Miss Arden {wlw-professorxstudent}

Chapter 8

KATHERINE'S POV:
Being friends with Kalina worked perfectly. That was what I tried telling myself every day of the following month, as she took time to talk to me almost everyday and made up terribly transparent excuses to come and see me.

I wanted it to work perfectly because I was scared of what would happen if it did not. I was scared of her beautiful face becoming more and more addicting, when she rambled about anything and everything just to talk to me.

I was scared of the sparkle in her dark brown eyes and of how it would keep pulling me in. I was scared of growing to anticipate her showing up unannounced with some stupid lie about having forgotten something in the lecture hall.

Because two years ago, I had let another pair of eyes entrance me. I had gotten my first real job at a university in the north. I had made friends with the other professors and I had loved it all.

Back then I had lived in central London and the way to the university grounds had taken me approximately an hour every morning and if I had been unlucky two hours in the evening. It had been hard but it had been worth it for that job.

Half way through the year I had met a girl, a student at the university. She had been no direct student of mine but she had seemed so ardently interested in literature that I had let her stay in my office a lot. I had had no problem with her being around. At some point I had even started waiting for her stupidly perfect black bob to appear in my doorway.

We pretty quickly got romantically involved and I had not known how easy it would be for me to fall in love with her. So, I had approached the situation with no precaution.

And it had been wonderful. Beautiful. Heart-racingly forbidden on university grounds. Until another student had seen us kissing and had reported me to the headmaster, who had gotten rid of me without as much as a twitch of an eyebrow. She had lied. The girl had claimed I had been taking advantage of her. I had not. I had loved her and she had told me she had loved me too. It had fueled an aching guilt and mistrust in my judgement of character and of another's intention and of another person's feelings.

I had been heartbroken. Not just from losing the job I had worked so hard for but also from the girl never answering any of my calls again.

Half a year later I had found a job at a college in Croydon. I had not been able to believe my luck. It had been in the middle of nowhere but it had paid well. And nowadays it paid even better.

And now, it was happening again. I was scandalously intrigued by the perplexity of a student and her hold on me.

Said student walked into my office one October afternoon. I was staying behind to get some work done as I knew I would fall asleep as soon as my head hit any sort of pillow at home.

"Kalina? Are you alright? What are you doing here?", she shrugged and smiled at me.

"Maybe I found it sad that you were staying here all alone. I just went back home to drop off my bag and get my wallet and came straight back here", that was- friendly.

"It's just that I'm a bit restricted in regards of options of entertaining you right now. I'm sort of actually stuck here with work", I did feel sorry, she seemed to have had a plan to get me out of there and I just crushed her hopes but if there was a flicker of disappointment to be detected, she quickly got rid of it and grinned at me.

"I'll just stay here with you then. I'll be quiet. I promise. I'll just keep you company. That's what friends are for, no?", and the crinkle next to her eyes made it impossible for me to deny her.

So, that afternoon we did not exchange another word while she sat on the big couch in the far end of my office and I stayed hunched over my desk and whenever I looked up to take a breath and check up on her, she was already looking at me and would try to avert her eyes at something behind my head to play it cool. I felt fuzzy at the thought of her being incapable of keeping her eyes off me.