“No, thanks,” he says, his gravelly voice deep, nearly inaudible. It unfurls over my brain like a ribbon of velvet, lighting up a roadmap of my synapses and screaming, MAYDAY, MAYDAY. POTENTIAL HOT GUY ALERT.
I lower my arm and suppress a snort. It’s not every day that Mr. Hardwin faces outward resistance.
“Might I remind you that participation is twenty percent of your grade?”
“Might I remind you that if a student isn’t raising their hand, they don’t know the answer?”
“You never raise your hand, so that’s hardly a surprise,” Hardwin scoffs, turning up his aquiline nose in disgust.
Yikes. This is awkward.
Mulligan’s spine straightens, a growl emitting from his chest. “Maybe you’d have a higher participation rate if your students understood anything you’re teaching.”
There’s a collectiveoohfrom the crowd, stoking a mob mentality that’s probably dead set on burning this lecture hall to the ground. Mr. Hardwin’s list of victims could wrap around the entirety of MU. Hell, evenI’mnot on the guy’s side, and I’m his favorite.
Hardwin glowers like he’s hell-bent on turning his pesky disputant into stone. “Perhaps assistance from Ms. Renault would do you some good, Mr. Mulligan. Or at the very least, she could teach you some manners,” he snaps.
Haha, yeah, that’s—wait, me? I don’t want anything to do with this dick-swinging contest.
Suddenly, every head turns toward me expectantly, and the answer that I had locked—memorized, even—beneath mymental trapdoor has escaped confinement. The last person to look at me is this Mulligan guy himself, and I kid you not, the next domino effect of events happens in slow motion. Because, lo and behold, the self-proclaimed martyr of Intro to Literature is none other than the Lamborghini-driving douche who almost punted me into the afterlife.
No fucking way.
Our eyes gridlock for a fleeting second, but this isn’t a look of love, people. No, it’s a silent call for revenge.
I can’t believe he has the audacity to be in the same seven hundred square feet as me.
Purebred loathing sizzles in my bloodstream, washing my vision in red, and I’m as tightly wound as a coil spring fighting inertia. My killer instincts rev full throttle. I’d rather fuck myself with a two-pronged carving fork than offer any sort of aid to this lowlife leech.
Yet, for some unknown reason, even when my gaze sets him ablaze with the force of a thousand fiery suns, he never looks away.
“It’s simple,” I answer patronizingly, reveling in the fact that I’m now the one mortifyinghim. “Nick Carraway is the embodiment of irony—which is yet another literary device Fitzgerald uses to comment on the lack of morality in a wealthy and glamorized society. Seediness under an otherwise perfect surface. Our narrator claims that he isn’t judgmental, however, his biases are evident through his internal dialogue and recollection of certain events. Fitzgerald’s intended usage of this type of narration pushes us, as the readers, to question how we interpret different scenes. We’re ideally just as lost to the illusion of the American Dream as Gatsby is.”
How does it feel, dickwad? To have everyone stare at you like you’re some freakshow?
Professor Hardwin puffs his chest out in pride. “Thank you,Ms. Renault. I’m gladsomeoneseems to be paying attention in my class.”
The curtain quickly falls on my one-woman show, and everybody goes back to minding their own business, trying to keep up with the speed at which Hardwin jots extensive notes on the chalkboard.
Even so—after my adrenaline tapers off into nothing but an ignorable buzz—Mulligan is still accosting me with his annoyingly good looks, maintaining eye contact like he’s been sucked into my orbit and has no intention of breaking free anytime soon.
After eight consecutive pages of notetaking, the session ends on a rather dismal note, and I take my time packing up my things since my next class isn’t for another hour. I tried regulating my breathing and practicing some coping skills after my unsavory eye-fuck with Satan himself, but the hatred and shock from Mulligan’s merepresencekept me on edge the entire time. He was just…sitting there. Acting natural. And everybody knows that he turned my body into a putrefied peach.
He’s gonna get off so easily, and…and maybe I hate myself more for letting him. Paying for my hospital bill was subterfuge, not an act of generosity. If we weren’t already halfway through the semester, I’d drop Hardwin’s class.
The bustling of my peers devolves into white noise, and my awareness has seemingly slipped to the backburner. When I turn around, I end up running into the six-foot-something giant loitering by my seat. I don’t need to scan his face to confirm his identity—the voice that I so foolishly took to like an old dog to a new bone ambushes me without warning.
“Hey, um. Can we talk?” Mulligan asks, glancing down at me from his intimidating height, the backpack hanging off his shoulder looking disproportionately small against the backdrop of his insane muscle definition.
Breathe, girl. Remember what that one Buzzfeed article said: anger is just misunderstanding with nowhere to go.
I choose to respond calmly. I choose to respond calmly. I choose to respond calmly.
Eye twitching, I bite down on my tongue until I taste iron, resentment congealing in my stomach. “Can’t. Busy.”
I haul my backpack onto my back and attempt to make a beeline for the exit, but I don’t get very far thanks to his freakishly fast reflexes. His hand shoots out to stall me—making unwanted contact with my wrist—and I full-on growl at him like some rabid animal. Great. Now I have to wash my arm with bleach.
He does the wise thing and recoils. “Sorry, I—I just want a minute of your time. Please. I know I’m not your favorite person right now, but I could really use your help.”
