College Omega's Secret Baby (MPreg College Book 1) Page 7

  Alan kneeled on the floor, between Os’s toweled feet. It was like a dream for Os: lying back on a huge bed, seeing a gorgeous man appearing at bedside between his outstretched legs, and that man massaging his feet. The hot towels felt like warm, loving embraces on his exhausted feet. At nineteen, Os never had foot pains before. But now he was pregnant. Everything was different. The everyday aches and pains Os normally heard about only from older people were now his own in pregnancy.

  Alan’s hands pushed and squeezed the soles of Os’s feet through the hot towels. He wiggled the toes back and forth and rotated Os’s feet clockwise, then counterclockwise. Os lay back on the soft down pillow and closed his eyes, almost falling asleep.

  Then a crying baby sound: Os’s phone rang. Os woke, and Alan looked up from between Os’s feet.

  “Oswald Offenbach?” the female voice asked. Whoever it was was stumbling with Os’s name. Maybe somehow the baby-supplies marketers had already found out he was pregnant.

  “Yeah. Who’s this?”

  “I’m Belinda Jones from the Springville State Sentinel. We saw each other today at the omega dorm. I just wanted to ask you a few questions.”

  “No thanks. I’m not interested in answering any questions.”

  “So, can I put you on the record as saying no comment?”

  “I’m not interested in answering any questions. Including that one.” Os sighed.

  “Ok, thanks. Can you put me in touch with Professor Archer? His office line isn’t picking up. Do you have his home number?” The way she asked it, she suspected something. Of course she suspected something: she’d seen Os and Alan descending from Os’s dorm room to Alan’s car. She’d have to be blind not to suspect something was going on.

  “I’m not interested in answering any questions.” Os clicked the phone off again, then set it to mute.

  “Who was asking you all those questions you don’t want to answer?” Alan’s blue eyes shot up to ask. Os could’ve answered any question for Alan. And it felt tremendously better to know that Alan was with him. Alan couldn’t do anything about the gossipy college reporters, of course, but he could provide moral support to Os. And Alan was great at providing moral support.

  “The same reporter we saw at the dorm. They are sniffing around, I guess.” Os shrugged as best he could while still lying down and trying to take a nap. Alan sighed deeply and looked down at the floor as he massaged Os’s feet.

  “Os. I just want you to know: no matter what, I’m with you. I’m yours. Even if they find out about our relationship and our baby. I’m sticking with you for this. Ok?”

  “More than ok.” Os stretched his legs out further. “I love you. And I’m always here for you too. I’m only a nineteen-year-old freshman, but any way I can be, I’m always here for you.”

  Alan crouched up, half-crawled onto the bed, and planted a small kiss on Os’s pregnant belly. Then he lay his face on it. Even through his shirt, Os felt the warmth of Alan’s face. Somehow, everything was going to be ok.

  Seven

  In second-quarter human genetics and reproduction, Os was still Alan’s star student in public, and his beloved omega husband in private. Nobody knew. At least as far as Alan knew, nobody knew.

  Os said he’d vaguely mentioned to his dorm-mates that he had found an apartment off-campus. That was a decent enough excuse, but according to Os, those dorm-mates had expressed more interest in Os’s exact whereabouts than they’d ever expressed in him before. Os had been wearing those extra-large hoodies, windbreakers, granny sweaters, anything to hide his growing pregnancy belly. But besides the growing belly being more and more difficult to hide, Alan saw Os’s occasional temper outbursts toward his classmates piqued more than a few eyebrows. He’d even seen Os’s classmates surreptitiously hand-gesture a pregnant belly to one another when Os was in the midst of one of his temper outbursts before or after class.

  Alan’s colleagues, too, seemed to drop seemingly innocuous questions about Alan’s friendship with his star student. Alan did his best to answer the questions calmly and offhandedly, just as if he was being asked about his conversations with any other student. Oh, yeah, they had coffee together, yeah, they sometimes talk about the class over lunch. But it was nothing appropriate, as far as Alan told his colleagues. And it certainly wasn’t human reproduction in action, as far as Alan’s colleagues were told.

  That chilly February afternoon, Alan declared class to be over, and watched the students filter out. Of course Os would walk out of the class together with the other students. They’d meet later at the Starbucks adjacent to campus, and Alan could drive him home.

  After the students were gone, Alan gathered his things from the lectern and walked out. Immediately outside the classroom door stood a uniformed campus security officer. And next to the security officer stood Bill Bevins, Faculty Dean. One of Alan’s students must’ve gotten up to something no-good. Or maybe gone missing.

  Maybe they’d ask Alan whether he’d seen some student of his over the past few class sessions. those questions always embarrassed him, because he never remembered his students’ attendance, and it felt like a dereliction of duty. That was the thing about teaching undergraduates: the university expected you to be their caretaker. Alan never knew exactly how to do it right. And he knew that whatever the university considered to be the right way, Alan’s relationship with Os wasn’t it.

  “Professor Archer.” The way Bevins said Alan’s name, it sounded more like an announcement than like a greeting.

  “What’s up, Bill. Did one of my precious charges run off without paying their tuition bill? Or am I up for a research prize? Or what?” Alan asked lazily.

  “We just wanted to talk with you about something,” Bevins said. “You mind coming to my office?”

  That was weird. The we especially. And the campus cop. Did they think Alan was about to get violent or something?

  “Sure. Let’s go to your office.” There went Alan, trying to be nonchalant, mister nonchalant himself, the very picture of nonchalance.

  The three walked silently toward the administration office building. Alan racked his mind for what could have been up.

  There was the one flight ticket the previous year for which he’d received a cash refund, which $226 he’d “forgotten” to give back to the university. The university never tracked such things. He was on the verge of coming clean and counting out $226 from his wallet on the walk over. But maybe it wasn’t that. He only needed to stay cool. As cool as he could be.

  Why was the security guy following them into the administration building? Was Alan accused of shoplifting?

  Bevins nodded to the campus security officer, who didn’t go inside Bevins’s office, while Bevins and Alan went inside.

  “Have a seat.” Bevins pointed to the soft office chair on the opposite side of his desk. Bevins got into his own chair without waiting for Alan to sit down. Was the security guy still standing watch outside? Was Bevins going to administer Alan a beating?

  “Ok, first thing.” Bevins raised his chin and looked down at Alan over his own fat, floppy face. “Don’t play tricky. Don’t play dumb.”

  “I haven’t even said anything,” Alan said. He inhaled deeply. Whatever this was, it wouldn’t be good. He calmed himself by imagining holding Os’s hand through this ordeal, whatever the ordeal was going to be, hugging Os closely, feeling Os’s semi-wavy brown hair on his own neck, patting Os’s pregnant belly. He daydreamed of daydreaming about their future baby.

  “There you go again,” Bevins said loudly, snapping Alan out of his daydream-in-a-daydream. “This I went to Harvard, I’m smarter than all of you bullshit of yours.”

  It was weird. In all his time as a professor at Springville State, Alan never mentioned Harvard to anybody even once. Yes, he’d graduated from there, but he let his academic record speak for that. He never mentioned Harvard, much less gloated it over anybody. But it was Bevins and the rest of the administration who brought up Harvard to him, constantly. And
told him that he gloated Harvard over them, when they were the only ones who ever brought up Harvard.

  “Dean Bevins. With all due respect.”

  “This isn’t the Harvard Faculty Club, Archer. You don’t have to talk to me like that.” It seemed Alan couldn’t win either way.

  “Ok. Bill. My first point was that I never brought up Harvard. You’re the one who keeps talking about me having gone to Harvard, me having an attitude from Harvard, et cetera. I mean, and so on. I never brought up Harvard even once.”

  “You just mentioned Harvard four times, Archer.” Bevins shook his head disdainfully. Definitely, Alan couldn’t win.

  “Alright.” Alan was interested in solving problems, not in having picayune verbal wars with this fat-faced administrative monster. “As you said, Bill, this isn’t Harvard. So let’s not talk about Harvard. So what’s the agenda for our meeting?”

  “I just wanted to make it clear that you shouldn’t waste our time playing dumb. Because we know what’s going on. Do you know what I’m talking about, Archer?”

  “You can call me by my first name. That’s Alan. And can you be a bit more specific about what’s going on? Are we talking about Marvin Gaye or what?”

  “Ok. Alan. Unleashing your Harvard wit, I see. What’s going on between you and Oswald Offenbach is what I’m talking about.”

  So it was about Os after all. Somehow that had seemed like both the least likely and the most likely possibility. There was nowhere else for Alan to go with speculating about it now: Os was what the meeting was about.

  “Ok. And more specifically what’s the meeting about?” Alan asked.

  “Alright, Alan,” Bevins said, and exhaled theatrically, as if for the benefit a hidden camera somewhere. Maybe there in fact was one. “Oswald already told us everything. About the inappropriate relationship you’re carrying on with him.”

  “Oswald?” Os snitched him out? That wasn’t unthinkable. Os was young. And for the past few months, Os had been prone to pregnancy-induced temper tantrums. Somehow ill-advisedly reporting their relationship to the university administration could have been one such tantrum.

  “Did you expect to just carry on an inappropriate relationship with a freshman without him complaining to the administration? And to the Sentinel? And to all his friends? And to anybody else within hearing range?” Bevins was chuckling.

  “So—” Alan started to say.

  “Oswald told us everything,” Bevins said, shaking his head in reprimand. “Probably with your Harvard degree and all, Alan, you realize that this is a dismissable offense? You can and will get fired for this.”

  Alan silently nodded. He wished he could tell them that as much as he liked teaching at Springville State, it was no longer all he had in life. But since that was the very thing he was being accused of, it would be touchy, to say the least, to bring up.

  “I’m sorry.” Alan leaned back in the chair. He had to face the repercussions of what he’d done. And Os, as much as Alan loved Os, Os had brought this upon him. “I’m sorry I did things like this. I’m not sorry about my relationship. But I’m sorry this is how you had to find out about it.”

  “Even if we don’t call it a firing, Alan. Even if we don’t call it a firing. Even if we call it a resignation.” Bevins tapped his fingers on his desk, like he was typing on an invisible keyboard. “It’s going to be obvious that you resigned because of a scandal. People put two and two together. It will be a disgrace, Alan. Your academic career — over, in disgrace.”

  “Fine. That’s fine. I’ve got other options.” Alan had to work hard not to smile. Working at OmegaCheck, the maker of pregnancy tests for omegas, would pay much better than teaching. They’d been trying to recruit him for years. There were also the job offers from Harvard — the only university Alan’s parents considered “good enough” for him — but that would’ve been too far away from Os.

  “Oh yeah, OmegaCheck?” Bevins laughed. “Yeah, I’m sure you can go work there. You’d still leave the university in disgrace. Leave academic life in disgrace.”

  Why was Bevins emphasizing the disgrace? It’s not as if Alan could go back in time and take back his relationship with Os. And not as if he’d want to. Emphasizing the disgrace seemed like nothing but a sadistic rubbing-it-in or getting-back-at Alan for some untold slight.

  “Fine. It seems I have no other option, right? Are you emphasizing my academic disgrace just to get your rocks off here?” Alan had never spoken like that to the Dean. But if he was going down in disgrace, he had nothing to lose. “You wanna slap my ass or something, put a ball gag on me? What’s the deal?”

  “There are always options, Alan. There are always options.” Bevins steepled his hands. He looked and sounded like an evil henchman in a cartoon. What the hell were those options? Was he soliciting a bribe? Was he soliciting a blowjob? Alan had seen his share of shady dealings in academia, but he was unprepared for whatever Bevins was trying to do.

  “Ok. Bill. I’m definitely the dumb guy here, because I have no idea what those options are.” Alan really didn’t. If they were out to destroy him, then they were out to destroy him. “Could you edify me please?”

  “Alan, Springville State prides itself on serving all students, but especially serving our most vulnerable students, the omega students.”

  “Yeah. I know that, Bill. I work here too.”

  “Well, maybe you can imagine. A relationship between an alpha professor and one of our freshman omega students doesn’t look good at all. Not good at all.” Bevins said those last words slowly, presumably for emphasis.

  “Looks, always all about looks.” Alan shook his head. He had gone into academia because he thought it was the one place he’d be known for his work and his knowledge, not his looks. Now looks were the focus again for his career, although in a different way.

  “Alan. Did you know that international omega students pay over a hundred thousand dollar a year here in tuition and fees? Ever wonder what’s paying for your fat salary?”

  “I’m vaguely aware of my arguably, arguably fat salary coming from the non-arguably high prices we charge international students, yes.”

  “Alan. What do you think some billionaire parent in China will think when he hears about this? The story is liable to get out, you know. The reporter munchkins are all in a fuss about it. Even the faculty is all in a fuss about it.”

  “I don’t know, Bill. Seriously, I’m not a billionaire parent in China. I have no idea. But I imagine it can’t be good for the University.”

  “That’s correct. Your Harvard PhD must be doing you some good, because you’re correct on that. Your sexual relationship with a freshman omega will definitely not look good for those billionaire parents who fund your salary.”

  “So? You’ve already decided that you’re firing me. I don’t know why we’re discussing all these things.”

  “Alan. The problem is not whatever you and that Oswald kid did. I don’t give a flying fuck how you get your dick wet, ok? You and he are both adults. Between you and me, ok? I don’t give a flying fuck.”

  Well that was interesting. Alan only said, “Oh.”

  “Alan, let me tell you something. Marketing. Billionaire parents. Appearance is reality. The story getting out. That’s what matters.”

  “Yeah, we’ve established that, Bill.”

  “The other thing that matters a lot for our marketing efforts is that you’re here, Alan. You know it very well. You’re famous for your work in studying omega reproductive biology. You and I know that you’re not the students’ on-call physician. You’re not even a physician. You and I know that. But for the parents, having Alan Archer right here on campus is really reassuring for sending their omega sons here.”

  “I could see that.” It was all Alan could say to sound modest. Of course he knew that parents of omegas loved Springville State in part because the famous Alan Archer taught there.

  “So here’s the option I’m offering, Alan. Are you ready?”


  “I’m ready, Bill.”

  Bevins breathed deeply and nodded at Alan emphatically. “We keep you employed here at Springville State. We give you full tenure. We triple your salary. You’ll be making over three hundred K a year. Full tenure, highest-paid professor at Springville State. Sound ok?” Bevins beamed at Alan. He was obviously awaiting an eager acceptance. Bevins resembled a fat guppy waiting to be fed.

  “If that’s the offer, why did you need to bring the campus security officer with you to present it? Were you afraid I’d go crazy with joy?” Alan laughed.

  “We just need your help, Alan.”

  “Aha. I’m sensing a catch.”

  “We need you to firmly deny that you had any relationship with Os Ofenbach. The kid already ratted you out. There’s no use for you to keeping him around. He’s obviously already turned against you.”

  “You want me to deny my relationship? The relationship you just told me a few minutes ago not to deny?”

  “Well, of course in this case, you’d be telling the truth. Because you would have actually ended the relationship. Completely. Full stop. No more contact. We pull him out of your class. We get a campus restraining order preventing him from seeing you. He won’t ever bother you again. Pretty good, right?”

  Alan’s face flushed. Even if Os had ratted him out, even if full tenure and a tripled salary were on the table, Alan wanted no part of what Bevins was offering.

  “I’m not going to dump Oswald like that.”

  “We’ll take care of him,” Bevins said. Alan stared wide-eyed. He felt like he was in a movie and Bevins really was the evil henchman. “I mean, not take care of him take care of him. I mean like give him a nice little scholarship or something in return for him admitting he got pregnant from a one night stand and then decided to blame the pregnancy on his professor.”

  “You guys even know about the pregnancy?”

  “Alan. He told us everything.” Bevins nodded, obviously proud of himself and his investigative abilities, whatever they might have been.