Literature, lust and love - Professor Romanoff

THIRTY-THREE

I walked into the car park and manoeuvred my way over to Alex, who was chatting to a teammate of ours. He grinned when he saw me and ruffled my hair before I swatted his hand away. I dropped my head onto his shoulder groaning at the earliness and brightness of the day. Alex only chuckled and shushed me as our coach began to talk to us, briefing us for our trip to New Haven to play against the Yale basketball team.

"Alright team! You may know her already, but for those who don't, this is Natasha Romanoff, teacher of English, and she is accompanying us on our trip to New Haven! For legal reasons we need a female to come with us, so she was one of the few victims the dean could pin down," Coach joked. Coach's voice woke us all up from our drowsiness as we waited to get on the bus and his words finally sunk in for me after a couple of seconds. Alex nudged me, smirking, and I looked up and saw Natasha's eyes scan the crowd before they landed on me. I stared at her, reminding myself of her green beauties before she looked away hastily. I glanced around and saw Yelena leaning on a lamppost, barely keeping consciousness, making me smirk. The bus soon arrived and I dragged Alex to the back so that I could put as much distance between Natasha and me. I plugged my earphones into my ears and stared out of the window for the entirety of the journey, only occasionally tearing myself away from the road when Alex wanted to show me something.

Alex - Why aren't you with Natasha?

My phone lit up and I rolled my eyes when I saw that Alex had texted me when he was right next to me. My smile dropped, however, when I saw what he was asking. I hated lying to him but it was far too late to do anything else.

Don't want to bring attention to us. We need to keep it on the down-low.

Alex - Planning on sneaking off with her at some point? ;)

No, not at the moment.

I could feel Alex turn to look at me confused, but I didn't falter and blocked out his questions.

Eventually, we arrived at our hotel, since we couldn't all fit in Yale accommodation, and Coach handed out our rooming arrangements. I smiled when I saw that I was sharing with Yelena, and I saw her blonde head disappear through the hallway to our room so I jogged to catch up with her.

"Hi, roomie!"

She smiled sideways at me. "Desdemona, you better not snore."

"I don't snore!" I giggled, as I raced her to our door. She got there first, which was good because she was the one with the key, but as soon as she unlocked the door, I snuck in first and cannonballed onto the bed.

"You're an idiot," Yelena sighed, but soon joined me on the bed. We lay on the bed for half an hour, chatting about silly things, Yelena always telling me that I was wrong, and me arguing back.

"I'm just coming in to check on you, please be decent!" A voice called out through our open door and my stomach twisted when I recognised it to be Natasha, who strolled into our room.

She stopped still as I looked up at her and her mouth opened slightly.

"Your coach just wanted me to let everyone know that he wants you warming up in twenty minutes," Natasha's eyes jumped quickly between Yelena and I before she dropped her shocked look and walked out.

"Do you know her?" Yelena whispered as I heard her retreat down the corridor.

"She was my teacher."

"Why did she look at you like that?"

"I fucked that up too. I basically fuck everything up, so good luck Lena!"