I can do this. I CAN DO THIS. No. No I can't do this. What would I even say? 'Hey Prof! Sorry I called you a sexist, pwease make my grade better!' Christ. I shouldn't even have argued, I should have taken it and adjusted my strategy for the class to begin with, now I have to navigate this. I audibly sighed before consulting back to my homework in the library. I figured I might as well work on it right before the office hours so the info would be fresh in my mind, but unfortunately I have been finding it less and less penetrable this week. Maybe it was because I was mad, maybe it was because of the anxiety I had around the instructor, or maybe he was right I really wasn't understanding the material. HA! Maybe this is good, hold onto this psychic space of self doubt and humility, maybe it'll endear me to him when we talk, make him pity me.

I shut the Rossi book and stuffed it into my backpack along with my notepads and pens before exiting the library, taking deep and steady breaths, genuinely trying to internally rehearse what I would say this time. By the time I arrived at his office I felt as prepared and confident as I thought possible, that is until I knocked. Professor Reid answered the door with a heavy sigh and an exhausted looking face. For the first time ever I saw him with no jacket, no cardigan, not even a tie. The sleeves of his purple dress shirt were rolled up to his elbows and it was even open slightly by a single button. Hardley the sluttiest a man had ever looked but by the standards of the professor it may as well have been pornographic.

"Miss Prescott, I'm happy to see you remembered we had a meeting." He said, once again in that tone that I probably would have registered as condescending if I weren't so distracted by the grip of his hand on the door and the revelation of lean muscles under his shirt. "You can come in, Miss Prescott." He said, snapping out of my haze slightly.

"Right, yes sorry." I stuttered out, hoping he would chalk my slightly odd staring up to the way I usually stare into space. I brushed past him into his office and straight towards the chair in front of his desk, barely even registering my surroundings as I desperately tried to re-collect my thoughts. An effort once again put to immediate vein when I looked up to see him standing behind his desk and my imagination rudely intruded in with the image of him bending me over it. Fuck.

"You wanted to continue our conversation from Tuesday? About the grade on your first paper?" He finally prompted as he sat down in chair.

"Yes, yeah, yeah, um, or, rather no." I started, once again stumbling over my words. "I wanted to… apologize." I forced out, even I was struggling to believe the words. "for, uh, arguing with you about my grade. You are the expert and I shouldn't have questioned your integrity as a grader." veering into something I was actually sorry for would hopefully help, I didn't care for how I had spoken to him about this to begin with. When I looked back up from my hands Professor Reid just stared at me with a deeply focused expression I couldn't fully make out. "Um, and I would appreciate it if you would still allow me to re-write my paper, with your guidance in understanding the material." I added. He stayed quiet for what felt like an eternity, studying me with his kind puppy-dog like eyes that betrayed his otherwise stern face.

"You're a film studies graduate student, aren't you Miss Prescott?" He finally spoke, taking me slightly aback.

"I– yes, I am why is that relevant? Why do you even know-"

"It's in your file, Rosaleen Prescott, 25 years old, NYU graduate, currently pursuing your Master's degree in film studies with an emphasis in queer and feminist psychoanalysis, which – I assume – is the answer to the question that drove me to look closer into you because I was slightly confused why a film student who wasn't even a undergrad found herself in my criminal psychology class." He rattled off without breaking eye contact with me.

"Yeah," I breathed out, "yeah I felt that my thesis would benefit from taking a few psych classes on their own, separate from the strict lens of film theory so that I could strengthen my own personal analysis." I responded, holding my gaze in kind to his, if a bit shakier.

"So what I'm curious about now," he continued, "is why you're so desperate for a good grade in this class that you're telling a lie so obvious it borders on embarrassing for you." He finished with a tone that was so matter of fact it was hard to process what he was saying as cruel.

I sat there gobsmacked, for a moment. I should have known better than to try and deliver a fake apology to the FBI's top psychological profiler, I suppose. I guess I had figured he would accept the act of humility and we could disregard whether he believed me or not. As I began regaining my composure to respond, my disarmament was replaced with the same indignation I felt when I first read the feedback on my paper and a question of my own bubbled out of my mouth, "How long did you know that?" I asked, "did you read my student file before the semester started?"

"Responding to my question with your own question isn't an answer, Miss Prescott." he responded, I spotted a glint of something in his eye as he said it. It was only for a moment before he remasked it but I caught it, I had disarmed him with my deduction too.

"Neither is that response," I countered.

"Yes," he said, "I read all my student's files, I like to know who I'm teaching. Why does that information matter to you?" he asked, leaning forward in his chair.

I laughed. God help me, I laughed out loud, to his face. I had come here to apologize and smooth over any friction with this man for the semester and I was about to make it 100% worse, but I couldn't stop myself. "Did you think this interrogation attempt was going to enlighten me to your perspective? Did you think it was going to show me the magic of your profiling skills or something? Because from where I sit this whole exchange has only proven the point I made before. You didn't like that some know-nothing liberal arts major is questioning the validity of your whole practice!" I spat out at his face, "You expected me not to be able to understand the material before you even looked at me and then I had the nerve to undermine it in any way and you didn't like that."

I was standing now, even with Professor Reid sitting in his chair I was only just above his eye level, and he continued to look at me studiously as he had before. "Would you like to sit back down?" he asked me calmly, though this time with enough condescension that even his pretty face couldn't buffer it.

"No." I huffed out in a tone that probably resembled a bratty child. Professor Reid just blinked at me before gesturing his head towards the chair, wordlessly instructing me to sit again. I obeyed this time, though still huffy.

"So following that, I'll ask again, why are you so desperate for a good grade in this class that you came here prepared to humiliate yourself, if you truly have such a low opinion of my integrity, and when this class is not even a requirement for you. You could audit, it's early in the semester, you could drop it altogether. Why are you here, and why are you risking your GPA on a class with material of such a different academic bent than you're used to?" It was a series of questions that felt more revealing of me than any of the answers I could give would. I had walked into his trap, I had played my hand exactly how he wanted – no, how he knew I would after only a handful of interactions with me. Master psychological profiler indeed.

"I enrolled instead of auditing because I like to actually learn the material in the class, and assignments are what help me to productively do that," I answered, it was a boring answer but it was true. "And I came here prepared to embarrass myself with a fake apology, because I do want to learn from you. I want to stay in this class, and better understand the material you're teaching me, and I thought I would have an easier time doing that if I just apologized and cozied up instead of creating friction with you." I confessed, humiliating as it was, it was the truth of the matter.

I could tell he believed me this time, the softness returning to his hazel eyes he said, "I don't think you're a know nothing liberal arts major, Rose." I was once again disarmed by his use of my first name, the first time I had heard him say it without the accompaniment of my last. "I think it shows a remarkable amount of dedication to your field, and intellectual curiosity that you wanted to take this class at all. I do, however, think the nature of the content in this class is materially different from the type of academia you're used to, and as a result you're struggling slightly to understand it in full." The air of condescension I had previously clocked in voice was now gone entirely, he wasn't trying to challenge me anymore. "I can tell from just your first paper that you're an extremely proficient writer, as well as from your generally anxious demeanor that you're bad at tests. You count on essays to carry you academically, so when you got a lower grade than you were counting on here you responded harshly. But that proficiency of writing is also why I was able to thoroughly identify what you aren't understanding, subject wise. It's not that your critiques of criminal profiling lack merit, it's that you aren't ready to coherently make them yet."

I breathed in deeply, trying to keep the tears pricking the back of my eyes from falling in response to such gentle correction. "Alright," I started, "so what would you like me to do?" I asked, suddenly feeling like a child asking a grown up how to un-spill my cereal. He smiled at me warmly, the first real smile I'd seen from him this entire conversation.

"Like I said, your choice to even take this class, as well as your passion for your own work, shows a great deal of curiosity to me that I deeply respect. If what you would like is to better grasp the material, I'm happy to have private one-on-one tutoring time with you here outside my office hours." He proposed. I was silenced by shock once again. Was he serious? After all that he wanted to give me extra help? Alone, in his office, for hours on end into the night? I felt my cheeks begin to blush as I once again began picturing a flurry of things he most definitely would not find appropriate in his office.

"Yes, please." I let out, I think it came out as a whisper, I couldn't be sure.

"Great!" He said, an even bigger smile truly plastering itself across his face again, "What nights work best for you?"

"Nitghs?" I asked, "Plural?"

"Well of course, the lectures are 3 hours each and if we're going one-on-one reviews that'll take at least an additional 4 which I figure you'll need to spread across multiple nights, as maintaining a regular sleep schedule is important to a successful academic life. Not to mention the fact that we also have to play catch up these next few days on the lectures from your first couple weeks." he rattled off again. I just nodded in concurment, mesmerized by how he spoke.

"Yeah, yeah, right, okay, um, Tuesdays, after class works for me if it works for you," I started, and he nodded enthusiastically. "Let's also say Thursday nights, I usually work mornings on Thursday."

"That sounds like an excellent plan to me," he said before knocking the top of his desk. "If you don't have anywhere else to be, as long as you're here I'm happy to get a head start on the first week's material." he offered, seeming almost hopeful that I would say yes.

"I- uh, sure!" I responded, possibly a bit too enthusiastic. "I have all my notes and the Rossi book you assigned, it's full of highlighting and notes in the margins, I'm sorry." the words stumbled out of my mouth. "I was doing your homework before I came here." I explained, not wanting to look like I showed up over prepared for some reason.

"No need to apologize, that is all good!" Professor Reid assured me as he collected my notes to flip through them.

We spent about an hour and half going over the first week's lecture notes, leaving us with minimal time to discuss the assigned book chapters, but it was getting late and as he said, a regular sleeping routine was important. Or something like that.

"Thank you, so much for this." I said as I made my way out of his office.

"Of course, Miss Prescott, like I said, I'm really moved by your desire to learn, I'm always happy to help with that." He smiled at me again. I hope these sessions mean I get to see that smile more. I paused, remembering one other thing I had neglected to comment on earlier.

"Professor Reid?" I asked.

"Mhm?"

"You called me Rose, earlier." I said.

"Oh, yeah, I'm sorry if you didn't care for that, old confrontation trick from the field, you call someone by their first name, it can calm them down when they're upset." Whatever condescension might have been found in that statement was buried under his clearly sincere concern he had made me uncomfortable with the action.

"No! No, it's fine!" I assured him, "it's just, that name, 'Rose', the only other person who ever called me that was my dad." I said, unsure why I was giving him this much information. "My friends call me Rosie, and my mom she'll call me Rosaleen when she's mad, but you're the first person in a long time to call me just 'Rose'." He looked at me as though he wanted to say something but was choosing not to, probably picked up on that past tense about my dad I had let slip. Thankfully he didn't press further. "I'd like it if you called me that actually. Here, at least, it would probably be weird in class, but you know here, when we'll be spending so many hours alone just the two of us, 'Miss Prescott' starts to sound too formal." I offered.

"Well then, Rose," he said, a small smile creeping on his face as he looked down at me, "you can feel free to call me Spencer, while in the office of course." he finished as he locked the door behind us.

I admit, I laughed a little again. "I'll try!" I told him, "But that one might be a bridge too weird for me."