Page 33 of His Favorite Student
My heart leaps. Yes! This is it!
“Therefore, I will be opening an investigation into Professor Belcher’s behavior.”
I let out a deep sigh. It’s like a massive weight has been lifted off my back. “Thank you, Dean. I—I can’t thank you enough.”
Her eyes twinkle as she nods back at me.Does she know about me and August?
I have no proof. But there’s something about the way she’s looking at me that makes me certain she does.
“Is there anything else?”
“No,” I say, closing my notebook and holding it to my chest. “That’s all. Thank youso much.”
I get up and walk out of her office and into the Saturday sunlight that seems brighter than ever before. I stand on the steps and breathe in the warm, crisp air.
It tastes different than it did three days ago. Everything feels suddenly sweeter. More intense. More alive.
I am more alive.
I take out my phone and stare at the unread texts from August. Why did I doubt him? Why did I ignore him?
“You’re such an idiot, Jessie.”
I hover my thumb over his name to call but catch myself. Then I type two words back:
I’m coming, Daddy. I’m coming.
EPILOGUE
AUGUST
Five years later…
There are eleven notebooks lining the shelf above my desk in our home office now. They’re arranged chronologically, each one filled cover to cover with green ink.
The first is the original. The first one she carried into my office for her first lecture. The one with anatomical diagrams and notes that I wasn’t even aware she was taking at first.
Professor Holt has the body of an Adonis, and hands that I can’t stop thinking about.
She filled that notebook like it was a diary, detailing the wonders of our sex life together. And then, as the years went by, she filled ten more. Her current, and twelfth, lies open on the bedside table with a pen on top of it, just waiting for tonight’s entry.
Because my wife is adorable. She documents everything. Every position we try, every sound we make, every place I put my hands or tongue…
…and how many times I get her off. Our record so far for one session is seven. But records are made to be broken.
Our son, James, is asleep down the hall. He has Jessie’s eyes, my jaw, and an adorable stubborn temperament that he gets from both of us. This of course means a nightly negotiation to get him into bed. He’s only three years old and is already sure he’s right abouteverything. He’ll be a force of nature when he’s older.
Tonight, Becca put him down for us. Becca, Jessie’s long-time friend who bought her the vibrator so many years ago, which may have inadvertently caused the chain of events that led to our incredible relationship.
She moved to our same neighborhood after graduation. She and Jessie are such good friends that they’re practically incapable of living more than a few minutes apart.
And I don’t mind. I like Becca, and we pay her to help us out around the house—probably more than someone else would charge—but I don’t mind. We owe so much to her. She’s basically part of the family now.
Their mutual friend Dani is married now to a man who looks wonderfully terrified of her. And Lourdes runs a women’s health center in Miami. They FaceTime weekly, and I have a feeling our fun together is the topic of many discussions.
Jessie is finishing up her graduate degree in human anatomy and writing her thesis on female sexual responses, specifically the neurological mechanisms surrounding arousal. She’s specifically focusing on women who, like her, were late in exploring their sexuality.
Her committee chair calls her work ‘groundbreaking.’ Me? I tease her and call it ‘autobiographical’ but only when we’re in the bedroom at night. I have to chuckle when she hits me with a pillow, then straddles me, her bright eyes gleaming down at me.
