Someone Will Remember Us - Swanqueen

Chapter 1

Emma knew her shoelaces had come undone, but she didn't have time to do anything about that as she raced down the empty corridor. The lecture hall was within sight and she naively told herself that she'd be able to make it in one piece – but then she stumbled, nearly slamming into the wall, and swore under her breath as she crouched to quickly re-knot them.

The only bright side to the near-collision was that no one else had been around to see it, although that was because she was 15 minutes late to her first class of the semester and everybody had already long settled into their seats.

Emma had been at Boston College for two full years, and yet she'd still managed to get lost. She was always getting lost. The English department was spread out through the labyrinthine halls of the arts building, and every goddamn day she seemed to forget where the hell she was and where she was supposed to be going.

She screeched to a halt in front of the door that she'd been charging toward and glanced down at the note she'd scribbled on the back of her hand: Introduction to 18th-century literature, room 108. She'd copied it off her third-year class schedule that morning after she'd woken up 40 minutes later than planned and then had to wait for her roommate to stop hogging their shared bathroom.

If she'd stopped to think about it for a moment, she might have realised that it was a bit weird for her biggest introductory lecture of the week to be taking place in the corridor that was reserved exclusively for professors' offices. But she didn't think, because it was the very first day of her junior year and she was late and she was a mess. She also didn't knock. She just pushed the door open and decided that sneaking into the back row and sitting down quietly was her best option.

There was no back row, though. She staggered through the door and froze, finding herself faced with walls of bookcases and a vast wooden desk. The room had that English-department smell that she'd come to recognise over the past two years: old, mildewy books that academics refused to throw away; bad coffee from the vending machine down the hall; and freshly printed, ink-smeared paper. There was another smell, though – one of really rich perfume and expensive hand lotion – and Emma somehow registered it way before she noticed that there was someone sitting on the other side of the desk.

Her heart dropped. Two dark brown eyes, which had just snapped up impatiently from the work that Emma had interrupted, looked back at her.

"Oh." Emma blurted out, stepping back to check the number on the door. "I thought... I'm supposed to have a lecture in room 108."

The woman, who was wearing a perfectly tailored jacket and a crisp white blouse that was unbuttoned just slightly further than Emma would have thought acceptable for a college professor, narrowed her eyes. When she tilted her head, her shoulder-length dark hair caught a glimmer of light from the window behind her.

"You probably mean lecture hall eight." she said, and Emma felt a weird twisting in her stomach at the sound of her voice. It came out of her mouth in ribbons, silky and seductive.

That thought looped its way around Emma's brain like a noose, and she totally forgot that she was meant to respond in some way. She just stared.

The woman raised her eyebrows and prompted, "Lecture room eight? L 08?"

Emma blinked. Then she looked down at the smudged ink on her hand and sighed. "Oh."

Move, the voice in her head hissed at her. She was still loitering in the doorway, her hair a blonde tangle around her flushed face, and she knew what any normal person would do next: they'd apologise, make their excuses and leave. But something about the woman's sharp gaze was pinning her to the spot, and as much as she wanted to turn and bail, all she could do was gape back at her.