One Last Time

Doctor Rhian Morgan pulled her long red hair into a tight ponytail, as she always did before class, and gave her reflection one more look using her cellphone’s camera. While her students and associates in the English department would most likely describe her as strong-willed, driven, and intense, the truth was that Doctor Morgan was self-conscious, especially with how she looked.

She knew she was pretty. Plenty of men had told her in her adult life. Her pale, blemish-free skin, her red, puffy lips. Men particularity were taken by her amble bosom, a genetic gift that all her sisters enjoyed. But still, when she thought of herself, Rhian heard the voices of the mean girls in middle school, all those years earlier, teasing mercilessly.

It affected her more than she wanted to admit. She had, in fact, found herself holding back from relationships because she never really trusted that her partners found her attractive. Sure, they’d say it, but she never believed it. Why would they stay when there were so many women more beautiful than her? It was better to reject them before they had a chance to reject her.

It didn’t really matter that much. Of late Rhian had been convinced that her forays into romance were distractions, something she should put aside to focus on work. It wasn’t as if there wasn’t lots to do. She had papers to grade (her TA was useless that year), lectures to prepare, and her book, her passion project, was only half written. If she could just remove the distraction of men from her life, she would be in a much better place.

The door opened and students began to file in. That class, a new Science Fiction literature class she had convinced the Dean to green light, was popular. Most had signed up thinking that it would be a cakewalk, but already some students were falling behind. One such student walked in the door.

Tim Thompson. Doctor Morgan had held high hopes for the boy when he first showed up in her class, wearing a cute leather skirt and crop top. She often did that, assuming that the attractive students would do well in her classes, but Tim wasn’t meeting her expectations.

Oh, he was meeting her attractiveness expectations, that was for sure. His jeans, extremely low cut, extremely tight, not only showed off his top of his panties when he bent over, but perfectly contoured his penis in the front. His face was, as usual, immaculately done up. Where do these young people learn so many beauty skills? One day she might get the courage to ask.

Sitting in the front row, he opened his notebook ready to take notes. He was keen, but he was failing. In fact, at the end of the class, Rhian was planning on handing his paper on the influence of the expressionists on early science fiction cinema back to him with a failing grade. He had failed to understand that this class was not a film studies class. She’s never seen such a misstep before. This was the final nail in his scholastic coffin. He would not be invited to continue in the class, and he would have to meet with an academic advisor to see if he would be allowed to remain in the English program.

It broke her heart, really, to see such an eager student go. He did seem to love the subject, but he was unable to grasp what she was trying to teach. A guy like him, though, would be fine. Maybe university wasn’t for him. Maybe he could try to lean into his strengths… modelling perhaps?

The last student came in and she called for the class’ attention. They had a lot to get through, ideas to build upon, things they would need to know to so that the rest of the material that year would make sense. Had she the forethought, she would have pulled Tim aside and let him know earlier, so that he could at least avoid sitting through a lecture that would have no bearing on his academic future.

Oh well, one last class won’t hurt him. And besides, it wouldn’t hurt her to have a little eye-candy in the front row, one last time.