He moved behind the students, slowly, pausing for one, nodding to another, hands at his back, hunching over due to his greater height. His hair fell over his eyes and to Madison’s ire he left it there, as if beckoning someone to come over and smooth the dusty blonde curls away from his face. With his core group of art majors, the “select,” he spent a long time agonizing over what should or shouldn’t go in their god-forsaken senior portfolios. It seemed to Madison that he spent far too much time with those students, the ones who least needed his help. Unlike the pathetically bumbling students who found themselves taking the course to meet their Humanities elective.

Madison rolled the pastel back and forth in her fingers, adding to the pile of bright pink dust at her feet. The powder cascaded gently to her bare toes, coating the flip-flop’s “V” and giving her foot a strange dusty look. She hated pastels, hated art. On the soccer field she was feared and respected, a natural goal-scorer, the ideal leader, driven and determined. On the field she was the object of constant attention, whether it was a routine practice or the scoring moments in a divisional game. And to celebrate after the game there was never any lack of energetic men, or women, to oblige her every whim. But, in this class she felt unnoticed and hopeless; it was not an emotion she was used to feeling.

He moved on to the trio of girls in front of Madison, who burst into a gush over his paintings which had recently been hung in the faculty gallery; almost instantly they went from sucking up to whining about their own lack of ability. Madison crumbled her pastel down to a thin cylinder, watching it frost her toes like pink icing and wondered how long they’d last against her on the field. Two seconds, she told herself, I could whip their ass in two seconds, blindfolded.

“Well, um, over here,” he advised Kristin, ignoring her gawking adoration, “you might want to eliminate some of these distracting verticals, remember, verticals divide. Or, perhaps add a few well placed horizontals, unbox what you’ve got going on in this um, image.”

Madison glanced up briefly, suppressing a smirk. She wouldn’t mind having him add his vertical to her horizontal. She smudged the pink powder on the concrete floor with her big toe, tracing a spectacular fantasy appendage then quickly smearing over it before he noticed. Of all the irritants in this art class being ignored by her professor, every delicious part of him, was the absolute worst.

From under her lashes she saw him step confidently between his groupies, they parted for him like petals opening for the bee, and she tried not to think about his butt. It was so very nice and firm, which she preferred over “meaty,” the term her teammates used when they were actually talking about a fat ass, in her opinion.

“… and please, the foreground means deeper color, more color, stronger color, and get the edges crisp, think contrast…” he continued in that hushed solemn tone he used only when the student’s work was really awful. Madison herself had never heard him talk above a whisper as they stood before one of her “efforts.”

He made a fluid movement with his hand, as if painting in the type of detail he wanted Kristin to consider. He repeated the gesture, with emphasis since Kristin’s cow-eyed look was less than reassuring. “And wrap the little design here around your jar, if this is the jar?” He looked down at Kristin, who blushed, she had been caught up in his conductor-like arm motions. Dumb cunt, Madison thought, all she can think about is his body.

He moved past Kristin’s awkward moment and added, “shadows, don’t neglect your shadows, without them none of it will look solid,” then turned to the other girl’s easel. This time he sighed lightly, moving his hands behind his back.

Madison liked his wrists, covered in that gingery blonde hair that curled out from shirt sleeves, collars and t-shirt necklines. She could see it peeping out at the back of his neck, all fine and wiry, tinged with red. She wondered if it got darker down his belly; did he have red fuzz on his balls too she mused, snapping the pastel in her hand. It fell to the floor with a tiny chinking sound. From over his shoulder he looked downward, to her embarrassed toes, pink with pastel dust. The two pieces of her broken pastel had rolled to a stop at his left heel. Without a word he picked it up and pocketed the pieces. Madison wanted to curl up like her toes and disappear, somewhere, anywhere.

“Now you,” he said heavily, approaching her with some deliberation. The trio of girls blurred into a sour-faced mass behind him, all Madison could see was his looming form. He gave her large sheet of paper a cursory review, his hand playing with the pastel pieces in his pocket. She wiped her dusty hands on her jeans, worried. She had in fact made a few obligatory blue, slashing marks overtop the smeary brown hodge-podge underneath. It hadn’t occurred to her to pick up the colors from the still life of oranges reflected in the large bluish white porcelain jars.

He cleared his throat, “okay, so we have a major improvement over the last effort don’t we?” Professor Aeirl ran his hand through his thick, unruly hair, then stroked the darker beard of his jaw. She had often fantasized about shaving off that mountain-man beard, dying to feel the smooth skin afterwards. “Well, don’t we?” he repeated, looking at her directly.

Madison shrugged, “yea, you bet.”

Roger held his breath, how could someone so ferocious, so tenacious on the field be such a slackass the very second she took off her shin-guards? As he backed away he added, “next time try looking at the class assignment, see if that jogs loose a stray moment of inspiration for you, hmm?”

Madison narrowed her eyes, she suspected he was being sarcastic, something in the tilt of his head as he stepped back. It was in the set of his wide shoulders, in the rocking motion as he moved away from her, in his fiery blue eyes. Even the tone of his voice sounded rather insulting, she thought.

“You didn’t give me back my pink pastel, Professor Aeirl.”

He gave her one last glance as the class packed up the day’s work with incoming students swarming around them. “I think we’ll talk in my office, today. Got it?”

“Are you going to give it back then? I borrowed this set you know, it’s not mine…”

“One o’clock, Madison. Today.” He waited for her usual litany of excuses, with the “select” hovering at his side, staring at her with their usual disapproval.

Madison stared back at their stupid artsy faces, everything dyed and pierced and uncomfortable all at the same time. “Sure,” she told him. I could take them all, with a broken leg. Make that two broken legs.

Aeirl grinned unexpectedly as he went through the door, “and don’t even think about ditching me this time, Madison.”

Madison paused on her side of the door, “hey,” she said, assuming the “timid” student role as her best defense. “You said 1pm, right?” She ventured into his small windowless office a whole step and tugged downward on her little nylon top, trying to cover her navel but it sprung up again almost immediately.

Aeirl grunted over his papers that covered his desk, “it’s 1 already is it?” He turned toward her and motioned to the chair near him. As she sidled past him to the chair she kept losing one or the other of her flipflops; they appeared to be a size too big.

Madison hunched her shoulders, looking down at her almost bare feet, and waited for the lecture. She stole a glance at him, watched him stroke the gingery blonde beard of his jaw as he asked her if she were “ready” for their “big talk.”

“Yea. And I really like this song,” she ventured as she propped her hands under her legs, idly swinging her legs back and forth. The tape was a familiar one, with rainstorms, thunder, and rushing ocean waves, which he played in class during long sessions with their model. There was no “song” to speak of but Madison didn’t know what else to call it.

Aeirl settled back into his chair, arms folded over his chest. He was a big man, well over 6 feet tall but his rumpled, good-natured temperament made him seem anything but intimidating. “Yes, very stimulating. Perfect for another round with my worst student.”

She knew what was coming and crossed her legs together at the ankles, bored. Her swinging feet, back and forth, back and forth, kept her attention while he launched into another “piece of friendly advice” concerning her “direction.” She decided she would do her nails in that metallic blue she had mixed up the night before, playing with nail lacquers. She still had the blonde streaks in her dark brown hair so blue would be perfect.

“Madison?” he repeated, his face reddening. The girl looked up at him in surprise; he stifled a comment, she had the shortest attention span he had ever seen. Following department protocol he was supposed to be patient with “jocks” like Madison who were at the college on athletic not academic scholarships. Set her up with a mentor-tutor, assign her short, specific goals, basically just keep her in class or her scholarship would be history.

“Madison, you need to do something about your class work and your attendance and your overall lack of motivation. You have three Incompletes and two Withdrawals so far this year, do you really want to add a failing grade? Surely there is something else you can do with your college years beside kick a stupid soccer ball around the field?” He almost said, “and hump everything that moves off the field too?” but stopped just short, unnerved by his own jealousy. He noticed her feet had stopped swinging and he shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

“My classes are boring, like the teachers.” There, she had said it.

Aeirl shifted again. She met his look and they stared at each other for along time. It was one of those afternoons in late spring when the students suddenly popped up, like the daffodils outside the University library, in clingy little tank tops and cut-offs, convinced it was actually the dead of August. Aeirl felt something respond in kind; or, maybe it was the sight of her round breasts taut from the chill, the nipples hard under the thin nylon of her top. He relaxed in his swivel chair and unexpectedly grinned at Madison.

“Yes,” he admitted, “as a whole, professors are a blowhard group; however, at least we bore each other more than we do the students. Be grateful for that much…” his voice trailed off. She had propped her foot onto her knee and began to scratch idly at the ankle. As she splayed her pink nails across the delicate skin of her ankle he realized how warm the day had become after all.

Madison mugged a look, “hey, it was your decision to work here, where there’s uh like nothing but teachers,” she told him, not unaware of her rudeness just more interested in the fact that her knee now almost touched his.

Aeirl watched her strong, tanned fingers rub the ankle where she had scratched until it was red. Her nail colors didn’t match, a Barbie-like pink on her hands but some kind of neon orange on her toes. It reminded him of her sketches from class; without a doubt, she had an appalling sense of color. And yet it gave him the severest jolt of excitement, as if she were caressing his balls and not the pale roundness of her heel. “Yes, yes, certainly,” he faltered, “but who knew how many openings and planning committees and alumni dinners I’d be dragged to, how many department parties where they line up to outdo each other, bitching about this or that grant they wrote, lost, should have tried for.”

She stopped rubbing her heel to rest her hand over the foot and regarded him directly. “Roger,” she said conspiratorily, “there are ways of dealing with all kinds of boring shit.” Even the “select” didn’t call him ‘Roger.’ Madison leaned closer, as if imparting a secret, her eyes never leaving his face. “You know what I do when I’m sitting through stupid award dinners and our hideous art class?”

She leaned toward him even closer than before, the edge of her knee now pushing against his; it was if every nerve in his body had relocated to just that spot. It was as if he could hold his breath forever. The tips of his fingers were at the very crease connecting their bodies, her tanned knee alongside his beige Dockers. Her flip flop dangled from her toes. “I’m afraid your going to tell me, aren’t you?” he asked, only half in jest.

She didn’t blink, “well, do you want to know?” She slid the thong of her flip flop back and forth between her toes.

Nervousness crept over him, he was close to grabbing her damn flip flop and throwing it across the room. “You pretend you’ve got them rolled into the net while you punt soccer balls at their heads?” It was warm enough to take his shirt off; the way they overheated these modern buildings was ridiculous.

“Well, that would work too, but no, that’s not what I do,” she said lightly. “Let’s try it this way, try and guess what I think about in our class.” She wet her finger and “cleaned” a smudge of dirt from the side of her foot. As she raised her eyes back to his he felt it, the calm, confident determination of a predator and he was her quarry. Aeirl bristled with enough “fight or flight” adrenaline to explode on the spot. She smiled luxuriantly, begging him to “think reallll hard.”

“In our class,” he said, stalling for time, hoping she’d lose her nerve. Hoping he was wrong. How did this even happen? It wasn’t as if she were the first student to ever hit on him before, and it wasn’t always the ones failing his classes either, so why didn’t he just swat her back to reality?

“Uh huh.” Her hand moved from her foot to her knee. Their knuckles brushed against each other but neither moved their hands.

Aeirl tried a hearty gruffness, “clearly it’s not your assignment.” When he found himself laughing alone he sobered, flexing open his tense fingers, they accidentally drifted across the top of her hand. “So, which is more boring, my assignments, or me?”

“I never think about your assignments. I’m usually thinking about just you, posing, like you were our model, naked and patient. We take forever just to draw all the interesting… parts…” Madison took his hand and brought it over to her cold foot, slipping her own away as his larger, warmer hand knew just what to do. The whole top of her foot disappeared into his fist, his fingers closing over the toes like the protective sheath of a condom. “It makes even the most mind numbing class just whizz by, imagining which pose I would make you do for me next…”

Aeirl did know that this was when he was supposed to remind both of them that he was her “professor,” that this routine wasn’t going to change her grade. That he preferred women with the same artistic tastes as his own, say, someone who knew enough to never put Barbie-pink and neon orange together; that he was all very flattered but…

Madison looked down.

She was watching him stroke her foot, unwittingly stroke and massage her long toes with his enormous hand. When she saw the tips of her toes peep out past the meatiness of his fist they looked as small as cocktail sausages. If she could have sucked on her own toes right then and there she would have. “I have great feet, considering.”

“Considering?”

“Yea, considering what I do to them, getting ‘em smashed by those clods on the field, and stuck in hot sweaty socks, cramped shoes; ever notice I never wear shoes if I can help it? It’s like the hockey guys, when they’re not on the ice they NEVER wear shoes, I totally understand, considering.”

She swiveled in her chair, which moved her knee out of the way, her foot closer to his lap. “They look quite pampered, to me,” he murmured as he massaged her foot and calf deeply, with both hands, hungrily. He scraped his nails up over the knee, traveling as far as he dared.

She gave him a sly smile, “it helps to have the right kind of friends.”

He kissed the top of her knee, struck with an odd thought. “The old goats over in Podiatry?”

“Not exactly. I train my own specialists. The ones with the biggest hands, soft and strong, teach them everything I know.” Madison extended her leg so he could kiss her knee; he had a direct view up her inner thigh to the edge of her shorts.

His hands ran along the outer swell of her thighs and under the white trim borders; no panties. “Ever get a student who manages to teach you something new?” he asked her huskily.

Madison pushed him back into his chair and wedged her foot up against the bulge at his zipper. “No, but I live in hope.”

As she teased the front of his pants with her toes, wiggling them away from his busy hands, he surveyed her whole leg, from the tip of her toes, pressed now to his lips, all the way to her muscular thigh, “has anyone told you how good you would look in a cast?”

“Who does Roger remind you of?” she asked him, trying to get his wavy hair to curl around her finger.

They laid on his bed, facing each other, the long spokes of his ceiling fan silently spinning overhead, cooling and comforting. Shane flipped onto his back and stared at the fan, thinking; several ideas came to mind.

She tugged on his arm, cuddling closer, nibbling and blowing softly in his ear to irritate him.

“Do you want an answer or not?” he said, trying to fend off her latest advances. She wouldn’t be happy until he did what she came for. Her capable hand slipped into his boxers, surprisingly gentle.

“He’s you, in about twenty years,” she whispered into his neck. She bit playfully, excited by his erection. There was something so stimulating about sex with a man intent on resisting her. Sooner or later she would find someone who could do it, who wanted her but who could hold out and then she’d be wrecked. That was the one she would fall for, that was the opponent she most feared, the one she never stopped looking for.

Shane rolled off the bed, irritated with the radio station’s incessant commercials. “I’m like that crackhead right now,” he said dully as he fiddled with the dial, looking down, unaware of Madison’s reflection in his large bureau mirror, “I don’t have to wait twenty years.” Madison grinned, waiting for him to notice her in the mirror as she stroked the top edge of her cast, pulling at the cotton stockinette, poking her nails underneath.

When he did turn round, having found a “rock classics” format for her, he paused. The sight of her wrist resting on her thigh as her fingers dragged over the cast’s stubbly texture gripped him in the pit of his stomach. “I love this,” she said, possibly referring to Blondie’s song, “The Tide is High.”

Shane sat on the side of the bed, solemn. Why did he fight her all the time, why not just enjoy what she was so eager to give him? He couldn’t see Roger successfully asserting himself over Madison’s demands either. She rubbed her thigh with her open palm, rotating it almost hypnotically, lost in the sensation of feeling the weave remain firm and rigid under the growing pressure of her hand. Madison grinned, then held out her hand to him. He took it after a moment, knowing she would resume the circular rubbing using his hand underneath her own. She continued to press down, as if their hands could bore down to the skin level, laser-like, in pursuit of some hidden itch. He shook her hand free; he could do this himself. She wanted him to hump her cast he’d hump her cast.

“Be nice,” she said, lying back against his pillows to watch. It felt so good, so different from the recreational casts Roger had put her in before. The achiness of a real broken leg, the fatigue and swollen weight of it entombed within the fiberglass wrappings, was a completely novel experience for her. Madison’s tolerance for pain was high, typical of any athlete, but this wasn’t really about pain.

For a moment their thoughts crossed and they stared at each other.

“The answer is ‘no,’ I haven’t done it with him since I broke my leg.” She was so quiet, her gaze unwavering. “I saved that for you.”

In the years that followed, long after he had lost all contact with her, after affairs with so many other women who were more beautiful or cultured or easier in temperament than Madison he still held onto the perfection of that one unexpected, extraordinary afternoon. And it wasn’t really about sex. It was the intimacy of something shared that couldn’t be shared any other way. To someone else it may have seemed logical, athletes get hurt all the time. They expect it, the image of one limping about on crutches, hobbled with some unwieldly cast on the sidelines meant nothing more than “shit happens.”

But Shane understood. Vulnerability for someone like Madison was an unknown sensation; she had too much grit and aggressiveness, if anything she made others quake with vulnerability in her cocksure presence. Pain, as arduous and uncomfortable as it was in a cast was absolutely nothing compared to the “V” word. Pain she knew how to deal with; feeling exposed, burdened, an easy target, slow and awkward were infinitely more alarming to Madison. It wasn’t something other people, however, were going to see. But, she’d let Shane know, as if it were his own leg that had broken. He would understand why the pain itself had became something for her to conquer, it was the best way to slay the feeling of being vulnerable. And anyone used to pain could tell you, to neutralize pain you dissect its parts, you detach from it, study it. Even appreciate its intricate workings. There was a certain pleasure in this.

“Right there,” she told him, doesn’t it feel swollen to you?” He looked from the x-ray film in one hand to the area underneath his other palm, the curve of her calf as it rose above her ankle. Of course he wouldn’t be able to feel anything through her cast, but she insisted on guiding him over its whole terrain, his eyes alert to what the physical x-rays told him and his desire to feel inside her cast along with her description.

He quickly realized that everything felt “swollen” to Madison and she had a dozen ways of describing what kind of swelling. “Like when hotdogs pflump up in boiling water” was the shin area. “When you bang your toe on a table leg,” was how the top of her arch felt, “throbbing” even when raised on his pillow or resting in his lap. “Imagine your toes are these happy little balloons, when suddenly you get this weird rush that makes them feel like they’re going to go pop pop pop,” she told him, her face flushed with excitement. “Zingers everywhere,” she added as he ran his hands over the cast, luxuriating in its sealed symmetry, protecting the jagged rupture of bone within. Something so delicate, so shockingly fragile encased in this seamless, invulnerable cast. No buttons, zippers, snaps, no way to “open” it, it seemed to stuck to her leg as to be part of it now. “Fits damn sight better than a condom,” she noted airily.

He wanted to wrap himself around the whole of her leg, feel every part of the cast against his body, rub deeply till it left a rash, an imprint on his skin across his abdomen, down his thighs, along his belly like a fleeting tattoo. But he didn’t know how to do that without hurting her.

“Try it,” she said, prodding him with her good foot. She liked to play with his hair, her toes wiggling through the hair at the back of his neck. He rested on left side, facing her feet, the casted leg tucked underneath his body, safe and firm. It felt indescribable between his legs, at times very rough on his balls and shaft, too rough. But he couldn’t keep the erection down, even as the head of his penis would chaff and he would feel an unwanted tenderness he also felt desire rearing back in a hot rush as his balls rubbed against the cast. It didn’t seem possible for it to be too rough for them. What the hell was he supposed to do? He remembered her once telling him that Roger would get off, literally, on the casts that he had put her in but this was an altogether different situation. What if he really got into it, pumping and grinding away, he’d snap her leg in two. And, hearing her say, “go for it” didn’t help either.

“I’d do it to you, if it was the other way round,” she added, and he believed her.

Shane stroked the line from her big toe down the cast to her knee, as far as his hand could reach. “Too bad we’re not both in casts,” he said, only half seriously. He had a low threshold for pain, too low for the kind of workout she was capable of doing to him. A curious trickle ran down his spine, not for the first time he felt as if Madison was more masculine than himself.

“Hey!” she exclaimed, going up on her elbows, “I’ll put you in goal against those animals from my team, tell them the first one to break your leg gets to sleep with you…” She laughed at her own suggestion.

He felt her hand on the back of his calf, near her hip, his foot snuggled underneath her butt. She stroked the hair idly, still regaling him with which one on her team would be the best candidate for the “mission,” but he didn’t hear her all that clearly. It was that rhythmic stroking of her fingers, urging him to hump with his pelvis, burying his groin into the side of her long cast, the head of his penis now burying itself into the warm folds of his sheets and blankets. The shaft itself felt the scraping of the fiberglass, as did his balls, but they just tightened up with tension and need, it was only when she dug her nails into the skin above his ankle that he shot off, wildly, furiously. The dim impression of raucous cheering that he heard sounded just like a goal had been scored. Even off the field Madison was a player.