It was supposed to be a quick stop.
That’s what I told myself walking into the convenience store. Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen. Grab some groceries, pay, get back to my apartment before I started regretting leaving the house at all.
Twenty minutes later, I was standing at the register with a basket that contained considerably more than I’d planned to buy.
Milk. Bread. Eggs. Instant noodles. Coffee. A few snacks I definitely didn’t need but definitely wasn’t putting back either.
I paid, thanked the cashier, and walked outside.
Then I stopped.
Rain. Not a drizzle, a full commitment, turning the street into a blur and soaking the air with the smell of wet asphalt. I looked up at the sky like that would somehow negotiate a better outcome.
It didn’t.
"You’ve got to be kidding me."
I stood under the awning for a moment, weighing my options: wait it out, or make a run for it. Neither sounded appealing. I sighed and opened my umbrella.
That’s when I noticed someone running toward the awning.
A woman. Soaked through, clearly caught in the rain before she’d found cover. Her hair clung to her face in dark strands, her clothes were plastered to her, and she was breathing like she’d sprinted the last block on principle alone.
She reached the awning and stopped, catching her breath.
I glanced at her, and, well. Wow. Even drenched and out of breath, she was easily the most striking woman I’d seen outside of an ad campaign.
I noticed the shiver running through her a beat later than I should have.
"You okay?"
She met my eyes and brushed a wet strand of hair off her cheek, composed enough that you’d never guess she’d just been ambushed by a rainstorm.
"I’m fine."
I looked her up and down — soaked shoes, dripping sleeves, a puddle actively forming beneath her — then back at the rain.
"That’s a pretty convincing argument."
She followed my gaze down to herself, seemed to register the full scope of the situation for the first time, and laughed. A real one, caught off guard by her own state.
Somehow that laugh caught me off guard more than the rain had.
"Fair enough," she said.
"You need a ride?"
She glanced past me, toward the lot.
"My car’s parked over there." I gestured with my head, then added, mostly to sound less forward, "Unless you’d rather wait here until it stops."
She titled her face toward the sky. It had zero intention of stopping.
"I think I’ll take the ride."
"Come on, then."
I moved closer and tilted the umbrella over her instead of myself, which I only clocked as a mistake once my left shoulder was thoroughly soaked. Small price.
She glanced at my shoulder, just once, but said nothing.
We reached the car. I loaded the groceries in the back while she got in the passenger seat. I climbed in after.
She reached for her seat belt.
It didn’t move.
She tried again. Still nothing. At this point the belt wasn’t malfunctioning so much as taking a stand.
"Problem?"
"It’s stuck."
I leaned over and gave it one firm tug. It released instantly, like it had just been waiting for a man to show up and validate the effort.
She blinked. "Oh."
"Apparently it just needed some encouragement," I said, handing it back.
She smiled and buckled in without further comment, though I noticed she tried the belt one more time first, quietly, like she didn’t quite trust it not to embarrass her twice.
I started the engine and pulled out.
"So, where’re you headed?"
"Camden Hale University."
I glanced over. "That’s where I’m headed too."
Something shifted in her expression, small, but there. "Really?"
"Yeah. I’m a student there."
"That’s good to know," she said, a little too deliberately for a throwaway line, and turned back to the road before I could ask what exactly she meant by it.
Neither of us said anything for a while. Then:
"What year are you?" she asked.
"Third. Engineering."
Her smile widened in a way that felt disproportionate to the information provided.
"What about you?"
"Me?"
I nodded, eyes on the road, missing every single opportunity to notice how long she took to answer.
"...Also Engineering."
"First year?"
She looked at me the way you’d watch someone walk confidently into a wall.
"What makes you think I’m in a lower year than you?"
"I mean, I’m a third year, and I’ve never seen you around. Figured you were probably a first year."
"Do I look that young?"
"Oh. Second year, then. Final year?"
She stared at me for a beat. Then she laughed, properly this time. She clearly wasn’t planning to explain why.
"What?" I said.
"Nothing." She failed to hide her smile. "It’s just— cute."
I decided, wisely, not to ask what was cute about it. Some questions are better left as unexploded ordnance.
By the time we reached the university, the rain had already stopped, which felt like it should have meant something and didn’t.
I pulled over near the campus gates.
"I live off campus," I said, by way of explaining why I wasn’t driving her further.
"Oh."
She unbuckled, smoothly this time, the belt apparently having learned its lesson, and reached for the door. Then paused.
"What’s your name?"
"Nathan. Nathan Reed."
"I’m Nicole."
She stepped out, then leaned back in just enough to add, "Thank you for the ride, Nathan."
"Sure thing."
She closed the door and walked through the gates.
I waited until she was out of sight before pulling away, telling myself it was just good manners and not the fact that I was still thinking about that laugh.
The next morning, I was sitting in class with Jackson beside me, half-listening to two guys in front of us dissecting our new professor like she was a car they were thinking of buying.
"Did you hear? She’s got a PhD."
"Yeah. In Automotive Engineering. And she worked in the industry for a year before this."
"Seriously?"
Jackson, my best friend, leaned toward me, clearly unwilling to let a rumor go unspread. "Dude, have you heard about our new Thermodynamics professor?"
"No."
"She’s ridiculously hot."
"Really, dude? You’re talking about a professor."
"I’m just saying what I heard."
One of the guys in front turned around, entirely unbothered by the concept of professional boundaries. "He’s not wrong."
The other nodded, equally unbothered. "Not even a little."
I shook my head and faced forward, already regretting every part of this conversation.
"You’ll see," Jackson said, grinning like he already knew he’d won an argument I hadn’t agreed to have.
The door opened.
The room went dead silent — the specific silence of thirty people quietly rewriting their semester plans. Someone near the back whistled before getting elbowed into silence. One guy froze halfway through opening his notebook. Another simply stopped functioning, staring like he’d forgotten blinking was a skill he possessed.
I looked up and it was her.
Same woman from yesterday.
Hair styled now instead of dripping, soaked clothes traded for a sharp, professional outfit that did absolutely nothing to make her less distracting. She walked to the front, set her things on the lectern, and turned to face the room.
Her eyes found mine first. Held there half a second longer than professional. A small smile, there and gone before anyone else could have clocked it, and then she was facing the class like nothing had happened.
"Good morning, everyone."
She picked up a marker.
"I am Professor Nicolette Anastasia Collins. I’ll be teaching your Thermodynamics course this semester."
Jackson turned to me very slowly, already grinning before he’d even finished turning.
"See? Ridiculously hot."
I didn’t answer.
I was too busy doing the math on how, exactly, the woman I’d given a ride yesterday was now standing at the front of my Thermodynamics class with a marker in her hand and my entire semester in the other.