Women's Studies update (Patreon)

Kalmer turned his head to Annie like a stubborn lid coming loose on a pickle jar. Slowly and with great relish. “Ms. Edison… can I call you Annie?”

“Yeah, sure… it’s my name…”

“I think you’re prejudging Britta and her choices without fully understanding them. I know you’re not really my student, but don’t you think you’re being a little hasty? I hate to indulge in the same stick-throwing I just chided Britta for, but as her friend… isn’t it odd that you see her happier, getting more satisfaction out of life… and yet…” He rubbed his stubble. “It’s almost as if you see someone prioritizing Britta, seeing that she gets all the focus and attention she needs to live her best life, and instead of being happy that she’s getting all the care she needs… indeed, instead of wondering if perhaps she needs more focus and attention from you…”

“Are you calling me a bad friend?” Annie demanded.

“I don’t like to use words like ‘good’ or ‘bad’ here. I prefer ‘thoughtful’ and… not so thoughtful.”

“So you’re saying I’m not thinking?!”

Kalmer grimaced. “I don’t like to brag, but I have been a professor of Women’s Studies for quite a few years.”

“At Greendale!” Annie pointed out.

“It seems to me you’re thinking of Britta as another you… some failed reflection of you… and when you consider what’s right for her, you see it as being right or wrong for you, and judge it accordingly.”

“I don’t think of Britta as a failed version of me!”

“Then how do you think of her?” Kalmer pressed.

“I… she’s made some mistakes—“

“So have you,” he said, coming away from his desk to approach.

“Yes, but I’m going to fix them. I’m getting my degree!”

“And Britta’s not fixing her mistakes?” Kalmer asked, coming closer.

“Of course she is. I’m just fixing mine sooner… because I’m not in my thirties…”

Kalmer sat down on her desk. “Annie, I really hate to validate Britta losing her temper before, but when she called you a perpetual student… well, here you are, becoming an admissions officer for a school you don’t even like.”

“I like Greendale!”

Britta scoffed. “The way you like one of those half-dead pugs you find on the side of the road and nurse back to health, even though it’s going to have a limp the rest of its life and need to go to the vet once a month…”

“You leave Mr. Flatface out of this!”

Kalmer spun his hands around each other as he encapsulated what he was talking about. “But you see how you hold onto this perception of yourself as an educational wunderkind instead of taking risks, as Britta has done?”

“I take risks!” Annie protested. “I adopted this pug I found on the side of the road… he could’ve had fleas… oh, you just criticized me for that… is it hot in here?”

“It’s okay to be cautious of risks,” Kalmer assured her, reaching out to pat Annie’s shoulder. “Britta’s risk-taking certainly hasn’t always paid off. But can you say that all your caution has gotten you where you want to be in life?”

“I… I…”

Kalmer crooked his thumb, reaching underneath the neckline of Annie’s blouse to rub her bare skin with the hand he had gripping her shoulder. “Let’s make a deal. You sit in on the rest of today’s session with Britta. Absolute observer. You don’t speak, you don’t interfere, unless I include you. If, by the end, you still think I’m full of shit, you can put that down in the admissions guide. You can even go to the Dean and tell him I shouldn’t have a job. But… if you agree that this class has a positive influence on Britta… I’d like you to apologize to her and say she was right to take this risk.”

Annie looked at Britta. There was a gleam in her eyes. Excitement? Zeal? Annie couldn’t tell. She was used to Britta being passionate; the blonde was almost all passion, some days. But there was a flop sweat to that, like Britta was feverishly set on forcing excitement about whatever nonsense the study group was on about today because she didn’t have anything else to be excited about.

But this… exhilaration seemed genuine. Like a bride on her wedding day.

Or a cultist about to drink the Kool-Aid.

“Okay… I guess I can hear you out,” Annie said. “But only because I really do have an open mind, not because you’re… not… being weird. Because you are. Being weird.”

“You won’t interfere?” Britta asked.

“I just said I wouldn’t.”

“And you won’t make a lot of noise about how weird we are?”

“I just said—“

“You just said we were weird,” Britta pointed out triumphantly.

“You are weird. But I won’t say it,” Annie mollified. “I mean, not anymore after that one time.”

“Two times.”

“That’s enough squabbling for now,” Kalmer informed them, not unkindly. “Now, we’ve burnt through a lot of class time on this little debate, so we’ll have to rush to get everything done by the bell. No more niceties. Britta, present yourself for inspection.”

Annie resisted the urge to question ‘inspection,’ as her rule-abiding mind remembered her promise not to speak or interfere. Still, she debated with herself whether to try bending the rules—maybe raising her hand and seeing if Kalmer would call on her—and so she ended up saying nothing as Britta stood and undressed. By the time Britta was taking her clothes off, Annie was stunned speechless.

The knot that held together Britta’s top untwined. The folds of fabric fell open, revealing her bare breasts underneath. She hadn’t bothered with a bra; she didn’t need one. Not that her breasts were small—while Annie’s were more voluptuous, Britta’s were still well-sized and perky, the pert undersides barely meeting her chest, but rising up in offering to the eye.

Kalmer’s eyes lowered, darting over her inviting nudity, and Annie found herself doing the same, albeit with an embarrassed look on her face. She glanced at Kalmer. His expression was clinical, almost scientific, but there was a glimmer in his eyes. As well there should be: Annie would’ve felt offended on Britta’s behalf if any red-blooded man could see her bosom and not feel at least a little…

Or a lot. Annie noted the rising bulge in Kalmer’s pants. Gooseflesh raced up and down her body and she felt a note of moisture at her core. Well, of course that part of her was wet, it wasn’t supposed to be dry, but she suddenly seemed acutely aware of how not dry it was.

Before Annie could even try to figure that out… it couldn’t be for Britta, could it, so was it for Kalmer or was it just some energy in the room she was responding to?... Britta slipped her pants from her sleek little hips and let them fall to the floor.

Slowly, tauntingly, letting Kalmer’s eyes view all of her exposure (and Annie’s too), Britta stretched as she stepped out of her pants. Kalmer stared at her, his eyes wide and unblinking. Then he moved closer and Annie held her breath, wondering what he was going to Britta now that she was exposed like this.

But all Kalmer did was grab the waist of Britta’s boy-shorts and push them down to her dimpled knees. Sliding his leg between hers, he used his foot to push the bottoms the rest of the way down her legs. Britta arched her hips forward, offering up her juicy sex… and Kalmer’s hand was right there, only needing to move a few inches to cup it… but Kalmer didn’t move.

Not to give into Britta’s seduction or to give her her personal space. Instead, he looked over her naked body. Touching her, but callously, only moving and adjusting her posture for better looks at this portion of her anatomy or that.

“Very nice.” Kalmer tugged at a lock of her hair. “You’ve been using the new shampoo. Your hair looks much glossier.” He ran his hand down her spine, stopping at the small of her back. “Skincare routine too. Very soft. Very sleek.” Then his hand moved lower, taking hold of her buttocks and squeezing. Annie sucked in breath and didn’t let it out. “Nice and toned. Spin class?”

“Every day, sir,” Britta reported proudly.

His hand ran around her waist, exploring the barest hint of abs on her taut belly. “And to think, when you came to me, you thought you were twenty pounds overweight. Do you feel overweight, Britta?”

“No, sir.”

“You look magnificent. Doesn’t she look magnificent, Annie?”

“Yeah, but…” Annie was tongue-tied. She wanted to say how inappropriate this was… it was insane… there was a naked woman right in the middle of class and Kalmer was groping her!

But Britta looked so happy, proud of herself and basking in every note of Kalmer’s approval like a flower in the sun. She preened for him like a little girl, like… like Annie would’ve for her father. Only she’d never gotten, really gotten the kind of deep-seated affirmation that Britta got to savor now.

She was jealous. She wanted Kalmer to look at her and declare her Britta’s equal, no, her superior.

Annie swallowed her misgivings. “She looks perfect,” she admitted.