He nodded. "You know, I don't mind typing up my comments if you send me it."
Fear gripped me. "You didn't like it. I knew it was a frivolous waste of time, but it felt like I just had to get it out." I wrapped his coat tighter around me and shuffled my high heels through the dried leaves.
Ford laughed. "Spoken like a true writer. All I meant was I could save you a trip."
"Thanks," I glanced at him, "but it was nice to have an excuse to leave."
It sounded innocent, but echoes of other thoughts loudly contradicted me inside my head. Ford's dark hair curled over the crisp collar of the white tuxedo shirt and my fingers itched to sweep it clear. To tangle my hands in the hair at the back of his neck, that neck that already showed dark stubble. I wondered what it would feel like against my cheek, the bare skin of my arm.
I shivered again and Ford jumped ahead to open the door of Thompson Hall. "One nice thing about a top floor office is that it's always hot," he joked.
His narrow office was so warm that I immediately shed his tuxedo jacket and slipped it onto the hanger I found on his couch. Ford opened the small, ivy-covered window and let in a soft, autumn breeze to cool us.
"So you really liked it? You're not just being nice to me?" I asked.
Ford tossed me the short story and leaned against his desk. It took a moment before I could tear my eyes from the shirt that was tight against his muscles when he crossed his arms.
"I loved it," he said.
The words sent a honeyed delight over my body until I looked down at the pages. "There's so much red ink. Oh, my god, it's like a blood bath."
Ford chuckled as I sank onto the small sofa in his office. He stepped over and sat on the arm next to me. "Don't let that get you down. Most of my comments are about structure and clearing out the extra images. Your writing itself is impressive."
I gripped the pages and pored over each mark. Ford cleared his throat and went to reopen his office door. The breeze made it waver closed again, so he leaned against it. The faint light from the hallway cast him into silhouette and I realized neither of us had bothered to turn on more than the small desk lamp.
In the dim light, he could still read my expression and chuckled again. "You have to think of all criticism as constructive or it'll sink you," he said.
"Do you mind going over it with me? I'm not sure I can interpret all of this as positive unless you explain it," I said.
Ford pushed off the office door and went to one of the sparsely occupied shelves. He pulled a bottle of scotch from behind a wide textbook. "Would my comments go down better with a drink?" he asked.
I shook my head. "I had champagne at the event," I confessed.
He smiled at me, then pried his eyes away and poured an extra finger of scotch. I tugged my thin dress strap back into place and wished the breeze would blow through the open window again. His office was getting warm.
"You seem used to events like that. Does your father make you go with him a lot?" Ford asked.
I looked up from the pages of my short story and met his eyes. In the dim light, the gray was shifting to a deeper, fathomless blue. "You don't like events like that, do you?"
"The event's fine, I just have a problem with a lot of the people there," Ford said.
I shrugged and my dress strap slipped again. "My father is great at those events. Maybe knowing how to schmooze is an inherited trait."
Ford finished his drink and settled onto the arm of the sofa next to me again. His fingers plucked m,y errant strap and tugged it back in place. "You inherited that but not your father's passion for creativity in everyday life?" he asked.
My breath faltered. His fingers had left a brand on my bare skin, one that my body believed only his touch could sooth. "Creative expression has its place but, no, I think practicality should take precedent in everyday life."
Ford reached for the tendrils of hair escaping my messy chignon then pulled back. He rose and tossed himself into his creaky, old desk chair and kicked his feet up. "You know, I think I might be starting to agree with your father. You are too practical. You know college is supposed to be a time to explore, right?"
I shoved away the blazing thoughts of what I wanted to explore. "Is that what you did?"
He shook his head. "I enlisted straight out of high school and had the Army pay for my education."
"So you were practical too," I said.
Ford trailed his eyes up to my face and I realized how primly I was perched. "You know it's possible to be both. Like Hemingway," he said. He nodded towards the skeleton selection on his shelves. "Top, middle shelf.",
I stood up, the swirl of my long black dress and the appreciative focus of his eyes like a caress against my sensitive skin. I hoped he didn't see the trail of grazed goosebumps. I had never felt a man's eyes on my body with such pleasure.,
I wanted to linger along the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves but the book was easy to find. "Did you just move offices or something?" I asked.
Ford snorted. "I guess I'm just not your stereotypical professor."
My mind backtracked and played that thought over again. Ford was not a stereotypical professor. Maybe that was why I was having trouble thinking of him as off-limits. He was relatively young for a professor, more closely connected to a vocation than scholarly studies. Ford was also unmarried, single, and devastatingly handsome.,
I was not the only student that thought about him, and that was a fact. My female classmates, and a few of the men, commented on his effortless attractiveness almost every day.
"Have you ever read A Moveable Feast? It's Hemingway's reminiscing about starting out as a writer in Paris." Ford continued to lounge in his office chair.
I blocked out the thousand nagging voices of my body that urged me to test the muscles of his thighs by falling into his lap or taste the potent scotch flavor that must have lingered on his lips.
"No, I haven't read it." I sat down on the edge of the sofa as prim as before. "You must have."
Ford smiled. "It's a favorite."
I flipped through the dog-eared pages and wished I could take the copy home with me. The pages he marked and the passages he underlined made me wonder more about him than the story of a young Hemingway in Paris. I imagined climbing into bed with a book he knew so intimately and the thought fired another blush across my cheeks.
Focusing my eyes on the open page in my hands did not help. The passage spoke about settling into bed with his wife, their books, and the open window showing the stars outside. Longing was a sharp burn through my chest. The simplicity and peace of that scene and the loving way it was worded made me want the same with all my heart.
Ford had underlined it and bent the corner of the page. I wondered if he read it with the same ache. He said nothing and gazed out the open window of his narrow office. The last clinging ivy rustled quietly and the faint scent of cold drifted in. The season was moving on to winter any day now, and it added to the bittersweet tone of the words.
The sound of faraway laughter reached us, but we were both content to sit in the quiet of the top floor. I knew we were the only ones in the building, and even the light from the hallway seemed reticent to join us.
Foolish, romantic junk, I thought.