“You won’t. I will explain. They’ll be okay. I want you to meet them.” And I do. My own nerves ease with each comforting word I offer.
“Okay, then. Yes, I’d like to meet your family, Cal.”
“Good.” I grin, feeling the rightness of this invitation. Fran will come home with me. My family will see—we’re friends, and that friendship won’t change things at home. “I’ll send you the information. Hopefully it’s enough time to take a few days off.”
“Jan owes me,” she says. “Last year, she said her uncle died, and I worked five days in a row for her. Really, she was following Pulse Theory around on tour.”
“The boy band?”
“Yes. Jan and a million thirteen-year-olds were in heaven.” She presses her lips together and dips her head. “I can get the days.”
I rein back my grin and take another bite of my wrap. “Now, let’s talk about this remake. Why is sending your date through weeds, mud, and thistles fun? How does this help you?”
“Oh, Callum Whitaker, if only you knew. Also, you forgot your raincoat.” She waves her empty fork in a circle my way. “I might need you to replay the whole thing.”
“Yeah… that’s not going to happen.”
Thirty-Five
I grind my teeth,tremors running over my skin and throughout my body. I stand across from Professor Ellington’s large wooden desk, though she has asked me to sit no less than three times.
“But a C?”
“A C was generous. A C was for the extensive experiments you completed, and your writing was proficient.”
“Yes, extensive experiments. I proved that?—”
“You proved your body has chemical reactions to the opposite sex, Miss Fairchild. We’ve known that for years. That wasn’t a new discovery.”
I swallow past the lump in my throat. “No, I proved that those scenarios, that the romcom remakes I set up, created those sensations and reactions.”
“You’re saying that what you’ve proved is that there is a formula for love.”
“Yes!” I point at her.
“No. There is not. And if anything, you’ve proved there isn’t.” She sits back in her leather office chair, arms folded.
I shake my head. “That’s not true. I proved that all of those movies and the situations in them bring people closer together. They give people feelings that, like seeds, will grow into more.”
Professor Ellington tilts her head. “So, after all of this”—she holds up my double-spaced, twelve-point font, fourteen-page paper—“you are in love?”
I swallow. “I know a lot more about love than before I began.”
“But are you in love?”
My brain wraps around kissing Callum, late-night talks, laughing over stories, sharing myself, getting to know his team, and learning about soccer. I want to say yes—so, so badly.
But as if Professor Ellington can read my mind, she says, “And does he love you back? Because I don’t think you wrote about unrequited love in this paper. Did you?”
I shake my head. “No, professor. I didn’t. And I’m not in love.” My heart thumps, disagreeing with me. But then we’re—my heart and me—still figuring out what love is. “But I do believe in the love story.”
She sets my paper down and leans into her desk. “That’s clear. My father-in-law believes there are little green men living on the moon. That doesn’t make it so. The problem with this paper is that you’ve proved nothing, Fran. You’ve proved that love and rejection exist. Forgive me, but I think the world was already aware of that. The only thing this paper told me is that your understanding of love is that of a fairytale and nothing real.”
Nothing real? Nothing real. How can she say that? Everything I wrote, everything I experienced was authentic.Everything.
“Areyou telling me she wanted you to discover some brand-new concept? Does Ellington want her class to cure cancer for an A?” Rosalie paces in front of the couch I lay on.
“I thought I could change her.” I cover my eyes with my hand. “Was I foolish?”
