Page 23 of Teach Me
“I’d never done it before in my life.”
Cameron folded his arms over his chest. “Me either,” he said, expression going stony for the skepticism in my gaze. “Fuck you, that’s the truth. I don’t lie.”
I put a hand up, and Cameron shook his head, voice measured. “I apologize for the ‘fuck you.’ It was unwarranted.”
“I believe you. I hope you believe me, too. And if I’d had even the smallest suspicion that I was…”
“Getting blown by your student?”
“Yes, thank you, Cameron.” I threw my hands up and sighed. Go figure, the one time in my life when I threw caution to the wind, indulged in the impulses I’d always left to fantasy, it came back to bite me in the ass.
“You know what’s really messing with me, though? How the fuck did I not figure out it was you sooner?” Cameron’s face scrunched in a frown. “It seems so obvious now.”
“Contextual expectation, cognitive load, change blindness, source memory error, acoustic differences,” I rattled off glumly. “Any or all of these things could have been a factor.” It was the easiest question he’d asked me since he’d walked through my door. “Our brains are incredibly efficient at dealing with expected information, but falter in unexpected situations. You didn’t connect the dots for the same reason I didn’t: it seemed preposterous. We filter information based on relevance and familiarity. When you’re out of your usual context, the cues that normally alert us don’t line up the same way. What seems obvious in hindsight was obscured by our psychological blindspots at the time.”
Cameron made a disgruntled noise. “It’s honestly kind of scary when I think too hard about it.”
“Stranger than fiction, to be sure,” I agreed.
A long silence stretched between us after that. I had no idea what the fuck to say next, how to proceed. Cameron fiddled with the seam of his jeans, looked out the window over the quad, and finally back at me. Turned out my glory hole partner and I were destined for an awkward face-to-face conversation after all.
“Should I drop the class? I mean, I need this credit hour, but I could find an equivalent class and try to rework my work schedule to make it happen.” His voice was muted and careful,his eyes similarly guarded now when they lifted to mine. “I don’t want to, though. I really don’t.”
I pinched the knot of tension that had formed beneath my brows. “I’m not even sure what protocol is in this situation.”
“You mean there’s not a paragraph in the professor handbook about accidentally hooking up with a student?”
“I’m pretty sure they considered it covered by forbidding involvement with students in the first place.” The tinge of sarcastic humor that’d returned to his eyes extinguished at my response, and I regretted it immediately.
“You didn’t know, though.”
“I didn’t.”
Cameron sucked his lower lip between his teeth, then let it pop free. “In fact, you might never have known if I hadn’t said anything.”
“Cameron…” Oh boy. I kept quiet, waiting to see where he’d go with this, suspecting I knew already.
“I’ve given this a lot of thought. That’s why I was late. I almost didn’t come, but I didn’t… I really like the class, okay? And then after class, I spent the next fifteen minutes going around in mental circles, trying to decide whether or not I should say anything.”
“You did the right thing by telling me.” So why did I wish he hadn’t?
“Funny how the right thing sucks so bad sometimes.”
“A known hazard, yes.” I considered for a moment, drumming my fingers on the desk, then decided. “There’s no need to drop the class. We’re both adults here. I think we can navigate around this by simply moving on. It won’t happen again; we won’t speak about it. It was clearly an unfortunate accident. As for your essay and any other coursework, I’m going to have my TA, Paul, help you from here on out. He’ll be your primary point of contact.”
Cameron’s expression dimmed. “I thought you might say that.”
“You disagree?”
“No, but…fuck, I know I’m not supposed to say this, but I don’t want to move on.” His voice rose with agitation again. “I liked what we had going. Like, really fucking liked it. It was sexy, it was hot. I can’t remember ever getting off so hard, and you kind of seemed like?—”
“Cameron…”
One corner of his mouth tilted up. That smile on him arrested me. “No one ever calls me Cameron. I like it when you do.”
I shook my head. “There will be plenty of other opportunities for you to…revisit that club and meet others keen to take you up on?—”
The glare he turned on me took me aback. “Oh my god, do you really think I’d go back and sit at that glory hole waiting to suck some other stranger’s dick?”