Lo presses his knuckles to his lips, trying desperately to hide his grin.
“Take me in the ass. Please, please!!! Ahhh!” the girl cries.
RESPOND!!! I internally shriek. No, my computer has decided to rebel against human intelligence. So I slam the screen shut and close my eyes, praying for my teleportation power to kick in. I know it exists.
“aaaahhhhHHHH!”
I bury my head in my arms. Finally, the noise dies off, leaving the lecture hall in dead, awkward silence. I peek up from my arm-fort.
“I have a virus,” I mumble and cringe, too embarrassed to rephrase it to my computer has a virus.
The professor’s dark eyebrows draw into a hard line, not pleased at all. “See me after class.”
People steal glances back at us, and the exposure sends my skin into red disgrace.
Lo leans in again, but his masculine presence no longer tempts me. I feel like I’ve been electrocuted. “I didn’t know you watched anal porn.”
He tries to cheer me up with the words, but I can’t even laugh. An army of fire ants just crawled across my body. “I’m dead,” I mutter, and a horrifying thought hits me. “What if my parents find out?”
“This isn’t high school, Lil.”
The words don’t make me feel much better. I stare at my palms and retreat inside myself. My shoulders curving forward, my head slightly bent.
“Hey.” Lo gently turns my chin to meet his gaze, one full of understanding, narrowed with empathy. I begin to relax. “He’s not going to call your parents. You’re an adult.”
It’s hard to remember that when my parents cling to my future with such diligence and force.
“How often do you do it in the ass?” Lo banters with a crooked grin.
I groan and bury my head into my arms once again, but my lips upturn in a small smile. I hide that as well.
After another half hour of fearing my computer and producing paper notes at a snail’s pace, the class ends. People take the opportunity to glance my way as they stand to leave, like they want a full mental picture of The Girl Who Watches Porn （In Class）。
I rise and my hands shake by my sides. Lo passes me my backpack, and I sling it over my shoulder. His palm spindles across my waist, for a brief second, as he says, “I’ll see you later. Maybe we can grab lunch during your break.”
I nod, and he pulls away, leaving me to wonder whether that was real or fake. Whether he meant to really touch my hip or if it was an unconscious movement, trained from all these years of pretending.
The scary part, I almost hoped it was real.
I watch him disappear with an old JanSport backpack, nearly empty. No notebooks. No pens. No computer. Just an iPad, a phone and a thermos in his possession. He walks without worry or care, tapping the height of the doorframe on his way out. Something about his self-assured nature, his unhurriedness, mesmerizes me.
“Name?”
I break out of my trance. The professor stands at his podium, waiting for me.
“Your name?” he asks again, just as tersely. He slides his laptop into his briefcase. Students for the next period begin to filter in, and their instructor starts erasing the whiteboard that’s scrawled with economics problems.
I near the podium. “Lily Calloway.”
“Lily,” he says dryly, taking his briefcase from the table. “If you can’t bring a clean computer to class, then you need to take notes with a pen and paper. Next time this happens, I’ll be enforcing this on everyone. You don’t want to be the girl who ruins this privilege for the whole class.” No, I do not. I only have one friend, already isolated as it is, but that doesn’t mean I want to make any enemies.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
He nods and walks off without another word.
*
The clock ticks past midnight by the time I trudge into the Drake’s lobby, my heels clapping on the creamy marble floors. My muscles ache from being wedged in a coat closet at the ballet theatre. I stayed seated beside Rose and Poppy for a total of ten minutes. Then I disappeared in search of a guy who eyed me at the ticket booth. After the hookup, I returned to my seat and they hardly noticed that I bailed on our planned sister-time. I spent the rest of the ballet imagining the male dancers with me—taking them home after the show ended. And when the curtains closed, a huge part of me wanted to go find one, but I was with my sisters. I was sitting with them, thinking about sex. I was an idiot.
I enter the golden elevator and press the highest number, my back aching. Did he have to slam me into the hangers?