Author's Note- Edited.
Enjoy!
Forbidden
Clueless
I wound up getting full marks for my make-up test and that allowed Professor Souza to merit my work as a C instead of an F into the system.
Though I didn't much care for the way he went about it, Professor Souza pointed out where the majority of my faults were born. It wasn't that I was horrible at math. It was that, when I couldn't understand it, I would get frustrated and start overanalyzing my work and answers. That only proved to take me down the wrong path.
The failing path.
So, Professor Souza organized a study method that would be best suitable for me as we stepped into the second half of the term. It consisted of him giving me a page of problems that were similar to the homework assignments I had done the day before. For instance, the homework I'd had over the weekend and had turned in Monday became my sole concentration on my Wednesday study session. I received a list of problems that I had gotten wrong and worked my way through them, knowing that, if I hesitated with my answer, then I should double check my work and not second guess what seemed the most logical.
For the time being, it really seemed to help and I found that I could catch a lot more of my mistakes as I made them instead of at the end of working through a problem. I didn't allow myself to get too excited about it though, not at least until I started seeing the results in my tests and overall grades.
Aside from that and being mostly satisfied with my study time with Professor Souza, things were still going slow as far as breaking through the, He's just the teacher and I'm just the student barrier. There were a few occasions over the following days where I was able to get just a hint of personal information out of him.
I'd been able to gather that he went to Syracuse University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in physics. When I asked him why he became a math teacher if that was the case, he evasively answered that it was the only position open at the time and directed me to continue with my equations.
At another point I discovered that, out of all his moving around as a kid, he had never left the state. His father was a lawyer and a damn good one by the sound of it, otherwise Professor Souza and his family wouldn't have had to move that much for his father's job.
Again, though, he would jump out of his reveries and insist that we got back to work. It was completely frustrating. He was frustrating. He would always open up, even just a little, then think better of it and shut Derek out, returning as Professor Souza full force. Every time I thought that I might have a chance to dig a little out of him, he'd shut the door in my face.
I wondered at times if he knew what I was up to. But then I considered whose fault it really was. Because it sure as hell wasn't mine. I wasn't the one who asked him to call me Chloe when he started off going by Ms. Saunders. Why would he introduce himself by his first name if he didn't want to have a less formal relationship outside of school?
My only hope as I had left the study session Thursday evening was that he wasn't joking around when he said he should stop by the diner on Saturday's more often. That was the ultimate casual setting and, if I was graced with the chance to serve him, there would be millions of different and better topics to talk about than math.
"So, this is the part where you say, 'I need to send them back.'"
"Huh?" I mumbled lamely, falling back into the present. The present being my dorm room where Nate and I were lounging on my bed, Nate sitting perpendicular, his back leaning against the wall where mine was against the headboard and my legs were stretched over the top of his. I met his amused gaze as he waved his copy of my script in front of my face in exaggeration.
"Earth to Chloe. We're supposed to be rehearsing." He laughed and I swatted at him with my own packet.
"I know I go on and on about making this scene perfect, but going over this script a million times tends to make me zone out."
"Well," Nate sighed, lifting his arms above his head, giving his body a good, long stretch. "I can't argue with you there. I say we call it a night. We've been at it for almost an hour anyways."
"Alright," I agreed while pulling my legs back and releasing him from the encasement. "Want to head over to Michael's for dinner?"
"Nah," Nate shook his head, standing and grabbing his jacket off the foot of my bed. "I don't have too much money left for the week and I have an early business class before calculus, so I should hit the hay early tonight."
Nate was the opposite of me when it came to taking care of himself. He knew when to accept favors and, when his parents offered to continue paying him an allowance, he wholeheartedly accepted, meaning that he didn't have to work like me. Although, he always stretched his earnings pretty thin over the two week span that his parents deposited money into his account.
"Yeah, saving money sounds like a good idea. Besides, I'll be there Saturday morning, so I can wait for the free food."
"You don't have to work tomorrow night?" Nate questioned, his ginger brows knitting together and a sudden form of excitement lighting up his blue eyes.
I smiled and replied, "Nope. First Friday of the term that Michael didn't put me on shift. I don't even know what to do with myself."
As I said this Nate beamed and leaned against the wall by the door of my dorm.
"How about a movie?"
"I don't want to see Gangster Squad," I mumbled instantly, automatically knowing where this was going.
"No, Chloe." Nate laughed. "I mean the drive-ins for their season closing this weekend. I think they're playing some version or another of Frankenstein tomorrow."
I gave it a thought. It seemed like a nice idea and it had been a while since I had gone out with my friends just for the fun of it. I was also lacking some time other than our shared studio workshop class with Liz.
"Sounds like fun. And it's cheap, so I won't have to splurge too much. Let's do it."
"Don't worry about the money, Chloe. It's on me." Nate announced.
"I thought you said you didn't have that much money left," I stated skeptically. Nate just smirked in reply.
"Not much to spend on food that I already have in my dorm. I'll have plenty for tomorrow."
"Right," I muttered with a roll of my eyes, knowing full well that he was going to be broke before he got paid over the Thanksgiving weekend.
"So, since you're the one with the car, want to just meet over at my dorms around six?" Nate asked as he opened the door to my dorm.
"Sounds good."
I had to admit that I was pretty eager to do something fun and maybe even a little distracting from all the hectic business that I had undergone over the past week. Though I had yet to have another issue with Professor Banks or make any progress with Professor Souza, I found myself slightly exhausted from the emotional rollercoaster of it all.
My excitement grew as Friday passed by. I called up Liz before my calculus class and invited her to tag along with me and Nate to the drive-in. She was quick to accept as her boyfriend would be working an evening shift after his afternoon classes.
On my way out after the bell signaled our release, I turned in some of my extra study questions to Professor Souza and suggested saving him a piece of the diner's Saturday special, hinting that I was hoping for him to come the following day. He merely nodded without meeting my eyes and I left the class feeling somewhat dejected and in desperate need for the movie night to come sooner.
Around half past five, I stopped by Liz's dorm to pick her up and she giddily hopped in the front seat, chatting a mile a minute enthusiastically before she even had the passenger door open.
"I'm so excited! I've never even been to a drive-in movie theater before."
"Really?" I questioned as I put my car in drive and pulled out of the parking lot. Liz and I lived about a block away from Nate and his dorms so I had decided to pick him up last. As I drove, Liz continued.
"I know, right? I guess I was just deprived as a child from the good stuff."
"But, weren't you always busy taking care of your mom and your little brother?"
"I guess you have a point."
"How are they, by the way?" I added, pulling into the parking lot in front of Nate's dorms. He was on the second floor and his window was just above the entrance. So, when I parked, I laid my hand on the horn, an old habit for when I used to pick him up in the mornings and drive the two of us to high school.
Liz giggled and said, "Good, I guess. Same as always. Mom's sick again, but Nana knows how to handle her. Oh! Actually, Nana started a pottery class a few weeks ago and said I should be expecting a few things for Christmas. And then my little bro joined a soccer team for his middle school."
"That's awesome," I responded, just as Nate slipped out through the lobby's double doors.
I opened my door and stepped out of my car before shouting, "Hurry up, slow poke! We've been waiting!"
His hair was such a bright red that, even twenty feet away I couldn't miss the way his brows met in confusion, question taking over his features.
"We?"
"Come on, Nathaniel! Can you walk any slower?"
I glanced behind me to see that Liz had gotten out also. Well, for the most part, she was only standing atop the rim of the small sedan where the door sat, waving her arms as she stood a good extra foot over the top of the car.
Though I expected it, Nate didn't seem amused. In fact, his face fell from perplexed to disappointed.
Damn. Was I not supposed to invite Liz?
"Liz has never been to a drive-in movie, so I thought that we should drag her along." I announced as he came closer. I noticed that he was wearing the white and blue plaid, button-up shirt I had gotten him for his birthday in September and my favorite pair of his dark washed jeans with the hole in the knee from when we had gone hiking the previous summer.
I suppose it would have only been polite to mention to him back during our calculus class that I had invited Liz, but, I had thought that it was somewhat implied. That the night was supposed to be fun and celebrate the fact that I had the evening free of work.
"Uh, yeah. That's cool." Nate spoke with a seemingly reluctant, deflated tone. But then he smiled up at Liz over the top of our heads and said, "Glad that you could make it, Liz. I can't believe you've never been to a drive-in movie before."
"I know, right?" Liz laughed, repeating a similar conversation to ours as she and Nate climbed back into the car.
I sighed, having caught that Nate's welcoming persona hadn't met his eyes and knowing that I would have to make it up to him later. I quickly clambered back into the driver's seat and escorting the lot of us to the movie.
No amount of fun the night before could amount for the disappointed squirming sensation I felt when Professor Souza didn't show up at the diner for my shift Saturday morning.
Nate also denied visiting me as he usually did, still a little wounded- though he refused to admit it- that I hadn't kept the Friday evening just between him and I. In which case, this actually confused me. We were always together and I often felt as if Liz were left out of the loop at times. Why was it so bad that we all got to hang out together or what about it made him so bitter?
As the week progressed and the campus glowed in anticipation of the forthcoming long, holiday weekend, he seemed to gradually get over it and fit back into his old self. So I allowed my concerns to drop and focused the majority of my concentration on the math test we were supposed to have Wednesday before we were released for Thanksgiving break.
Professor Souza informed me after Monday's class that we would only meet for the Tuesday study session in light of holiday preparation and that we would focus on the lessons that would be covered in the test. For once, I felt completely confident in my ability to perform greatly on one of Professor Souza's tests, all because of his tutelage. However, that didn't keep my spirits very high as he continued to slip farther and farther from of my reach.
I could feel my theories and desires withering as I saw less of the man who had come to the diner and more of the man I had found myself so anxious and flustered around. I had fallen back into my old patterns of admiring him from afar, blushing whenever he looked my way, stammering whenever it was necessary for me to speak to him and overall hesitant to approach him the more he pulled away.
I wondered with sense of mortification if he had been able to deduct my feelings for him and simply cut off the chance of an inappropriate teacher/ student relationship by remaining distant, cold and unyielding.
Better said; falling back into his role as my Professor.
When that idea seemed to become more realistic than the one that I was different to him than his other students, I ceased to allow myself to dwell on such implausible fantasies. I stopped kidding myself. I told myself to grow up and move on and I tested with that attitude, turning in my quiz at the end of class Wednesday morning without so much as a look in Professor Souza's direction, no longer feeling too confident about my score.
"Hey, Marcus," I called through the pickup window to the only other worker on shift with me in the all but dead diner.
"It's pretty slow this morning. Why don't you take your break?"
The hazel-eyed man shrugged indifferently and set his spatula on the counter beside the stove. He stripped himself of his apron and trudged over to the back door towards the smoke pit where he spent the majority of his breaks.
"See you in thirty minutes." He called over his shoulder and I rolled my eyes.
I took the first fifteen of those minutes to clean up what few tables had already been used that morning and even reheated the coffee that was beginning to cool at the brewing station. I was fighting with a particularly stubborn, old coffee pot that often decided not to work when I heard the chimes of the entrance bell sound. I called a greeting without looking, still fussing over the blasted machine.
"I'll be right with you."
When the red light informing me that the machine was working finally flickered on, I placed my hands on my hips triumphantly and muttered, "Serves you right."
The light dimmed off flauntingly.
"Damn, coffee pot. Wait until I replace you, then we'll see who's taunting who."
An amused snort sounded behind me and I jumped, yelping quietly in the process. I turned upon my visitor and nearly got weak-kneed when I met dazzling green eyes.
"Do you often threaten inanimate objects?"
"P-professor Souza?"
Said man smirked while folding his arms and leaned them against the breakfast bar where he occupied one of the stools. I couldn't help my gaze flickering to his biceps, hugged tight by a short sleeved, plain, gray t-shirt or shake the slight attraction towards the shadow of stubble on his jaw, born by a simple refusal to shave over the weekend.
I was in such a daze by the fact that he was there, I almost wondered if I had fallen into a state of delusions do to my bored state courtesy of the uneventful morning. And then I was confused.
"What are you doing here?"
Professor Souza looked about to make a sarcastic remark- which I wouldn't put past him knowing what little I did of his personality- but seemed to think better of it. He reached towards his back pocket and surfaced with a piece of paper folded over like a letter. He handed it off to me in which I gave him a skeptical and quizzical look before examining it.
It was the test I had taken Wednesday. The only difference from the quiz I had taken then and the one I was looking at now was that there was a large 84 scrawled in red ink beneath my name.
My eyes snapped up and met Professor Souza's once again, surprised, only to find that he was no longer smirking.
He was smiling. A small smile, with a crooked quirk of his lips that lit up his features, his eyes sparking in a contended glow.
"How about we celebrate with some of that pie?"