Did he…?

Of course he did. I can still feel the warmth of his firm hand on my butt cheek. I initiated it, to be fair, but if he had just kept his hand there, that would have been one thing.

That’s not what happened, though; he turned his hand around and squeezed me. And it felt incredible. So why is he pretending it didn’t happen?

He knows. I know. We both know that we know, so—

“The classroom is this way,” he says, sounding impatient. He gives me this “hurry along” motion with his fingers, as if I’m a dog that’s sniffing a bush instead of walking.

I consider just grabbing him by the arm, holding him still, and waiting for the students to clear out. Then I can just say something to him point-blank.

But I hear the elevator open again, and more students exit out into the hallway behind us. Many of them are probably my students. Not a great time to be seen holding my boss’s arm in the hallway, looking at him with flushed cheeks and panting breathlessly.

And my panties are wet, I realize. Jesus, he only touched me for a few moments, and I’m soaking wet.

He opens the door to a classroom and holds it for me to pass through. I smile at him as I walk past. My eyes catch on his tie again. Most of my memories from years ago are hazy and muddled. I remember doing certain things in a vague sense, like “I went to class,” but I rarely remember specific details. The night where I confronted Professor Leeds in the garden outside the bar is different. I can remember each slight movement he made. I remember the contours of his veins popping out as he gripped the tie. And the tie—of course—I remember above all else. It’s the same tie I’m looking at now. I’m sure of it. The same shade of light blue, the same white-latticing etched across it in thin lines. What are the chances he just happened to wear that tie, of all ties, today? I believe in fate, not chance.

I walk past him, and I notice he keeps holding the door rather than walking in with me. More and more students walk in, and Dr. Leeds holds the door for them, too, saying good morning to each of them as they walk in.

I see some of the girls give each other looks after they pass him, some giggling like idiots.

Jealousy flashes through me. What if...what if he’s just messing with me now? Stringing me along. What if he only really likes young girls, and I’m not young enough for him anymore? I was a freshman six years ago, wasn’t I?

“And he didn’t touch you because of it,” I tell myself. It’s different now, isn’t it?

I consider finding a seat to sit down, then I realize with an awkward jolt that I’m the damn teacher. I’m supposed to go up to the front of the class...I should have stayed with Dr. Leeds and said good morning to everyone. Instead, I’m standing awkwardly in the middle of the class.

It’s too late to go back to the door, so I just go all the way to the front of the class and put my bag down on the teacher’s desk. I don’t stand in front of the podium, though. That would imply that I’m about to speak, and…

Damn it. With all of the discussion we had about the syllabus, we never ironed out who was doing what today. Surely, Dr. Leeds is going to come up and introduce me to the class, right?

I watch nervously as he loiters and lingers near the door. Even as the students are trickling slowly in—only a few per minute—he stays at the door. I watch as the time hits 10:02, and I realize it’s been a full minute since another student entered.

Dr. Leeds lazily lets the door shut, and he walks in. I sigh in relief, as I wait for him to take the podium.

Instead, he stops at a desk near the middle row and sits down.

I look at him with slight panic, but he just holds his hand out, palm upturned, and gestures for me to begin.

That asshole. He must be doing this intentionally. Some cruel “sink or swim” initiation. Does he do this with all of his TAs, or just me?

I smile a little realizing that it might be special treatment, and if it is, I want to swim instead of sink.

I walk confidently up to the podium and introduce myself to the forty-plus students slouching and yawning up at me. Though I do notice that some of the boys are looking at me with a certain glare, one even smiles at me.

“I’m Nicole Weissman,” I say. “I’ll be your TA for this class. How many of you are lit majors?”

Two or three people near the front of the class raise their hands.

“And how many of you just wanted an easy gen ed credit?”

Dozens of hands shoot up as the students laugh.

“Dr. Leeds,” I say, pointing toward him, “was my Intro to German Lit professor. I was in it for an easy gen ed requirement, too, but now here I am, pursuing my Ph.D. in the subject.”

“Give us Dr. Leeds then!” a girl shouts from the back. More girls laugh and giggle in his direction.

I grit my teeth. “He’ll be—”

Dr. Leeds stands up and straightens his jacket. “I will be here. From time to time. Miss Weissman was my student, and I trust her abilities. I’ll teach this first week, and from then on, I’ll be available during my office hours. Though, please, do not underestimate Miss Far—Miss Weissman. She may not look it, but she’s as knowledgeable about Hermann Hesse and Goethe as any stiff old man.”

He saunters up to the podium, puts his hand on the small of my back, and slides it down to my ass. He squeezes, looks me right in the eye, and says, “Good Day, Ms. Weissman.”

I try not to look visibly shaken as he lets go of me. There’s no way anyone could have seen what he just did, but the brazenness of doing it right there in front of all of our students astounds me!

Adrenaline is surging through me, and it’s all I can do but nod demurely and walk away from the podium. I grab a seat in the front row and sit down, my ears still ringing from what he did.

I watch as Dr. Leeds lectures, and suddenly I feel like a freshman at Oxford again. The tie, having me sit down while he teaches, telling me “Good day,” it seems like he’s intentionally trying to trigger something in my memories. As if seeing him again didn’t do that strongly enough already.

Still, he must know that I’m ready and willing for him to take me, so why is he drawing it out so long? Back in his office, had he ordered me to do something, I’d have done it. If he had simply taken what he wanted, I’d have leaned back—or forward—and let him take it.

He must get some kind of thrill out of teasing and testing me. Could he be waiting for a certain response? He’s touched me twice now in the space of an hour, and I realize I’ve done little but act dumbfounded and shocked. Does he want me to react that way, or does he want me to turn it up on him?

I remember the way he held that tie. He’s into BDSM, surely, and he’s one hundred percent dom. He wants to be in charge. He probably just wants me to surrender myself to him. Does that mean I should keep quiet and see what he does, or should I say something to him outright? Speak my intention to submit, or submit silently? There’s no way for me to really know. The best I can do is feel out the situation and take my best guess. All I know is that I want to please him.

I lean back and watch Dr. Leeds lecture to the students. I listen to his deep voice, his accent that drives me crazy with want, and his beautiful way with words. I try to take in every detail about him. His dark hair, his sharp cheekbones, the way he always smiles with his eyes. It’s not like I can really find the answer to my questions by just staring and listening as closely as I can to him, but maybe it’s worth trying. Or maybe he’ll drop some clue for me in his lecture. I wouldn’t put it past him.

“Internal and external conflict…” Dr. Leeds says, sounding somewhat exasperated. “Easy, basic stuff guys. Anyone?”

I bite my tongue. I doubt he wants his TA to chime in here when he’s trying to get the students talking.

“Forget German Lit,” he says. “You all know Romeo and Juliet, right? What is the main conflict there?”

No students raise their hands. Typical for a freshman course like this. It’s not “cool” to answer questions, and most of these students still have a high school mentality.

Dr. Leeds waves his finger around and jabs it toward a student in back. “You. Main conflict in Romeo and Juliet. Lay it on me.”

“Uhh,” the guy stammers. “Me?”

“You!” Dr. Leeds says, pointing again for emphasis.

“I guess,” he mumbles, “like, uh, they can’t be together.”

“Why?” Dr. Leeds ask.

“Cause they die and shit?” he says, laughing.

There are some stifled giggles from the other students, but Dr. Leeds doesn’t laugh.

“What shit happens before that?” Dr. Leeds asks. “The conflict is what drives the plot. They die at the end. Their dying isn’t the conflict, because their deaths end the conflict and the story itself.”

“I guess,” the student says, “it’s that their families don’t want them to be together.”

“Right,” Dr. Leeds says. “So, would you consider that an internal problem, or an external one?”

The student’s forehead wrinkles up, and he squints. It looks like considering this question is using up all the available processing power in his brain. “External?”

“Why?” Dr. Leeds asks. “Give me your reasoning. You’re right, but you had a fifty percent chance of guessing right.”

“Because like,” the student says, “what their families want is just like some outside thing. If it was just the two of them, they’d be together, no problem.”

“Would that make for a good story?” Dr. Leeds asks. “The play starts, they are in love, and we have three acts of them being happy together with no problems?”

“I guess not,” the student says.

“Good job,” Dr. Leeds says. “You’re not nearly as dumb as you want to sound. Name?”

“Greg,” he says.

Dr. Leeds moves his finger across the lecture hall, and I watch the students tense up nervously as if he was aiming a gun.

“You!” Leeds says, pointing at a girl who I can clearly see is texting and not paying attention.

“Me?” she asks, her voice squeaking.

“Yes, what’s your name?”

“Uh, Tiffany?” Her voice squeaks up like a mouse on the last syllable.

“Why does that sound like a question?” Dr. Leeds says, grinning.

“Tiffany,” she says, slowly sliding her phone into her purse and finally looking up, focused.

I realize that it’s going to be really hard to teach this class. The students seem to know stuff when they are pressed, but I will have to press hard. I’d imagined everyone just automatically becoming fully engaged and discussing everything nearly unprompted. I’d imagined students arguing with each other. I need to watch Dr. Leeds to see how he gets them to open up. A semester of students clammed up like this would be a nightmare.

“Tiffany,” he says. “Pretend that Romeo’s and Juliet’s families are totally fine with them being together. There is no feud between the Montagues and the Capulets—”

“Who?” she asks.

“The families in the play,” Leeds says, sounding exasperated. “Look, just pretend we have the play open, and Romeo and Juliet are madly in love. They can’t keep their hands off each other, and no one is even wanting to stop them. Put a wrench into this situation for me—an internal one.”

“Like?” Tiffany asks. “How do I make them unhappy?”

“Or how do you make them fight? Some kind of conflict.”

She bites her lip. “Well, my boyfriend is always way too into fantasy football. The season just started, and he’s always checking his phone instead of paying attention to me. I think he’s in like three different leagues or something. It’s really boring.”

“Okay,” Dr. Leeds says. “I don’t think they had fantasy football back then, so can you make it fit the time period of the play?”

Tiffany furrows her brows. “Romeo is always dueling people. He’s got one of those old-timey swords like the three musketeers, and he just can’t stop challenging people to duels.”

“Tell me what makes this internal rather than external.”

“Um, because he wins all the duels, and he gets a lot of money from winning them. But Juliet gets really worried anyway, and also he is so busy dueling that he doesn’t have much time for her. It’s like his mindset is the problem, which is internal, right? He’s always thinking about dueling and not about her.”

“Good,” Dr. Leeds says. “Keep your phone in your purse and you’ll do well in this class.”

He goes on like that, pulling answers out of the students like a dentist pulling teeth.

“I think,” Dr. Leeds says. “Really subtle and nuanced conflicts often make the best stories. Let’s try to think of one together.”

He pulls out a marker and starts writing on the whiteboard. “Let’s think of a harder one to throw a wrench into, shall we? We’ll do Romeo and Juliet again. Instead of starting out totally in love, they are...into each other. Both realize it, but for some reason they can’t act on it. Can someone give me a good reason for that? External or internal.”

I tense up at this. This “hypothetical” situation is starting to hit very close to home.

“Romeo’s a drug dealer,” someone shouts. “Like old-timey drugs, I guess, opium and shit. And Juliet is like a goody rich girl, and she thinks Romeo is too dangerous.”

“Good,” Dr. Leeds says, writing it down. “But can we get more subtlety or nuance?”

“What if he’s older?” someone says. “Not so old that it’s creepy, but old enough that it’s kind of like...a bit of a problem.”

Dr. Leeds looks me right in the eyes, and I feel a cold chill rushing through me. Then he breaks eye contact and writes it down. “I like this one, so let’s lock this in and expand on it. Back in Shakespeare’s time, there wasn’t such a taboo about older men with younger women. It was quite common, so how would we make it more of a problem without going over the top?”

“He’s her uncle!” someone shouts. “Like Game of Thrones!”

“Without going over the top,” Leeds says over the students’ laughter.

“Romeo is a chick,” someone says. “You couldn’t be lesbians back then.”

“Alright,” Leeds says. “I like that. We’ll go with it. So here we have two people who both know they are into each other, but there is this thing between them. Should they or shouldn’t they? Will they or won’t they?”

“Maybe they are both pirates,” someone says. “Romeo is the lady captain pirate, and Juliet is her first mate or something. I heard the Chinese used to have women pirates back then.”

“Good,” Leeds says. “So an authority figure. That’s another wrench thrown in. Older, and in a position of power.”

Dr. Leeds looks at me for the briefest moment, the hint of a grin flashing across his face.

I notice the students are actually engaged now. He’s somehow gone from pulling half-sentences out of them one at a time to getting them to shout stuff out unprompted.

“So let’s imagine a scene,” Dr. Leeds says. “We have all of these layered conflicts, but underneath all of that is this undeniable attraction between Romeo and Juliet, who are now pirate women. Any volunteers?”

“I got this,” a guy says, raising his hand. “I’m very cool with lesbians, just in case there’s any lesbian couples in this class. I’m very cool with it, if you get what I mean—”

“Just paint the scene for us,” Leeds snaps. “Focus on the layers of conflicts, and I shouldn’t have to say this, but please don’t describe a sex scene out loud to show how cool you are with it.”

“No problem,” he says, clearing his throat. “So pirate Romeo lady is all grizzled, and like a total battle-hardened MILF type. She’s got an eyepatch, but that just makes her even more hot, right? Especially to Juliet, who is way less experienced as both a pirate and as a lesbian woman. It’s like, she knows she’s gay, but she only knows it because she likes Romeo. Maybe she’s felt attracted to other women before, but she suppressed it because she felt it was wrong, but with Romeo that feeling is so strong she just can’t deny it anymore. I’m thinking of a scene where maybe Juliet messed something up. Like she did some pirate thing incorrectly, like she was supposed to kill someone and plunder their treasure, but she was too soft and showed mercy instead of going all pirate on their ass.”

Dr. Leeds is totally silent, as is the rest of the class. Everyone, me included, is leaning in and listening.

“So, uh, anyway,” he says, “Captain Romeo calls Juliet into the captain’s quarters. She knows she’s gotta be firm with Juliet, right, because she disobeyed the pirate code of always killing people you plunder. If Romeo lets Juliet get away with that, then all her other pirates might go soft, and then no one will fear her anymore. The conflict, the extra layer or whatever, is that Romeo really likes Juliet. Really likes her.”

He looks up and around, seemingly surprised at how completely everyone is paying attention to him. Not a single student is on her phone, and no one is zoning out or falling asleep. He’s completely pulled everyone into his story.

“So,” he says, “Romeo is totally experienced and knows what she wants. She’s been with tons of women, but it’s always just been kind of whatever for her. She never thought she’d find real love, but Juliet has changed things for her. Still, she can tell Juliet isn’t experienced, and since Juliet is part of her crew, it’s more complicated…”

“So,” Dr. Leeds says, interrupting. “With Captain Romeo fully in charge of the ship, and with her being experienced and knowing what she wants, what is really going to stop Romeo from just getting what she wants?”

Dr. Leeds looks at me again with that knowing grin. “Especially when Captain Romeo is experienced enough to see it in Juliet’s eyes that she wants it just as much?”

“Honestly,” the guy says, “if I’m writing this scene, they are totally going to do it right there—”

“Alright,” Dr. Leeds interrupts. “You’ve done a great job setting the scene, but if they do it right there, we lose that tension, don’t we? Sex relieves tension. You’d have to throw in another conflict later to keep the story alive, wouldn’t you?”

He shrugs. “You all heard how cool I am with lesbians. Just throwing that out there for real in case you’re open to men.”

There’s stifled laughter, but I notice some girls giving the guy eyes and knowing looks. I doubt they’re lesbians, though.

Another student raises her hand. “Maybe Captain Romeo just likes this game. She likes drawing it out. She could just take what she wants, but everything is so fresh and new for Juliet, so Romeo doesn’t want to deny her that slow build-up.”

“So you think it would be a totally selfless move for Romeo?” Leeds asks. “There’s nothing in it for Romeo herself?

“I mean,” the student says, “I guess she could get off on watching Juliet sweat it? Like, she’s fully in control, and denying Juliet what she wants could just be a big turn-on for her. Even if that’s what happened, it would still be an interesting conflict to drive the story, because there’d always be that urge there for Romeo to just give in and get what she really wants from Juliet.”

“I think you’re onto something there,” Leeds says, looking at his watch, and then right at me. “But class is over. I’m impressed with you all today. For your homework, I want you all to write your own version of this scene, layering on as many conflicts as you can without going over the top. And please do not write any sex scenes. This is literature, not erotica.”

Everyone laughs, but I’m too busy thinking about Dr. Leeds wearing an eyepatch, with me as part of his pirate crew.

So he enjoys the feeling of me not knowing what I should do? Those weren’t his words, but he said, “I think you’re onto something” to the student who suggested it. He just used the class as a way of communicating to me what he’s up to.

I could take his hint and continue letting him play this game with me. Or maybe I would enjoy the feeling of getting right up in his face and calling him out on it? How would he like that? Good stories aren’t just about layers of conflict, sometimes surprise twists and turns are just as important.

There would still be plenty of “layers of conflict” left even if I peeled this one away. He’s still my mentor, and I’m pretty sure he’s not supposed to bang his TA. That should be conflict enough for him.

And if we need another conflict? Maybe I’ll get mad at him for stringing me along so much.