Tenure

14. Kiernan

14

Kiernan

My head is pounding.

I open my eyes slowly, groggily, before sitting bolt upright. This isn’t my fucking bed.

Snippets of last night flicker through my mind. Beer pong. Shots. Dancing—lots of dancing—hands on my hips . . . Fear .

And then a voice in my ear, and the smell of cedar and expensive cologne in my nose . . .

Oh God. This bed smells like cedar and cologne. Is this . . .

I sense movement and look up. James is standing in the doorway, arms crossed, leaning against the doorframe.

He looks pissed. I swallow. Hard.

“I’m really sorry—” I start but he holds up a hand, and I instantly shut my mouth.

“I made coffee. And breakfast.” His voice is hard, cold, and he pegs with me a stare telling me neither are negotiable before he disappears back down the hall.

I throw back the covers, wobbling a little as I’ve still got the spins, before I glance down at myself. I’m drowning in one of his T-shirts, falling just past my ass cheeks.

Cool. First time a boy sees me naked, and I don’t even remember it.

Except he isn’t a boy.

I sigh and take a risk, padding over to his dresser and opening and closing drawers until I find one with sweatpants in it, pulling them on and rolling down the waist multiple times. I walk down the hall barefoot, glancing around at his wholly impersonal apartment. It’s not shocking. Not really. He’s a fucking math professor. But I’d hoped for . . .

I don’t know what I’d hoped for. I try not to think too hard about why I’d been imagining his apartment in the first place.

His place is open concept, the kitchen all glass and chrome, floors shiny and black. He’s sitting at the kitchen table sipping a cup of coffee, the New England Journal of Mathematics open.

He’s wearing faded jeans, a heather-grey T-shirt, and . . . black-rimmed glasses?

I swallow hard, again, because he looks— Fuck, I really wish I had underwear on right now.

He doesn’t acknowledge me as I sit down, doesn’t look up, just reaches out with his right hand and shoves a mug of coffee at me.

I wrap both hands around it and pick it up, watching him warily, sipping it.

I suppress a moan. Fuck, this tastes good.

The silence is tense but not entirely uncomfortable. I think he’s distracted, his forehead wrinkled, and his mouth drawn down as he flips the page.

“What are you reading about?” I ask, taking another sip.

“Math.”

I poke the side of my cheek with my tongue. He’s spoken six words to me this morning and I’m already annoyed. Cool.

“What article are you reading?”

He glances up at me over his glasses and my stomach clenches. I hide half my face behind the mug, grateful he can’t see my lip quivering from nerves.

“The Efficient Numerical Method for Solving a Quadratic Riccati Differential Equation.”

I take another sup of my coffee and try to picture the photo that went along with that article.

“By Yirga?” I ask.

His eyes widen, and he leans back in his chair a little, studying me.

“Yes,” he says shortly.

I frown. “I didn’t understand that one.”

He stares at me, like I’m a problem he still hasn’t puzzled out. Just like when we met.

“Where did he lose you?”

“Somewhere around the Runge-Kutta method.”

His mouth twitches. “That’s because I haven’t taught that to you yet.”

“You haven’t taught anything to me yet. The textbook has.”

“I wrote the textbook.”

“I thought you co-wrote it.”

I sip my coffee loudly. He looks pissed. Pissed enough to throw something. Or possibly spank me. My stomach clenches not altogether unpleasantly at the idea. Instead he slides the journal forwards, scooching his chair closer, and grabbing a blank notebook and a pencil from behind him on the counter.

“Show me where you can solve to.”

He holds it out, and I can’t tell if it’s a peace offering or a threat, but I take it anyway and glance at the formula, trying to shake off the last of the haze from the night before and remember how to use my brain like a functioning adult again.

I scratch out the general form as a differential equation, and then start breaking down the intervals into subinterval mesh.

I pause again, sucking on the end of the pencil, trying to work it out, but the practical application of y as a free parameter evades me.

I glance up to tell him this is where I’m stuck and find his eyes glued to my mouth. I pop the pencil out and he jumps, eyes sliding up to mine, a hint of something almost sheepish on his face.

“Here,” he says, plucking the pencil from my fingers and looking over my notes. “Y yields a new formula. It’s a fourth-order rule to provide stability to the equation . . .”

He starts breaking apart the formula into sections, explaining the basic principles of each and how they intersect, layering in the theory of the Runge-Kutta method as he talks. It’s kind of like watching an artist paint from scratch, the numbers and letters filling up the page in logical boxes that make my brain fucking sing, even as hungover as it is.

“Understand?”

I nod, because I do, but I must look a little dazed because he frowns at me and hands me back the pencil.

“Prove it.”

My heart pounds a little, but I scratch out the next equation and break it down just like he did. I stumble a little, this method brand fucking new to me, but refer back to his notes twice before I push through.

When I’m done, I put my pencil down gently on the page and stare at the table, afraid to look at him.

“Kiernan?”

I keep staring at the table. “Yeah.”

“Get back in my fucking bed.”