My Professor's Secret

29|

"It's nice of you to join us. Five minutes late I might add," Professor says, eyeing me all the way to an empty chair near the front of the room. With the start of this new semester, the size of our class had almost doubled. I even caught eyes with the boy that introduced me to my love of Hoa's ice cream parlor. Wyatt.

Class remains silent until I've completely planted myself in my seat and have trained my attention towards Professor. "With that being said, congratulations! I was just looking for students willing to take on extra responsibility and now I have appointed you set director." His eyes wander from mines and never find them again for the remaining two hours of class.

I try my best to hide my distaste for his demands. He goes on to explain the requirements for our first assignment. We were to partner with someone and choose from a select few scenes of The Scarlet Letter to preform in front of class. From there we would be cast according to performance judged by our classmates and Professor. After that, the winners would then be cast for the performance shown on campus.

My stomach concave's at the thought. With the class doubling in size and my stage fright, I didn't know how I'd manage. I've already planted the seed of set director exempting me from acting, but before officially dismissing the class, Professor makes it clear that each partnership will be graded and expected to preform two scenes without needing the script. Truthfully, I'd much rather be designing sets and bossing people around than performing in front of the entire campus.

After professor dismisses the class, I make it my mission to escape before an opportunity of a conversation could present itself between him or Wyatt. With Wyatt here, I had a daily reminder of our kiss ending in the both of us practically ghosting each other. Not to mention the fact that he had been on dates with other girls and hadn't bothered to see me. And it would be quite difficult ogling over my teacher with someone I kissed and was still somewhat interested in under my nose. It would only lead to issues. Especially since a part of me felt as though Trevor felt the same as I.

Outside is as midnight though time only reads nine o'clock. The wind is sharp and blows frozen snowflakes across my cheeks. I pace myself for the freezing walk ahead, subconsciously counting the cost until I'd be able to afford my car. Three grand—which meant one more month of Hinkhouse checks. Or winning the writing competition I still hadn't heard about.

"Castillo! Wait up!"

Without needing to look back to identify the owner of the voice calling out to me, I already know who it belongs to. If I had the nerve, I'd have kept walking. Pretending that I hadn't heard him call out to me. It isn't that Wyatt and I left off on bad terms because we didn't. The chemistry between him and I seemed genuine from my perspective. Though he wasn't the only one to blame for our lack of communication, I still wondered what made him so distant. Especially after the kiss we shared.

As if by command, I'm glued in place until he manages to close the distance apart from us.

"I didn't know you were interested in acting," he says, urging us forward. "Wait. Are you walking home by yourself this late? Let me drive you."

Perhaps extra shifts would speed the process. I needed my own car. I couldn't decline. My fingers already began to harden and the tip of my nose stung from the wind.

"I'd like that, thanks."

Throughout majority of the ride to my dormitory, we don't exchange a single word. Partly because I refused to be the first to speak. But also I was a little offended about him going on dates while we were kind of already "dating".

"So, acting? Why didn't you tell me you were interested? Do you already have a partner? We could be Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale. You'd definitely get it."