“Only if you’d readAnimal Farm.”
He tilted his head a little, still staring at me with startling grey eyes. “But Ihaveread it. And I’m guessing you knew that, right?”
I shrugged. “I assumed.” I didn’t bring up that he’d mentionedAnimal Farmbeing very important to him in one of the many interviews he’d done postFollyhitting it big. No need for him to think I was a book stalker or anything.
Because I wasn’t. Well, not totally.
He nodded. “Good assumption.” Then he shook his head again, and his look softened, almost went out of focus. “Anyway. So, you were able to keep up with classes and a job in the admin building this semester? No issues?”
I shook my head a little bit, not really sure where this was going. “No issues. I have to have the job as part of my scholarship stipulations, and I have to maintain a 3.25 GPA.”
“And you will?”
“Should be a 3.7 or around there.”
He smiled softly, and just a hint of his perfectly straight, white teeth showed. “What? No four-point-oh?”
“I had a blip in Calculus.”
“God, just a blip? I flunked Calc. I think twice.” The smile again, this time a little bigger.
It was all I could do not to pull my top off and rub myself all over him. I tucked a strand of my straight hair behind an ear—a nervous habit I was trying to break. Like all my bad habits that I’d brought to Bribury. “But, anyway…yes, I was able to handle both the job and grades. It wasn’t a lot of hours at the admin building.”
“Think you could handle more?”
It wasn’t a loaded question in any way. No sexual innuendo in his voice at all. And yet I very much wanted to channel Jane and give him a Mae West answer about what all I could handle. “Yes,” was all I said.
“Good. I have something I think you’d be great at. It’s not for credits—though it should be—and it isn’t part of a work/study program, so you’d still have to keep your job at the admin building.”
He paused, and I nodded, waiting for him to go on.
“I balked at the extra section. Loudly. Part of the reason I took this year away from the city to do this was so I could really buckle down on my next novel. I barely got a few ideas jotted down this semester, and I jot down alotof notes. I can only imagine the extra time it will take this spring.”
“Can’t they give you a TA or something, to help with reading all the papers?”
I briefly wondered if that’s what he had in mind for me. But no. They wouldn’t let a freshman, who had only just had the one class on creative writing, wield that much power over her fellow freshmen’s papers.
“They did offer a TA. And I probably should have taken it. But…Ireallylike reading all the papers. Giving comments. Seeing if any of the stuff we talked about in class got through. I didn’t want to give that up. Not entirely. But then, what? Half the students have their papers read and critiqued by me, and the other half by a TA? That didn’t seem right. And, well, I’m sure a lot of people just randomly got my class. But, I’d like to think a few had actually heard of me and wanted to take the classbecauseof me. So it didn’t seem, I don’t know,rightto not read the papers myself.”
I wanted to tell him I’d taken his class because of him. That every time we had a paper returned I’d read and reread his comments on them. I just nodded and said, “Yes, I can see that. I think it’s good you want to read them yourself.”
“Is it?” He ran his hand across his mouth. A beautiful mouth with full lips, the lower one looking particularly suck-worthy. “Yeah. Good. I thought so.
“So instead of taking on a TA, they gave me the funds to use for an administrative assistant.”
“But if they wouldn’t be helping with the papers, or the class, what would the assistant be doing for you?” I asked. Then I had a vision of me running around town picking up Montrose’s dry cleaning and doing his grocery shopping or something.
I hated chores. With a passion. I’d had to do all of that back home, with two baby brothers and a mother that was, at best, neglectful, at worst, MIA.
And a father who, at least for me, was never in the picture.
Coming to Bribury, living in the dorms, meant I didn’t have to do those mundane chores anymore.
Sure, I had to do my laundry, and hit the store for snacks to have in the room and stuff like that. But I wasn’t planning dinner, or making sure the boys got to bed. Or to preschool. Or, basically survived.
So, the freedom of that kind of chore was symbolic to me, and I didn’t want to look back.
But the idea of being in Montrose’s life, even if it was to water his plants or something, wasverytempting.
