Love Lessons

He turned just in time to snatch the basketball out of the air, spin and sink it into a basket above his head. Nothing but net.

Three male voices groaned loudly. Two others cheered. Mike’s three-on-three teammates slapped him on the back and offered upraised hands for high fives.

“And that would be…game!” Bob Sharp performed an embarrassingly dorky dance of victory, his near-shoulder-length red hair flying around his square-jawed face.

“Dude.” Mike rolled his eyes. “Chill.”

“Seriously.” Black-haired, green-eyed Brandon Williams, the third member of the winning team, tossed a sweaty towel at Bob. “You’re making us look bad.”

Still joking around with his teammates and opponents—also all friends—Mike moved to a bench at one side of the park basketball court and rooted in his gym bag for his watch. He groaned when he found it. He had lost track of time during the game and now he had ten minutes to shower, change, grab his books and make it to Catherine Travis’s apartment by three o’clock.

He was going to be late.

“Hey, Mike. Wanna go have a beer and watch a game or two?”

“Can’t,” he replied to Bob’s suggestion. “Gotta study.”

Typically, Bob brushed off the excuse. “C’mon, man, you can study later. It’s not like you’ll be grounded if you don’t get an A.”

He laughed heartily at his own joke. Bob still couldn’t understand why Mike had decided to go back to school almost ten years after dropping out of his first attempt at higher education. Bob was perfectly happy driving a delivery truck and stocking snack machines in local businesses, spending his leisure hours hanging with friends and chasing women.

Until a few months ago, Mike had been pretty much content with that lifestyle himself. Now that he had decided he wanted more, some of his friends seemed determined to try to talk him out of it.

“C’mon, Mike, have a beer with us,” Brandon seconded. “It’s too nice a day to study.”

“Sorry, guys. Can’t. I’m supposed to meet someone at three for a study session, and I’m already running late.”

“Oh, ho.” Bob gave a sudden, knowing grin. “That explains your hurry to hit the books. So who is she?”

“Just someone who offered to help me get ready for a test Monday. And I’ve really got to go, guys. See you later, okay?”

“You’re holding out on us, Clancy,” Bob called after him. “We want to meet this chick.”

As he jumped into his pickup and threw it into gear, Mike wondered how Dr. Travis would feel about having herself referred to as a “chick.” He wouldn’t think she’d care for it much.

Dr. Travis. It felt sort of odd to refer to her that way. Made her sound like one of his stuffy professors, rather than the attractive young woman she was.

Glancing at the dashboard clock, he saw that it was almost straight-up three o’clock. He was definitely going to be late.

He had been criticized quite often for his rather fluid concept of time. His friends had pretty much gotten used to never knowing when to expect him. He hoped Dr. Travis wasn’t one of those clock-watching types who got upset about that sort of thing.

But when she opened her door for him at twenty minutes after three, she didn’t look at all annoyed. In fact, strangely enough, she seemed almost apologetic.

“It occurred to me a few minutes ago that I never gave you my phone number,” she said, motioning him inside. “There was no way for you to let me know you’d been held up. I hope you didn’t have to rush too hard to get here because of my oversight.”

She really was blaming herself because he was late. Interesting. “It’s my fault for letting time get away from me,” he assured her. “I hope it didn’t cause you any inconvenience.”

“No. I don’t have any other plans for the afternoon.” She motioned toward her small, rectangular dining table. “I thought we could spread your books and notes on the table. Can I get you a glass of fresh lemonade before we get started?”

“That sounds great, Dr. Travis. If it’s no trouble.”

She smiled and shook her head. “I’d like a glass, myself. And please call me Catherine.”

He watched surreptitiously as she moved into the kitchen. Wearing an olive-green camp shirt open over a khaki-colored pullover and khaki slacks, she looked even younger than she had the last time he’d seen her. He still couldn’t really guess her age, though he would bet she wasn’t more than a couple of years on either side of thirty. Very close to his own age.

She must have earned her doctorate at a young age. One of those brainy, ambitious, superfocused types, apparently. But not an intellectual snob. She wasn’t giving off any vibes that suggested she considered herself superior to a twenty-eight-year-old maintenance man with only a few hours of college credit behind him.

Remembering a recent, painful encounter with a woman who had made no secret of her disdain for his current status, he winced.

Something touched his leg. He glanced down just as Catherine’s cat meowed a greeting. “Well, hello, Norman. I wondered where you were hiding.”

Returning to the table with two glasses of lemonade and a plate of brownies, Catherine slid into the chair beside him. “He’s been asleep on my bed. He has to have at least ten naps a day or he gets cranky.”

Chuckling, Mike scratched Norman’s ears, eliciting a loud purr of approval. He stopped scratching to reach for his lemonade. “This looks great. Homemade brownies?”

Catherine shrugged. “Just the box-mix kind. I was having a snack attack earlier.”

Judging by her slender frame, she didn’t give in to “snack attacks” that often. But since he didn’t feel quite right about checking out her figure when she was offering to help him study, he pulled his gaze away from her and snagged a brownie from the platter.

Catherine motioned toward the textbook and notebook he had tossed on the table. “You said you’re studying for a test on glycolysis?”

He nodded and turned his thoughts to business. “Yeah. I brought my study sheets and the practice test the professor gave us. I tried to take the practice test yesterday, but I didn’t get very far with it.”

“Let me look at the test and your notes and I’ll see if I can help you understand it better.” She gave a self-deprecating little smile that almost took him back to noticing-how-attractive-she-was territory. “Of course, it’s been a few years since I’ve been tested on this stuff, so I might have to refresh myself a bit.”

Norman leaped onto Mike’s knees and head-butted his chin. Mike patted him absently.

“Just set him down if he’s bugging you,” Catherine advised. “He takes a hint fairly well—for a short time, anyway.”

“He’s fine.” Mike opened his notebook. “Here’s the sample test….”

“Okay, see if you can answer this one.” Catherine said almost an hour later. “Regulation of glycolysis takes place by the a, allosteric inhibition of phosphofructokinase by excess ATP, or b, conversion of dihydroxyacetone phosphate to glyceraldehyde phosphate?”

Mike blinked a couple of times, then frowned in concentration. “That would be…the first one, I think. A.”

She smiled at him. “Yes. You’re right.”

He made a production of wiping his brow, his self-satisfied smile so endearing that she had to swallow before asking the next question. “Complete this sentence. When yeast cells metabolize glucose anaerobically, the end product is—?”

“Pyruvic acid.” He must have seen from her expression that he’d given the wrong answer. He corrected it immediately. “Ethyl alcohol.”

She smiled again. “Correct. You’re doing very well, Mike. You should have no problem passing this test. Would you like to practice the essay questions? I can busy myself with something else while you work on them and then give my opinion of your answers when you’ve finished. Of course, you know that essay questions are often graded subjectively, so your professor might judge your responses differently than I would.”

“Hey, I’d really appreciate that, if you’ve got the time. The essay questions really worry me. It’s been almost ten years since I’ve had to write essays, and to be honest, I wasn’t very good at it back then.”

“No problem. I have a couple of journal articles I need to read. I can do that while you write. I’ll let you know when your allotted time is up.”

He nodded and drained the last of his second glass of lemonade, then bent industriously over his notebook.