Eager to Learn (Complicity Cycle) (3 page)

BOOK: Eager to Learn (Complicity Cycle)
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The door opened, but I didn’t jump. I’d left it unlocked
on purpose.

There was the jingle of a belt unfastening and the rumple of a shirt and jeans being discarded.

“Knock, knock,” said Jeffery.

“Who’s there?”
I said.

Jeffery stepped into the shower completely naked.
Water trickled down his skin and the mist caught in his eyelashes. Boys always had the best eyelashes. “Me,” he said, sliding a hand around the soap-slicked small of my back. He pulled me against himself, looked down on me, and kissed me. It was an honest kiss. A no-show kiss.

I ran my hand down his chest, which was only now starting to get a light dusting of hair.
My fingertips crested his abs, falling gently into the subtle gaps between them. Then down further still, where I lightly brushed the base of his shaft.

“Me who?” I whispered
up to him, barely audible over the rush of steaming water.

“I, uh, didn’t think that far,” he said, smiling self-consciously.

I loved that smile. I loved that boy.

I kissed
his lips, gently holding him in the palm of my hand as he grew harder. He was, in fact, well-endowed.

Yes, apartment showers were hands-down better than dorm showers.

His fingers traced up my spine and to the back of my neck as our mouths interlocked. Then he moved down, kissing me along the curve of my jawline to the hyper-sensitive skin of my neck. He ran his fingertips into my hair, sending chills through me.

I pulled myself close to him, feeling the architecture
of his back with my hands. He might not have been a high school football star, but rock climbing had left his upper body carved and lean. I ran my fingers through his hair as well, urging his head to continue its downward journey.

He obliged with tongue and lips, dipping into the hollow of my clavicle and down to my
left breast, where he hovered over the nipple, warming it with his breath and just—just—barely touching it with the tip of his tongue. A light flick, and then another. His hands rested gently on my hips.

My fingers dug into the back of his head, and I pulled, wanting him to clamp down.
To suck and taste and stroke. He resisted, staying right over my nipple. His eyes closed against the spray of water, the curl of a devious smile at the corner of his mouth. I pulled harder, but he moved on, abandoning the nipple and gliding to the valley between my breasts. His tongue seemed hot and strong against my wet skin, pushing and pushing as it rode up the curve of my right breast all the way up until he reached the nipple, where he hovered again, refusing to let me have even that minor release.

I
clawed the back of his head, using my fingernails this time as he flicked and played. His hand moved to the original, abandoned breast, and though he massaged its softness lightly, he left the nipple unattended.

I moaned and leaned into him, practically begging as he teased me.

And then, without warning, he clamped his hot mouth to my nipple. At the same time, he cupped his palm around the other one, and I leaned into him with a gasp.

I nearly got a little too loud, and I had to reel myself in, aware that Ashley was right in the next room and that the walls were thin.

Jeffery looked up at me with a quiet laugh, and I pushed him away playfully. Then he stood and guided my hand to his cock, where I gripped him and pulled him close to me. He kissed me, and as he did, he slid a hand down my stomach and past my navel. Down, down, to where all the warmth and the electricity coiled and vibrating in anticipation.

And in all the wetness and the heat, I felt the cool dry brush of
foreign fingertips against my skin.

I gasped and stumbled back at the remembered sensation.

“What?” he whispered, glancing at the livingroom-side wall that symbolized Ashley’s presence.

I
stepped out of the shower, streaming water and making puddles on the bathroom floor. I didn’t care. I grabbed a towel distractedly and wrapped it around my nakedness like a cloak.

I looked in the mirror, and through a steam-mottled haze, a faceless
me
looked back.

A hard stone formed in my throat.

“What is it?” Jeffery asked, genuine concern in his voice as he stumbled out of the shower, his hard penis bobbing.

I breathed and closed my eyes.
“I can’t do this right now,” I said, hating myself as I said it. I glanced at his cock, and I felt like a bad girlfriend.

“Okay,” Jeffery said, rebooting.
“Um, did I do something wrong?”

I shook my head.
“No,” I said. “Sorry, it’s just… I can’t explain it, but I just can’t do this right now.”

Jeffery, naked and dripping, scratched his head.
Another boy might have been angry or indignant or at least demand an explanation. But not Jeffery. Though his expression was bewildered, all he said was, “Okay. That’s… Okay.” He grabbed a towel and dried off. When he wrapped it around his waist, a resistant bulge remained. “Are you all right?” he asked.

I nodded.
“I just need a moment.”

“I could make some popcorn,” he said.
“We could watch a movie.”

I nodded
again, trying to swallow back strange tears.

The fuzzy Jeffery in the mirror watched me for a moment, clearly trying to decide if
he should say anything else. Then he grabbed his jeans off the floor—where I’d dripped on them—and headed back to my bedroom.

The sh
ower continued running, continued filling the air with steam and static.

I remembered now.
I remembered everything.

I was a bad girlfriend.
A
very
bad girlfriend.

Chapter 3

Earlier that day, I’d climbed up the steps to Choppin Hall after Calculus. The concrete baked in the heat, and a distorting haze wavered over every bright surface, reminding me—somehow—of a beachside gin-and-tonic, sweating and swirling as the melty ice mixed water with alcohol. A swooning kind of heat that you could almost get drunk on.

I was light-headed as I stepped into the air conditioning, and my stomach felt like someone had it in their grip and was slowly tightening and twisting it.
The light-headedness came from the heat. It was a feeling familiar to anyone from the South. The stomach twisting was because I was about to have to talk about my memory problems, and this was a feeling that would be familiar to anyone with a disability they have to discuss with strangers.

As I started up the interior s
tairs to his office, I hoped Giacomo wouldn’t chide me again for being late. I’d learned my lesson, and it wouldn’t happen again. Talking about my disability made me feel somewhat naked, and it’s hard to take any kind of criticism when you’re naked.

The hallways were empty—as they had been earlier that morning—but the sound of lectures echoed behind closed doors and my shoes once again squeaked on the tile.

Much sooner than I was ready, I found myself standing in front of heavy wooden door with the brass plaque: C. GIACOMO.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and knocked.

“It’s open,” said a voice from within.

I pushed on the door and found it was so.

In contrast to the cold, sterile hallway, Giacomo’s office was dimly lit, warm, and had a lived-in quality that made me think of good soil.
A sweet, smoky maple smell suffused the air, and the walls—which held framed degrees and awards—were made of a rich, red wood. The carpet was the color of a billiard table, and both the chair and the couch against the wall were dark, slick leather. The shelves boasted a humidor for cigars, a collection of scotches—their bottles still encased in fine, papery cylinders—and a silver espresso machine.

Though I’d never thought about it before, I suddenly wondered how much they paid professors.
Certainly not enough to decorate an office like this.

Giacomo sat behind a heavy desk littered with haphazard papers, golden trinkets, and, disjunctively, a doll that looked like it had eloped from a Mexican
Día de Muertos
festival. The doll stood erect on its stand and wore a strange red costume. Its grinning skull head stared at me.

The older man didn’t even look up as I entered.
He was typing on a Macbook, the blue square of its screen reflected in his glasses. With stern eyes, he referenced a printed spreadsheet beside the laptop, then continued typing.

“Dr. Giacomo?” I said.
“I hope I’m not interrupting.”

Still without looking up or pausing his typing, he said, “You won’t be in just a
few more seconds.” He typed some more keystrokes then hit command-s to save. “There,” he said, closing his laptop. He removed his glasses and, with the squareness of his face and the sharpness of his eyes, he looked astoundingly
masculine
. Like some indomitable, battle-scarred lion. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m Caitlyn Seager,” I said.
“You asked me to come see you during your office hours. I gave you a sheet—”

“Ah, yes,” Giacomo said. He motioned toward the leather armchair across from his desk. “Close the door and have a seat. Coffee? I just brewed a pot.”

“Uh, yes sir,” I said, obeying.
The door clicked heavily into place as I closed it, and the leather whispered as I sat. Giacomo’s office had no windows, and with the door closed, only the tick of a wall-mounted clock scratched the silence. A warm lamp bathed the room in amber.

As Giacomo moved to pour two mugs of coffee, I could
n’t help but notice the sureness of his motions. The smooth confidence, so authentic in comparison to Jeffery’s cocky swagger.

“Sugar or cream?” Giacomo asked.

“Both,” I said.

“How much?”

“Oh, uh, just some,” I said, somehow flustered.

He chuckled with an ex-smoker’s rugged smoothness.
“I’ll make it fairly sweet, then.”

“Thank you,” I said.

I continued looking around the richly-decorated office as he poured cream and sugar.
I studied the landscape paintings on the wall, the violet orchids growing under a light that shone only on them, the sparkling crystal and silver of decanters, snifters, and tumblers in the cabinets overhead. However, my eyes kept returning to that out-of-place straw doll and its hollow bone eyes.

Giacomo
held a dark purple mug out to me, the coffee now lightened to milky beige. I took it and blew across the top, waiting for it to cool before I sipped.

The older man
took a long pull of his own coffee—black—and produced the sheet I’d given him from a desk drawer. He studied it briefly.

“So,” he said.
“Your condition?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.
“It’s a rare form of epilepsy. Sometimes I have short-term memory blackouts.”

“You mean complex partial seizures?” he asked, still studying the paper from the university counseling office.

I shook my head. “No sir. I stay aware throughout the incidents. Sometimes an hour or two will just go missing for a while.”

“Hmm,” said Giacomo, turning his eyes on me.
“Seems like a fairly convenient way to get out of hard test questions, isn’t it?” he asked.

I felt my face flush and
shook my head. “No sir. I almost always remember the missing time within twenty-four hours. I’m always careful to do my studying ahead of time in case I block a cram session, so I never have to worry about that.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Giacomo.
He set the sheet down on his desk and interlaced his fingers. “So if it’s no trouble on tests, why bring it up?”

I sipped my coffee.
“I let all my teachers know, but I’m mostly concerned about the lab for this class,” I said. “My blackouts come at random. I usually have about one a week, but some chemicals, lights, and smells can make it worse. I’ve wound up losing full days at a time because the girl sitting next to me wore a perfume that triggered my blackouts. It can be disorienting and affect my schoolwork, so I’m just trying to cover my bases.”

“That’s fair,” said Giacomo.
“We’ll be careful with the lab then. Let your lab instructor know as well.”

“I w
ill,” I said.

“Caitlyn Seager,” Giacomo said, as if tasting my
name. His rumbling voice kindled a kind of warmth in my stomach. “Any relation to Caleb Seager, perchance?”

The warmth vanished.
I looked away.

“Yes,” I said.
“He was my brother.”

“I knew Caleb,” Giacomo said.

I looked up at him. I’d expected that Giacomo recalled my brother’s name from the newspapers.

“You did?” I asked.
The tears that always followed mention of my brother filled my throat, a hot liquid. I forced down some coffee to combat it. The wound may have been two years old, but it was deep.

“I was one of his
three major professors,” Giacomo said. “One of his mentors. He was an excellent student. And seemingly very happy; certainly successful in his research. His death came as a shock to all of us.”

I blinked back the tears and took a long sip to give me time to recover.
“Me too,” I said.

This was an understatement.
Caleb’s death had shattered me. It had come with no warning, no evident struggle with depression, no major life changes. He’d broken up with his girlfriend, sure, but that had been three months prior, and he’d been the one to do the breaking up. By every single account, he was happy, productive, and in love with life.

And then one night he jumped off a building to his death.
No note.

When I graduated high school, I got accepted into three of my preferred colleges, and I got better scholarships at both of the other two.
But I came to LSU because I had to walk where my brother had walked. I had to find out at least a bit more about what happened. It just didn’t make any sense.

“Stop that,” Giacomo said.

I blinked and looked up at him, the coffee mug warm between my hands. “Stop what?” I asked.


I can tell from your eyes. Stop thinking such sad things.”

And with strange ease, I did exactly that.
I stopped thinking of my brother. The thoughts fell away, and the pain of yesterday became a problem for tomorrow.

“I’m sorry I gave you such a hard time today in class,” Giacomo said.
“I try to make an example out of someone early on. I’m sorry it had to be you. Try not to hold it against me. No hard feelings?”

I shook my head.
“No sir.”

“Good,” he said.
“Now strip.”

BOOK: Eager to Learn (Complicity Cycle)
5.67Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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