Office Hours with Mr. Robinson, Part I
Some Lessons Aren’t on the Syllabus
The first time Julian Carter came to my office hours, he actually had a question.
That was what made the second time suspicious.
By the third, I knew the young man was trouble.
He showed up every Thursday at 4:15, ten minutes after the last serious student had packed up and wandered down the hall. Always late enough that the department had gone quiet. Always early enough that I couldn’t pretend I was leaving.
I taught Southern Gothic Literature in Room 214 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and Julian sat in the third row like the room owed him something. Not loud. Not disruptive. Worse than that. He was patient.
The kind of patient that made a man feel watched.
He was twenty. I knew that because the roster said so, and because I had checked it once after class, then sat there staring at my computer screen like I had caught myself doing something nasty.
Twenty.
Old enough to know better.
Young enough to make me wish he didn’t.
That afternoon, campus had settled into a lazy golden quiet. Late sun slipped through the blinds in my office, striping the bookshelves, my desk, the stack of essays I had been avoiding for two days. My coffee had gone cold. My tie was already loose. I had spent the last hour marking up mediocre papers about Flannery O’Connor and pretending not to think about the way Julian looked at me during lecture.
Not looked.
Held.
That was the word.
Julian Carter had a way of holding his gaze on me like he had already figured out where all my locks were hidden.
A knock came at the door.
One soft rap.
Then the door opened before I answered.
“Professor Robinson?”
I looked up over the rim of my glasses. “Mr. Carter.”
He smiled.
Lord, that smile.
“Got a minute?”
“For class?”
“For now.”
I leaned back in my chair and set down my pen. “Office hours are for class.”
“Then yeah,” he said, stepping inside. “For class.”
He wore a dark green sweater pushed up at the forearms, jeans that fit better than they had any business fitting, and a backpack slung over one shoulder like he had just wandered in from a photo shoot instead of my afternoon seminar. His hair was messy in that purposeful kind of way boys with mirrors and good sense knew how to manage.
No.
Not boys.
He was not a boy.
That was part of the problem. Julian Carter was a grown man, and he knew exactly what his face did to people.
I gestured toward the chair across from my desk. “Have a seat.”
He did not sit.
He closed the door.
The click was soft.
Still, I felt it low in my stomach.
I looked at the door, then back at him. “You can leave that open.”
“Can I?”
“You should.”
His mouth twitched.
Julian reached back and opened it a few inches, not wide enough to be useful, just enough to say he had obeyed me. Then he sat, slow and casual, stretching his legs out like he owned every inch of carpet between us.
I folded my hands on the desk. “What’s your question?”
He pulled a notebook from his backpack but didn’t open it. “Today’s lecture.”
“On O’Connor?”
“On repression.”
I stared at him.
He stared back.
There were students who flirted because they wanted a better grade. Students who flirted because they didn’t know they were doing it. Students who mistook kindness for invitation. I had seen all of them. I knew the types.
Julian was none of them.
He was deliberate.
“What about repression?” I asked.
“You said her characters lie to themselves before they lie to anybody else.”
“I did.”
“You believe that?”
“I teach it.”
“That ain’t what I asked.”
His accent came out stronger on certain words. Country, but polished. A little honey over a blade. The first time I heard it, I had asked where he was from.
“Georgia,” he had said.
“City or country?”
He smiled then too. “Depends who’s asking.”
Now he sat in my office with one ankle crossed over his knee, notebook closed in his lap, making a question sound like a dare.
“Yes,” I said. “I believe people lie to themselves first.”
Julian nodded as if I had confirmed something. “So when a man keeps saying he doesn’t want something, maybe he’s not lying to everybody else.”
I tapped my pen against the desk once. “Careful.”
“With what?”
“With pretending you’re talking about literature.”
“I am.”
“No, Mr. Carter. You’re circling something.”
His smile faded a little. Not gone. Just quieter.
“Maybe I’m trying to understand the text.”
“You understand the text just fine.”
“You think so?”
“I’ve read your papers.”
“Then you know I pay attention.”
“I know you like being noticed.”
He laughed under his breath, and the sound went straight through me.
“Is that what you think?” he asked.
“That you like attention?”
“That I need it.”
I should have redirected. I should have asked him to open his notebook. I should have pointed to some passage on page 143 and dragged us back to dead writers and respectable conversation.
Instead, I sat there with the late afternoon light crawling over my desk, feeling my pulse in my throat.
“I think,” I said carefully, “you’re too smart to waste my time.”
Julian leaned forward. “I wouldn’t waste your time, Professor.”
There it was again.
Professor.
He didn’t say it like the other students. He didn’t toss it out like a title. He put his mouth around it. Let it sit there. Let me hear what he was doing.
I stood.
Not because I needed to stand. Because if I kept sitting across from him, I was going to say something stupid.
I walked to the bookshelf behind me and pretended to look for a book. “You’re doing well in the course. Your last paper was strong. A little unfocused in the middle, but the analysis was good.”
“Thank you.”
“You don’t need to come in every week.”
“I know.”
I pulled a copy of Giovanni’s Room from the shelf and turned back around. “Then why do you?”
Julian’s eyes dropped to the book in my hand.
Baldwin. Of course he noticed.
“Maybe I like the way you explain things.”
“You get enough explanation in lecture.”
“Not the same.”
“How so?”
“In class, you talk to everybody.” His gaze lifted to mine. “In here, you talk to me.”
The office went quiet except for the low hum of the old building, pipes ticking somewhere in the wall, somebody laughing faintly down on the quad.
I should have been angry.
I wanted to be angry.
Anger would have helped. Anger would have cleaned the room up, given me something respectable to stand on. Instead, all I had was the awareness of him, his legs, his mouth, the bright nerve of him sitting in my office like he had every right to say what he had said.
I set the book on the desk. “This is inappropriate.”
Julian glanced at the book, then back at me. “Talking?”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
“Then say it.”
I laughed once, sharp and humorless. “You don’t want me to say it.”
“I think I do.”
“You think this is a game.”
“No.” His voice changed. Lower. “I don’t.”
That stopped me.
He stood, and the room tightened around him.
Julian was not as tall as me, but close enough that I noticed. He had the lean build of a man who knew what his body could do, not heavy, not soft, just restless muscle beneath that sweater. He stepped toward my desk, slow, and placed his notebook on top of the essays.
I looked down at it. “Move that.”
“You haven’t even read the question.”
“There isn’t a question.”
“Sure there is.”
He opened the notebook.
One sentence sat in the middle of the page, written in black ink.
What happens when the thing a man wants is the thing that ruins him?