Every now and then I give an old-school quiz where I pass out a sheet with questions that only need relatively quick responses. The problem isthat sometimes, like now, a student forgets to put their name on the paper, and in a class of three hundred students, finding the owner can be difficult. There are about eighteen students who don’t have grades for that quiz, and I haven’t been able to track them all down.
It’s probably a moot point. The owner of the quiz barely scraped together thirty points out of a hundred. They spent half the time waxing poetic about the importance of communication in making connections and building relationships, rather than answering the questions on the quiz directly. I cobbled together what points I could give the student, but it wasn’t much. Hell, I couldn’t even give them points for remembering to put their name on the paper.
I close up my office, and head down the hall to see Melinda. I knock, and she tells me to come in.
“What’s up?” I ask.
She gestures for me to have a seat, and I do.
“How’s everything going with the hockey player?” she asks.
I shrug. “Well enough, given that I don’t have a validated intervention I can use on him. It’s mostly trial and error, but we’ve made progress.”
She nods. “And how are the two of you getting along?”
I frown at the question. “Fine. Why?”
“Is there anything I should know about you two?” she presses.
My frown deepens. “Like what?”
“Look,” Melinda says, leaning forward in her chair to put her elbows on the desk. “Normally this would be none of my business, but given the amount of funding at stake, I have to ask. Is there anything going on between you and the hockey player that could come back to bite us?”
My mouth falls open. “What? No. Why would you ask that?” But there’s a sudden chill tickling up my spine.
Melinda clicks her mouse, and a picture pops up on her computer screen. She turns it toward me so I can see it better, and I feel the color drain from my face. It’s a grainy cell phone pic of me and Ash on the dance floor of the club Saturday night. My ass is pushed back against hisgroin while his hands splay across my stomach and chest. My eyes are closed, and I look enraptured as he leans his face down close to my neck.
I knew we’d gotten too close on the dance floor, but this picture makes it look like we’re one step away from heading up to a hotel room for the night. I’m mortified as color rushes back to my face.
“Oh my god. Where did you get that?” I ask.
“It’s making the rounds on the celebrity gossip sites,” Melinda says. “They haven’t identified you yet, but my wife sent it to me. She remembered meeting you last year at David’s retirement party.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck. The media may not have identified me yet, but I have a COMM class full of three hundred students who’ve probably all seen the photo by now. Hell, the student I saw at the club that night might have taken it. I hope TMZ at least gave him a good price for it.
“It’s not what it looks like,” I say quickly.
“No?” Melinda says. “Because it looks like you put yourself in a very questionable position with a man whose boss is paying you and this university a shitload of money to have you help him. I know he’s not technically your student, and you’re not his psychologist, but you’re close enough to both those things that this is concerning.”
“I know,” I say quickly, “and I shouldn’t have let it happen, but I swear there’s nothing going on between us.” Except a lot of kissing and caressing I haven’t been able to get out of my mind. “Ash invited me to come hang out that night with the players, and I figured it was a good research opportunity.”
Melinda raises a dubious brow, but I hurry on.
“My ex-boyfriend was there that night, and apparently the guys have this thing they do when someone’s ex is there that involves making the person the center of attention, and things like that. Ash was trying to help me make Drew jealous. It was all for show.”
Melinda eyes the picture again, and I know she’s not buying it.
I go cold again as I wonder if Ash has seen the picture and what he thinks of it. I pull my phone out of my pocket and swipe it open. I havefifteen notifications. There are three texts from Ash and two calls.
Yup. He’s seen the pic.
Of course he has. The Hydra have a public relations manager whose job it is to know when these things happen. The guy probably knew about the picture minutes after it hit the media.
I look at the rest of the notifications. Most are from Celena – four texts and five calls, plus one call from my mother. As a rule, my mother doesn’t do celebrity gossip, but one of her friends probably called her and told her about the picture.
I open the texts from Ash. The first one starts with, “Don’t panic.”
Never have the words ‘don’t panic’ kept anyone from panicking, and now is no different.
