I try to focus on what the professor is saying. But it is 4:15 pm and the classroom is warm and she is in class. My attention keeps wandering up a row and two desks over to where she sits. She has the most beautiful hands. Square, strong, long-fingered. I am enthralled with how she plays with her pen, wondering what it would be like to have that hand caress my cheek, travel slowly but deliberately down my neck, rest on my heart and then reach out to cup my breast. . . I wonder how her smooth café au lait skin would look tangled against mine on my futon. As if I had called her name aloud, she suddenly turns around and looks directly at me, one eyebrow raised. I feel the color rise to my face as I blush furiously and return my gaze to my notebook, pretending to write down whatever the hell the professor is currently saying, as though it is the most profound pearl of wisdom he has ever spouted. My cheeks still afire, I wish fervently that the floor below me would open up and swallow me whole, or that magically, the fire alarm would perhaps go off. The goddess is unkind and the minutes continue to tick slowly by as I again try to focus on the lecture, not let my thoughts succumb to her siren song.
© 2016 Revised 2020 Christine Elizabeth Ray – All Rights Reserved
