Chapter Two

She was there on the front row just as she always was. This time she'd chosen to sit directly opposite me. It was so difficult not to look at her. I couldn't look at her. I only had to glance in her direction to start getting hard.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

I was a professional. I'd been working there for nine years. In all that time, I'd never had a crush on a single one of the students. I'd had several of them throw themselves at me but I'd remained the consummate professional. There was no way I was going to risk my career over something like that.

The rules were simple. You did not have any kind of personal relationship with a student. It wasn't illegal, they were all over eighteen after all, but it was professional misconduct just as if I turned up drunk as a skunk like Mr Kennedy did last year. He managed to slip away with early retirement. I doubt I could get away with that at thirty-nine. I'd be out the door and all my qualifications would be for nothing. Dole queue or supermarket shelf stacking while those I taught rose through the echelons of their careers around me.

So I avoided even thinking about it. To look at me, you'd think nothing had changed. The year Donna started, it was all going fine, I was even being marked for potential head of department in the not too distant future. Then I met her.

I'll never forget the first time I saw her. It was Introduction to Study Methods, how I started all the first years off. One hour a week for six weeks before we got going on the proper stuff.

I'd prepped it all over the summer, tweaking what I'd learned from last year, the main thing to not be too dry, get some activities on the go, persuade them to start talking to each other and to me, break the ice before the hard work began.

I walked in, put my bag on the desk, turned around to look at them all and there she was. It was like the entire room was plunged into darkness and there was just a single spotlight shining on her. It was only for a few seconds but it felt a lot longer. The sentence I was halfway through fell out of my brain completely. All I could do was stare at her.

She had a nervous smile on her face and she was chewing on the end of her pen. In front of her was a pristine notepad, yellow highlighter parallel to it on the left, pencil on the right. It was a perfect freeze-frame of time that I only have to close my eyes to see whenever I want.

That smile, just a flick at the edges of those luscious red lips. Rounded cheeks and cute button nose and eyes that were fixed on me. As I looked at her, she looked away and she looked embarrassed, as if she'd been caught staring. Her hair perfectly framed her face and she was wearing a light summer dress, red and white, like something out of a fifties movie. Holy fuck, I wanted her at once.

So I did what I had to do. I looked away. I've been looking away ever since, taking only the slightest glances at her when I was sure I could get away with it.

I couldn't help myself that first time. It was a mistake, not one I made again. When they were split into groups, talking to each other in their rows, I nonchalantly headed her way, trying to make it look as casual as I could. I was sure that once I spoke to her, the feeling would go away. She was just pretty, that was all. She'd be an idiot or up herself or something that would pour cold water on the churning feelings inside me.

I'd never felt like that about anyone, not when seeing them for the first time. Just my luck that it was someone almost twenty years younger than me. I listened as she talked to the others and her voice made me want to grab her, drag her out of there, take her to my office and lock the door and not let her out until I was finished with her.

Instead I made a vow, a vow I kept throughout the first and second year. I would avoid her. It was the only way. I could pretend she didn't exist.

Which worked fine until the third year. In the first two, I was able to get someone else to take on the tutorials with her, making one excuse after another, making sure I was never alone with her. I knew I wouldn't be able to trust myself otherwise.

But in the third year I ran out of excuses. We'd only been back a week when her name appeared on the schedule outside my office door.

I was glad of my desk during those sessions, the only way to keep her from seeing how hard I got, especially when she wore those short skirts of hers. I felt more like an undergrad myself than a bloody grown up. I shouldn't have been feeling that way.

Then the spider came into the lecture hall. If it wasn't for that spider, things might have gone very differently. But it did come. It walked right along the floor in front of my desk, an enormous great thing with big spindly legs. It scurried towards the front row and people began pointing.

"All right," I called out over the noise. "It's only a spider, don't panic."

I walked over and knelt down just as it ran towards her feet. She jolted backwards in her seat and let out a yelp of fear. As she did so, her knees separated. It was only for the briefest of seconds but it was long enough. I had my hands around the spider but I was looking up, unable to resist, being closer to her than I'd ever been before.

She wasn't wearing any underwear. I thought for a moment that I'd imagined it but as I carried the spider over to the window and dropped it through onto the hedge outside, I knew I was right. I replayed the last few seconds in my head.

I'd glanced up. She'd jolted backwards, her knees separated as she scrambled to her feet. I caught the slightest glimpse of the most perfect sight I'd ever seen in my life, then she slumped back down, her knees clamped together, her face bright red with embarrassment. Did she know that I knew? There was only one way to find out.

I was a professional. Note the past tense. Because from the moment I got that flash of her, any hint of professionalism went out of the window. I was lost.