Instead, I just typed,Thanks again. Are you home yet?
Home. Hell. Whatever. Yeah, I’m here.
I smiled, thinking about Jane having to go home for Christmas and then standing in her half sister’s wedding the week after.
And again I thought how lucky I was that Bribury was installing their new front end system over break, allowing me to not only make some extra money, but also have an excuse not to go home.
This is going to feel like the longest break ever, Jane texted.
I would be spending part of mine in Billy Montrose’s office going through the notes of his next great novel.
To me, the break couldn’t last long enough.
Chapter4
My last final went okay.Probably not four-point good, but good enough to keep my GPA in the range needed to keep my scholarship.
I made my way to Montrose’s office in Snyder Hall.
He opened the door after I knocked, and stepped back, waving me in.
I took a couple of steps into his office and stopped.
“I know. It’s bad, right?” he said, indicating the plethora of boxes lined and stacked…well, all over the place. Some were large, like the kind apples were shipped in. Some others were shoebox size.
“It’s a lot, that’s for sure,” I said, trying not to sound daunted. I wanted this job, badly. And not just for the money and what it would mean to me.
It was likely as close as I would get to crawling inside the mind of a literary genius (okay, wunderkind, at least, if not genius) and I wanted that.
But, yeah, there were alotof boxes, and this was going to take a lot of time.
“So, you decided to bring the boxes from your apartment over after all,” I said.
He looked a little embarrassed as he said, “No. They’re still there.”
I nodded. “About the same amount as here?”
He looked around, taking stock. “Hmmm…maybe more. Probably more.”
“Okay. Well, let me get a start on the boxes here while you’re gone. I won’t need keys to your apartment. Unless you think they should be worked on simultaneously, or something?”
He let out an exasperated sigh. “I have no idea how they should be worked on.” He moved to his desk, the only uncluttered surface in the small room, and picked up a sheet of paper that he held out to me.
I walked the few feet to him and took the piece of paper. “What’s this?”
“I put it together last night. It’s a broad—like side of the barn, broad—breakdown of the characters’ names and basic plot points of each of the different book ideas I have. Some even have working titles.”
“Great,” I said, scanning down the rather long list. He hadn’t been kidding when he’d said he’d had a lot of different ideas for novels. “This will be really helpful.” I meant it. Already my mind was thinking of ways to organize his notes, how the different puzzle pieces might fit together.
“I’m sure once you dig in, you’ll find a lot of rogue notes. Some that don’t belong to any of the book ideas on this.” He tapped the back of the paper I still held, and it rippled in my hands. He sat on the edge of his desk. I wanted to look at his outline, but his guest chair had two boxes on it, so I leaned against the edge of his desk next to him.
We were close to each other, though not touching. His hand was on the desk, not far from my thigh.
He was wearing a black fleece pullover, with a hint of red tee showing at the neck. Blue jeans and pure white running shoes.
And he smelled like…sex. No, like intelligence. Like sexy intelligence.
It was good he was going to be gone for three weeks—there was no way I’d be able to concentrate on his pile of boxes if he was here in this small room with me.
