I noticed him much later than everyone else in our classroom. I'd been busy rummaging through my bag for another pencil after lending mine to one of my classmates, Ella. Sensing a shift in the atmosphere, I immediately looked up and froze.
There, sitting at the edge of the shiny oak desk in the middle of the room, stood a tall, tan man with ocean green eyes and tousled, curly blond hair. He had his arms folded across his chest and his feet crossed at the ankles, no doubt loving the attention the entire room was giving him. I was sure we would all have heard a pin clatter on the floor if someone were to have dropped one.
The man we all had our eyes glued to was a rare sight at Grimwald College. Not because there weren't other handsome teachers working here, never mind that most of them were middle-aged or several years older than us and looked nothing like him, but because he was so young he could have passed as one of us.
If you had asked me, he could easily have played a Greek god in any movie about the Roman Empire, or he could have been a model. I was almost certain he was.
Trying not to draw any attention to myself, I slowly sat up in my seat. I could have sworn he flashed his glossy, white teeth at me before going back to surveying the room. Gosh, even his stature was beautiful. It was very clear from his toned legs to muscly arms, that he worked out. It was hard to tear my eyes away from him, and my cheeks were burning from our brief eye contact.
I was so caught up in staring that I had barely noticed the teacher who'd escorted him into the room, and I probably wasn't the only one. She made her presence known by clearing her throat.
"This is Philipé Weston. He will be teaching your English Literature class for the following eight weeks, in preparation for your upcoming English Literature exam." Immediate chatter filled the room, but Mrs. Hill, the teacher who had just spoken, asked everyone to quiet down. She was a 5"2 stony-faced woman who hardly smiled, and the only colours she wore were grey and black — her hair always pulled back into a tight bun at the back of her head. I was surprised her hairline hadn't begun receding by now.
I scoffed, which earned me a stern look from her. How was anyone meant to learn anything, let alone focus, when the presence of this new teacher alone was distracting?
"I'll leave them in your hands, Philipé, and please don't hesitate to report back to me if anyone misbehaves," Mrs. Hill said, turning her attention to our new teacher.
"He'll be alright," came a voice from the back. Laughter.
"He better be," she responded, raising an eyebrow in the direction of the comment.
Mrs. Hill offered Philipé a sympathetic smile, as if warning him of the terrors we might bring him, before she exited the room. It was, quite frankly, the most genuine smile I had ever seen on her. Maybe Philipé's charms extended beyond her barriers as well.
"I think Mrs. Hill gave me a pretty wonderful introduction, don't you?" He winked at me and I felt my cheeks flush again. I wondered if anyone else had caught that.
A hand shot up a few desks away from me. It belonged to the voice from earlier. The class' joker Alistair.
"Yes?" Philipé put his hands in his pockets, probably as a defence mechanism. I couldn't tell.
"So, are you some kind of Spanish prince or something?"
"No, I'm not." The new teacher's brows knit together in confusion. "Why do you ask?"
"What British person names their kid Philipé if they're not related to the royal family or something?"
"Leave the man alone, smart ass." Someone — I wasn't sure who — threw a piece of crumpled paper at Alistair's head, and the whole class erupted with laughter.
The new teacher could barely hide his smile. "The weekly plan says you're currently reading Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. Lucky for you," he went through his bag, brought out a book that looked like it had been stuck to the back of a car and pulled across a motorway, and held it to his chest, "I've brought my own battered copy of it with me, and — "
"Ooo, the prince reads. How romantic." More laughter.
Once the commotion died down, Philipé made us open our books to the page we had left off from the last time. "Right. Let's turn to chapter twelve, shall we?"
When Philipé focused his attention on me and asked if I could read the first three pages, my palms began to sweat, so much so that turning the pages seemed like something I'd be unable to do. Finally, once I managed to reach the right page, I began to read.
My heart leapt into my throat the moment I looked up and locked eyes with Philipé. He was towering over my desk with his arms crossed and a wide smile on his face. Those ocean green eyes looked even deeper and more beautiful up close.
"That was beautiful …?"
"Jade," I responded.
"Jade. Great, that was beautifully read, Jade." He turned to the rest of the class, as if looking for his next victim, and I fought with myself not to see our frequent eye contact as anything other than a teacher-student interaction.
"Okay, Mr. Smarty pants." He was addressing Alistair who looked mortified. "Since you've had some good jokes, why don't you read the next passage, and then we can discuss it?" It was rare for a teacher to ask Alistair to read. There was silence.
"It's okay if you don't want to. I'll ask someone else to read." Philipé said, flashing his perfect smile again.
I had no idea how I would make it through the next eight weeks without developing a serious crush on this new teacher who made me feel all kinds of strange things from just one look, but it was already looking very bad.