The grade hit the portal at four-oh-five, a big fat red F stared back at me. It was no surprise. I just sat there with a popsicle in my mouth and one leg over the chair arm in my dorm room while the group chat blew  the fuck up.

Jess: “WTF Calder is actually insane???”

Andre: “bro FAILED me for real i’m shaking”

Lexi: “he failed half the class fr someone needs to report him”

Zay: “i’m emailing the damn department rn idc”

Mira: “no one passed question 7 ”

Alix: “how did I study for three days and still get a D wtf”

Jay: “he doesn’t even  know how to teach ”

Tina: “he literally hates girls it’s not just me right??”

Noah: “he failed alyssa too and she sits front row like every day”

Gina: “mine said 59.4 like girl just round it up tf”

David: “i’m not retaking this class i will take the L and drop out”

Cam: “this man deadass smiled when he gave me my test”

Bree: “he’s so smug it makes me SICK”

Leo: “he used to be in the military or something? explains a lot”

Alyssa: “I CANNOT breathe I got a straight-up 42”

Jules: “who tf made him a professor he’s like a punishment from God”

Moni: “he should be fired fr i don’t care”

Vik: “finals week and this is how he wanna play???”

Sam: “I need a drink already I can’t do this”

Tam: “I didn’t even open the damn portal. don’t need that negativity in my life.”

And I sat there laughing my ass off,  while i sucked the cherry off my popsicle stick, typed “lmao y’all dramatic as hell he’s just bored” with a little smirk, and when Jess replied “says the girl who turned in a blank test???” I just sent back a kiss emoji and kept scrolling, because I knew i had failed and I was going to fix this because this final weeks were important like fuck. 

The popsicle was melting faster than I could suck it, sticky red dripping down my fingers and onto my bare thigh, and I didn’t bother wiping it because it felt kind of good, warm and wet and slow, and the way my tongue dragged up the side without thinking made my whole body remember what it wanted  not books, not grades, , but something hard and grown and mean enough to make me whimper, and without even closing my eyes, I let my brain wander back to that look on his face when I dropped the blank test in front of him, that cold flat stare like he hadn’t just been staring at my tits the whole time, and I thought about what it’d feel like if he ever dropped that stupid act of his, if he ever lost control for just one second and shoved everything off that desk just to bend me over it and make me learn something that actually  would stick.

I pulled on the little pleated skirt that always rode up when I walked and the fitted tee that hugged my tits like it knew they were the main event, i smoothed my hands down the sides, then sprayed that vanilla perfume between my legs, on my wrists, under my tits, because I liked how it smelled when it mixed with heat, and I knew that smell always stayed behind even after I left the room, i grabbed my lip gloss from the nightstand and tucked it into my back pocket, gave myself one last look in the mirror, i wasn’t checking if I looked decent I didn’t care about decent just to make sure I looked like the kind of girl who didn’t need to ask twice, and I laughed under my breath, shook my head, and said out loud, “Let’s go see why Professor Calder suddenly thinks he’s hard to get’’

His office was at the end of the hall, right where it  was quiet and dull and tucked between two classrooms nobody used, and I didn’t stop or hesitate, just knocked out of courtsey, then i went ahead and opened the door and walked in without waiting for a reply.

I opened the door and there he was behind the desk, glasses were on his nose, sleeves pushed up, collar a little open, already looking at me like he was tired of whatever he thought I was about to say, and immediately went back to grading some poor soul paper as if i wasn”t in the room

“I saw the grade,” I said.

He didn’t look surprised. “Then you already know what this conversation isn’t going to be.”

I leaned back. “You don’t even want to hear what I came to say?”

He glanced at the clock. “You’ve got five minutes.”

I smiled. “That’s all I need.”

He raised an eyebrow but didn’t speak.“Is there anything I can do?” I asked, tilting my head, not even trying to sound innocent,

“No,” he said, not looking away from me, not giving me even a second of hesitation, and I didn’t react right away because I had already guessed that would be his line, I just kept sitting there, legs crossed, arms resting at my sides, i was in no hurry, just watching because i knew he would crack not too long.

He looked back at me, and he didn’t blink or shift in his seat or do anything obvious, but his eyes did move  first to my mouth, then my chest, and then lower, pausing at the edge of my skirt like maybe he was thinking about where it stopped and what he did or didn’t know wasn’t underneath it, and he didn’t say anything else, just sat there behind his desk with that same stiff, unreadable expression.

I leaned forward just a little, not too much, just enough to make him have another view of my tit, and I asked again, slower this time, not like a joke  but a tease  “Are you sure there’s nothing I can do?”

And this time he didn’t answer at all, not right away, I did not get any words from him ,  he just kept looking at me, like he was still holding that line, like he was trying not to cross it. He thought I hadn’t already noticed the way his eyes dipped or the way he hadn’t told me to leave yet,  the silence stretching until it got thick between us, until it felt like something real was going to happen next.