Melissa burst out laughing. “This story gets better and better.”
I waved it off. “I’m not the most conventional of women. But apparently my strange talents have caught the attention of the powers that be at Harvard. I’ve been invited to apply for a faculty position.” Rather surprising, considering I had only started the lectureship a couple of weeks ago. But my work was well-known in malacology circles.
“Here?” Sean asked.
“Yes. Of course, these things take a long time. The academic appointment process is slower than a slug making its way to leafy undergrowth, but it was a surprise to be asked.”
Melissa raised her spoon. “Why would it be a surprise? You’re here on this guest lectureship. Of course, they think you’re amazing!”
Women lifting up other women. Sean had chosen well.
My friend frowned. “But what about Jason?”
“Jason and I are not a couple. We just had a whole conversation about it at this very table.”
“But he wants to be involved in his kid’s life. And that’ll be harder if you’re here and he’s there.”
I knew that, but I had made it clear to Jason that I was ambitious and that ambition might require a change of scenery. Now that Marcus was my department head back at Lakeshore, and insisted on micro-managing all my decisions, I questioned how much further I could rise in that environment. I hadn’t even broached the idea of a sabbatical with him so I could work on my book. I saw a fight for protected research time in my future.
Moving to another city would have an added benefit: not seeing Jason so much would ensure those feelings I had caught could be thrown back into the ocean. I might miss him now, but a prolonged absence would only serve to cauterize any wound.
“Jason has always known I might move somewhere else if my career demanded it. But this is just a castles-in-the-air notion right now. I’d like to have the baby first before I even think of the next steps in my career.”
But I refused to allow Jason Isner to limit me, in my professional life—or in matters of the heart.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Jason
* * *
“So this book club is about hockey players?”
Lauren raised a glass of white wine to her lips, then lowered it again. “It’s about Rebels hockey players.”
“But it’s not an actual book, right?”
“It’s fan fiction. So the author, or maybe authors, I don’t know, uploads to a website about this fictional”—she finger-quoted that—“hockey team called the Chicago Renegades. And the stories are thinly veiled sexy adventures for your teammates. The names have been changed, ever so slightly, to protect the guilty.”
Tonight, the Empty Net was filled with very real hockey players, veteran and rookie, all here to celebrate Theo’s retirement. Everyone he had ever played with or against, mentored or menteed, sneezed on or bought coffee from, was here to wish him well.
Which I planned to do, right after Lauren finished telling me how her book club regularly discussed the fictional sex lives of non-fictional professional athletes.
“Who’s in it?”
“Well, there’s Beau Coden, a goalkeeper who likes threesomes.”
I gasped like a schoolgirl at this incredibly lazy fictionalizing of the name of my team’s tender, Noah Boden. “No!”
“Oh yes.” Lauren was practically giddy. “And Thatch Cockslaw, who is very well endowed. Summer’s been getting a kick out of that one.”
I tutted. “And you guys meet and dissect this junk?”
“We have a regular book club where we read bestsellers and fun romances, but then we set aside a few minutes each month for the latest adventures of the sexy Renegades.”
“Sounds faintly libelous.”
“It’s all in good fun. And none of the stories are real—or are they?” She winked. “You’re in there.”
