I bite back the urge to make a smart-ass comment about how Callie’s conflict is the need to flirt ridiculously with the professor she has the hots for, university protocol be damned. Instead I look at Carla and blow out an audible breath, certain that my expression reflects my displeasure.
I’m usually on top of all of the department’s goings-on but my last-minute trip to the Sonoma race to watch Colton mixed with playing bestie to nurse Layla through her unexpected breakup and the usual first month of school discord has left me in the dark about course specifics. It had better be a damn good class if I’m going to have to be stuck sitting through it.
“You know I’m agreeing to this because I’m already behind on my draft and need those weeks, right?”
“Exactly!” She smirks. “I don’t have that PhD behind my name for nothing.”
“That’s low.” I just shake my head as I reach over to grab my bag. “So give me the details.”
“You’re a lifesaver!” She reaches out and pats my shoulder. “So the seminar is on sex, drugs, and rock and roll in a manner of speaking.” She quirks her eyebrows up, asking if I’m okay with that.
Like I have a choice. I can just imagine some stiff professor giving a seminar about something so completely foreign to him. Now I’m going to have to waste my time mollycoddling someone when I have so many other things that would be a better use of my time. Sounds like a real barn burner.
“Who’s teaching it?” I ask, my tone reflecting the cynicism I feel over the contradiction between teacher and subject.
“A guest lecturer. I forget his name but he’s a member of some popular band.” She rolls her eyes. Her musical taste includes only classical music and jazz. “Oh and he’s cute,” she says with a smile and then cuts me off before I can ask her any more details. “Now shoo – he’s probably mangling the sound system as we speak. Microphone on upside down or something. Class is in the GFA building, room sixty-nine.”
Mentally I roll my eyes at the room number, thinking how something else that number represents would be a much better way to occupy my time than listening to a monotone oration. And I wonder how big of a name he can really be if Carla’s worried that he has his mic on upside down.
I shake my head one more time and sling my bag over my shoulder. “Thank you, Quinlan,” she says in a saccharine sweet tone that makes me laugh.
“Just so you know, I’m cursing you right now,” I say over my shoulder as I open the door and begin the journey across campus.
I’m winded, hotter than hell, and cussing out Carla even more by the time I reach the closed door of the lecture hall. When I pull it open and step into the lobby, I can hear laughter from the students beyond the open theater doors.
Two coeds exit the bathroom across the foyer from me, both way overdressed for students attending a lecture, and one is applying lipstick while the other giggles uncontrollably. They walk past me and I hear hushed comments about how they “just had to see for themselves” if he’s as hot in person and “damn security for kicking them out” before they push through the doors I’ve just entered
My curiosity is now definitely piqued. Who the hell is the guest lecturer if there is security here?
Maybe it’s one of Dad’s friends. Stranger things have happened.