Sneaking Candy Page 2

  “Nothing like being early,” she said, walking down the long, gray-carpeted aisle in between the rows of seats.

  It had been Amanda who’d given me the idea to write as Candy when I first moved here three months ago. I was lamenting how I would have to beg for change on the overpass to pay my rent past October. I’d had a padded bank account when I got to Miami, thanks to college graduation gifts, but that would only last so long.

  It was Amanda who had said, “Duh, you’re a writer. Why don’t you write a book?”

  “It can take years.” I breathed. “To get an agent, a publisher to take you on; I don’t have years.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “Like one of these.”

  We were sitting next to each other on the couch in our living room. She’d clicked on her phone and passed it to me. Her Kindle app was filled with book covers featuring guys with abs as taut as stretched rubber bands or that highlighted a sexy item like a knotted tie or a Martini glass.

  I kept scrolling and found covers with couples who looked like they were about to do it and couples who looked like they just had, twenty-seven times in a row.

  “You can write it yourself and sell it yourself. Lots of people are,” she said.

  “What are these books about?” I asked.

  “What else? Trying to have sex, having sex, having more sex.” She grinned. “And falling in love. You know, the good stuff.”

  I continued scrolling. There had to be a hundred books, all with covers that screamed in their own way, Let’s get it on.

  “You really haven’t heard about these?” She frowned.

  I guess I sort of had, but I was also a writing student—we tended to do our best to ignore what the public was actually reading. “What if no one buys it?” I asked.

  “Get out your notebook and a pen.” She sighed and leaned toward me. “I have a few stories in my fornication files I know would sell.”

  I spent the night taking notes and two weeks devouring as many books as I could on her Kindle. With my muse fully aroused, my first book, Couch Surfer, was written and self-published in two months.

  Couch Surfer, inspired by Amanda’s love of surfing and men, was about the only female surfer and lifeguard stuck—or not so stuck—for the summer in a house full of guy surfers and lifeguards.

  Amazingly, the book started to take off. Super supportive bloggers posted reviews and invited me to do interviews and guest posts. I got e-mails and messages on Twitter and on Facebook from fans. I sold books. Had what anyone from the outside would consider real success. I hadn’t hit a bestseller list or anything, but I had been amazed that even one person had bought my book, let alone enough for me to pay my rent.

  Amanda heaved her bag on the desk in front of me. She had more in there than most people had in their basements. She was the only person who knew my secret, and with her stories as stimulation, she was my biggest fan.

  “Professor Dylan doesn’t like it when I’m late,” I said.

  “I thought you enjoyed when he punished you,” she said, using her I’m talking to Candy Sloane voice.

  “In your dreams, Mandy,” I replied, pulling out the nickname for when she used her I’m talking to Candy Sloane voice. Sometimes when we got really drunk we would toast, “Mandy and Candy against the world!”

  Okay, fine, more than sometimes.

  “No.” She paused dramatically. “In your dreams.” She paused and started laughing. “No, you’re right, in mine.”

  Amanda knew about my almost-kiss with Professor Dylan. She also knew writing as Candy, more than studying as Candice, was probably what had been fueling my thoughts about it becoming an actual one. Maybe it had been fueling the belief that it had ever even been an almost-kiss in the first place.

  I watched a student enter, his face typical of the first day: deer-in-the-headlights eyes, swivel headed, and backpack laden. I looked up and nodded my you’re in the right place nod. My students always seemed scared, but they weren’t much younger than I was. The only real difference between us, besides me being in grad school, was that I could drink legally.

  He sat down in the second-to-last row and Amanda moved closer to me, put her hand on my desk, and leaned in.

  “You see him today?”

  “Syllabi review,” I said, rolling my eyes. I didn’t have to say anything else. Amanda knew our history. The one I fantasized about and the real one.

  “Sexy,” she said. “No wonder you’re all red in the face.”

  I blew out a pfft. “I just forgot to put on sunscreen this morning.”

  “Because you didn’t want to smell like a Coppertone advertisement for your meeting,” she pressed.

  “Shut up.” I usually didn’t care if Amanda gave me crap about Professor Dylan, but there was a student sitting in the room. Even if he was too far away to hear us, I was his professor. There were things he should think about me, even if they weren’t true.

  For instance, that I didn’t have what might be considered an unhealthy attraction to my professor.

  “Whatever,” she said, rubbing at a smudge on her white shorts.

  “Want to have dinner later?” I asked, eyeing a couple more students flurrying in.

  “I’ll pick up Reggie’s,” she said.

  “Again?” I huffed. Reggie’s was a dive around the corner from our apartment. It had decent food, but it was greasy enough to give you and anyone who could smell your food a coronary.

  She turned her fingers into tweezers. “I’m this close to a date with the guy who works the counter.”

  “Wow, free Reggie’s for your whole life,” I said, making my eyes wide. “Lucky.”

  “He’s in a band,” she explained. “He has dreams beyond Reggie’s.”

  “Reggie has dreams beyond Reggie’s.”

  “One of these nights, you’re going to tell me you’re having dinner with the professor.” She wiggled her eyebrows for effect. Amanda was adept at changing the subject. She loved talking about my romantic foibles but hated talking about hers.

  “I’d be skipping class to get waxed if that were the case,” I said, playing along.

  “On the first day?” She put her palm to her throat in fake shock. “Candice Salinas.”

  “A girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.” I shrugged.

  She hoisted herself up onto the desk and crossed her tanned legs. “I’d like to see that note on the door.” She held her hands up and pushed them forward like a palms-out breaststroke. “Class postponed due to Brazilian.”

  “Who said I’d get a Brazilian? There are a lot of other styles available.”

  “Nice to know all your research is good for something.” Her green eyes sparkled. I’d tried to describe them before and the best I could come up with was green-apple Jolly Rancher.

  I heard him before I saw him—the clearing of his throat, the swish of his corduroy pants, and the soft slap of his plaid Converse All-Stars.

  “Is this how you prepare for class, Candice?” Professor Dylan asked from just behind Amanda.

  She jumped and stood at attention, as if we were two schoolgirls who had been caught smoking in the bathroom—which, minus the cigarette part, I guess we kind of were. It always felt weird when he talked to me like that, like he was trying to prove he was an adult. Demand respect for the four years he had on me.

  “Professor Dylan,” I said, standing, too. The red Amanda had said she could see on my face must have been scarlet.

  He turned his wrist to check his watch. “You have a class about to start.” He said it like I didn’t know—more of his adult act.

  “Right,” I said, sitting back down and shuffling the stories I would be workshopping that day. I put them over my unchanged syllabi, picked them up vertically, and tapped them against the table to make it more official or something. I could feel myself starting to sweat.

  Amanda got the hell out of there without saying good-bye to either of us. I didn’t blame her; I would have loved to have been able to e
scape what was coming next. I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket with a text I knew would say, Show him your stripes, Candy.

  Oh, how I wished I could. If I were one of Candy’s characters, I would have sat him down in my chair and slithered on top of him to spend the time until class started making his heart sprint around in his chest, the way he made mine.

  But no, I was about to be punished, and not at all in a fun way.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, trying to act like I didn’t care.

  Professor Dylan stared at me, possibly because he could tell I was edgy from his presence. I could feel him breathing above me. “I’m observing you.”

  “But it’s the first day,” I said, squinting with a question even though I knew it was because of what had happened earlier in his office. He didn’t believe I would change the syllabus, and now he would see he was right because I hadn’t.

  I should have gone for a latte and never come back.

  “No better time,” he said, his face agonizingly stoic.

  “I just saw you,” I stalled, wishing I could move the letters on the syllabus around with my mind, so at least half of the people on it would have a penis like he’d requested.

  “And that was such a pleasure,” he said, lengthening the word, “I came back for more.” He walked all the way to the back row of the lecture hall and sat down.

  Oh, screw me.

  And not the Candy “screw me,” either. I was screwed. I’d defied him and now he would know.

  The rest of the students piled in. Laptops hit desks and opened. The ones who volunteered to send their work ahead of time to be critiqued the first day turned and saw Professor Dylan, either exhilarated or terrified he would be in class to hear it. The great Anthony Dylan, the reason most of them probably came to school here if they wanted to be serious writers. The reason I had come to the University of Miami. But I knew he wasn’t here to critique them; he was here to critique me.

  He was here to bust me—another of Candy’s favorite words with its most unfavorite meaning.

  Usually class was uneventful. I was Professor Dylan’s teaching assistant during summer session, too, and even though this was the first day of a new class, I knew the drill. At least one story with serious promise to critique, one terribly awful one you could never say was terribly awful because otherwise the author would drop your class, and one that was neither promising nor terrible.

  The promising ones were the ones that kept me going, made me want to help them be better writers. Made me want to be a professor.

  After critiques, we’d spend the last ten minutes assigning the chapters for the book we were reading.

  I’d have to skip that part, because with Professor Dylan here this would be anything but uneventful. He was here to make sure I did what he’d told me to do. I put the syllabi back in my bag and started class, aware he was watching me. Aware his sharp blue eyes were trying to cut through me like shards of glass. Even with him all the way at the back of the room, I could feel the heat start rising from my thighs. Ignoring him would be difficult.

  I did all the first-day stuff: introduced myself as Candace Salinas, first-year MFA student. You may have seen my work in the University of Miami literary magazine.

  Hopefully you will never see my work in Dirty Girls Bedding Bad Boys, the anthology I just wrote a Candy short story for.

  The creative writing students I taught all thought they were going to make it. It was what they were paying for. It was what I had thought, too, during undergrad. Sure, I still believed someday I might make it, and in a lot of ways I already had, but not in the way anyone at this university would take seriously.

  When I let the students know I would be e-mailing the syllabus so we could get to the critiques as quickly as possible, I saw Professor Dylan smirk.

  I wanted to smack it off his face.

  I heard the familiar click of Professor Dylan’s pen and the scribble of him starting to

  write, no doubt cataloging my insubordination. We worked our way through the first critique without him saying a word, then the second and the third. He didn’t stop taking notes until class was over.

  Until the last student had finally left.

  He watched from the back of the room, studying me. This wasn’t the first time he’d observed me in class, but it was the first time since we’d both seen each other in more skin than clothes. It was the first time since he’d realized I had completely disregarded what he’d asked me to do. For a professor his age, making sure people did what he asked them to do was one of the only ways he could demand respect.

  So I was in serious trouble.

  “How’d I do?” I asked, trying to play it cool. I walked over to him, wondering which of us would be the first to break. Be the first to admit our meeting that morning had been, academically at least, a huge waste of time.

  “How do you think you did?” he asked, not giving anything away. He had a patience that was exasperating.

  “I would have done a lot better without you here inspecting me,” I said. “I’m anxious enough on the first day as it is.”

  “You’re a pro. You shouldn’t be anxious about anything.”

  A pro—almost as bad as being called smart and talented. I stared at his shoulders, knew that under his shirt they were tan and broad.

  “Besides, I can come and observe you anytime I want.” He waited before adding, “It’s in your TA contract.”

  He was really saying he owned me—saying because of what I’d done I should have been kissing his ass, but I wasn’t in the mood.

  “Are you going to type those up first? Or give them to me as a draft?” I held my hand out for what I assumed would be a scathing account of my teaching session. At least it wasn’t an academic warning.

  “No,” he said, surprising me, “these are my notes.”

  “For?” I asked, my pulse starting to flutter. I guess he was going to write me up. Maybe I should have been kissing his ass.

  “A book I’m writing,” he said.

  Oh, hell to the no.

  He hadn’t come here to bust me. He had come here because something that had happened in our meeting earlier had inspired him.

  I didn’t even want to know how he would describe me, my class, and this room with me in it. I felt the sick tickle of nausea bubble up in my throat. I wasn’t egotistical enough to think I was the only one he’d been taking notes on, either. He’d come here to observe us all. Steal whatever traits, lines of dialogue, and mannerisms he wanted and bend them to his will like a magician—an evil, although terribly-hot-without-his-shirt-on magician.

  I twisted my lips, forcing myself to hold back words. I wanted to say he was being unfair, but I’d been unfair myself to my students, my family, my friends. Using the parts of them I needed when I needed them. Of course, I was never as blatant as he was.

  I’d never shoved it in their faces.

  Two can play at that game, I heard Candy’s voice say.

  I walked back to the desk at the front of the room, took out the small notebook I always kept in my bag, and started to write. I wrote about white-sand beaches and tanned chests and wet swimsuit trunks clinging like bungee material to asses. I wrote about his hair, the color of wheat, the color of grain, and his eyes stormy oceans.

  “Candice?” he asked. I’d never had the guts to just walk away from him before.

  “Busy,” I said, not looking up.

  “We were having a conversation,” he said.

  I held up my finger: the sign of one minute, the sign that what I’m occupied with is more important than you. I continued to write.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Taking my own notes from our day at the beach,” I said. I looked up, put my pen to my lip. “What size waist are you?” I asked, feeling Candy’s brazen strength fill my skin.

  He was silent for seconds, for minutes, for what could have been fictional hours.

  I’d done it—rendered him speechless.
>
  But I should have known Professor Anthony Dylan was never speechless. Instead, he surprised me by answering, “Thirty-two.” Then adding, “You can show me your updated syllabus tomorrow during office hours; that should give you enough time to change it as I requested.” His sneakers made the synonym of an echo as he left the lecture hall.

  He stopped in the doorway. He wasn’t done. “I’d also like you to clear your schedule to observe my office hours for the next month.” He paused as if he wanted me to hear each syllable of what he said next. “All my office hours.”

  Excellent, not only would I have to be up before the blazing Miami sun was, that also meant I would have to sit in his office every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning and try not to think about our almost kiss.

  Yup. He screwed me.

  Chapter Three

  I’d really wanted to ask what his jock size was, but I had to keep my teaching fellowship.

  Candy might have paid my bills, but my fellowship paid for school, and I still had two years in this program to go. Two years to keep convincing the students I taught I was someone they wanted to learn from and convincing Professor Dylan I was someone he wanted to teach.

  Two years to hopefully prove to my parents the choice I’d made for my profession wasn’t a total blunder. I would need Professor Dylan as a recommendation to get into a PhD program to do that.

  Candy, as much as Mandy and I loved her, had the capacity to ruin it all.

  It was getting harder and harder to keep her hidden, though. In moments like the one in the lecture hall, it was clear she’d started bleeding into my real life. It was bound to happen eventually—I spent all my free time writing as her. If I wanted to get specific about it, it was like Candy was the devil on my shoulder who never went away.

  I just had to keep my eyes on the PhD prize. On the only “Doctor” I wanted to be. I hoped that would be enough for my parents. When I thought about them now, the writer in me saw them literally cutting me out of their lives like the surgeons they were.

  Sure, they had always been hard on me, but they had also always been there. Had being the (no pun intended) operative word.