Professor Hendricks.
Subject: Business Strategy Project Requirements
I open it.
Students,
Your semester project requires extensive collaboration. I'm mandating weekly meetings with your partner, with documented progress reports due biweekly. Partners who fail to meet regularly will receive grade penalties.
Additionally, there will be a required overnight research trip in October to visit your chosen company's headquarters. Transportation and lodging will be provided by the university.
Plan accordingly.
Overnight trip.
With Ivy.
I should be horrified. Should be figuring out how to get out of this.
Instead, I'm thinking about how I'll have her alone. Away from campus. Away from her friends who guard her like protective dragons.
A chance to finally make her listen.
It's manipulative. Probably crosses lines. Definitely will make her hate me more, but I'm desperate.
And desperate people do desperate things.
I close my laptop and finally crawl into bed, but sleep doesn't come.
Instead, I think about the dance. About the way Ivy felt in my arms, tense and angry but still there. Still dancing with me even though she hated it.
Still affected by me, even if that effect is negative.
It's pathetic that I'm clinging to that. To the evidence that I still matter to her, even as the person she hates most.
But that's all I have.
And I'll take it.
Monday morning, I wake up to seventeen missed calls from my mother.
I call her back reluctantly.
"Finally. I've been trying to reach you all weekend."
"I was busy. Settling in." I say annoyed with her overbearing mothering.
"Too busy to answer your mother?" Her tone is sharp. "We need to discuss your progress."
"I've been here a week, Mom. There's no progress to report."
"There's always progress. Have you made connections? Joined clubs? Met with your academic advisor?"
"I'm handling it."
"And Miss Chen? I trust you've been... appropriate with her." Which I know means, stay away from her.
My jaw tightens. "What does that mean?"
