demands.
Okay, now that’s just fucking rude. I’m suddenly not so shocked that he’s in my seat anymore. I’m more...mad. Narrowing my eyes, I half-scowl at him. “Nope.”
Now it’s his turn to act surprised. “Nope?”
“That’s right. No.”
“You’re not going to tell me your name?”
“Maybe if you asked for it properly, like a normal fucking person and not some sergeant major asshole handing out an order, I would tell you.”
This earns me a swift bark of laughter. “All right, fine. Please, Oh Angry One, would you do me the honor of telling me your name?”
Mercifully, Professor Cline enters through the door and not a moment too soon. The towering stack of texts books in his hands wobbles, threatening to fall any moment. He curses under his breath, then curses again when he sees that two of his students have already arrived. “Sorry, guys. Sorry. Here, Silver, grab this for me, would you? I’m gonna lose it in a sec—woah!” The top book in his pile clatters to the floor. Looks like the rest of them are going to go any second, too. I lunge forward, rushing to help him.
Students file in while I help him unload the textbooks onto his desk, and the tension in the room ramps up; the guy sitting in the corner might as well be dressed as a circus clown with a face full of makeup for all the attention he’s getting.
Marjorie Chen’s looking at me like I’ve grown another head. David Moss—a guy who once told me I was breathtaking and begged me to go to spring formal with him, is now wrinkling his nose at me like I’m an apple he’s bitten into and discovered to be rotten. Everyone else is casually glancing at the stranger in the corner, though, whispering furiously to each other behind the backs of their hands.
“All right, thank you, Silver. You can take your seat.” Professor Cline extends his hand, about to touch me between my shoulder blades—a casual gesture to usher me toward a desk—but he stops himself at the last second, apparently thinking better of it. He gives me a tight-lipped, uncomfortable smile, then quickly looks away. In a louder voice, he addresses the rest of the room. “Yes, yes, I’m glad to see all of you are still mentally alert for this highly anticipated last session of the day. You are indeed correct. We have a new student amongst us this afternoon. Yes, he looks quite imposing. Yes, he rides a motorcycle. Please, get your behinds in your seats, or we’re going to be here all day. Silver Parisi, where are you going? Take the desk next to our new friend. You’re holding up traffic.”
God damn it.
I had just retrieved my bag, eyes firmly glued to the floor, and was attempting to weave my way over to the other side of the room, but now I’m fucked. Now I have to sit right next to New Boy, two feet away from him; I can feel his intense eyes glide over me, inspecting me distractedly as the chorus of chatter around us slowly begins to die down. Professor Cline removes his grey blazer and hangs it from a hook on the wall behind his desk. I’ve never been a great judge of age, but I’d say Cline’s in his mid-forties. I overheard Karen, Principle Darhower’s assistant, on the phone once, telling someone that Cline used to teach at UCLA. That he’d been involved in some sort of scandal and had been relegated to teaching high school physics here at Raleigh because of it.
“All right. Let’s get it all out of the way,” he says, splaying his fingers in a supplicating gesture toward the group. Cline’s gaze lands on the guy sitting next to me, and he sends an apologetic smile his way. “Alessandro Moretti. I said that right, yes? I’m guessing you’d rather poke both your own eyes out than stand at the front of the class and tell us all a little bit about yourself?”
My skin feels like it’s on fire; my neck is prickling like crazy as I cautiously look to my right. The guy—Alessandro Moretti—clears his throat. For one eternally long second, I can’t seem to rip my eyes away from the sight of his Adam’s apple shifting in his throat. “Alex,” he says. “And no. If it’s all the same to you.” The timbre of his voice is a lot like the rumble of his motorcycle’s engine—deep, rich and resonant.
“Fair enough. Alex it is. We’ll