“Give it a shot. There’s no wrong or right answer.”
“Okay.” I thought for a few long moments. “Because music expresses all the things people can’t say, but are impossible to keep quiet.”
He didn’t immediately respond. “Sing or play an instrument?” he asked after letting it sink in.
I smiled. Having been a music major for undergraduate, I knew my answer always confused people. “Neither. I can hold a tune, but I don’t sing exceptionally well, and there isn’t a particular instrument I excel at, like most music majors.”
Basically, eighty-five percent of all music majors either sang or played guitar or piano. The remaining fifteen percent were the random drummers or saxophonists.
“Can’t say I hear that often.”
“I know. I learned to play a few instruments decently during my undergraduate work, but I don’t want to be a musician or a rock star. My master’s degree will be in musical therapy.”
The waitress came and delivered plates with giant burgers. I’d hoped it would transition some of the attention away from me, but Caine must have been busy piecing the little bits I’d already shared together.
“I’m guessing whatever music helped you express that couldn’t be said might be the same thing that caused you to have those out-of-control years.”
“Am I that transparent, or are you that good at reading people?”
His eyes studied mine. “Neither. Let’s just say I can relate well.”
I nodded. “What about you? Did you want to be a rock star?”
“Something like that.”
I grinned before shoving the burger into my mouth. “Wow. Thanks for sharing. You’re an open book.”
Caine chuckled. “Are you always such a wiseass?”
“Are you always so vague and dodgy when asked a direct question?”
He stared at me while he chewed and swallowed. “Alright. I wanted to be a rock star when I was younger. Is that a straightforward enough answer for you?”
I grinned. “Do you sing or play an instrument?”
“I played the drums.”
“Play or played?”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
“Does that bother you?”
He chuckled. “And there’s another one. Eat your burger, Ms. Martin.”
After that, we ate in relative quiet. But it was a comfortable kind of quiet. Caine cleared his plate, and I was still picking at my French fries when his cell phone rang. Looking at the name on the screen, he excused himself, saying he needed to take the call, and he left the table to speak in private. We weren’t on a date or anything, but it made me wonder if he was married and didn’t want his wife to know he was with someone. Cheater Owen was still fresh in my head.
When he came back, Caine apologized. “Sorry about that.”
“No problem.” Yet for some completely unwarranted reason, I was annoyed. “I’m done eating. We can get started. I’ve taken up enough of your time.”
Once the busboy cleared the table, Caine took a folder out of his bag, and we began to go through the syllabus. We did some rough lesson planning for my first lectures and talked about meeting after the next class to finish going through the rest of the planning we needed to do. I’d be sitting in on three of his five classes and teaching one of my own. Caine asked about my work schedule and scheduled the extra-help sessions I would hold around my hours at O’Leary’s, which was thoughtful. When we were done, he ordered a coffee.
“So, what rumors have you heard about me?” he asked, leaning back in the booth.
“Do you really want to know?”
“I’m sure I’ve heard most of them. But let’s lay them on the table, and I’ll tell you if they’re true or not.”
“Okay. Well, for starters I heard you were a stickler for punctuality. I guess I don’t really need to ask if that one’s true.”
“I guess not.” He smiled. “Anything else?”
“You fired your last TA because she wouldn’t grade hard enough.”
He nodded. “That’s true, too. Although you’re missing part of the story. She wasn’t grading her boyfriend hard enough. Unless she was grading the things he wanted to do to her…because those were pretty well thought out. I’d know since that’s what I found he was writing on his tests. No actual music answers, yet he was getting all As.”
“Oh.”
“Anything else?”
I have no idea why, but I decided to embellish the last rumor to satisfy my own curiosity. “You’re married and you almost got fired for sleeping with your students.”
The look on his face told me I’d hit a sore spot. Caine’s jaw clenched, and his full lips thinned as they drew into a line. “Not married and stopped sleeping with my students after the first year.”
I crinkled my nose. “So you used to sleep with your students?”
“I was young and stupid. The first year I taught, I spent almost all of my time on campus. It was the only place I met people.”
“Ever hear of match.com?”
“Of course, wiseass. But people are rarely what they seem online.”
I scoffed. “Tell me about it.”
Caine raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like you know from experience.”
“Just last night in fact.”
“And…”
“And he only had one thing on his mind.”
“Sex?”
I nodded. “Men can be such assholes. No offense.”
That damn lip twitched again. “No offense taken. Unless of course you’re calling me an asshole—clearly it wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Do you spend weeks talking to a woman and telling her you’re looking for a relationship and then show up on the first date wanting nothing but sex?”
Caine’s gaze shifted between my eyes. “I’m not looking for a relationship. But I’m upfront about that to try and avoid any expectations. Although I can tell you that even putting it out there from the get go—women don’t always hear what I’m telling them. They hear what they want to hear.” He paused. “Guess you could say women can be assholes, too. No offense.”
I laughed. “None taken.”
His eyes roamed my face. “Can I offer you some advice?”
“Sure.”
“You’re beautiful. Any man who tells you he doesn’t have thoughts of having sex with you running through his brain the moment he meets you is full of shit. But a man who can’t tell that isn’t what you’re looking for isn’t paying attention. Chances are that translates into a lack of attention in the sack anyway, and he isn’t worth your time.”
He was absolutely right, and there would be time to analyze his theory later, but in that moment, I was wondering one thing…is he thinking about having sex with me right now?
Rachel
Oral perception.
Okay, so maybe the class was Aural Perception. Whatever. My mind was definitely all over the place as I sat in the back, watching Professor West teach about how different people—philosophers, composers, medical professionals, teenagers—conceptualize the act of listening. I remembered taking the course in my first year of undergrad school. I wasn’t sure if I had matured and could appreciate a lecture like this more at twenty-five than at barely twenty-one. At least now the particular professor lecturing was able to hold my rapt attention.
While I was busy listening, the beanie-wearing guy next to me was drawing nudes. He’d sketched a page of faceless bodies that were actually pretty amazing, even if they were sort of lewd and graphic. He shrugged when he caught me looking, smiled and whispered, “Gotta do something while this full-of-himself jerk drones on.”
Caine wasn’t a professor who sat at his desk to lecture. He wandered around the room and interacted with the students. “Listening can be broken down into categories: informative, appreciative, critical, relationship, perceptive, discriminative. The method and timing of delivery can affect what we hear. Tell me, where do you listen to music, how is it delivered, and who was the last musician you listened to?”