English and writing have always been passions of mine, and sometime between the start of college and this year, I realized I have the potential to be a really great teacher too. I’m told I have an easygoing, optimistic, extroverted personality that shines in a role such as teaching, and Stone has mentioned my patience and adaptability are impressive… not like I’ve memorized every word he’s ever said to me or anything.

And those compliments mean even more coming from him, since he’s such a phenomenal teacher. He saw potential in me that I never saw and pushed for me to go after my goal. He helped me land this aide position last year, which admittingly doesn’t help my stupid fucking crush at all.

We, surprisingly—or not so surprisingly—work well together. I’ve heard horror stories from other aides, and how their teachers are monsters. Either giving them way too much work or not enough. I’ve been lucky enough to get to spend some nice one-on-one time with him as he shows me the ropes and how he likes things done… in the classroom, of course.

For the remainder of class, I force myself to focus on the essays I’m supposed to be grading, and for the most part, it goes well. The class is excused, and I get up from my desk as soon as most of the students have filtered out, sauntering over to Stone’s.

“Here’re the ones I’ve done. I’ll work on the rest tonight and have them back to you by next class.”

“Perfect. Thanks, Cash.” Mostly, he calls me Mr. DeMarco, especially when it’s my professor aide days, but when he calls me by my first name, my stomach flutters every fucking time. It’s maddening, and probably means nothing to him or anyone else.

“No problem. Have a good night.”

“Hey, actually, I wanted to talk to you about something.” He gets out of his chair and rounds the desk, perching that perfect fucking ass right on the corner. “Have a minute?”

My eyes flit to the closed door and then back to him. “Uh, yeah. I don’t have a class after this, so I’m good. What’s up?”

“There’s this literary convention next month that I go to every year. It’s for professors, mostly, but sometimes graduate students go. They always have interesting speakers, and I learn something new every time. I spoke with the dean about it. Even though you aren’t in your graduate program yet, if you want, you can join me.”

I have to work to keep my eyebrows from shooting up at his offer. Take a breath, Cash. “Oh, cool. Yeah, I’d love to. Where is it? At the convention center?”

“No, it’s in Portland this year. We would drive down on a Friday morning, or if you have class that day, we could leave after.”