.’s eyebrows rose, but all he said was, “Hot Guy is a better nickname than, uh . . . Ageablism Guy. Right?”
“Well, I’m probably a lot older than he is,” Sebastian pointed out, letting the Scotch and the music—and R.J.’s cheerful, upbeat company—mellow him out. Also, it was the weekend and he had a few days off before he had to address his class and explain how to capture and wrangle that mythical, elusive beast known as a thesis sentence into submission. “And I’m sure I won’t be seeing much of him when he gets his paper back. But, until then, I’ll enjoy how he fills out that pair of sweatpants.” He grinned evilly.
It wasn’t a laugh, but it was close enough.