Page 5 of Dark Ink

“Turn!” my professor shouted. “Draw!”

I looked up to Rian.

Our eyes met. And he and I sucked in a collective breath.

My charcoal remained suspended just above the page. I did not dive into his drawing like the others. Despite him being all there for me. Facing me. All of him exposed. All of him ready for me to claim.

Rian looked at me like he knew me. Like he’d recognised me from somewhere. Like he was stunned to see me once more. And it confused me. Because we hadn’t met, despite the nights I’d dreamed of him in my bed, pressing my thighs together to try to ease the ache and hating myself for it. He couldn’t possibly know me.

So why was he looking at me like he did?

My professor called for Rian to turn, but he did not move. He shouted it again and still the same.

“Professor Merrick, please,” he tried.

Rian turned, but his face stayed on me. He smiled. He laughed. He shook his head and looked away. That one moment was all it took. My phone buzzed. Rian had released me enough that I thought to check it.

It was Stewart.

It was urgent.

Rian

The auditorium of third-year students all blinked at me like baby owls.

I stood behind the lectern. Drummed my pencil against its edge. Tapped my toe impatiently beneath it. I sucked in an irritated breath. I exhaled noisily.

One student cleared his throat. Another coughed a tiny little cough hidden behind cupped hands. Still another one shifted the tiniest bit in her chair and blushed bright red as her chair creaked in the eerily silent classroom.

I wished one of them would have the fucking nerve to say something. To do something. To get up and leave. To yawn rudely. To turn to his neighbour and mutter with a flicked thumb toward me, “What the fuck is up with this guy?”

They’d never make great artists. The whole fucking lot of them. Wasted. Ruined. Spoiled. They’d had the talent trained out of them. The rawness polished. The gifts wrapped up in bureaucratic bullshite.

They’d all been on time. Worse than that, they’d all been to class early. I had to watch them all, one by one, filing in. One by one, smiling so fucking politely at me. One by one, committing the greatest sin of all: not. being. her.

“How’d you all find out I was teaching a class this semester?” I demanded.

One of the students raised his hand and I threw my pencil at him.

“You’re not in kindergarten,” I shouted at him. “I’m not going to fecking call on you. Just tell me.”

“We received an email,” the kid said.

Poor thing, I’d scared him shiteless. Maybe I’d make an artist out of him after all. Pass on the favour my dear old man did for me.

“An email,” I said. “And this went out to all third-year students? It said I was teaching. And to come?”

The kid almost raised his hand again before nodding and answering with a croak, “That’s right.”

I drummed my fingers on the lectern. I’d only agreed to take on this class in order to find my Raglan Road girl. I’d almost been convinced she’d just been a figment of my imagination, a mirage, an LSD-induced siren, when I’d turned on that pedestal to find her right in front of me. Staring back at me. As real as my demons. I’d been shocked, then a rush like the first hit of a crack pipe. She was real. And she was mine.

Imagine my shock, my fury, when I looked away for one fecking second, one bleedin’ second to catch my breath, to calm the pounding of my heart in my ears and found her gone.

I’d barely had the sense to put my pants back on before I’d stormed into the dean’s office.

“You want to teach?” the dean asked, raising his white eyebrows up over his drooping eyelids. “Professor Merrick, you told me you wouldn’t, and I’m quoting you here, ‘Dublin Art School can shove it.’ That you’d teach here again over your dead body.”

I dismissed his words with a wave of my hand. “Yes, yes,” I said. “But aren’t we all just decomposing flesh, Dean?”

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