My dark Professor

2

I hate coffee. Everyone around me knows that. So why the hell would she serve me coffee when I specifically told her I wanted water?

"You are fired."

Her eyes well up with tears. Damn waterworks; too bad it doesn't work on me.

Is she the nine, or is it ten already? Househelp I have fired in a month.

I watch her run out, almost tripping on the way out the door.

"Man, you're so mean."

I turn to look at the source of the voice. Leaning against the wall with his arms crossed on his chest and expression in a snarl, he looked like he was about to punch me.

"I don't try to be. People are just annoying," I told him dryly.

He chuckles at that.

"No, man, you're just mean."

I give him a side eye, which he ignores.

Travis might be the only person who could get away with speaking to me like that. He was also the only person who truly understood me. So I give him a pass for his attitude. Besides, he was a good man, some might even call him kind. I cringe at that. I would not want to be considered kind; it gives people an opening to take advantage of you.

"Not all of us can be like you, Travis. Some of us don't live in clouds."

He moves away from the wall and sits on the chair facing me on the desk.

"Whatever," he says, but I don't miss the eye roll he gives me.

"What have you been working on anyway? You've been grading this specific paper for hours now."

A common trait we share. We both don't miss a thing around us. So attuned to every little detail in our environment. It might be a result of our upbringing. We've unknowingly become the sharks our fathers wanted us to be.

I look down at the said paper. He was right, I have been repeatedly reading it for hours now. I have the words memorized. It was perfect. Everything about it was perfect down to the last word.

I am amazed. Rare for me. I am not easily amazed, so this is an anomaly.

"As you said, I am grading it."

"Yeah, but you've been on it for a while. Is it that complicated to grade? No, I don't want to know, I don't want to know anything about your job," he says seriously, but his brown eyes twinkled with amusement.

Travis still couldn't get over the fact that I was a teacher. He says it was the most normal and shocking thing I've ever done. In that order, because in his words, I don't do normal things.

"No, no it's not complicated. It's just... I just," I stammer.

He looks at me, surprised. Did I just stammer? I haven't stammered in years. I don't stumble over my words. Not anymore, not since I knew how to use words right. But right now, I don't know how to put into words how amazed I am by this essay without sounding creepy.

"No way. Now I have to read this paper," he says, then leans down to slide it over his side on the desk, but I quickly slide it back to me.

"No. You can't read it," I say, my voice coming out harsh.

"Woah, Caspar. Relax, I won't touch it." He puts his hands up in surrender.

I rub my face, frustrated with myself. Why the hell was I acting this way over a piece of paper? I don't understand but I did not want anyone else to read her words. I wanted it to feel like she wrote it specifically for me. Which she kind of did, but no, she did it because it was required of her to pass the class.

"I'm sorry," I apologize.

"It's fine. Maybe you do need that coffee." He laughs at the blatant disgust on my face at the mention of coffee.

I throw a pen at his face. He catches it before it hits him.

"Try again. Maybe when I am retired from being a professional baseball player."

Yeah, that. Travis was Travis Gray, the legendary baseball player of Boston.

Sometimes I forget who he was. In my mind, he was still the same lanky boy who followed me everywhere to annoy me during the endless business meetings our fathers dragged us to. Good thing he was not lanky anymore, far from it.

"Yeah, but I could take you down with a ball on the field, you know that right?"

He roars with laughter. I laugh with him. We both knew I wouldn't get my feet anywhere near a baseball field. I would get my slacks wrinkled, which is a big no for me.

"I would donate my kidneys to see your preppy clean-ass near a place as rough as the field."

"Lucky for you, you get to keep your kidneys intact because I won't."

If only our fathers could see us now.

Well, they have seen us, and disappointment is the least of the things they see when they look at us. The sons of billionaire tycoons of Boston turned into completely basic people. I was basic anyway, Travis kind of missed the hit there because he was famous. But still, that was not the path they chose for us. Too bad we'd rather do anything than wear a suit to destroy and play with the economy under disguise as businessmen.

I feel the familiar headache I get whenever I think of him pulsing.
I press the button on the wall behind me.
I wait for the voice to ask me what I want, but no sound comes out. I pressed it again, several times but nothing.

"You do know you don't have a Househelp anymore, right?" Travis says, looking so ready to laugh at my expense yet again.

"Damn it!" I yelled in frustration.

I stand up to get the damn water for myself because everyone else was incompetent.

"Don't forget to get me a cup of that ginger tea, please."

"Fuck you." I glare at him.

I slam the door at his grinning face, then proceed to the kitchen. Why was it so hard to get a drink in this house? I need a competent new Househelp, fast.

Long after Travis leaves, I'm still mindlessly grading papers, but my mind always lingers back to a certain one.

 I have already graded it, and of course, I gave it an A.

Not because I was infatuated with the girl, which I was if I was being honest with myself. But because it was pure literature written in the most enthralling form.

She was good. I wanted to see how she'd write her stuff without being given a topic to write about as they do in school. I want to see her write about everything.
This is unusual. Why the heck am I so fascinated with her? I have no idea if it's her work I'm fascinated with more or just her. 

I needed to get over it. It was wrong and immoral. I was better than this. I was better than this. Maybe if I repeat it several times, I'll believe I was better. But no, I was not. In the end, I was just like everyone else. I had emotions and sometimes felt them stronger than an average person would.

Later that night, I went to sleep with her words in my mind.
And I die. I die yet again. Not from fever. Not from cancer. I die from the poison. The poison and the antidote.
She was me. A feminine and beautiful version of me.

~~~~~~~~~~~