Page 76 of Bad Professor

“The baseball player? That’s cool that he plays baseball. I looked him up—totally hot,” Jade adds as an aside to her sister.

“I met him,” I can’t help but say. “He’s nice.”

“Nice,” Jade scoffs. She pulls out her phone and scrolls for a moment before showing it to her sister. “He doesn’t have to be nice if he looks like this.”

“Men always need to be nice,” I say in a firm voice.

“Dexter is very nice,” Jordan offers.

“The girls in his classes must be all over him.” Jade studies her phone and I only guess that she’s looking for Dexter. “Where does he teach?”

Can’t we go back to talking about Dexter’s hot friend Nick? “Um… the university.” I hold my breath, dreading connections being made, but to my great relief, Jade’s attention remains on her phone and Jordan continues to pour milk in her cereal.

“Is that where you met him?” Jordan asks.

“No. At a bar. I was…” Maybe we should go back to Dexter teaching at the same school I attend. “…meeting a friend.”

“A date?” Jade’s tone sharpens like a knife. “Are you dating? Besides Dexter?”

“You didn’t tell us,” Jordan accuses.

“One date.” I did not see this coming. “And he was a friend-of-a-friend of Juliet’s so it wasn’t much of a date. I left early.”

“You left with Dexter?” Jade’s voice rises. “When you were out with another guy?”

“No! It wasn’t like that at all. He was there—I was there. We talked. He gave me his number. End of… how we met,” I finish weakly.

“Wow.” I have Jade’s full attention and I have never seen that expression in anyone’s face—grudging admiration. “Mom. I think you’ve got game.”

And then my sixteen-year-old daughter gives me a high five.

Dexter might not spend the day with us, but his ears must be burning because we talk about him a lot. The girls are full of questions, and while I love being able to share this aspect of my life with them, there is so much that I can’t say.

They may be mature young women, but I’m their mother and they don’t want to hear anything that may be on the left side of PG. And I certainly don’t want to share anything like that.

We do some shopping, have a nice dinner together and invite Dexter for breakfast the next morning. He insists on making the meal, and bacon and waffles, with maple syrup and whipped cream, really cements his position as their new best friend.

Afterward, even though I would have loved to drag Dexter to my bedroom since watching him in my kitchen with clothes on is almost as sexy as seeing him cook shirtless, we sit around the table and help the girls with their homework.

More like Dexter gives ninth-grader Jordan a lesson on proper essay-writing technique. And Jade pays attention just as much as her sister.

Dexter also goes over Jordan’s essay with a red pen. “This isn’t cheating,” he insists, as Jordan makes the corrections. “This is just providing the education that the school board really needs to include in their curriculum. I get a ton of first-years that haven’t got a clue how to write a proper essay.”

“Ok. Thank you for helping her.”

“I don’t cheat,” he adds, the word hanging between us.

I think of how Carlos was unfaithful to me for years, and I had no idea. Dexter could be cheating on me right now, and I wouldn’t know. As close as we are, there is still so much about him that I don’t know. Things I sense he keeps from me.

But then I remember that day in class when Hanna was talking to him and how he turned away from her when I came in. How he smiled at me, with eagerness and excitement and no guilt whatsoever.

A man who looks at me like that can’t be doing anything bad.

I touch his hand. “I know.”

41

Dexter

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