Page 141 of Oleander

Want.

Different in nature and flavour from the want I’d had for Finn’s mouth or his dick, and closer to the kind I’d had for Caspien. It was just the forbidden nature of it, I told myself. It was the knowledge that I could never really have it. It was knowing that a boundary existed that couldn’t be crossed. It was, ridiculous as it sounds, safe.

But still, the abruptness of it frightened me. I hadn’t known I’d felt that way about Nathan, not to mention he was my bloody professor, and that part had come on me very much like it had for Caspien. Sudden and breath-taking.

I stood abruptly, slammed shut my laptop, grabbed my bag and ran out of the library as fast as I could.

Twelve

Nathan said that asking me to be his guide in Jersey had nothing to do with his attraction to me and everything to do with fate dropping me in his lap when he was writing a screenplay about the occupation of the island. I was a gift, he said more than once.

He’d been drawn to me before he knew where I was from (‘those big green eyes that look at everything the world has to offer you with an edge of terror’), and the synchronicity of it only proved that we were meant to be something to each other.

After the night in the library, buckled from embarrassment, I skipped my Tuesday film criticism class. And then the Thursday tutorial after that. I’d made up some lie to Nikita about not feeling great Monday night, followed by a dentist appointment on the Thursday, but I was going to run out of plausible excuses soon enough. Honestly, I was fully prepared to fail the class and resit something in the summer, after he’d gone, to make up my grade.

But on the Friday, a week to the day after the incident, I was reading the back of a microwave meal – it was the third one I’d picked up so far – at the Waitrose chilled section when I felt a presence come to a stop next to me. I slid the packet back and picked up another.

“Definitely the moussaka or the cottage pie,” the presence, who had a distinct American accent, said.

I stiffened, instantly aware of every part of my body. Turning my head I wasn’t surprised to see him watching me with one of his easy smiles. “Be easier on the tooth.” Silver-grey eyes sparkling.

My stomach dipped as I opened my mouth to attempt some excuse.

“Sir, hi, hello...I,” I stammered like a bloody imbecile.

He rolled his eyes. “Oh, man, not thesiragain.” He reached into the fridge compartment for a garlic loaf, and put it into his basket. “I’m actually glad I ran into you because I’ve made a lot – too much – spaghetti Bolognese. If you’d like to join me for a bowl?”

My mouth opened, closed, opened again. “You want me to have dinner with you?”

“I mean, if that’s weird, I could leave the room, and you could eat. After all, the goal is just feeding you. I don’t technically need to be there.”

Unexpectedly, I laughed. There was a nervous fluttering in my stomach, but I was ravenous with it. I wasn’t sure what the fuck I was doing, but I found myself nodding.

“I really like spaghetti Bolognese.”

Nathan had rented a basement flat only a five-minute walk from the university. It used to be a B&B, he told me as he led me down the stairs and into a cosy little vestibule where we took off our shoes. He opened the door into a large low-ceilinged living/dining space, a vine green kitchen nestled at one end. The place looked newly renovated, though it had a lived-in feel: papers piled on the dining table, books and a laptop on the coffee table, and a pot of delicious smelling Bolognese steaming gently on the hob.

As he turned on the oven for the bread and boiled the kettle for the pasta, I took a seat at the dining table and listened as heexplained how his quarter Italian heritage was to thank for the ragu sauce.

I accepted a glass of wine and set the table with the mats and cutlery he set down next to me, while he plated up the food. It felt bizarrely comfortable. I liked him as my professor, probably because he wasn’t like the other professors. He was half their age for a start, and he didn’t so much teach or lecture as chat about films he liked and why. And as we had dinner, it felt much like it did in class. He made me laugh, he was interested in what I had to say, and it was only after stuffing my face with the best spaghetti Bolognese I’d ever had, and was a little loose from the wine, that he asked why I hadn’t come to class this week.

I groaned, hiding my face in the crook of my arm. “Because of what happened in the library.”

“And what happened in the library, Jude?”

I lifted my head to peer up at him. He was sipping casually from his glass, a wry smile on his mouth. He was extremely good-looking, mature, and successful. And as incredible as it was, he appeared to be flirting with me. But he was also my professor. And it was as though I’d only just remembered that last part, and that I was here, alone, having dinner with him, because suddenly, the easy, jovial atmosphere had sharpened to a very fine and deliberate point.

I said, “Come on. You know you’re...well, hot.”

“Do I?”

I let out a nervous chuckle. “I mean, surely yeah, you do. Half the girls in class are in love with you, a couple of the guys too. And then there’s Bailey at the coffee shop who’s been plotting my death since you bought me a bacon roll and who I had to lie to so I could get him to give me your order.”

“You lied? Not Jude Alcott.” He was grinning now.

“I just said you’d asked me to go there for your usual, that he’d know what it was. I thought there’d be less chance of him messing up the order on purpose.”

“Wow. How very Machiavellian of you.”