While You Were Teaching

Chapter 15- All the Colors of the Rainbow

"Can anyone tell me the derivative of 6x^2 + 5x +4?" Dominic scanned the room, searching for his next victim.  It was Monday afternoon, a week after Dominic and I's first date, and I was staring at the wall bored as Dominic tried to get us students to participate.

All of a sudden, everyone became extremely fascinated by the color of their denim jeans and by the notes they had haphazardly taken only moments before.  I smiled at the dance that occurs every time a teacher asks his or her class a question.  The dance begins when a class doesn't participate as much as a teacher would like and ends when some poor, unfortunate soul is singled out by said teacher to answer a question that the student will most likely not know.  Fun stuff, right?

Unfortunately, I was so caught up by everyone else avoiding Dominic's gaze that I forgot to avoid his gaze myself, which is why I was the only one who made eye contact with him.  His blue eyes lit up when they landed on me.  Damn, he looks good today.

"Avery.  How about you?  You haven't talked yet today."  He smiled devilishly, knowing full well that I'd rather scratch my own eyes out than have to talk in class.  I hate public speaking enough, but at least in those situations you get to prepare what to say in front of everyone.  When a teacher calls on you, you get a second to think and then Bam! showtime. Just your everyday public education torture system.

"12x +5" I answered back sweetly, shooting daggers in his direction. 

"Is she right?" Dominic's gaze shifted back to my classmates and my breath hitched in my throat as I waited for someone to step in and contradict me.  I looked down at my notes and mentally went through the problem again.  Luckily, I still got the same answer.

"Ryan, what did you get for the answer?"

"Uhhh." Ryan, a boy two rows behind me, flushed red and looked down at his notes, as if the answer would just magically appear.  "I don't know, Professor Brown.  I wasn't able to solve it yet."

"Okay, no problem.  Did anyone else get an answer yet?" His question want met with silence again.  The final step in the dance: Dominic giving up and showing the class how to do a problem.  Happens every time. But not this time. 

This time Dominic kept looking over at me me and the voice inside my head was telling me that this wasn't quite over yet.

"Avery." Shit, shit.

"Since you're the only one who seems to know how to do this problem, why don't you come down and show the class how to do it?  Sometimes it helps students if one of their peers explains it, instead of the teacher." He grinned boyishly and I crossed my arms angrily over my chest.  He had never made anyone else come up and do a problem in front of the class, why was he picking on me?

"What?" I asked incredulously.  There was no way in hell I was going to walk down there.  He had to be crazy.

"C'mon, I won't bite, I promise." He started motioning with his hand for me to come join him and the entire class turned to look at me. Damnit.

"Fine." I stalked up to the front of the class in my black Doc Martens and wrote down all the steps as quickly as possible, double checking to make sure I didn't make a single mistake.  Then I retreated back to my chair with my gaze trained on the floor.

I waited breathlessly as Dominic studied my work.  I hate this. I hate this. I hate him. He looks so cute though when he's concentrating.  The way he scrunches up his eyebrows. Avery! No.

"Thank you, Avery. Class, what do we think? Does it look good?" My face felt hot and a wave of relief washed over me as the room filled with choruses of 'Yes' and head nods.  I sat up a little straighter in my chair and Dominic shot me an I-told-you-so smile.