Weekends were weird, with Montrose and me carefully planning when we’d each be at his office so we wouldn’t have to spend much—if any—time together. It was like divorced parents divvying up custody of the kids—I had the office in the mornings, he had it in the afternoons.
That morning the campus was deserted, students sleeping in from their Friday night reveling. Fresh snow had fallen in the night and crunched beneath my shoes as I tromped to Snyder.
The office was exactly how I’d left it last night when I’d finished up at eight. I knew I would most likely be the next person in, but I’d left a note for Montrose with where I’d left off, just in case he’d…what? Decide to make a late night visit to his office to see my handwritten note? To marvel at my stellar typing?
Yeah, maybe I was just hoping he had nothing better to do on a Friday night.
I had come to terms—sort of—with the idea that I’d blown it with Montrose. (Even though I wasn’t sorry in the least for speaking up that day.) That whatever we’d had, whatever flirting we’d done online, and the day of kissing, was all there was going to be.
But I hadn’t let my mind wander beyond that. If Montrose wasn’t texting, FaceTiming, or kissing me…was he doing all of that with someone else?
Thinking about it should have made me mad, or certainly sad, but instead, I felt that old familiar insecurity wash over me. Like I’d shown up at a Bribury party in last year’s jeans or something.
I hated that feeling. Absolutely hated it. I knew I had a chip on my shoulder about it, the size of Queens itself, but I didn’t seem to have the tools to get past it.
Not yet, anyway.
I tried to shake off my feelings, and not think about where Montrose had spent his Friday night. Or with whom.
A stack of papers from the class he taught had been placed on the now nearly-empty credenza. I’d ignored it yesterday, but today I thumbed through them, remembering turning in this assignment myself last fall.
Had another student’s papers captured Montrose’s attention, like he purported mine had? After skimming a few of them, I picked up the last pile of book notes from the other end and got to work.
I was done about two hours later, and put the notes in a box, labeled it by book title and stacked it on top of the others in the corner.
I spent another hour working on the notes I’d transcribed, then transferred the file to a fresh flash drive and placed it in the center of the blotter. I didn’t bother leaving a note, it was obvious where I’d left off.
I packed up my laptop, and pulled my coat off the hook. I took my shoes back to the desk to sit while I laced them up.
As I slid into my shoes, my eyes were drawn to the photos on Montrose’s desk as they so often were.
I wanted this job. I needed the money, and I loved being just a little inside the mind of Montrose. But it was hard being here, seeing his smiling face as I worked. Knowing that old leather couch had been the site of the best kisses I’d ever tasted.
I grabbed a sheet of paper from the side of his desk and scribbled a note, saying some—but not all—of what I was feeling, before I could think better of it.
Billy,
As you can see, all the materials that were in the office have been completed. The last of it is on the drive on your desk. This might be a good time for me to break away from the project. You’ve paid me for January and February, already, so we could call it even.
If you’d like to have someone else finish up the job, I’ll completely understand.
If I don’t hear from you by Monday at four, I won’t plan on coming in and will consider our professional relationship fulfilled.
I didn’t apologize for going after him about the whole rape/violation tantrum. And I added in “professional” when describing our relationship, though it probably wasn’t necessary.
Professional was the only type of relationship we had.
I half hoped when he came in on Monday morning that he’d text me right away and tell me to plan on working, that he’d brought a couple of boxes from his apartment and I could begin with phase II. My other half, my less masochistic side, wanted to receive no such text. To be done with the torture of being so close to him, and yet so, so far away.
Before I could grab the note and tear it up, I quickly left the office.
Chapter18
I grabbedsome lunch by myself at the caf and decided to get in a few hours at the library before I needed to get back to my room and start getting ready for the night out with Jane.
Around three, I got a text. Because I had my phone on silent, it was just sheer luck that I saw the light go on out of the corner of my eye. Probably Jane, wondering when we should be ready to go out.
I started to pack my bag as I swiped my phone. It was like my hand holding my laptop hovered in the air and froze when I realized that it was Montrose, not Jane, who had texted.
