Page 8 of Can't Have Him

“Oh, cut it out,” she says, disgusted. “You were harder on me, weren’t you?”

Harder on me.The words ignite the lust I have for her that I’ve put so much energy into repressing.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say gruffly. “I graded your paper exactly how I graded every other student’s paper. Did you even look at the notes I left all over your exam? I pointed out every problematic area. I was even forgiving with a few of your answers.”

“Of course I read your comments. But they don’t—okay. For instance.” She holds up her exam. “Here you say that I need to provide more examples. But I clearly provided multiple examples…” She takes a moment to scan her essay answer. But as she reads what she wrote, the indignation fades from her face. “Shit.”

“I was very fair in grading,” I say.

Olivia sighs, defeated. “I guess my answers weren’t as good as I thought.”

“It happens,” I say. “Look, don’t worry too much about it. There will be opportunities for extra credit.”

She looks at me with appalled eyes.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” I say quickly. “I would never do that with a student. I want to beextremelyclear about that.”

“I would never do something like that, either,” she says.

But now I can’t stop thinking about what it would be like to fuck her right now on my desk.

“Olivia,” I say, my voice low, almost in a growl. “I don’t know how much longer I can take this. Do you know how hard it is to see you walk into my classroom every day? Even when you sit all the way in the back…even when I avoid looking at you…you’re still there.”

Olivia presses her lips together and nods. Quietly, almost in a whisper, she says, “I know.”

“We need to do something about this. I need to not feel so attracted to you.” Desperately, I try to think of a way out. “You need to tell me something that will make me want you less.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “But there’s gotta be something.”

The two of us sit in silence for a few moments. The only noise in the room is the second hand ticking on the clock on the wall.

Finally, shifting in her seat, Olivia says, “I mean…I guess I have a habit of blaming other people for things. And I’m bad with money. And I can be selfish. Do you want me to keep going?”

“No.”

“Do you really think this is going to work?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “But it’s worth a shot.”

“Okay. Well? Tell me yours.”

I hesitate. I could list off negative traits in the same way that she just did. But another idea comes to me.I don’t want to do it, but it feels necessary in order to dissolve this sexual tension between us.

“That night we met in the bar,” I say, “when you told me about how your ex made you feel like you’d just wasted the last three years of your life, and I told you that I’d been there, too?”

She looks at me questioningly.

“Well…in my case,Iwas the one who broke it off. But before I broke it off…I cheated on her. For several months.”

Olivia’s face wrinkles. “Are you serious?”

“I wanted to know if it was just something I had to get out of my system.”

“Jesus.” She stands up. “Well, good news. It worked. I’m not attracted to you anymore.”

My hands start to shake. I squeeze them into fists to make them stop.

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