Chapter 3: The Graduate and the Grad Bar
The Anchor’s neon sign flickered against the window as David nursed his third bourbon, the former student across from him—Claire, twenty-eight now, structural engineer, sharp as a fresh pencil—laughing at his old department stories with her knee pressed warm against his under the bar. She’d been flirting since her senior year, and now, no longer his student, she let her fingers walk up his forearm and asked, “Does it bother you? That she’s fucking someone else right now?” He swallowed the burn and said, “I don’t know—but I’m here, and I’m not leaving,” and the truth of it sat between them like a shot glass he couldn’t knock over. They made it to her car in the parking lot, windows fogging while his hands pushed under her blouse and her mouth sucked a bruise into his neck, her breath hitching when he palmed her bare tit and pinched the nipple hard. He realized with a jolt that he wasn’t just tolerating this arrangement—he was starving too—so he unzipped his jeans, pulled out his cock, and shoved her head down into his lap, gasping “fuck yes” as she swallowed him whole while the jukebox inside played some old love song through the bar’s open door.