Page 7 of Brighter Shades of Light

“Why, are you going to break in and steal the coffee machine or something?” Desk-Guy asked, rolling his eyes. “Most professors don’t even use it. They keep to their offices. It’s mainly there for appearances. Just print what you need to and get out of there. Okay?”

“Sure.”

I turned and walked toward the staircase. The library had been renovated a year ago, so there were modern touches amongst the older parts of it. Windows lit the place up, the majority of them floor to ceiling so they appeared like one glass wall. The first platform on the stairs had a set of plushy reading chairs, and I passed them and made my way up the second flight of steps.

Footsteps echoing down the corridor and quiet murmuring could be heard, but not much else. I looked at the numbers above the doors until I found the professors’ lounge. After typing in the six-digit code, the light on the keypad blinked green, and I grabbed the handle. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected to see when I opened the door. Maybe fancy chairs and espresso machines. Some professors damn near acted like royalty; might as well treat them as such.

What I didn’t expect, though, was a kind of drab interior with tables, a few windows, and an old coffee machine that looked like it was on its last breath. I didn’t look too closely, though. Permission or not, I kind of felt like a kid who was somewhere they shouldn’t be.

“Let’s get this over with,” I said to myself and walked over to the computer, logging into my email.

All five of my courses required us to print the syllabus—some of which were seven or eight pages long. After scheduling them all, I walked over to the machine, watching it prepare the paper and begin to print.

I loved seeing how it all worked.

Something about the sound of the machine as it printed appealed to me, and I started adding other sound effects to go with it, eventually tapping my hands on the table and creating a beat.

“Can you not do that, please?”

I jumped at the voice and flipped around.

A man sat at the table in the corner of the room, his back against the wall, and was eyeing me over a stack of papers. With tousled blond hair that touched the middle of his ears, light-green eyes that peered at me through black-framed glasses, and a narrowed brow, he was both mysterious and fucking hot. But not an obvious kind of hot; more subtle and reserved, as if he didn’t understand his own appeal.

“Sorry,” I said, once I was able to find my voice. My cheeks heated as I recalled my one-man beatboxing show. “Didn’t see you over there. I thought I was alone.”

The man nodded and went back to reading. Two textbooks were laid out on the table, and he skimmed the chapter from one before doing the same to the second and flipping the page. Multi-tasking to the extreme.

A smarter person would’ve taken that as a sign to shut the fuck up and go about my own business. Instead, I stepped closer to him.

“I’m a student here.”

He looked up at me. “I see that.”

Yeah, I’d stated the obvious, hadn’t I?

“The printer in the main part of the library is broken, so they said I could come up here.”

The man returned his attention to his papers. “Mhm.”

Oh my god, just shut up, Cody.

The printer continued to whir behind me, adding noise to the otherwise quiet room. So quiet. I’d never been good at keeping my mouth closed. It was a discipline the NROTC officers had had to drill into me from day one.

“So, you’re a teacher?” I asked.

He pushed his glasses up his nose and glanced up at me again. The power of his eyes made me a little wobbly on my feet.

“Correct.”

“I’m Cody Miller, a midshipman in the NROTC program.” I stepped forward and reached to shake his hand. It was only the polite thing to do when meeting someone.

At first, I didn’t know if he’d accept it by the way he studied me, but he finally took my hand in his.

“Dr. Sebastian Vale,” he said, giving my hand a firm shake before letting go.

The air left my lungs and I nearly shit and fell back in it.

No fucking way was this real. From what I’d heard, Dr. Vale wasn’t fond of having his picture taken, so there had never been a photo of him in the articles I read. Sure, I probably could’ve found a picture of him if I had looked hard enough, but it hadn’t mattered enough to me.