Page 142 of Oleander

I smiled, proud of myself.

“So, that’s a lot of people you claim are in love with me. What about you?”

Without thinking, I almost said, ‘I’m in love with someone else,’ but I thought better of it.

Instead, I said, “Nah, I don’t think any of them are in love with me.”

Nathan laughed and stood, lifting both our bowls and forks. I followed behind him with the side plates.

“I can do the dishes,” I offered. For some reason, this made Nathan look at me with what I thought was fondness before he gave a slight shake of his head.

“I have a dishwasher. Go sit down.”

I sat on the sofa sipping my wine as he finished up in the kitchen. “Do you miss New York?” It was a nice flat, but I imagined his place in Brooklyn to be something he might miss.

“Uh, yeah, I do. I miss my dog. I miss craving Japanese food at 4 a.m. and being able to walk two blocks with him and get it.”

“What’s his name?” The coffee table had a photo of him with his dog. It looked old and large, with a pointed dark nose and lighter around the head and ears.

“Ivan.”

I shot him a look as he came to sit next to me.

“Ivan’s Childhood. Tarkovsky, of course,” I laughed. “Could have guessed that.”

“It’s a good name.”

“Terrible film, though,” I smirked.

“Okay, what’s your favourite film then, wise guy?”

I shrugged, “Don’t have one.”

“Coward.”

I laughed again. “I really don’t. I like films – I like them a lot more since I joined your class, but they don’t move me the way books do. I can never quite suspend my belief enough to lose myself in them completely.”

“The way you do when you’re reading,” said Nathan.

“Exactly.”

“I think that’s a perfectly acceptable point of view.” He nodded and reached across to top up my wine. “Unlike your stance on Tarkovsky, for example.”

I wasn’t aware of how comfortable I was, how much I was enjoying myself with him; I’d somehow spent an entire night without thinking of Cas. And then it was close to midnight, and the wine bottle was long empty. The conversation had reached a natural lull, and though he’d certainly given me looks throughout the night, I wasn’t truly one hundred percent sure of how to read the situation. I was nothing special, whilst he was a smart, talented Oscar–winning professor. I was going to need to have it spelt out for me before I’d make that kind of a fool of myself.

“Shit, I didn’t even realise the time,” I said, standing. “I should get going.”

He didn’t move. He sat with his legs slightly parted, arm resting along the back of the sofa and a look on his face that I’d have to have been blind not to understand. When he widened his legs a little more, eyes never leaving mine, I couldn’t help my eyes dipping to the space between his legs.

My film criticism professor was hard. Really fucking hard.

There were fourteen individual points noted in the policy concerning relationships between students and staff. I knew because last Friday, after the library incident, I’d gone home and looked it up. I knew that under ‘definitions’ that policy included every individual working within the University under a formal contract (such as visiting academics). I also knew that since Caspien, I hadn’t wanted anyone as much as I wanted Nathan Alexander in that moment. It seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up on.

I was an adult, but that didn’t take away from the fact that the burden of responsibility in this sort of thing sat with the staff member, not the student. There was something in the statute about harassment towards staff which Nathan could maybe level at me. But he’d invited me here, to his house. He was hard. There was no way I’d misread this.

Nathan’s voice jolted me out of my thoughts.

“Jude, I don’t want to do anything that makes you uncomfortable.” He sat up, suddenly more serious. He had read my overthinking as something else.