Tenure

1. James

1

James

I’m sick of this shit.

I never wanted this. I don’t like young people enough to mentor them. That’s what TA’s are for. I’m supposed to show up, share my expertise, and leave. The ones who are smart enough to understand it, will. The ones who aren’t? Get out of my class.

New tenure rules. Office hours must be provided. Blah. Blah. Blah fucking blah. This is Applied Mathematics in Linear Algebra, not Pop Culture 101.

Most of the kids in this room will drop my class by October.

The rest will change majors by next semester.

What a waste of my fucking time.

I can see the confusion on their faces, practically smell the burning as their brain cells pop one by one.

I stare down the kid in the front row. The one who looks like he ate pussy for breakfast and mushrooms for lunch and doesn’t know how he ended up in this room.

Yeah, buddy. This isn’t high school calculus.

He opens his mouth to speak but I give him a look. He closes it, clearing his throat and shuffling his books into his backpack.

“The registrar’s office is in Building C. They’ll have a list of classes that are still open for late registration,” I say pleasantly.

He ducks his head, cheeks flushed, and beelines for the door.

One down.

He almost smacks into someone in the doorway, mumbling an apology that includes more words than I’d expect from a . . . I’m gonna guess lacrosse player?

Your daddy would be proud.

Then he disappears and Late Girl strolls in, plopping herself down in the back, dark hair covering her face as she pulls out her books.

“You’re late,” I say.

“This is for open drop-ins,” she says without looking up, still rummaging in her bag.

“If you’re here, you need the time. So make use of all of it, or don’t bother showing up.”

She pauses, her slender hand reaching up to tuck the curtain of hair behind her ear before looking up at me with pursed lips and narrowed eyes.

“I’m a late registrant. I came to catch up.”

Great. She hasn’t even been to the first two lectures.

“We’re on chapter five. Euclidean—”

“Vector spaces. Yeah. I know. I can read.”

I blink, a little taken aback with her tone as the rest of the students glance anxiously back and forth between the two of us.

“You did the homework?”

She scowls at me. “Linear transformations. Orthogonal matrices. Like I said, I can read. I came because I had a question, but clearly this is a waste of my fucking time.”

She slides her books back into her bag and stands up, pausing in the doorway and glancing over her shoulder, her brown eyes flashing and lip quirked up in a smirk.

My cock twitches like it’s been connected to a Dr Ho.

“I’ll do the reading on my own and spare you my attendance. The papers you get this term that are all perfect? Those will be mine.”

And then she’s gone.

Everyone gapes at her, staring dumbly at the doorway. I have to fight to keep my own jaw from falling open.

Who—in the actual fuck—was that?