Vintage Love

Chapter 9

❝KEY.❞

"So, now for Robert Burns." Archer starts and I sigh.

"We're not done? We've gone through 10 of these in the past hour." I massage the sides of my forehead, trying to take in the analyses that he sprung on me.

"One more and we'll take a break, okay?" He watches me with a smile, seeing my exhausted form. "It's better you get used to this now rather than figuring out how to decipher these poems at the event."

"Fine, one more."

"So, A Red, Red Rose." He passes me the poem, getting me to read it like the past few ones but this one has my attention. And so unlike the rest of the poems, I read it thoroughly instead of stopping halfway. "You like this one?" He asks and I nod.

O my luve is like a red, red rose.

That one line managed to draw me in and I wondered how Archer caught that. "How'd you know?" I chuckle lightly as he stared right at me, eyes studying me with an intensity that gets me to look away.

"This is the first one you're actually reading." My eyes go wide as he says this and he laughs, "I told you, I know when a student lies to me." He says, a smile spread across his lips. "Anyway, so the colour red." He starts, the intensity in his stare back as his eyes pierced through mine. "Red's passionate."

With the way he's looking at me, I don't know if he's talking about the colour, or me.

He clears his throat, rubbing the back of his neck. "Robert Burns repeats it twice, to show the intensity of the passion he felt for his lover." He continues after a few beats, ripping his gaze away from me.

Of course, he's talking about the colour. He doesn't date students.

"Burns has also used the rose as a symbol of love and he compares it to his lover." He speaks and his eyes glow, a slight tug of his lips as he smiles with each word. I caught him doing this quite often, where he'd lose himself in the words in front of him and it'd seem like he didn't have a care in the world.

"Red," he calls out.

"Hm?" Oh shit. I was staring. I haven't heard a single thing he said after the rose.

"You got it?" He looked at me as he raised his eyebrows, his eyes searching my face.

Maybe he didn't catch me staring.

"Mmhmm." I hummed, nodding my head.

"We can go through it one more time," He opened up the book but I knew it'll be futile. God, having him as my professor was making things way harder.

My hand sprung out as I placed it over his hand, slamming the book shut. "Enough, please. I'm exhausted." I groaned. We had gone through Vintage Love before this, which meant a splitting headache for me. That tied together with him prepping me for the event coming up, I was drained.

He chuckled in response, "Fine, help me with these." He gestured towards a few books as he picked up a few in his arms.