Total pages in book: 108
Estimated words: 101764 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 509(@200wpm)___ 407(@250wpm)___ 339(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 101764 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 509(@200wpm)___ 407(@250wpm)___ 339(@300wpm)
The click-clack of high heels across the linoleum floor had me glancing up to find our instructor, a graduate student at MIT, according to what she’d written on the whiteboard behind her desk. When she entered, she walked straight to the desk at the front of the room, where she pulled a laptop out of her bag. She wore straight black slacks and a cream-colored turtleneck sweater. Her long, shiny black hair hung down her back, tied away from her face in a low ponytail. After she opened her laptop, she watched her class fill through black-rimmed glasses and a pleasant expression on her minimally made-up face.
All in all, she was a beautiful woman. Though we were well into the twenty-first century, men still dominated the engineering field. I loved that our first lab had a female instructor. It would be fun to watch the rich bros in my class take direction from her.
Most likely, they’d spend their time slobbering over her instead of learning.
“Good morning, everyone,” she said once most of the seats filled up. Her melodic voice floated above the low hum of get-to-know-you chatter, which faded to nothing when she spoke. “My name is Marissa Haverstead, and I’m a PhD student here at MIT. I’ll be leading you through this introductory robotics course. Please call me Marissa.”
She glanced down at a paper on her desk, then quickly scanned the room.
“Looks like we have a full class this year and one vacant seat right now, which means…”
My stomach fluttered as I glanced at the chair next to me.
Empty.
Awesome. Everyone in the room had a partner except me. My face heated from the stares of the other students focused my way.
“Someone is running late,” she said right before a body slid into the chair next to me.
“Sorry,” a male voice said without an ounce of the embarrassment I would have experienced at being called out for arriving last on the first day.
I turned to introduce myself to the newcomer—my partner—and my stomach plummeted.
The Ken Doll.
“Hey, FL,” he said with a smirk. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“FL?” I asked with a frown. What the hell was FL?
“Freeloader.” He winked.
If I could have smacked the smug grin off his face without being expelled, I would have in a heartbeat. What a conceited prick.
Why the hell did he have to be so hot? His arrogant smirk would be so much less irritating if it weren’t made up of plump lips and accompanied by twinkling blue eyes.
I loved blue eyes. They were so different from my dark ones. This close, I noticed a small fleck of green in his left eye shaped like a comma. One speck of imperfection in an otherwise flawless face that only made him more attractive.
Damn Ken Doll.
Since I couldn’t hit him, I settled for my usual weapon, my caustic tongue. “I suppose you paid for this with your lucrative job?” I snapped my fingers. “Oh no, wait, your mommy and daddy paid for it. Just like they paid for your clothes and your Tesla and whatever else you have that you didn’t earn yourself.”
I only had two seconds to enjoy the flash of surprise in his eyes before he grinned again. “Dayum, FL has a backbone. All right, I can work with that. Let the games begin. This is gonna be fun,” he said as he rubbed his hands together.
Maybe I should tell him I was gay. That would get his future-frat-boy ass out of that seat faster than anything. He was the type of jerk to be afraid of catching sexual orientation if he sat too close to a queer guy like me.
I’d be fine if he dropped out of the program. Completing the assignments alone had to be better than putting up with him.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” Marissa said. She narrowed her eyes at us. “Save the chitchat for the breaks, please.”
“Sorry, ma’am,” Ken Doll said with a charming tone that probably had his high school’s entire cheerleading squad fawning all over him.
I resisted rolling my eyes.
Barely.
“FL here was just asking if he could borrow a fiver for lunch. Poor thing doesn’t have much,” he added in a faux whisper.
Oh, fuck him.
My ears burned. Why the hell wasn’t I born with the ability to disappear on command?
A few of my classmates snickered, but most remained quiet. Marissa didn’t get the joke. She had no idea I was there on a scholarship. She probably didn’t give two craps about petty high school bullying. “Doesn’t matter the topic of conversation,” she said with a tight-lipped grin. “Talk on your own time.”
What an awful start to my first day. “Sorry,” I mumbled like an idiot. Ignoring the murmurs and whispered chuckles of my summer classmates wasn’t possible. My face burned so hot my ears had to be smoking.
Kenn Doll didn’t seem to mind in the least. “Won’t happen again,” he said without an ounce of remorse while flashing that charming grin at our teacher.