Page 12 of Can't Have Him
She stops a few feet in front of me, out of breath.
“Is something wrong?” I ask. “Olivia, what’s—”
“That can’t be the last time we see each other,” she says. “It can’t.”
“What are you saying?”
“James,” she says, pleadingly. “You know what I’m saying.”
I almost kiss her. I comesofucking close to cupping her face in my hands and kissing her. But, with great difficulty, I pull myself back.
“You’re still my student, Olivia. Until I grade your paper and submit your final grade, you’re still my student. And I’m not going to cross that line.”
She bites her lip. “Then we’ll wait.”
“You realize I’m going to be biased though, now, when I grade your paper, right?”
“So grade them blind.”
I laugh. “Yeah. Okay. I guess I could do that.”
Olivia holds out her hand. “Give me your phone.”
“Why?”
“You don’t have my number.”
She’s right. I pull my phone out of my pocket and hand it over. She types in her info and hands it back with a smile. “Call me after the grades are submitted?”
“I will. I promise I will.” I swallow. “Fuck, Olivia. You don’t know how badly I want to kiss you right now.”
“You’re wrong,” she says. “I know exactly how you feel.”
Chapter Seven
Olivia
Two days later—two days that feel like an eternity—I get a call from James. As soon as I see his name pop up on the screen of my phone, I laugh.James From The Bar.
“Hey,” I say, pressing the phone to my ear.
“Hey,” he says. “Are you free for dinner tonight?”
“Well…I did have plans to eat boxed macaroni by myself…”
Within the hour, he’s buzzing my apartment and I’m flying out the door, calling out a goodbye to Emma.
“Have fun getting laid!” she calls back, and my cheeks immediately turn pink.
I think they’re back to normal, though, by the time I make it downstairs to meet James. When I step out of the apartment building, his eyes widen at the sight of me. I’ve got on a dress that hits at mid-thigh and I’ve curled my hair into loose waves.
“Wow,” he says. “You look great.”
“You too,” I say. The button-up shirt he has on beneath his jacket isn’t clinging to him as tightly as his shirt was that day in the rain, but it still looks damn good on him. “Where are we going again?”
He grins. “It’s a surprise.”
We walk up the block and get into his car, and then he takes me about a fifteen minute drive away to a quaint little restaurant in the middle of a residential neighborhood. For the next two hours, we eat one of the best meals I’ve ever had while actually getting to know each other. We talk about everything, from the way we grew up to our aspirations for the future. I tell him about how I want to work in a museum after I graduate, and he tells me that he has a few connections that he’d be happy to hook me up with.