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already awake, and we were definitely going to be late for the first class of the last semester of our last year of college.
    We booked it to the Fine Arts building, breezing past the hipster Art majors smoking outside the doors. We jogged down the hallway to find that sure enough, the doors to the small black box theatre where we had acting class were already closed.
    “Shipoopi,” Kelsey said.
    Then . . . because we’re theatre majors . . . we broke into the song from The Music Man. Because sometimes life just needs a little music. (But we did it quietly and on fast-forward because we were still late for class).
    There was no way to enter this theatre without making a ridiculous amount of noise. The doors creaked and slammed no matter what you did. We pushed open one of the doors and immediately heard Eric Barnes, the head of the department say, “Late!”
    We called an automatic, “Sorry Eric!”
    Careful not to spill our coffees, we pushed through the curtains that surrounded the edge of the room, and grabbed the nearest empty seats on the risers.
    I set my coffee down and went about organizing my stuff, digging through my bag for a pen and my folder.
    “As I was saying,” Eric continued. “Ben Jackson was supposed to be teaching this course.” Ben was pretty much our favorite teacher, but he’d been offered a role in this killer new show off Broadway and would be taking the semester off. “But as you all know, he’s in New York for a few months. To replace him for the time being we have one of our most talented former students—Mr. Taylor.”
    I finally found a dull pencil in the bottom of my purse. It would have to do. Kelsey chose that minute to grab my elbow and jerk me toward her. I glanced up at her and then at the front of the class where she was looking. Then the pencil I’d worked so hard to find fell from my hand, and rolled away, lost to the abyss under the risers.
    The new professor was staring at me, even though everyone was clapping, and he should probably be waving or at the very least smiling. Our eyes met, and suddenly I was very glad I’d already set down my coffee.
    Because the new professor had been naked in my bed a mere 8 hours ago.
    Garrick was my teacher.

 
    C HAPTER E IGHT
    I T FELT LIKE hours passed before he looked away from me. When he did, the smile he gave the class was uneasy, and he tugged absent-mindedly at the tie around his neck.
    “Thank you, Eric. But please, everyone, call me Garrick.”
    I think I could actually feel the hormones released into the atmosphere when the girls in the room heard his accent. I felt Kelsey staring at me, but I fixed my eyes on one of the stage lights hanging overhead, and tried to think my rapidly beating heart into submission. This was bad. This was SO BAD.
    “Like Eric said, I did my Undergrad here, and then graduated this past May with an MFA in Acting from Temple University in Philadelphia. I’d been working in the theatre scene there for about six months when Eric called and asked if I’d be interested in the temporary position here.”
    I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye, simultaneously anticipating and dreading the thought of making eye contact with him. He was not looking at me. In fact, his whole body was angled toward the students on the other side of the room, pretty much ignoring the entire section where I was seated. Other than the fact that he was pointedly not looking at one side of the room, there was no sign that he was worried or frazzled in any way; whereas I could feel the heat in my cheeks and my hands were shaking as I pressed them into my knees.
    “I loved my four years here, and I’m, uh . . .”
    He glanced at me, and I could do nothing but look back—wide eyed and petrified. He cleared his throat and returned his gaze to the other side of the room.
    “I’m really excited to be back.”
    I wanted to crawl into a hole and die.
    I wanted to crawl into a hole at the bottom of a ravine, then be