Nocturne(33)

I heard Savannah sigh. The room was otherwise silent as the rest of the class was finishing their final exam. Some had already finished and left, and I knew Savannah wouldn’t be far behind. Over the last several weeks, she’d shown incredible command over the material in both her assignments and exams.

Something had changed.

It had changed in me, too, the moment I felt her mouth on mine. The moment I licked rainwater off of her lips before she opened her mouth to me.

Savannah seemed to still be in rocky territory with Nathan, and she’d stopped coloring outside the lines in her assignments. While she’d been the one to initiate our kiss, I did exactly nothing to stop it. I tangled my hands through her rain-soaked hair and pulled her closer. I’d dreamt of feeling the silkiness of her hair against my fingers for far too long to let the opportunity get away. The sound she made as I pressed my mouth harder into hers nearly brought me to my knees.

I’d thought of kissing her too many times during the semester. None of them included being right before finals in front of a piss-poor excuse for a Greek restaurant. In spite of my intentions to help foster her abilities and career, I’d done some damage. That much was clear given her emotional response to me and those around her. She likely thought I was a pig, a professor abusing his authority by preying on young and dumb students.

She was neither of those things, and I hoped to God she didn’t think those things of me.

Not that it mattered if she did.

Those few seconds were all we’d ever have.

Jesus. I closed my eyes for a moment and let myself feel her against me one more time. Her lips, cold and shivering but making me feel like I was on fire …

Stop.

I’d spent months discussing keeping lines between personal and professional. And now I’d harmed her ability to do just that. I’d watched her play at her flute ensemble concert, and I could pick her sound out of the group of six flutists in a second—her tone was breathtaking. But, her face looked empty and her vibrato was a little off. While that was only a small performance, if she continued to let her emotions spill into her music like that it could prove disastrous in the future.

Looking up, I found her smiling at Nathan for a moment before returning to her paper. Maybe things had smoothed out between them. I knew she cared about him. But the thought made my stomach clench all the same.

After a few minutes, Savannah stood, wrote one last thing at the bottom of her paper, and gracefully made her way to my desk.

“Here you go, Mr. Fitzgerald.” Her exam shook slightly in her hand as she placed it on my desk.

Keeping my eyes trained on the sheet music in front of me, I mumbled, “Thank you, Miss Marshall,” effectively excusing her from my desk.

“You’re welcome,” she responded. Her voice was soft and distant, causing me to look up. She was turning slowly away, her head lowered slightly. It made me want to reach out to her, inexplicably, and ask her what was wrong.

“Savannah,” I called after her as quietly as possible, before I could stop myself. A couple of students in the front row looked up for a second, before I raised my eyebrow and narrowed my eyes at them.

They quickly found more interesting things to look at. Such as their exams.

As she raised her head and turned back to my desk, she cleared her throat slightly. “Yes?” she replied, her brown eyes still dark and slightly glassed over.

Realizing I hadn’t thought through what I was going to say after calling her name, I straightened my shoulders and swallowed before saying, “Good luck.”



Her eyebrows came together for a second as she nodded and hastily left the classroom. Glancing down at her exam, I found a note written on the bottom right hand corner. Mr. Fitzgerald, she wrote, I know we disagreed about the material, and I’m sorry for all the trouble I gave you. But, I loved it—the music.

All the trouble? Knowing that Savannah would contest nearly every other word I said in class this semester made coming to class something to look forward to, despite the fact that I’d dreaded taking on the class in the first place. Regardless of the fact that I found her opinions ridiculous much of the time, it was her passion that I admired. While I maintained my stance that she needed to be appropriately trained in order to reach her maximum potential, I found myself hoping she didn’t lose her desire to break the rules.

It put life in her eyes. Life that drowned out the sound of a pounding rainstorm in the middle of a crowded city.

Shaking my head as I placed Savannah’s exam on the bottom of the pile, my eyes scanned the class, where I found Nathan Connors staring at me with an indignant expression on his face. He shook his head, and I saw him clench his jaw slightly before he turned back to his exam.

That boy was a nuisance. It didn’t really surprise me that he and Savannah were friends, or whatever they were. She, however, could get much further than he ever would, given his volatile behavior at school. I wouldn’t put it past him to one day genuinely lose his temper in a professional environment.

An hour later, after the last of the students shuffled out of my classroom, I made my way back to my office. Exhausted at the prospect of having to sort through the exams and tally final grades, I stopped when I saw Madeline White’s office door propped open.

“Come in,” she chirped when I knocked.

Madeline was my age, though I admit she looked much younger than I did. Her olive skin and long black hair made her look like a student and garnered her much male student attention on campus, from what I heard through droll pre-classroom discussions. She took it all in stride, though. Which I suppose was easier to do given she only had two male students to instruct.