I lift my eyebrows, turning toward Oliver, who looks like he wants to sink into the ground.
“You’ve told your parents about me, Ollie?”
“He’s told us, too,” Aaron says, grinning. “He didn’t say you have tats, though.”
Cheryl sighs, leaning over the kitchen island. “Aaron, if you so much as get a microscopiclinetattooed on your skin before you’re 18, I will have failed as a mother. Hell, make it 25. Your brain needs to fully form before you make those decisions.”
“Niko’s not 25, and he has good tattoos,” Aaron protests.
Cheryl looks over at me, putting a hand to her mouth for a moment. “Shit. I didn’t mean any offense by that, Niko.” She comes over and whispers in my ear so that Aaron can’t hear. “Your tattoosarevery beautiful. I just don’t want my fourteen-year-old getting any ideas.”
I nod. “Understand completely.”
Oliver is running his hands through his hair, putting them down flat on the kitchen island, then moving them back up to his hair again, adorably nervous.
“I told them we started dating a few weeks ago,” he admits to me. “I didn’t tell themall about you, though.”
“He said you’re popular on Instagram. Wouldn’t give me your account, though,” Emily says with a sly grin. “Ollie has had me and Aaron blocked on Insta for a while now.”
“Yeah, because you two should be focusing on school, not social media.”
Victor’s shrewd eyes are still peering at me from behind his glasses, and I definitely feel like I’m being sussed out.
“So,” he says, crossing his arms and leaning on the kitchen counter. “Oliver tells us you went to Morningview Prep. That’s a great school.”
“I wasn’t the greatest prep school student, but yes. I graduated.”
“We almost considered Morningview for our kids, too. Settled on Benning because it’s a lot closer, and still an academic titan.”
“Dad used to be a corporate lawyer, and now he’s a professor,” Oliver explains. “He likes, ah, school-related stuff.”
“What are you majoring in, Niko?” Victor asks.
“Still undeclared. I considered photography, and psychology. But I’m really not sure yet.”
No ideas for careers, either.
If I don’t ever make it as a model, I’m out of fucking ideas.
Because until my brother begged for me to get into Crimson… I wasn’t going to go to college at all.
“Ollie’s wanted to be a professor since he was young,” Cheryl adds, a warm smile on her face.
I turn to him, suddenly flooded with a strange feeling.
Guilt, almost.
I’ve never even once thought to ask Oliver what his major was, or what he wanted to do with his life. When I look at Oliver now, I can see it so clearly. He’d be an incredible professor.
He’s patient.
Smart.
Sensitive to the needs of people around him.
He’d also make the hottest goddamn professor on Earth, and I can picture students in the class endlessly forming crushes on him while he’d cluelessly just think they werethatinterested in the subject matter.
You want to be a professor.